Cold Heart (26 page)

‘Does Cindy’s death benefit Kendall?’ she asked again, casually.

‘No way. That’s not the way it works.’ Feinstein had got more of a grip on himself now, had become the lawyer again. ‘Anything Cindy owned when she died will form part of her own estate.’

‘Will that go to her parents? They’re out in Milwaukee somewhere, aren’t they?’

‘They may well be, but as far as Cindy was concerned they could stay and rot there. I have the last will and testament of Mrs Cindy Nancy Robyn Nathan right here in the office, and her family are not mentioned at all.’

Feinstein leaned back in his chair, sensing Lorraine’s acute interest in what he was saying. He permitted himself a leisurely pause and a further pull on his cigar. ‘She left everything to the House of Nirvana Spiritual Center, some fucking bunch of freaks.’ God, Lorraine thought, that was unexpected. ‘Fortunately,’ Feinstein said, with a self-satisfied smile, ‘the tax-saving clause prevents them getting more than her pantyhose. They won’t get a cent of Harry’s estate.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lorraine said. ‘Cindy didn’t tell me anything about the Nathans’ tax affairs.’

‘It’s a pretty standard thing on a large estate that will attract a lot of taxes, particularly when the beneficiaries are all relatively young and in good shape. All of Harry Nathan’s beneficiaries had to survive him by sixty days before the various gifts to them took effect. Otherwise, in the situation we have here, for example, we would be paying tax once on the estate when it passed to Cindy, then again virtually immediately when it passed to her heirs.’

The intercom buzzed again, and Feinstein screamed into it, ‘Pamela, I said no calls –
I
MEAN NO CALLS.’

‘Since Cindy didn’t live for sixty days, it doesn’t go to her heirs,’ Lorraine said. ‘So who gets it?’

‘The residuary legatee,’ Feinstein said.

‘Who is?’ Lorraine said, wanting to slap him. Lawyers: what a fucking pompous self-important bunch of creeps, she thought. Feinstein got up, turned aside to relight the thick cigar, then turned back to her as he drew on it, surrounding himself in a swirl of blue smoke.

‘Sonja Nathan.’

‘Sonja?’ Lorraine said. ‘She’ll do a bit better now than the couple of keepsakes Cindy said she was going to get.’

‘That would indeed have been pretty much the position if Cindy hadn’t died,’ Feinstein went on, in professorial mode. ‘Nathan’s big assets were the house, his holding in Maximedia, his art collection and his half of the art gallery. There were no substantial cash assets at all – or, at least, not in any accounts I knew about.’ His eyes narrowed with rage at this reminder of Harry Nathan’s perfidy. ‘The will disposed of all of those to Cindy and Kendall, and Sonja would have got anything else not specifically mentioned. He had a substantial film library, for example, at his office, which would have gone to her.’

Lorraine’s mind was racing: she had largely discounted the possibility of Sonja Nathan’s involvement in her husband’s death, but this certainly gave her a motive. True, she had had to kill two people to collect under Harry’s will, but if she had been prepared to kill once, why not twice? She had certainly been expert in covering her tracks – maybe used a professional hitman – as Lorraine had found nothing to connect Sonja with either of the two deaths. However, none of that was Feinstein’s business, and she tried to disguise what she was thinking by changing the subject to more mundane matters.

‘By the way, I promised Jose and Juana I would mention this matter of the savings Nathan took off them and their back salary. It looks like they should contact Sonja,’ she said, but the phone on the desk blinked again, and this time Feinstein, still on his feet, marched to the door and yanked it open.

‘Pamela, what the fuck are you doing out there?’ he shouted.

Lorraine heard whispers passing between Feinstein and his secretary before the attorney walked out, leaving the door ajar. He returned almost immediately. ‘She’s dead.’

Lorraine stood up.

‘Kendall Nathan’s dead.’

Burton looked up from reading the file on Lorraine Page to see Jim Sharkey outside the office door.

‘Is it the autopsy on Cindy Nathan?’ Burton asked.

Sharkey came in with some photographs and put them down on the lieutenant’s desk. ‘These are morgue shots. Hard to tell who it is, but it’s Kendall Nathan. Last night. Initial view is she was trying to torch the gallery and it backfired. Her hair caught light and . . .’

‘Dear God,’ Burton said, looking at the charred form. If Kendall had killed Cindy as, he had to admit, Lorraine had largely convinced him was likely, and possibly Nathan too, she had certainly got her just deserts.

‘Yeah, pretty horrific way to die. Place went up like a bonfire – lot of white spirit, plus all the canvases, the wooden frames . . . No one could do anything.’ Sharkey went on to tell Burton that there was an eyewitness, the owner of a shop that shared a back alley with the gallery workshop, who had seen Kendall enter the building and had raised the alarm when he saw the smoke.

Burton’s phone rang, and he picked it up; the receptionist told him that a Mrs Page was on the line. He asked the girl to take a message as he was in a meeting. He replaced the phone. ‘What about Cindy Nathan?’ he asked again.

Sharkey shrugged. It was still only nine thirty and nothing had come in as yet. Burton rocked back in his chair, and told Sharkey to see what he could do to hurry things up, while his eyes moved back involuntarily to the grotesque photographs of Kendall Nathan’s corpse. Well, he figured, there was no more potent motive force to set off a chain of destruction than the cocktail of greed, hatred and lust that had seemed to surround Harry Nathan. Either Cindy or Kendall had killed Nathan, Kendall had killed Cindy, and now Kendall, too, was dead. The nest of vipers had consumed itself, and he was glad to close the Nathan case for good. The evidence could go back to the family now, he thought, recalling the hours of sickening videotapes he had made sure that no one but himself saw, and made a mental note to call Feinstein to find out who was now the legal owner of Harry Nathan’s estate.

Decker jumped as Lorraine banged into the office. ‘Do I have a lot to tell you, darling,’ she said, tossing a rustling deli bag full of wrapped packages onto his desk. ‘Did you eat?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you. God, I’m hungry. What did Feinstein want?’ He went into the kitchen for plates.

When he came back, she said, ‘Cindy was right about the art scam. Feinstein bought over two million dollars’ worth of paintings from Harry Nathan and Kendall and they’ve turned out to be fakes. He wants us to try to trace either the original paintings or the proceeds of sale.’ Lorraine opened a tub of artichoke salad and scooped some into her mouth before continuing. ‘Cindy also wrote stuff about killing herself to Feinstein and a whole bunch of other people – which fits in with what I thought about the note. I had Kendall pretty much down for having killed her, but – you won’t believe this – Kendall Nathan died too last night.’

‘Ding dong, the witch is dead,’ Decker said ironically, arranging bread, bresaola and salad on a serving platter. ‘What happened to her?’

‘The gallery caught fire and she went up in smoke. That’s all Feinstein’s assistant knew.’ Lorraine tore off another hunk of bread, assembled herself a rapid sandwich and began to eat.

‘I’m sure Lieutenant Burton will be able to let you have a few more details,’ Decker said, with mock innocence, and Lorraine flushed scarlet. ‘Remember to ask him when he’s scrambling eggs for you – I mean, next time he calls.’

‘Did he call?’ Lorraine asked, giving up the pretence that her association with Burton was purely professional.

‘Nope, not yet. You want me to call him?’

Lorraine nodded, then changed her mind. ‘No, I’ll call him later. Anyway, two things. Feinstein figures that he bought the real thing from Nathan’s gallery, as he got it properly authenticated there, but what was packed and delivered were fakes. Cindy told me she thought Kendall and Harry were pulling something like that, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t believe her.’ Lorraine shook her head. ‘Poor kid. Nobody took her seriously her whole life.’

‘It’s not your fault she died,’ Decker said gently. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

‘Yeah, I know – part of the job,’ Lorraine said with a wintry smile. ‘But she told me she’d found out that some of the art at the house was fake too. Some Chinese porcelain she thought was antique was apparently knocked out by some company called Classic Reproductions. Check them out for a start.’ She finished her sandwich as Decker made notes of what she had said.

‘I also think we need to trace a guy who worked for Kendall Nathan, a sort of gofer who brought the paintings round and hung them for Feinstein,’ she continued. ‘He’s a young kid – Feinstein couldn’t recall his name, but I remember seeing someone when I was at the gallery so chase him up too.’

‘Will do,’ Decker said, making another note.

‘These are pretty spectacular pieces that have gone missing, so we contact galleries in the US and in Europe and all the big art auction houses. They’re all signed works by well-known modern painters, and all had price tags from three hundred thousand dollars to over two million. Poor old Feinstein really got stung.’

‘I’ll make some enquiries in London,’ Decker said, writing furiously. ‘I think they have a register of hot art works you can have searched.’ He was going to enjoy doing the legwork on this case, he reckoned, schmoozing through galleries, and looking up art-world friends.

Lorraine dug into her briefcase and brought out some loose pages. ‘These are the names of the people Kendall employed. Feinstein paid the wages so the list should be legit – just three people. He said they were hired to remodel frames, do repairs and so on, but they might also have been painting the fakes, so check them out. There’s also a list of regular buyers – get each of them to give you the name of their art adviser. It may mean a lot of people have been stung.’

Decker nodded, excited.

‘Clever bastards,’ Lorraine mused, leaning forward. ‘You can see by the list – all movie people. They rarely sold to a dealer or old money, because they’d recognize a fake so fast. Most of the people they sold to were just rich trash and wouldn’t know if they’d bought a Lichtenstein or a fried egg. They hung up what they’d bought, put up the gold plaque to say what it was, while the original stayed with Nathan’s gallery. He and Kendall were pulling the scam together.’

‘And a very lucrative one,’ Decker remarked.

Lorraine nodded. She frowned, and leaned back in her chair. ‘You know . . . everything Cindy Nathan said is starting to make sense. I mean about the high-tech security at Nathan’s – I’d say he kept the originals on his own walls.’ Lorraine leafed through the pile of pages of information from Feinstein. ‘There’s also sculpture, ceramics, and some statues that were worth over a million dollars.’

Decker waited, pen poised, as Lorraine thumbed through the pages. ‘According to Cindy, Nathan hadn’t paid the insurance for the contents at the house for quite a while. Why do you think that was?’

‘It’s certainly a weird thing to do,’ Decker said meditatively. ‘Particularly since he wasn’t lax about security.’

‘That’s what I thought. He was paranoid about it, monitored every phone call, every visitor,’ Lorraine said. ‘Supposing what he was worried about wasn’t the paintings being ripped off out of the house, but certain people getting
into
it – like the people who thought they had the same painting hanging in the guest bath at home? I bet he was careful never to sell to anyone too close to his own social circle.’

‘That’s certainly one explanation,’ Decker said. ‘But what about Kendall getting in and trashing the stuff?’

‘I’ve been trying to figure that one out since the housekeepers told me about it. The only thing I can think is that she discovered then that those paintings weren’t the ones she and Nathan had bought.’

‘What do you mean – he’d sold them again?’ Decker interjected.

Wouldn’t surprise me. I reckon Nathan got two sets of fakes painted. Then he switched the originals again to cut Kendall out.’

‘He was doing a double whammy?’

‘Right. And Kendall found out when she went to the house the night Cindy Nathan killed herself.’

‘But why the hell would she set light to the gallery?’ Decker asked. ‘That was her own stock – she must have known that was genuine, at least.’

‘She’s going to have lost a fucking fortune on the scam – I’d say she torched it for the insurance. Which is why Feinstein wants me to look for secret banks accounts. If Nathan sold half of those paintings he’s got to have millions stashed somewhere.’

‘I’ll start calling round and see if any of them have turned up.’ Decker dangled the last piece of bresaola above his mouth and finished it with an elegant snap.

‘Let me tell you the second thing first,’ Lorraine said. ‘Feinstein told me the exact terms of Harry Nathan’s will.’ And she explained how Sonja Nathan now stood to inherit not only Cindy’s share of Harry Nathan’s estate, but also Kendall’s.

‘Just so long as she lives another . . .’ Decker glanced at the calendar ‘. . . four days. East Hampton next stop, right?’

‘Yes, get me another flight. I doubt if Sonja has anything to do with it as she’s been out of the picture a long time . . .’ She smiled at the pun. ‘But I’d like to talk to her, and besides, Mr Feinstein is paying us top dollar, so we can afford it. All fraud cases take a long time to check out too, so we don’t take on anything else – well, not for a while.’

Decker rubbed two fingers together. ‘Do I get a rise?’

Lorraine shooed him with her hand. ‘Oh, get out of here. But if you come up with something, yes, we’ll split if fifty-fifty because I’ll need you to do a lot of legwork.’

‘Thank you.’ He bowed out, eager to make a start.

Lorraine glanced at her phone, then checked the time. It was after two, and Jake had not returned her call. Suddenly, she felt the depression descend. It was odd, she thought, she’d got a new and interesting investigation, but a date for the movies was more important.