Cold Blood

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘To care. Because I don’t want you to get hurt, you mind if I say that?’

  She rested against him, it took him totally off guard and he held her a moment. ‘Also, I have to admit that it makes me jealous as all hell. Not that there’s any hope for me but . . .’

  She smiled up at him. ‘You never know, Nick, when you’re all washed up and smellin’ cute you’re not a bad-looking guy. Just not . . .’

  ‘Your type?’

  She laughed softly. ‘You would have been once, like Lubrinski was, but, Nick, you’d be hell on any woman who cared about you. I know your kind, you love the chase but when it’s over you’re bored and on to the next.’

  ‘Ah, you got me sussed, huh? But you know, me and Tiger, we’re looking to set up a place, one with a back yard so he won’t piss on the carpets, and with the right woman—’

  ‘I’m not the right one, Nick, and we’re wasting time.’

  She saw the hurt look pass quickly over his face and then he gave her that smile of his. He kissed her lips before he sauntered off with his lopsided walk in his beat-up cowboy boots.

  As she unlocked her room at the St Marie, Lorraine wished she hadn’t been so dismissive because Nick, like Jack, didn’t come out with those kinds of words easily. In many ways she was attracted to Nick, it was hard not to be, but it wasn’t anything she would allow to happen because what she had said about him was the truth – Nick would never settle down, even with his ‘back yard’ routine. He was and always would be a loner, like Jack.

  She sat on the coloured synthetic bedspread and looked up at the bubbled wallpaper and air vent clogged thick with dust; after last night it all seemed ugly and depressing, and although it was still only eleven o’clock, she felt tired out. That awful feeling in the pit of her stomach that Caley was involved in his daughter’s disappearance wouldn’t go away, and even after a night with him, a wonderful, special night, she couldn’t help but be logical. She was able to subjugate her emotions towards Caley, and allow the professional judgement to take over.

  There was a sudden tap on the door and Rosie peeked in, carrying a sheet of paper.

  ‘I’ve listed those I could get hold of and those you’ll have to maybe see tomorrow. I got a car booked for you with a driver at a real low cost as some of these are quite a way apart, and Tilda Brown’s place is twenty-odd miles out of town.’

  Lorraine glanced over the handwritten notes. ‘So it’s Tilda Brown first, then Lloyd Dulay? Okay, I’ll get cracking.’

  The phone rang. It was Robert Caley.

  ‘Hi, you free for lunch?’

  ‘Ah, ten minutes ago I was but I’m just on my way out.’

  He sounded disappointed. ‘How about dinner?’

  ‘Can I take a rain-check on it?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll be back at the hotel early evening, maybe go out to the house, so just give me a call.’

  ‘Will do.’

  There was a moment of silence, both wanting to say some kind of endearment, but neither did. Rosie hovered nearby, listening as she pretended to check her notes. She wondered who the call was from, as Lorraine was suddenly acting coy, and she was blushing.

  ‘Talk to you later.’

  ‘Yes, about six-ish,’ she said, and the phone went dead. She replaced the receiver and looked at Rosie.

  ‘Who was that then?’

  ‘Robert Caley,’ Lorraine said dismissively.

  ‘Oh, you seem to be getting along very well.’

  ‘That’s the idea, Rosie – you get along with somebody, you get more information from them, they talk more freely.’

  ‘Mmmm, I’m sure they do. So, you going out with him this evening or are we having a case update? Only I got to let Nick and Bill know.’

  Lorraine brushed her hair. ‘I just said I would call him, Rosie.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll make a note of that, shall I? We’ll meet down in the lobby.’

  ‘Fine, see you later.’

  ‘Okey dokey.’ Rosie started for the door.

  ‘You and Bill seem to be getting along pretty well too,’ Lorraine said nonchalantly.

  Rosie had her hand on the door handle, her back to Lorraine, and her whole posture suddenly became defensive. ‘Yes, well, I make it my business to get along with him. We’re partners after all, and like you said, you get a lot more out of people if you get along with them.’

  ‘But Bill’s not a suspect,’ Lorraine said, amused.

  ‘Maybe he’s not, but as someone learning the business, I need some guidance to keep up with someone as experienced as you.’

  ‘Ohh, that was a bit near the knuckle, Rosie.’ Lorraine laughed.

  ‘It wasn’t intended that way, but you can get real nasty if I make the smallest mistake, so all I am doing is making sure I don’t make any more.’

  Lorraine was suddenly concerned. ‘Hell, Rosie, you know me well enough that if I snap at you, you know you can have a go right back.’

  Rosie smiled. ‘Yeah, well, sometimes I just get the feeling you don’t rate me, but I won’t forget what you just said.’

  Lorraine crossed the room and put her arms round her friend. ‘You just always be honest with me, Rosie. Jesus, we all make mistakes.’

  ‘No!’ Rosie smiled again, assuming a look of mock surprise which made Lorraine laugh again as she crossed back over to the dressing table.

  ‘I’m glad you and old Rooney get along, he’s a good man. He was a good cop too – bit rusty now, or maybe it’s just he’s not as hungry as he used to be.’

  Rosie’s cheeks went pink. ‘You undermine his confidence, Lorraine, like you do mine. He and Nick are working hard, we all are. We’re all after the same thing, and there’s nobody not pulling their weight.’

  Lorraine accepted the put-down gracefully, to some degree impressed by her friend – Rosie was more centred than she had ever known her.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, you’re right. See you later.’

  Rosie opened the door. ‘Take care, and check in with us, because we are all backing you to the hilt.’

  The door closed, and Lorraine frowned. Rosie was different these days: maybe it was working alongside Bill, maybe it was her diet boosting her confidence. Lorraine stared at her own reflection.

  ‘Maybe,’ she murmured to herself, ‘you should start straightening out as well.’

  She touched the bruise of the love bite on her neck, and could not prevent the warm feeling that began in her groin flooding right through her body until she hugged herself. She was happier than she had been for a long, long time.

  Tilda Brown’s family home had been built on the lake in the 1970s, a low white ensemble of rectangles and cubes with a nod to tradition in the form of modern reworkings of traditional architectural features, square columns and vestigial balconies barely six feet off the ground which reminded Lorraine of the wingstumps of some flightless bird. Still, it clearly hadn’t been lack of money which was responsible for its boxy blandness, and money was still much in evidence: a European convertible and a fancy off-road funmobile were parked outside, and a gardener was working outside. The large, well-tended yard adjoined the levée, and Lorraine told her driver, a sullen black boy of twenty, to pull up a couple of hundred yards away so she could walk round the back.

  ‘Wait for me, okay?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, you got me booked for the day.’

  From the levée she could see a tennis court and pool, each with floodlighting and a flanking cubist pavilion: by the pool a young blonde teenager lay stretched on a sun-lounger, and Lorraine went round to the front of the house before the girl – Miss Tilda, she presumed – looked up and saw her. She rang the door-bell, and a maid in a pink house-dress opened the door.

  ‘Come along in, Miss Page. Miss Brown is pool-side and she says to ask if you’d like a cool drink.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Tilda Brown had a perfect, all-over golden tan, her waist length blonde hair silky and well cut, and she wore o
nly the smallest of bikini briefs and top.

  Feeling the heat, Lorraine was relieved when Tilda got up from her sunbed and suggested they go to the small air-conditioned pool house, further shaded by large palms. She sat in a chair made of stainless-steel ‘wicker’, its cushions covered in what seemed to be hot pink Spandex, and motioned Lorraine to its twin.

  ‘It’s real hot already,’ Tilda said, smiling, ‘but I got all goose-pimples, coming in from the sun. You mind if I just fetch a wrap?’

  Lorraine returned the smile. The maid appeared to serve home-made lemonade, and Lorraine had drunk half her glass before Tilda returned, draped in a long silk kimono, wearing large dark sunglasses with thick white frames and smelling of fresh flowers. She was very nervous, her little hands shaking as she poured herself a lemonade.

  ‘Can you tell me about your relationship with Anna Louise?’

  ‘Sure, she’s my best friend. We both come from here, I mean, not that she lives here full-time like my family, but we first met when we were real young, you know, six or seven years old. Then we didn’t see each other for quite a while, maybe five years, but I got to go to UCLA and we met up again and it was like no time had passed at all. It was nice to be made so welcome at her home because I sometimes got so lonely.’

  ‘So you knew each other really well?’

  ‘We did, and I miss her.’

  Lorraine asked if she could smoke, and Tilda shrugged, fetching a small chrome ashtray. ‘You had an argument the day before she left LA,’ Lorraine said as she lit her cigarette.

  ‘We used to argue a lot, Mrs Page, we didn’t always agree on everything even though we were best friends.’

  The girl flicked her silky hair over her shoulder with an immaculately manicured hand, the nails lacquered oyster-pink to match those on her toes. Lorraine envied the Tilda Browns of this world, their ability never to perspire. This was money in front of her, and young as Tilda was, one could tell she had never wanted for anything in her life.

  ‘Can you tell me what the argument was about? It’d be the morning of February fourteenth last year.’

  Tilda’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘Well, you know Anna Louise was a good tennis player and she used to get impatient with me because I was not in her league. Even when we were just warming up she’d do these smashes and I just used to get so angry because it wasn’t a competition. But with Anna Louise . . .’ She hesitated.

  ‘Yes, go on, Tilda.’

  ‘Well, Anna Louise was competitive in everything and I just got tired of it. I said to her that I wasn’t going to play with her anymore and she threw a tantrum, and believe you me, Mrs Page, she could get so angry sometimes, say such horrible things. I had just had enough so I said to her that unless she apologized to me I was not going to travel home with her, no way. I would prefer to travel alone than with somebody as bad-tempered and mean as she was being towards me. Well, she just refused to apologize and so I went in to tell Phyllis that I wanted to leave straight away.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes. Phyllis arranged for Mario to take me to the airport and she also got me my ticket. I called my mama and papa and they collected me here. I said I didn’t want to discuss it, but that I was not going to stay with Anna Louise ever again.’

  Lorraine drained her glass and Tilda immediately refilled it. At last she removed her big white-framed sunglasses. Lorraine wanted to see her eyes, to try to ascertain just how good a liar Tilda Brown was going to be.

  ‘I never saw her again. And I have felt so guilty. The last time we were together we were fightin’, had those cross words with each other, and if . . . if she won’t ever be coming back, then . . . It just gets worse, and sometimes I cry about it because we would have made up, no doubt about it, we always did.’

  ‘So she didn’t call you when she arrived here with her parents?’

  ‘No, she didn’t, but I wish very dearly that she had.’

  Lorraine sipped the ice-cool lemonade, wondering how to play it. Tilda seemed to be the genuine forlorn best friend and even at one point had tears in her grey-blue eyes, but she never looked directly at Lorraine and she was exceedingly nervous.

  ‘On the night Anna Louise arrived in New Orleans, where were you?’

  ‘At home. I had a dress fitting, and I ate supper with Mama and Papa before going to bed, ’bout ten o’clock.’

  ‘And she never came round to see you, to make up to you?’

  ‘No, but like I said, I wish that she had. All I do now is pray that she is still alive, because I will make up to her for that silly tiff we had . . . and it was so silly.’

  ‘Do you know somebody called Polar?’

  Tilda frowned. ‘You mean like polar bears? No, I never heard of anyone with that name.’

  ‘How about Tom Heller?’

  ‘Oh, I know him, he was at college with me.’

  Lorraine was becoming irritated by her sing-song voice. She decided she had waited long enough. ‘You ever go to the Viper Room with Tom?’

  Bingo, the cheeks flushed bright pink. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The Viper Room . . .’

  The baby eyes blinked and the blush deepened as Lorraine drew out the picture of Anna Louise being fucked by the guys at the Viper Room.

  ‘Oh, my goodness . . .’

  ‘Mmm, oh, my goodness me. That was taken the night before your little tiff, wasn’t it? You were upstairs, weren’t you, in the private section of the Viper Room?’

  Tilda crumbled fast. She bent her head and started sobbing, begging Lorraine not to tell her parents. If her family were ever to know she would be in such trouble.

  Lorraine passed Tilda a tissue from a box, covered in the same pink synthetic fabric as the cushions, and she blew her nose. ‘I am so ashamed.’

  She continued to sob for a while, then quietened down. ‘Anna Louise used to take pills from her mother. The first time we took them we just acted silly but then she started to take them real regular, you know, and she’d make me drink vodka, she liked vodka. Then we’d go clubbing and . . . I cannot tell you how ashamed I am . . .’

  ‘No need to be in front of me,’ Lorraine said, encouraging her to talk.

  ‘I don’t remember what we used to do or what I did, I just used to blank out.’

  ‘But you both used to get screwed, right?’

  She nodded, and down came the tears again. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘The morning you had the little tiff was after you had been out clubbing with Anna Louise so you were probably a bit hungover, weren’t you? So was the “tiff” really about tennis or was it something more important?’

  Tilda sighed. ‘Oh, it was just awful, she could be such a bitch about things. She wanted to make sure we had our stories straight so her parents wouldn’t find out. We were down by the tennis courts and you’re right, we weren’t playing. I had such a headache, I was feeling sick, and Mr Caley came by on his way to work. When he stopped and asked if I was feeling unwell, I just started to cry. I know what we did was bad, but she could be very insistent, you know? She’d make threats that if I didn’t do what she wanted then she’d tell my parents.’

  Lorraine waited as she dried her tears and then sat back.

  ‘He was so kind, Mr Caley, sat me down and asked if I was sick, if there was something wrong. He even gave me his handkerchief . . . and I just cried and cried because I couldn’t tell him what I was crying about. He sat with me until I stopped crying and said that if there was something worrying me it was always best to share, that if ever I wanted to talk to him then all I had to do was call. He was so worried, so kind and thoughtful, more like a friend . . .’

  ‘Was Anna Louise sitting with you and Mr Caley?’

  ‘Er, no, she had gone into the pool house, said she was going to have a swim and . . .’

  ‘And?’ Lorraine asked impatiently.

  ‘Oh, Mr Caley left. He gave me a real nice kiss on the cheek and said he had to go into the office. Then she just flew at me.’
>
  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Anna Louise of course. She began hitting and kicking me, real crazy. She used her tennis racquet and hit me real hard, and then she got me down on the ground and was clawing and scratching at my face and pulling out my hair. She was on top of me, pushing my head into the ground.’

  ‘Did she think you had told her father about what had happened at the Viper Room, was that why she attacked you?’

  ‘Yes, she said she had seen me with her father. She wouldn’t listen to me – she said she was gonna make me sorry. I hit her back and then she spat at me, right in my face, saying she would tell my parents, tell everybody that I was trying it on with her father. I was so shocked . . . I was speechless.’

  ‘But he was just being kind and fatherly, right?’

  ‘Why, yes, of course, but she was crazy about him.’

  ‘Wait, wait, what do you mean, crazy about him?’

  Tilda had her hands clenched at her sides. ‘She was obsessed by her daddy, she talked and talked about him, that no man ever lived up to him and that . . .’ Tilda turned away and up came the flush, her cheeks burning bright red.

  ‘Go on, Tilda, and what else?’

  ‘She said they were lovers, that they were in love.’

  Lorraine lost it for a moment, so taken aback by what Tilda had said. ‘She actually told you that she was having a sexual relationship with her father, Tilda?’

  ‘Yes, yes, that is what she said.’

  ‘Did you believe it?’

  Tilda twisted her fingers, pulling at a ring. ‘I just had to leave, Mrs Page. I ran into the house and asked Phyllis to get me a ticket, I never wanted to see her again.’

  Lorraine’s heart was thudding. ‘You didn’t answer the question, Tilda, this is very serious. Were Robert Caley and his daughter lovers?’

  Tilda licked her lips and turned away, her voice strained, hardly audible. ‘I don’t know, but he was just friendly to me, really and truly, he never made any advances.’

  ‘What about her other friends?’

  ‘She only had me, I was her only true friend. She couldn’t tell anyone else about things, everybody thought she was so wonderful, they didn’t really know her. And no one liked to stay at the house because of Mrs Caley acting weird, you know, all boozed up and sometimes so out of it it was just plain embarrassing.’