Cold Heart (17 page)

Something else, too, had crept up on her unawares – though she hated to admit it even to herself. She had been attracted to Mr Neat and Clean, and the real pain was knowing that no one or, at least, no decent man would take a second look at her, and that anyone who knew about her past would give her a very wide berth. She was almost thirty-nine years old, and she felt older. The plastic surgery only covered the cracks; it was what was inside that counted. And Lorraine was alone, with only Tiger for company, and it was the idea of a future on her own that made her weep even more despairingly.

Tiger raised his head as she sobbed, then padded across and climbed onto the sofa beside her. She put one arm around his shoulders to draw his head close.

*

It was almost ten o’clock when Juana turned on the bath taps and discovered there was no hot water. She called to her husband, who was still downstairs, asking if he had turned off the water. He didn’t hear her, so she made her way along the landing, then froze as she heard the sound of water running. She was outside Cindy Nathan’s bedroom – and there was no way that the girl could still be taking a shower.

‘Get up here, Jose.
Hurry
,
HURRY!’

Juana and Jose went together into Cindy’s bedroom. Sure enough, the shower was still running, and sounded louder than normal. Suddenly both were afraid.

‘Go into the bathroom,’ Juana whispered.

Jose turned the handle, calling to Cindy as he pushed open the door, one inch, then two – then let it swing wide open.

‘Mrs Nathan?’ he said.

The water was still running and the shower screens were so steamed up that Jose could not make out whether Cindy was inside or not. He edged further into the bathroom, calling Cindy’s name, seeing towels and a delicate necklace lying on the tiles. He eased back the sliding doors, which had been drawn around the bath, and gasped. Cindy was naked, kneeling in a position of prayer, a cord wound round her throat and attached by its other end to the shower jet. Her head had slumped forward, and her wet hair covered her face.

‘Oh, my God,’ he whispered.

‘What is it?’ asked Juana.

Jose didn’t want his wife to see what he had seen, so he turned quickly and pushed her out of the bedroom.

Cindy Nathan was dead. Her eyes were open and her dead gaze stared down at the bottom of the bath, as water continued to spray over her kneeling body and swirl into the drain.

Kendall Nathan sat on her orange sofa in front of the TV set with a tray on her lap. She’d made her usual salad and had just poured herself a glass of white Californian Chardonnay. When the phone rang she was irritated. She had worked late at the gallery and was so tired she was in two minds as to whether to pick it up, but the ringing persisted. When she answered, she couldn’t make out what the caller was saying, and had to ask repeatedly who it was.

Jose sounded terrified, his voice breaking as he half sobbed how he had found Cindy.

Kendall almost dropped the phone, and had to breathe deeply to steady herself before speaking. ‘Calm down. Tell me again – is she dead?’

‘Y
es
, in the shower. What do we do? What do we do?’

Kendall closed her eyes, her mouth bone dry, but her mind racing. ‘Have you called anyone else?’

‘No, no, we don’t know what to do,’ Jose said. He had tried to call Lorraine at the office but her answer-phone was on, and he didn’t have her home number. He had also thought about contacting Sonja, but by this time Juana was hysterical, pointing out that Sonja couldn’t do anything from East Hampton. They were afraid to call the police, afraid of any blame being attached to them. Kendall had been their last panic-stricken decision – she would know at least what they should do. They could explain to her that they could not be held responsible.

Kendall calmed them, forcing herself to take deep breaths so that her voice was controlled. ‘I’ll come right over. Just stay calm and I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t do anything until I get there, do you understand? Don’t make any more calls,’ Kendall repeated, not wanting to find Feinstein in occupation by the time she got to the house. ‘Wait for me to get there.’ This time, she was determined to get into the house before anyone else did - and get at least one of her paintings out.

She replaced the receiver with shaking hands, and took a few moments to compose herself before she grabbed her coat, car keys and purse and ran from the house. It took her no more than fifteen minutes to get to the Nathans’, where she screeched up to the garage compound and slammed on the brakes.

Jose was standing, pale-faced, at the front door.

‘Where is she?’ Kendall snapped.

‘Bedroom. I found her in the shower,’ he said, as Kendall ran past him towards the staircase.

A tearful Juana was sitting on a stair and looked up, wiping her eyes on a sodden tissue. ‘There’s a note.’ She sniffed.

Kendall looked down at the woman, then continued up the stairs and along the landing towards the master suite, Jose behind her.

‘No - she’s in her own room,’ he said, and Kendall bit her lip before continuing more slowly along the landing. Cindy’s bedroom door was slightly ajar. She took a deep breath and walked in. Jose was about to follow her, but she turned round. ‘Leave me for a minute, please.’ Jose stepped back and the bedroom door closed.

Juana appeared, still clutching the tissue. ‘Did you show her the note?’

‘I left it on the dressing table.’

Kendall picked up the single sheet of scented pink notepaper, across which Cindy’s childish writing sprawled: ‘I can’t live like this. It’s all over. By the time you read this I will be dead - Cindy.’

Kendall sighed and set down the note on the zigzag, nursery style blue and white wood unit that Cindy had used as a dressing table, then turned towards the bathroom.

She leaned over Cindy’s body, bending down first to try to find a pulse at the wrist, then reached out as though to turn up the face, but recoiled: Cindy’s eyes bulged and her tongue protruded, her face swollen and discoloured. Kendall shut the shower door and walked out.

She stood in the centre of the room, breathing deeply to steady her nerves. She looked at the note again: very Cindy. But that was all finished with now, in the past. She shifted her gaze to her future, hanging in front of her in the form of a large Andrew Wyeth canvas on the wall . . .

Jose heard a single cry and looked at his wife. He was about to go into the bedroom when the door opened. Kendall almost pushed him out of her way as she hurried towards the master suite, stopping halfway along the passage to stare at another painting. She was breathing hard, and cried out again before she pushed open the doors to the master suite.

‘Go downstairs both of you, just go downstairs.’ She slammed the door after her.

Jose looked at his wife in confusion. ‘Do as she says, Jose.’

‘But shouldn’t we call someone? She’s dead in there,’ he said, pointing to Cindy’s bedroom. Suddenly there was a crash, and they heard a scream, as Kendall hurtled out of her ex-husband’s bedroom, her face flushed and her eyes wild.

‘Who else has been in this house? You’d better tell me, Jose. I want to know who has been in this fucking house, do you hear me?’

Jose was halfway down the stairs, but looked up to see Kendall leaning over the banisters.

‘Who has been here?
Tell me
.’

Juana answered from the bottom of the staircase. ‘No one, Mrs Nathan. I swear to you, no one but the police and Cindy.’

‘Has Feinstein been here? Any of his people?’ Kendall sprang down the stairs to stand, trembling with fury, in front of Jose and gave the man a sudden shove. ‘I want to know –
tell me who has been here
!’

Jose lost his footing, stumbled and clung to the rail. ‘No one, Mrs Nathan, I swear to you.’

Kendall held her head between her hands, repeating, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God,
no . . .
No!’

Juana and Jose watched as Kendall ran from room to room like a woman possessed, screaming and shouting incoherently. She smashed ornaments, knocked a piece of sculpture to the ground, dragged two canvases from the walls. The couple were so scared they ran to the kitchen and shut the door. They stood listening to Kendall’s shouts and screams, and the thumps and crashes as she continued moving through the house. Then there was silence, but at least ten minutes passed before she walked in.

‘Call the police – call whoever you want, but you’d better call somebody and tell them about Cindy.’ Kendall made towards the back door.

‘Aren’t you staying, Mrs Nathan?’

Kendall opened the back door without even turning around. ‘No, I hope she rots in hell.’

The door slammed shut after her, and they heard the jeep rev up outside and roar into the road. Jose crossed to the telephone, and Juana looked at him, all distress gone from her face and her features set.

‘Who’s going to pay us what we’re due now?’

L
ORRAINE KNEW
something was up as soon as she saw Decker’s face.

‘Cindy Nathan died last night.’

‘How?’ she asked, without emotion.

‘Found hanged in the shower. Looks like suicide – she left a note and, according to the guy at the house, the police aren’t treating it as murder, for the present at least.’

‘Jose called here?’

‘Yeah, about half an hour ago – phone was ringing as I walked in.’

‘What else did he say?’

Decker ran a hand through his hair. ‘Odd, really – I don’t think he knew why he’d called here. Said his wife suggested it. They both want to talk to you. I said you’d call when you got in.’

Lorraine pursed her lips. ‘I think I’ll do one better – I’ll go and see them. But first get me Jim Sharkey on the phone, would you?’ She changed her mind. ‘No. Ask if Lieutenant Burton will speak to me.’

As she closed her door, Decker knew immediately, from her lack of reaction to Cindy’s death, that something was troubling her. Her mood was abnormally flat, and she had deep circles beneath her eyes.

Lorraine was thinking rapidly. Why had Cindy committed suicide, if, in fact, she had? The girl hadn’t shown any signs of considering suicide, even just after her arrest when she had been under most strain, but perhaps alone, day after day at the house, the prospect of the trial had overwhelmed her. If she had killed her husband, maybe suicide had seemed like the easy way out or, at least, preferable to prison. But what about Kendall Nathan: Could she be involved in some illegal activity to do with the art market, and had killed Cindy, or had her killed, because she had found out? That seemed too far-fetched to be true, but there were the art works, which Kendall had so insistently declared were hers. Could Kendall have imagined that she would stand a better chance of claiming them, if Cindy was dead? She must have known that she would not inherit anything in Cindy’s place, and the collection would now most likely be shipped off to Milwaukee – Lorraine could not stifle a smile at the prospect of millions of dollars’ worth of modern art hanging on the walls at Cindy’s parents’ five and dime. Unless she had left it to someone else? Lorraine wrote herself an immediate memo to do three things: find out the exact terms of Harry Nathan’s will, if Cindy had made any provision in respect of her property, and to check out where Kendall Nathan had been when Cindy Nathan died.

Decker walked in, put some fresh coffee and bagels down on her desk, then tilted his head to one side. ‘You seem kind of low.’

‘Well, maybe I am. Let’s face it, we just lost a big client.’

‘That’s all, is it?’

She snapped, ‘Yes, that’s all, and stop looking at me like I got two heads. Some days you don’t feel so bright, and this just happened to be one of them. You call Lieutenant Burton?’

He told her that Burton’s line was busy, and he would call back. ‘Anything else you want me to do?’

She tried to think straight. ‘What about Sonja Nathan?’ She made another mental note to find out what Sonja got out of the estate.

‘I cancelled the flight - since we don’t have a client, there’s no point in wasting either her time or your money going out there. You want me to do anything else?’

‘Not right now. Oh, yeah, pack the tapes up and send them to Lieutenant Burton. The PD wants them.’

‘They’re welcome to them, I’ll do it straight away. Did you walk Tiger? ‘

‘
YES. NOW
get out and leave me alone.’

Lorraine sipped the coffee: Decker could really get on her nerves. The intercom light blinked.

‘Lieutenant Burton, line two,’ Decker said briskly, and Lorraine picked up the phone.

‘Mrs Page?’ Burton enquired.

‘Yes, speaking.’ She assumed her most businesslike tones. ‘I’ve asked for the Nathan tapes to be sent over to you, though I understand that may be unnecessary now.’

‘Word travels fast,’ he said softly.

‘She was my client,’ Lorraine said icily.

‘So what can I do for you?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m returning your call, Mrs Page.’

‘Oh, I just wondered if you could tell me any details. I understand there are no suspicious circumstances - is that so?’

He paused a second before answering. ‘It looks that way, but until I’ve read all the reports I can’t say.’

‘Have they done the autopsy?’

‘Presumably.’

‘Not giving away much, are you?’

‘As I said, Mrs Page, until I have seen the reports, I can’t discuss the incident.’

‘You mind if I call you again in a couple of days?’

‘I should have all the facts by then.’

Lorraine felt ill at ease. It was as if they had never met: he seemed cool and offhand. ‘Well, thank you for returning my call,’ she said lamely.

‘Not at all. Goodbye.’ He replaced the receiver immediately, leaving her listening to a dull buzz.

‘Prick,’ she muttered, and pressed the intercom. ‘Can I have some fresh coffee?’

‘By all means.’ Two minutes later Decker walked in with the coffee pot.

He topped up her cup and she gave his sleeve a tug. ‘Bad morning, sorry.’

He perched on the desk. ‘You want to talk about it?’