The kitchen was a blaze of colour, or would have been in normal light, as tangerine paint had been added in a vibrant drag effect over yellow walls. Well-tended ferns of all sizes and shapes and a little lemon tree were displayed in polished copper planters, which Lorraine recognized with a pang as the same as the one Decker had bought for the office. She sat at a table and Elliot poured her coffee. Her hand shook as she lifted the china cup to her lips. He sat opposite, lighting a cigarette, then looked at the stub. ‘I gave up two years ago but I’ve smoked two packs since last night.’
The coffee tasted bitter, but stirred Lorraine into life.
‘How did it happen?’
There was a long pause, then Elliot explained what had happened. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said quietly.
There was another terrible pause. Elliot made no effort to check the tears that ran down the dark stubble on his face. ‘I loved him so much.’ The words were barely audible. ‘I just don’t see how I can go on without him.’
Lorraine stayed for almost an hour with Decker’s lover, saying little, but listening to him and looking at the photo albums he showed her of how they had met and their life together. She remained calm, saying what she hoped were the right things, but Adam wasn’t really listening — he just needed to talk. He said the same things over and over again. Eventually he gave her three plastic carrier bags of things he had taken from the car, including Decker’s notebook and the catalogues of paintings.
She sat in her car, still in a state of shock, then drove to her office. Everything seemed unnaturally clear and bright — the doorman, the bell-boy, the décor in the lobby, the elevator. It was as if she was seeing everything for the first time, as if she had never been there before. She placed the plastic bags Adam had given her on Decker’s desk and walked into her own office, shut the door and hung up her jacket.
It was deathly quiet, and there was no smell of fresh coffee. Lorraine bowed her head.
‘Oh, Deck, I’m going to miss you so much.’
The coroner determined that death had been accidental, a conclusion consistent with the medical evidence. The speedometer of Decker’s car had remained stuck at the speed he had been doing — eighty-five miles per hour. The body was cremated at Forest Lawn, and the ashes placed in a niche after a short ceremony attended by many of Decker’s relatives and friends. Lorraine stood at the back of the crowd, not knowing anyone, and she, too, wept.
On the way home she bought herself a bunch of exuberant red gladioli to remember Decker, and sat with Tiger, finding him a comfort. She knew the dog would miss Decker too — the walks, and the special dinners concocted from leftovers that Decker had brought to the office. It never even occurred to Lorraine that Decker’s death might have been connected to her or to the line of enquiry he was working on when he died.
In the early afternoon, Jake called to ask about the funeral, and to check that Lorraine was all right. They arranged to meet after eight as he had a lot of work to catch up on. She took Tiger for a walk, but it was still only four thirty when she returned. She tidied the sitting room and arranged her flowers but time seemed to stand still. She turned on the TV but was restless and couldn’t concentrate. She began to think over the Feinstein case. She started a list of relevant facts — the art fraud, the secret bank accounts, then wrote ‘Sonja Nathan’, and underlined the name.
Sonja Nathan was now the main beneficiary under Harry Nathan’s wilclass="underline" should Lorraine still make the trip to see her?
Without her notes and files, Lorraine tried to recall all the intricacies of the case. No one else had been charged with Nathan’s murder and the police investigation was closed. What if someone had engineered everything so things would end up that way? Could Raymond Vallance have been that clever? How could he have planned to get access to the large sums of money Feinstein was sure Nathan had to have stashed somewhere? She wrote down his name on the list. Before she could make any real progress on suspects, though, she had to trace Nathan’s missing haul. Then she could work backwards.
The entry phone buzzer made her heart pound, but Tiger barked furiously, then wagged his tail. It was Jake, and just seeing him put the investigation into the background.
‘Hi, I’m sorry. I’m later than I said. There’s been a double homicide over at Burbank.’ He looked tired, and Lorraine took his jacket from him, told him to sit on the sofa and put his feet up. ‘This bastard broke into an apartment, held the woman hostage, demanded details of the safe and their cash cards, then beat the hell out of her when she said she couldn’t remember. Then her husband came home with their daughter, and he shot them both at point blank range.’ He scratched his head, and gave a helpless gesture. ‘Kid was only fifteen years old. I mean, how the hell do you live with that, seeing it? And there was nothing in the safe, just papers — her husband never kept any valuables at the house.’ He sighed and leaned back on the cushions. ‘Sorry to lay it on you, but... it hasn’t been a good day.’
‘That’s okay. You want me to get some wine? I can run down to the liquor store. Or maybe some whisky. What do you feel like?’
He reached out for her, and drew her close. ‘I feel like lying next to my woman.’
She kissed him, and told him to take a shower, then get into bed. He looked at her, and traced her face with his hand. ‘I’d like that...’
By the time she joined him in the bedroom he was fast asleep. He was naked, vulnerable, hadn’t even pulled the duvet over himself, and she loved him. The fact that he had come to her, in a way needing her, touched her deeply.
‘I love you,’ she whispered.
Lorraine couldn’t stop thinking about Decker. She had lain awake beside Jake for a while, then slipped from the bed to return to her notes, only getting to bed after midnight. Tiger was already flat out nose to nose with Jake, and he grunted when she got into bed. Jake stirred and lifted his arm for her to snuggle close, and then went back to sleep.
She had begun to work out the next stage of the Feinstein inquiry. She would need someone to take care of Tiger for a night, as she had decided that the next day she would fly to New York, get the Jitney bus to East Hampton, and stay overnight, as Decker had suggested, at the Maidstone Arms. She would then arrange to talk to Sonja Nathan, and could be back in LA the following afternoon. There was something else she wanted to talk about with Jake, and she was going to do it first thing in the morning before she left. She was going to tell him that when this Feinstein case was finished, so was Page Investigations. Not that he had asked her to contemplate giving up her business — it was something she wanted. It might look like a fast U-turn on her part — one moment striving to make the agency work, the next letting go of it — but she knew she was getting her priorities right. More than anything else, she wanted to marry Jake, and to have his child. She felt that a new phase of her life had begun.
The alarm clock rang shrilly, and Jake shot up, while Tiger hurled himself off the bed, barking. Lorraine felt as if a heavy weight was pressing her head onto the pillow.
‘What time is it?’ she groaned.
‘Seven, and I’ll have to get going.’ He was already stepping into the shower.
Lorraine pulled on a robe and went into the kitchen. She had a terrible headache, the kind that hung just behind the eyes, so she took two aspirin and felt them lodge firmly in her gut; now she had indigestion too, and Tiger’s constant barking at the clattering of neighbours made her head worse.