Линда Ла Плант - Cold Heart

‘Are your fingerprints on it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And they have the gun?’

‘The police found it in the shrubbery by the pool.’

‘Did you fire it, Mrs Nathan?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’ve said you did not kill your husband.’

‘Yes, but you asked if I fired it and I did,’ Cindy said, with a childish sort of exactness. ‘A few times, just practising. Once I fired it at Harry, but I missed and there were blanks in it anyway.’

Lorraine picked up a pen and twisted it in her fingers. ‘Did you fire your gun on the day your husband was found dead?’

‘No.’

‘Where did you leave it the last time you used it?’

‘In our bedroom, on my side of the bed, in a silver box. Harry had guns all over the house — he was paranoid about security. He had a licence, and he even had a gun in his car.’

‘Could I come out to the house, Mrs Nathan?’

Cindy nodded. ‘Will you say that you’re going to give me a massage? I don’t want them to know. I don’t think they would like it, you know, me hiring you, without telling them.’

‘Who are you referring to, Mrs Nathan?’

‘Oh, the lawyers and the staff.’

Lorraine leaned back in her chair. ‘Did you love your husband, Mrs Nathan?’

‘Yes.’

‘As his widow, are you his main beneficiary?’

‘I get the house and the stock he had in the company, and his second wife, Kendall, gets his share in the gallery on Beverly Drive, though the will says that if there should be issue of our marriage, then the kid would be the main beneficiary and I get a lot less. The most valuable stuff is the art in the house — Harry was a collector. Feinstein says it’s mine as part of the contents of the house, but Kendall’s got some attorney to write claiming she and Harry agreed to split it so her half wasn’t his to leave. There’s something about Sonja too, but Feinstein says it won’t add up to more than a few mementoes. It’s all very complicated...’ Her voice trailed off.

‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow, all right?’

Cindy nodded, then opened her wallet. ‘You gave me your card, so I got the cheque all ready. All you got to do is fill in the amount. I don’t know how much you charge, but I want you to look after me, exclusive, so that will be extra, and I’ll pay extra because I don’t want you to tell anybody that you’re working for me. If it gets out, I’ll deny it, and I’ll get one of my fancy lawyers to sue you. Do you have client confidentiality?’

‘Of course.’

Decker ushered Cindy Nathan out of the office and into the elevator, while Lorraine remained at her desk, staring at the looped, childish writing. She had suggested Cindy engage her on a weekly basis, and said it would be three hundred dollars a day plus expenses.

Cindy had counted on her fingers, then leaned over to use Lorraine’s felt-tipped pen. ‘I’m going to pay you five thousand dollars a week, and I want you for a month to start with. Then, if everything works out all right for me, I won’t need you any more.’

When Decker returned, Lorraine held up the cheque between her fingers. He took it and looked stunned.

‘Shit! Twenty grand! What in God’s name do you have to do for that?’

Lorraine perched on the side of the desk. ‘Long time ago, one of the boys arrested this old guy for passing dud cheques. When he was questioned he shrugged his shoulders and... he was crazy. He’d found the cheque book in a supermarket.’

‘I don’t follow. What’s that got to do with Cindy Nathan?’

‘I think she’s crazy — the elevator’s certainly not quite going to the top floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if that cheque bounced. On the other hand, she’s a wealthy widow.’

Decker chuckled. ‘Well, hell, let’s bank it first thing in the morning, and if she’s out to lunch we’re laughing.’

Lorraine clicked her fingers to Tiger. ‘Yeah, you go ahead and do that. Oh, that phone call Cindy denies making.’ Decker nodded. He still felt awful about the recording.

‘Cindy has quite a high-pitched voice. If she got hysterical, like she’d just shot her husband, it’s likely her voice would go up a notch. Whoever made that call, if my memory serves me well, had quite a deep, almost throaty smoker’s voice.’ She gave him that cock-eyed, smug smile. He said nothing.

Lorraine still hovered at the doorway. ‘Did Mrs Nathan come with a chauffeur?’

‘I have no idea,’ Decker said. As the door closed behind her he shut his eyes, tried to remember the voice. Had it been deep, throaty as she had just said? He could not remember.

According to the doorman in the main lobby, Cindy Nathan had walked into the building. He had seen no driver, and she had not left keys for the valet-parking facility. She had asked him which floor Page Investigations was on, and then used the intercom phone to the office. ‘I’m sorry if I did anything wrong,’ the doorman said apologetically.

‘You didn’t,’ Lorraine replied, as she left, with Tiger straining at the leash. But she knew intuitively that something was wrong. Nothing quite added up. She felt good, though, and she was twenty thousand dollars better off. Page Investigations was up and rolling.

Lorraine arrived at the Nathans’ mansion with her CD playing Maria Callas singing Madame Butterfly at full volume. The door was opened by a middle-aged Mexican maid who ushered her into the cool hallway and motioned her through an archway framed by a broad-leafed twining vine growing around two carved pine pillars. Looking up the floating stairs, Lorraine saw several modern art works. Whether they were valuable or not, she couldn’t tell.

Through the archway was a shallow flight of pink polished granite steps leading down to the main living area of the house. Floor to ceiling windows gave it a lovely, light, delicate feel, and the room had been divided into a sitting space on one side and an area for formal dining on the other. There were large plain white armchairs and sofas, and one piece of ‘art’ furniture, a strange green and black chair with a round, stuffed base and padded back, which looked to Lorraine like a cartoon-style tea-cup or a fairground waltzer.

Cindy Nathan sat in the tea-cup, curled up like a child with a glass of orange juice cupped in her hands, rolling a clear plastic beach ball back and forth over the same six inches of floor with a tiny, tanned foot, drying the varnish on her toenails. ‘Oh, hi, have you come to give me a massage?’ she said brightly, getting up. Today she had her hair in Dutch-girl braids, high on her head, and had made up her eyes in a defiantly garish blue, her lips with raspberry frosting. She wore a yellow top with peasant-style embroidery and blue and yellow windowpane check pants.

Cindy’s acting — as she pretended Lorraine was a masseuse — was as bad as it had been in her TV roles. She gestured for Lorraine to follow her into an adjoining room. It was a gym, very professional with weights, sit-up bars, medicine balls and leg stretchers. Close to a boxing punch-bag, in the centre of the space, was a row of different-sized gloves in bright red leather. ‘I always used to call this Harry’s toy cupboard. He was always in here when he was home, working out.’

‘He must have been fit.’

‘Yes, he was. Well, so he should have been. He spent enough time looking after his body.’ She giggled, and covered her mouth. ‘I reckon the reason he was so obsessive was...’ she held up her little finger and waggled it ‘...he was kind of small. Some parts of the body you can never build up.’

Lorraine perched on one of the black leather-covered benches, irritated by the girl’s innuendo. ‘Did you kill him, Cindy?’ she asked.