Lorraine waited while Cindy sipped the Coke.
‘I went into the bedroom to get the gun. I meant it, I was going to kill him, and I’d just figured out how to load it, but I couldn’t remember where it was, or if I’d taken it from the gym. I was looking all over the room for it when he strolled in all dressed up and Jose knocked on the door.’ Cindy frowned as she tried to recall the details.
‘Jose said that the car needed to be serviced, and did Harry need it after his breakfast meeting at seven. Harry said he didn’t. He’d had a long, hard night and he’d just sit by the pool reading scripts after his meeting. Then... he started laughing and he told Jose that I’d threatened to kill him again and that Jose was his witness that I was a real flake, a psychiatric case. He knows how upset I get about him saying things like that because I’ve had, you know, some problems.’
Lorraine shifted her weight. ‘Problems?’ she said gently.
‘Mmmm, I have these... kind of bad days, you know. I get depressed, uptight about things, angry.’
‘Can you go back to what you were saying about when your husband and Jose were talking in the bedroom? What happened then?’
‘Oh, yeah. Well, Harry left. And I went back to bed. I’d had such a bad night I told Juana not to disturb me. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and went out on the balcony to lie in the sun, and I guess I must have gone to sleep there. I had a nightmare, me shooting Harry, like I’d threatened to do, and something woke me up — well, I think it was me woke myself up because I pulled the trigger. I fired the gun. But I’m sure it was in my dream and then I’m not sure. That’s what terrifies me. Did I do it or was I dreaming?’
‘How long do you think there was between the two shots, or the one shot and what might have been a car backfiring?’
‘Er... maybe ten minutes.’
‘About how long does it take to get from the balcony to the pool, Cindy?’
Cindy drew open the sliding door. ‘Oh, four, maybe five minutes, but it would depend on how fast you were moving.’
Lorraine picked up her purse and followed Cindy out. ‘Do you think you’re going to be all right here alone?’
‘If I’m not there’s Jose and Juana, but they don’t like me.’
‘When you said I had to pretend to be a masseuse you seemed worried someone would find out that I was investigating the case.’
‘I am. I don’t want Jose or that bitch Juana to know. I don’t want anyone knowing my business because they all believe I killed Harry, and so they won’t say nice things about me in the court. But if they saw this, maybe they would change their minds.’ Cindy pulled up her top. There was a nightmare bruise across her belly, a virtual imprint of a fist. ‘This is nothin’. He was always knocking me around, just not my face.’
‘Does anyone know he did this to you?’
‘Maybe his ex-wives or his girlfriends — my mother always used to say once a wife-beater always one — but they won’t lift a finger for me, will they? Nor will my mother come to think of it.’ Lorraine lit a cigarette. She asked Cindy for the names of the people who had been at the dinner the night before Nathan was killed, the addresses and names of girlfriends and ex-wives, business associates, anyone who would benefit from his death, anyone who had a grudge against him. Eventually she said, ‘Let’s leave it there for the present, Cindy,’ and got up to go. ‘I’ll start checking some of this stuff out.’
‘Sure.’ Cindy shrugged. ‘But I’ll see you tomorrow anyway, won’t I?’
‘What?’ Lorraine was surprised.
‘Harry’s funeral. The coroner’s office released the body last night. I just called Forest Lawn and told them to take care of everything — they said they’d put a notice in the papers and all that stuff. I’d kind of like it if you came. I mean, my folks aren’t going to be there, and I never liked his that much.’
‘I’d be glad to,’ Lorraine said, thinking that a chance to get a closer look at Harry Nathan’s friends and relatives would be welcome. ‘What time?’
‘Eleven,’ Cindy said. ‘It’s in that fake New England church they have there. Match all his phoney friends.’ She gave a wry smile, but Lorraine saw the flicker of pain in her eyes. She could see too that having become Mrs Nathan III at the age of nineteen hadn’t landed this isolated, mixed-up girl in any bed of roses.
‘Okay,’ Lorraine said. ‘Just one last thing. Can I have access to some of these recordings Harry made?’
Once again it was clear that Cindy was uncomfortable, but she said, ‘Oh, sure. I’ll have Jose send them over.’
‘Couldn’t I have them now?’
‘It might take a while to find them. He kept them in weird places.’
She was evidently preparing the ground for some of the tapes to become conveniently untraceable, Lorraine noted. ‘Didn’t the police ask for them?’ she asked.
‘Well, I didn’t tell them about them. I figured, I pay my taxes, let them do their job!’ Cindy said with another touch of defiance. But then the fight went out of her. ‘Besides, they’re so fucking sure it’s me that they aren’t going to bother listening to ten million hours of Harry talking about all the ginseng he stuck up his ass.’
‘I see,’ Lorraine said evenly. ‘Well, I’d be interested to hear about it, if you could send over any tapes you have. See you tomorrow.’
By the time Lorraine returned to the office, she felt drained and Decker looked at her with his head on one side. ‘Go well, did it?’
Lorraine tossed her purse down. ‘You try interviewing Cindy Nathan. The porch light’s on, but there’s nobody home. She’s not sure that she didn’t do it, because she dreamed that she’d just pulled the trigger when she heard a gunshot, or as she told me repeatedly, it might have been a car backfiring!’
‘What’s your gut feeling?’
Lorraine leaned back in her chair. ‘I don’t think she did it, but I’d better find something fast to prove that she didn’t because, pushed by any decent prosecutor, she’ll admit that she did. She’s that dumb.’
‘Why would someone like Harry Nathan marry such a flake?’
Lorraine sipped her coffee. ‘Because she’s twenty and he was a fifty-year-old guy dyeing his hair and having face-lifts, and she’s got a body like a fourteen-year-old Venus, and an angel’s face. He also had quite a line-up of women as well as Cindy, plus remained friendly with his ex-wife, who still, by the way, runs his art gallery. I’d say Cindy was the classic babe armpiece for a man with a small dick.’
‘Oh, he had one of those, did he?’ Decker said, camp.
‘According to Little Miss Bimbo he did, but she’s having his baby. Not that he seemed all that interested — almost punched it through her backbone. I saw the bruise.’
‘So,’ Decker said, leaning on the doorframe, ‘what’s the next move?’
‘I think she’s hiding something about tapes Nathan made at the house — phone conversations, security videos. She didn’t tell the police and she kind of let it slip to me, but she said she’d send the tapes over. We’ll just have to wait and see what we get.’
Cindy Nathan brought the boxes upstairs from the gym herself and stacked them in the hall. She had listened to some of the conversations again and again, just to hear his voice, but they had agreed a code and stuck to it and there was nothing to make Harry or anyone else suspicious: even the police could have listened to them, if they’d found them. She dialled a cab company, said she wanted some items delivered, and sat down to wait for the driver to come. It would have been easier, of course, to send Jose, but she was sick of Harry’s housekeepers knowing all her comings and goings, the pair of them always watching her. They had been surprised when she had given them the rest of the day off, but within half an hour they had been on their way to Juana’s sister.