Cold Heart

Chapter 11

Lorraine made breakfast while Jake showered. Just setting two places felt good. She had lain awake beside him for a long time, replaying over and over in her mind the moment he had asked if she would marry him, half afraid she had dreamed it.

‘Hi,’ he said, as he came into the kitchen buttoning up his shirt and rubbing his chin. ‘You’ve got one hell of a blunt razor in there.’

They were at ease with each other, and Jake ate yoghurt and cereal, poured coffee for them both, and even put his dirty dishes in the sink. He made no mention, though, of having asked her to marry him.

‘Somebody house-trained you,’ she said, watching him squirt washing-up liquid into the sink.

Tiger took up his position at the front door, waiting for his morning walk, and Jake offered to take him out while Lorraine showered. It was as if he had known her for months, not just days, and his presence didn’t seem intrusive, just got better and better every moment he was with her.

Jake might have been well-trained in the dish-washing department, but he had left the shower steamed up, sopping towels and puddles on the floor and wet footprints on her carpet. Lorraine liked even that because it stopped him being too perfect. She remembered her ex-husband Mike, and the arguments they had had over his bathroom habits: she could never understand how he could take a shower and leave wet footprints everywhere but on the bath mat — and here she was liking it that the new man in her life was behaving in the same way. The new man in her life! She stared at her reflection in the mirror. In just two days her life had changed course, and from feeling depressed and alone, she knew now that a future was waiting for her.

Lorraine finished dressing, made the bed, vacuumed the living room and even plumped up the soft cushions, a small smile playing on her lips as she did the chores at top speed. She wished Rosie could see her now — she wouldn’t believe it! Being loved, even if just for two days, had made her domesticated! Lorraine crossed to the window to see if Jake and Tiger were on their way back, and seeing them both coming up the street below, she opened the window and called down. Jake looked up and waved, while Tiger almost pulled him off his feet. He unclipped the dog’s lead, still looking up at Lorraine. ‘I’m going to be late, I’ll call you.’

She was disappointed — she had wanted him to see how she had cleaned the house. Then suddenly she felt stupid, and a dark spiral of emotions started rushing through her mind. Why hadn’t he mentioned their marriage? Why hadn’t he come back to kiss her goodbye? Would she see him again? Tiger scratched at the front door, and Lorraine let him in. He went straight to his bowl, and began to gobble his food noisily. ‘Hey, you! I just washed that floor!’

It was while she was driving into the office, accelerating along Rose Avenue, that she began to run through the case. The light at Walgrave and Rose was broken, blinking a steady red that permitted one car at a time to cross the intersection. Seeing the line of vehicles jammed bumper to bumper, Lorraine looked at the memos she’d scrawled to herself. Why had Harry Nathan been killed? Somehow she didn’t think it was to stop the porn tapes being released — if someone was desperate enough to kill him for that reason, they would have ensured that they knew where the tapes were. But if that were the case, the suspects were Cindy, Kendall and Raymond Vallance, with Kendall and Vallance having the most to lose by the tapes becoming public. However, Lorraine thought, Nathan’s involvement in a multi-million-dollar art fraud seemed a much more likely motive for his murder. It was almost impossible that he had been killed by one of the victims of the scam — or of his other blackmailing activities: the tight security at the house would have kept strangers out. No. Nathan had been killed by someone who knew him well, which meant his wives or his friends. Yet again Kendall seemed the most likely killer — especially since what was probably her jeep had been seen near Nathan’s house on the day he died. Against that, though, she had given a convincing appearance of not having known that she had been ripped off in the scam until weeks later when Cindy died. The phone tapes indicated that she had been on warm terms with her ex-husband.

At last it was Lorraine’s turn to cross the intersection and she speeded up along Airport and Centinela to make up the lost time, but the ten-minute delay meant that she hit another major jam on Pico Boulevard. Lorraine turned back to her notes, and considered other reasons why anyone might have wanted Harry Nathan dead.

Assuming that no one else had had any inkling that the paintings weren’t genuine, Nathan had been perceived as a rich man; perhaps he, and the women, had been killed for his money by the person who would eventually inherit it — Sonja Nathan. Lorraine had never established who had made the telephone call to her office on the morning of Nathan’s murder, which lent a shred of support to that hypothesis. It had certainly been a woman, she thought — though perhaps Raymond Vallance could have imitated a woman’s voice.

The traffic was at a dead stop. Lorraine tapped her teeth with her pen, and continued to think about Sonja Nathan. If she was primarily motivated by financial greed, why had she let Nathan rip her off so spectacularly after their divorce? She had surrendered the gallery she had built up, her only means of earning a living — and which a court would almost certainly have awarded to her — because, Vallance had said, she was too proud to soil her hands. But soiling one’s hands with petty squabbles over money might be a very different matter to Sonja Nathan from soiling them with an enemy’s blood.

The impatient driver behind blasted Lorraine with his horn. She indicated in the mirror that there was nothing she could do, and glanced back at her notes, where she had written the words paintings, new partner. Had it been Nathan’s own idea to sell the paintings without Kendall’s knowledge, or had he been working with someone else? Someone who had decided to cut him permanently out of the picture — and out of the proceeds of the sale — just as ruthlessly as he had cut out his second ex-wife?

Lorraine ignored another toot from the driver behind her, and went back to her notes. Any new accomplice in the fraud would still have to be someone in Nathan’s circle of intimates, or they could not have got past the security — or known that Nathan would have to be killed outside, away from the recording devices in the house. That brought her back to Vallance and Sonja again: Sonja was the one with the specialist knowledge of the art world but Vallance was the one most desperate about the porn tapes...

Lorraine felt that she was going round in circles, but at last the traffic began to move. She put away her notes.

When she got to the office Decker was at his desk, calling galleries and auction houses. ‘I still haven’t turned up any gallery selling the paintings on the list, but there’s hundreds of ’em,’ he said.

Lorraine told him to concentrate next on private dealers: they were more likely to have buyers who did not necessarily want their purchases made public. She also asked him to check out known buyers from Japan and the former Soviet republics, especially the latter, who had a lot of illegal dollars to spend, and not to forget the buyers on record as having purchased art works from Kendall Nathan’s gallery.

‘I’m compiling a list from the papers Feinstein gave you, but it’d be better if I could get access to the gallery books,’ Decker said.

‘I doubt if sales like this went into any official ledger, but there might be a record of them at the Nathan house.’

‘Good thinking — you want me to go there?’

‘No, I’m going to go out there myself and try to get Feinstein’s art expert to confirm whether those paintings are real or fakes before we go any further,’ Lorraine said. ‘I’ll call Jose now.’ She dialled the Nathan house, and Jose said she could come straight over — he and Juana would be there, and they wanted to speak to her in any case: they had been given a formal letter from Feinstein terminating their employment. ‘We have to leave the property by the end of this week,’ he said angrily. They still had not been paid any back salary. Next call was to Feinstein. When she told him that she thought Nathan had been keeping the original canvases at his own house, he agreed readily to call the man who had authenticated the paintings for him. Within two minutes he was back on the line and said that Wendell Dulane would join her at Nathan’s house in half an hour.

‘Okay, Decker, I’ll be out until lunchtime, possibly,’ Lorraine said, picking up her purse.

‘Don’t you even want a cup of coffee, dear?’ he said in his best mom voice.

We had breakfast.’ She couldn’t resist using the plural, and Decker laughed.

Jose opened the door when Lorraine arrived at Harry Nathan’s house, but she said she would wait outside in the sun for Dulane to show up. Within a few minutes someone buzzed at the gate and a low-slung sports car drew up on the gravel. An elegant individual, dressed in a green linen suit, got out and introduced himself as Wendell Dulane.

She and Jose showed him where the paintings were hung, both on the ground floor and upstairs.

‘I’ve seen a number of these pictures before — one or two on Joel Feinstein’s behalf,’ Dulane said at once. ‘If they aren’t the originals, they aren’t crassly detectable fakes.’

‘We were hoping you could tell us the difference,’ Lorraine said. ‘They all look the same to me.’

The man nodded. ‘Certainly. I’ll call you when I’m through.’

Jose was evidently itching to talk to her about the letter he had received from Feinstein, and sure enough, when he ushered Lorraine into the kitchen, a small pile of correspondence had been set out on a black and white laminated table.

Juana came across to greet her. ‘Mrs Page, I’m so glad you have come. Did Jose tell you we have been told to leave?’

‘Have you been able to find any other employment?’ Lorraine asked, sitting down at the table to read Feinstein’s note and his brief apology for being unable to settle any outstanding accounts until the Nathan estate was in order.

Jose shrugged, and Juana pulled out a chair. ‘We have no references. We asked Mr Feinstein to provide some for us, but he doesn’t mention it in his letter and it is difficult to get decent employment here in LA without them. We have a few things we are looking into, but nothing definite. We were wondering if you could help us.’

‘I would if I could,’ Lorraine said. She didn’t know many people who could afford live-in help, but there were always movie people needing housekeepers.

‘But not without good references. We have worked for Mr Nathan for so many years...’

Lorraine knew what they wanted, and didn’t mind their rather obvious way around asking her for it directly. She said that she could give them some kind of reference and would speak to Feinstein again about their back salary and proper references. And then she had an idea. ‘Perhaps Sonja Nathan could give you a reference,’ she suggested, and saw a look pass between the couple.

‘We have written to her,’ Juana said, looking at her husband.

‘She hired you, didn’t she?’ Lorraine said, fishing for more information about Harry Nathan’s enigmatic first wife. ‘Was she easy to work for?’

‘Very easy,’ Juana said. ‘She was a lady. The rest were whores.’ There was a fierce look in her eyes, and a note of finality in her voice. Lorraine glanced at Jose.

‘Harry Nathan robbed her,’ he said slowly, ‘as he robbed us.’

A polite cough sounded behind her. Dulane had appeared in the doorway, Lorraine got up and motioned him into the hall where they could speak more privately.

‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘They’re fakes, all right — carefully executed, but I don’t think there can be any doubt. Just as well, I suppose, considering the damage some of them have sustained. Tell Feinstein I’ll call him later. Nice meeting you, Mrs Page,’ he said.

As Jose appeared to show Dulane to the door, something suddenly occurred to Lorraine. She walked back into the kitchen and asked Juana if the police had taken Nathan’s diary. ‘They took a lot of things from here. He had personal things like that in his briefcase, and they took that away, but there was an appointment book — it was stacked with the magazines.’

Lorraine followed her out to the main living area and across the large light room to a glass-topped table on which a number of upmarket glossies were spread out. Juana moved them aside, brought out a leather appointments book and handed it to Lorraine. She riffled through it: there were weeks without anything written in at all, then a few scrawled appointments. ‘Can I make a few notes?’ she asked, and Juana nodded, then withdrew. Lorraine took out her notebook and jotted down any name she came across — there was none she had heard mentioned before, and she wondered if they were art dealers, which Decker could check out. She turned page after mostly blank page. Some had a single line drawn through them and, she almost missed it, just the single letter S printed right at the top. The Ss were more frequent in the weeks leading up to the murder, but there was never more than one in a week. Lorraine noted each date, and wondered if the letter stood for ‘Sale’. Or could it refer to the first Mrs Nathan?

Juana returned with a sandwich of smoked chicken and salad leaves, in sun-dried tomato bread, neatly laid out on a tray with a napkin and some iced water. ‘Juana, if I run through some dates with you, can you see if you can recall them for any reason? Visitors, or even Kendall Nathan being here?’

Lorraine listed date after date but Juana shook her head, so Lorraine asked her to send in Jose. He, too, was unable to recall anything specific regarding the dates. ‘How about two days before the murder? Can you remember anyone coming here?’

Jose shook his head, but then he came closer and asked for more dates. ‘You remember somebody?’ Lorraine asked.

‘No, but I think... I am sure most of the dates are... wait. Let me talk to Juana.’ He hurried out and a minute later returned with her. This time Juana carried a small cardboard-backed diary, and Lorraine read the dates again.

‘Ah! I may be wrong, but most of the dates you want to know about are our days off. They weren’t usually on the same day every week, Mr Nathan would just tell us we could have the day off.’

Nathan must have made sure that his domestics were not in the house so they wouldn’t know who came or went, what paintings were exchanged or hung or, most importantly, who was taking items away.

‘Did you ever notice anything unusual going on with the paintings?’ Lorraine asked.

Juana raised her hands in an uncomprehending gesture. ‘They were changed so many times. Mr Nathan was always asking if anyone had been to the house, if anyone had seen them — he acted like he never wanted anyone to see them.’

‘Was there anyone in particular who used to come to look at the paintings?’

The couple looked at Lorraine. ‘No one in particular.’

‘Did Kendall Nathan still come to the house after the divorce?’

‘Many times,’ Juana answered. ‘She used to bring paintings out here and say where they were to be hung. Sometimes the new ones looked identical to the old ones.’

‘Did anyone ever come with her to help hang the paintings?’

Lorraine waited as they thought about it. ‘Sometimes she had a black kid who was her odd-job man. They were big canvases, and she couldn’t carry them in and out of the house on her own.’

Lorraine pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘During the last few days or weeks before Harry Nathan was shot, did anyone come and take away paintings? Or replace paintings?’

Jose said, ‘Yes, once, but we didn’t see him — it was our afternoon off. Mr Nathan said it was a man from the insurance company checking on them.’

‘Where was Cindy when this went on?’

‘I don’t remember, she never paid any attention to the paintings.’

‘Can you give me the date the insurance broker was here?’

‘It was a Monday, a week or two before the murder. I remember because Mr Nathan gave me three thousand dollars for household expenses, and to pay the gardener. I remember the day, too, because later in the evening, we had just served dinner and he called us into the dining room. He poured us glasses of champagne, said he was going to be a father, that Cindy was pregnant, just a few days, but pregnant.’

‘I see,’ Lorraine said. ‘Well, thank you for all your information. I’d better get myself back to my office.’ She got up to go, having deliberately held back the question she most wanted to ask until last.

‘I don’t suppose Sonja ever came here after she and Harry Nathan split up?’ she asked casually, as the couple walked out into the hall with her.

‘Sonja, never,’ Juana said, without hesitation, her eyes meeting Lorraine’s. ‘She never came here again.’

Decker was just hanging up the phone when Lorraine arrived at the office, and seemed very upbeat. ‘I just got an address from the welfare department for the kid who worked for Kendall Nathan,’ he said. ‘The one on Feinstein’s payroll was out of date.’

‘Well, check him out,’ Lorraine said. ‘Feinstein’s art guy said all the paintings at the house are fakes.’

‘I’ll get over to his home right now.’

‘Ask him if he ever met Sonja Nathan,’ Lorraine added. ‘Did you fix me up a flight to New York?’

‘I’ll get on to it as soon as I get back,’ he said.

Almost as soon as Decker had closed the door the phone rang and she picked it up: ‘Page Investigations.’

‘Hi! It’s me.’ It was Jake. She pushed away her notes and leaned back in her chair.

‘I was wondering if you’d like dinner at my place tonight.’

‘Yes.’ She laughed, and said she knew she was supposed to play hard to get, but...

‘Pick you up from your office at about six thirty?’ he suggested.

‘Yep. Oh, just one thing — the Cindy Nathan autopsy. Did it come in?’

Jake told her the results. Then Lorraine said, ‘I don’t think the note was genuine. Or, at least, she didn’t write it that day.’

‘Well, it’s possible she wrote it on a piece of paper she cut in two herself, for some reason,’ Burton replied. ‘I’m not going to push an investigation unless another suspect emerges besides Kendall Nathan.’

Lorraine said nothing, having decided not to mention her suspicions that either Raymond Vallance or Sonja Nathan might have some connection to Cindy’s death until after she had seen Sonja.

Burton went on, ‘The forensic team are still sifting through the debris of the gallery workroom, but they seem to think Kendall died accidentally, possibly while trying to start a fire. Wouldn’t surprise me if she was trying to burn the place down for the insurance — the business was in debt, and she couldn’t afford to renew the lease.’

‘Anyone else involved?’ Lorraine asked, and Burton said that, according to the witness, Kendall had been alone.

‘When did you know about her death?’ she asked.

He had been told the previous day. Lorraine wanted to ask him why he hadn’t mentioned it, but she didn’t because she wanted to avoid any awkwardness between them. At the same time she thought perhaps he should have told her, and, as if reading her mind, he said, ‘I was going to tell you about it last night, but... I got a little sidetracked, if you remember.’ He laughed, in a low, intimate fashion, then had to cut short the call as there was another waiting. He reminded her that he would pick her up later, then hung up.

The light on the answerphone was blinking. Feinstein wanted Lorraine to come over to his office at her earliest convenience.

Lorraine sighed. Now that the attorney was paying her, she had no choice but to do as he asked, and by just before four she was in his reception in Century City.

Dulane had informed Feinstein that further fake copies of his paintings had been found at Harry Nathan’s house, and Feinstein demanded to know what the hell was going on.

Well,’ Lorraine said, ‘it looks like Nathan did to Kendall what she did to you and swapped the paintings again.’

‘Jesus,’ Feinstein swore. ‘Crooked fucking bastard. Where the fuck are the paintings now?’ He glared at Lorraine as though she must know the answer.

‘It looks to me like they’ve either been sold on to other buyers, probably outside the US, or he had another partner who’s got them stashed somewhere,’ she said.

‘Find them,’ Feinstein said, rubbing his eye sockets wearily. ‘Just fucking find them.’

‘Right now my assistant is checking out the man who worked for Kendall Nathan,’ Lorraine said smoothly, ‘and when I have his report, I will give you a further update. We’re still checking out auction-houses, galleries and other possible outlets for the paintings.’ Feinstein pursed his lips. ‘You know, Mr Feinstein,’ Lorraine went on, ‘you could report this to the police. You have been used in a serious fraud.’

‘No,’ he snapped.

‘May I ask why not?’

Feinstein pinched the bridge of his nose, then leaned back in his chair. ‘One, I do not wish to appear like a total asshole and, believe me, if the media get a hold of this, you think anyone is going to want me to represent them? The schmuck that didn’t even know when he was being ripped off? I have my reputation to think of and...’ he spread his hands on his desk ‘...like I said, sometimes clients, like Nathan, do certain deals in cash...’

‘Did you benefit from cash payments, Mr Feinstein?’ Lorraine enquired.

Feinstein half sighed, half hissed his reply. ‘Not cash, exactly. I thought I made that clear.’

‘Not quite. If you weren’t paid in cash, how were you paid?’

Feinstein steepled the fingers of his sweaty hands. ‘An early de Kooning like the one I bought costs maybe a few thousand dollars more than I paid. It was a good deal — one for the future if you understand me, not to be sold on until a few years had gone by. It wasn’t hot, just an exceptional deal — in lieu of fees, you understand.’

‘I see,’ Lorraine said, loathing the man, who continued to play with his fingers.

‘So this stays a private investigation. You find who stitched me up, then I’ll deal with it my way. That’s what you’re hired to do so no more talk about reporting the fakes to the cops. Is that clear?’

‘Absolutely, if that’s what you want.’

He stood up, and began to move round his desk.

‘Did you also handle Sonja Nathan’s business?’ Lorraine asked.

Feinstein turned. ‘No, I didn’t. I was introduced to Nathan by Raymond Vallance, the movie star. Most of my clients are in the industry, which is another reason why I need confidentiality.’

Lorraine headed for the door, then turned back to him. ‘Do you know if Sonja Nathan and her husband were still in contact after they divorced?’

Feinstein blinked hard. ‘One of my partners handled the settlement. I met her during the meetings — they both had to be here.’

‘And Sonja Nathan is now the main beneficiary of the estate, correct?’

Feinstein nodded. ‘Yes — considering the other two wives conveniently dropped dead.’

‘Now that we know the art at the house isn’t genuine, what sort of sum would Harry Nathan’s heir be expecting to receive?’

Feinstein stuffed his hands into his pockets. ‘I don’t know. The house is worth about three million, the corporate stock not a lot in the present climate, and the gallery nothing — Harry and Kendall didn’t own the freehold on the site.’

‘And if his secret bank accounts are traced, would whatever money is in them also belong to Sonja Nathan?’

‘I will certainly be instituting a claim to trace the value of my property into those funds,’ Feinstein said, with emphasis, ‘but I can’t say what anyone else ripped off by Harry Nathan will be doing. Basically if nobody else claims it, it’s hers.’

It was five thirty by the time Lorraine got back to the office. She had expected Decker to be there, but he hadn’t even called. She cleared up some correspondence, tidied the office, took the garbage down to the incinerator, and had almost got everything in order when the doorman called to say someone was in reception to see her.

It was Jake — wearing a casual sweater, old cord trousers and sneakers. ‘Hi. Maybe thought we’d do the walk before we went to my place — you all set?’

Tiger hurled himself at his friend, tail like a windmill, then pranced around barking.

Lorraine made a last-minute check before they left. Her car stayed in the garage, as Burton had the roof down on his rather beaten-up Suzuki jeep. ‘This is for going to the beach,’ he said, excusing the state of the jeep, but Lorraine liked it, and so did Tiger. He had jumped in and sat on the back seat before Burton had the door half open. Lorraine patted his head, remembering Tiger’s previous owner — as perhaps the big dog was too. All that seemed a long, long time ago, and she thought about her old partners, Rose and Rooney, wondering how they were, and when they would be returning from their honeymoon.

Jake looked sideways at her, then reached over and took her hand. ‘You’re miles away,’ he said.

She squeezed his hand. ‘Yes — I was just thinking about a couple of friends of mine I want you to meet. They’re on their honeymoon.’

He released her hand, and suddenly she wished she hadn’t said honeymoon, because the word made her think about the proposal he’d made to her. He’d made no further mention of it, and she didn’t want him to think she was trying to drop hints or remind him of it, so she started talking about Rosie and Rooney instead. She wasn’t aware of where they were going, just chatted about how she had first met Rosie and that Bill Rooney had once been her boss when she was a cop. Jake listened, but seemed to be paying more attention to the road as he drove out towards Pacific Palisades. Tiger stuck his head out of the window, his ears blowing upright, then rested his head on Jake’s shoulder. The atmosphere was relaxed and easy, and Lorraine began to unwind from the day. She stopped thinking about Harry Nathan, Kendall, Cindy, and the repellent Feinstein, and by the time they were walking beside the ocean, and Jake took her hand in his, all she could think about was the man she was with, and how good it felt to be with him again.

‘So, you’re back from wherever you’ve been,’ he said softly.

‘Sorry, sometimes it takes me a while to relax.’ She moved closer to him, and he put his arm around her shoulder.

‘I understand — I was a bit wound up myself.’

‘Had a bad day?’ she asked.

‘Hell no — I was nervous about seeing you, worried you might have changed your mind.’ They stopped and faced each other. ‘I meant what I said last night, Lorraine. It may have been jumping the gun a bit — we hardly know each other, and I’m not... I mean, I don’t want to hold you to anything said in the heat of the moment, but if you want to just let things run as they are, then that’s okay by me.’

The pain in her stomach almost made Lorraine gasp. ‘Do you mean you want to... er... you know, let things run?’ She could hardly speak with nervousness.

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, then looked into her upturned face. ‘Thing is, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. It was tough working today because I kept on wanting to call you, just to hear your voice. I can’t hide my feelings, maybe because I’ve never felt this way before, so if I’m behaving like a kid, then you’ll just have to wait for me to calm down. I want to go to bed with you right now, I want to wake up beside you, and not just one night here or there, I want you.’

She felt a small twinge of guilt because he hadn’t been on her mind all day — in many of her thoughts, maybe, but not all of them. But being with him now, she forgot everything else. The words came out as naturally as breathing, three words she never thought she would say to anyone again. ‘I love you.’

He closed his eyes and whispered, ‘Oh, thank God.’