Cold Blood

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘Unless you wanted me to?’

  She looked at him, refusing to allow herself to smile. ‘I haven’t had an indecent or a decent proposal made to me for a long time, Bill, but right now, with Nick gone, I don’t think I am ready for either. See you later.’

  She turned the key and entered the room. Not until the door was closed behind her did she allow a small smile to break through. ‘The old buzzard’s really got the hots for me,’ she said to herself gleefully.

  Lorraine dressed with great care, with the fan running overhead so she wouldn’t break out in a sweat before she’d finished admiring herself. She had one of her new suits on, a silk shirt, high-heeled sandals and a single strand of cheap but good-looking pearls. She picked up her briefcase, having washed everything inside and just about managed to get rid of the smell of the doll.

  In reception, she passed Rooney, who turned and gave her a smile. ‘Looking good.’

  ‘Thanks. Was that you or Rosie who slammed the door?’

  ‘Me, getting worried you might have blown our million. Do you know if Mrs Caley has found out?’

  ‘If she has, I’ll sort it out. You won’t lose because of me, Bill. I know what I did was unethical, but at least I didn’t lie. Saying I’m sorry I did it would be a lie too. I liked him. Liked him a lot.’

  Rooney turned away. ‘What about Nick? You liked him too?’

  ‘You know I did.’

  ‘Then we split three ways now, huh?’ he said sadly.

  ‘I guess so. What’s that you’ve got there?’

  He held a folded sheet of paper. ‘A list of Nick’s possessions. His clothes, he had nothing else. His cowboy boots, his wallet and driving licence were missing.’

  Lorraine sighed. Her heart sank, but then she remembered something. ‘What about the necklace? That gris-gris thing he had round his neck, that listed?’

  ‘Nope, but we don’t know if he was wearing it or if it was also stolen.’

  ‘Well, check his room and I’ll come straight back here as soon as I’m done at the Caleys’.’

  ‘They know you’re coming?’

  ‘No, best to keep an element of surprise! Mind you, they might refuse to let me in, but I doubt it. They must know by now about Tilda Brown, it was in the papers.’ Lorraine started for the doors, and stopped. ‘Bill, the newspaper wrapped around that voodoo doll. It had a date on it, February fifteenth, but no year. Could you check with the newspaper printers and see if they can date it by some of the articles? It’s just too much of a coincidence, the date. Anna Louise disappeared on February fifteenth, so if it was last year’s paper it means Tilda Brown kept that thing for a long time.’

  She strode out through the heavy front door to meet her driver. Rooney remained staring at the pitiful list of Nick Bartello’s possessions, and he couldn’t help hearing his voice and that smoky laugh he had had. ‘No coincidences, Billy Boy. Never believe in them, just good detective work.’

  Rooney sighed, a lump in his throat. He couldn’t actually remember if it had been Nick or Jack Lubrinski who’d said that. They had been so alike and now they were both dead. Rooney became aware of his own mortality and was scared; no son, no wife, but maybe, just maybe a future with financial security beyond his meagre pension. And maybe there was also Rosie.

  Elizabeth hurled the pot of Lancaster neck cream at Caley’s head but it missed by yards and smashed against the wall of her bedroom in the beautiful Garden District mansion in which she had grown up.

  ‘How could you, how could you fucking do this to me?’

  Caley side-stepped the brushes and the silver-backed mirror that followed, and waited until she hurled her body down on to her velvet day-bed, her arm resting against her brow in classical fashion.

  ‘Go away from me, I hate you!’

  He applauded. ‘Bravo, none of your performances deserved an Oscar more than this one, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Fuck you? she screamed.

  ‘Why don’t you just calm down? Why work yourself up into such a state that you’re gonna need to call your dealer for something to space yourself out into oblivion? That is what you usually do, isn’t it?’

  She dived across the room and glared. ‘Calm down? You have stolen, stolen from your own daughter’s trust fund!’

  ‘Correction, she’s not my daughter.’

  ‘You were paid to treat her us one? Her face was red with anger, but even as she said it she wished she hadn’t as she saw the pain on his face. She immediately resorted to tears. ‘How could you steal from Anna Louise, Robert, and why? You know if you ever needed anything I always gave in to you in the end, you know that. So why?’

  He sat sullenly, hands clasped in front of him. ‘Because I was sick and tired of coming to you for handouts. Sick and tired of playing the same charade, of forever needing you to bail me out. I didn’t want to touch one more cent of your fucking money. I just wanted for once to stand on my own two feet, prove that I could do it. Maybe get back my self-respect. That’s all there is to it, I didn’t want to ask you.’

  She smiled. ‘Why not? You have for the past twenty years, and it’s not that I don’t have enough, for chrissakes!’

  He felt exhausted even trying to explain, but he felt he owed her that much. ‘Because I knew it would work. I knew it, and it would have made me independent. Don’t you understand? It would have been my own show, not yours, not even associated with you.’

  She smirked. ‘But you couldn’t pull it off, could you? Just like you could never have got the time of day from any one of your so-called partners without me – without my being who I am.’

  He sighed, shaking his head bitterly, and his voice had an undercurrent of sarcasm. ‘True, everything I am is because of you, you’ve given me everything. What do you want me to do, kiss your feet? Jesus God, Elizabeth, I’ve been on my knees too often, taken too much of your shit to do it again.’

  ‘My shit? You think I like being married to a failure? You think I wouldn’t have liked someone I could lean on? Someone who would take responsibility?’

  ‘What? What did you say?

  ‘I need, I always have needed . . .’

  He was hardly able to contain himself. ‘You and your needs are all I have been taking care of since the day I agreed to marry you, and that, as you fucking well know, was also part of the deal, taking you on, your drugs, your booze and Lloyd Dulay’s illegitimate child. Don’t you tell me about your needs. When have you ever, ever at any time considered mine? Huh?’ He dragged her towards him, scaring her. ‘Yes, look at me, Elizabeth, you look real good, because whatever I was paid to marry you, whatever contracts you had me sign to keep my mouth shut, were regarding Anna Louise. Now she’s dead, so that contract is now null and void.’

  She tried to wriggle away from him, but he gripped her wrists, pulling her towards him. ‘Yes, dead, she is dead, and you just won’t face it.’

  ‘She isn’t, she isn’t, how can you say it? You don’t know for sure.’

  He wanted to slap her but all he did was release her, moving as far away from her as possible. ‘It’s been nearly a year, Elizabeth, if she’s not dead, where in Christ’s name is she?’

  She started to cry, and he began to walk out but she screeched at his back. ‘Juda said she felt her presence, she told me.’

  He stopped and pointed his finger. ‘That goddamned woman is nothing but a leech.’

  ‘Takes one to know one, Robert.’

  He took four fast steps towards her and back-handed her across the face. She stumbled, and then he went after her again, this time gripping her by her hair.

  You have spent thousands on that fucking fake bitch. Even when I barred her from the house you still saw her, you even took Anna Louise to her, a fat, stinking pig of a woman who just greases your vanity to get what she wants. Well, how much did she make from you for her so-called psychic feelings on Anna Louise? How much, Elizabeth?’

  ‘Nowhere near as much as you have taken in one week, never mind twenty y
ears. Juda and I . . .’

  ‘Oh please, not that again, not the old friend from the past, because it makes me puke. She’s a con artist, and what kind of vice she’s gripped you in for twenty years is beyond me, unless it’s blackmail.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Ridiculous?’ He sat down, shaking his head. ‘You don’t have a life, Elizabeth, you spend your days and nights in a drunken or drug-induced haze, and Lorraine Page . . .’

  He hesitated. Just saying her name hit him hard. ‘Mrs Page told me you were now injecting a drug that could give you a thrombosis. Do you even remember me getting you in the ambulance, this time, to save your lifer How many more clinics, Elizabeth? How much more punishment can that body take, how many more times can it be surgically put back together again? Well, it’s no longer any concern of mine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She looked scared.

  ‘It’s over, I quit. I want a divorce,’ he said calmly and matter-of-factly.

  ‘I’ll have you arrested for using Anna’s trust, Lloyd will call the police.’

  Robert Caley laughed. Deep inside, he felt good for the first time in days, perhaps years. ‘Really? Well, go ahead, and you know what I will do? I will tell everyone you lied to me, that Anna Louise was not my child. I’ll demand they give Dulay blood tests, and that means the very thing you are so terrified of, Elizabeth, your blood will be tested too. The gloves will come off, and if you want it dirty, it will be dirtier than you ever believed. I will expose your drug addiction and your freak friendship with that fat bitch.’

  ‘STOP IT!’

  He smiled, now ticking off on his fingers. ‘I will give details of your plastic surgery, the face lift, the body tucks, the liposuction. So much for your big star status! The only place you are still a star is here, out in the real world you were forgotten fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Stop this?

  ‘No, Elizabeth, you stop this sham right here and now because there’s no need for it to continue. Without Anna Louise, there’s nothing. Consult your lawyers, but there will be no contest.’

  ‘Don’t do this, Robert. I mean it, don’t do this or you will be sorry. I’ll make you so sorry.’

  ‘Will you?’ He was walking out now, smiling all the while. ‘You’ve made me sorry, Elizabeth, from the day we married. Now I’m going to make you pay for it and you will pay for those twenty years. Believe me, that mega-fortune is going to be sliced right down the middle.’

  ‘I’m warning you,’ she said furiously.

  ‘No, I am warning you, because this time I mean it!’

  She glared, her mouth a thin tight line. ‘You do, and I will fight you, tell them you even had sex with your daughter!’

  ‘That deserved a punch in the face, Elizabeth, but I will never strike you again. You will never hold that against me, and as you know, she was not my daughter.’

  ‘You adopted her.’

  ‘I gave her my name. I also loved her like a daughter, and she loved me. You can’t take that away. There’s nothing you can do to harm me. It’s over. Goodbye.’

  ‘She was a cheap slut, you didn’t know that, did your The precious daughter you loved so dearly was a cheap whore.’

  ‘Don’t do this, leave her be.’

  Elizabeth smirked. ‘Ask Mrs Page, get her to show you the photograph of your beloved sweet daughter.’

  He walked out, closing the door quietly behind him, and she stood in a blind fury, wanting to scream after him, kick him, punch him, scratch his eyes out. But she walked to the window and looked out, her arms and hands clenched round herself. Her voice was hardly audible.

  ‘I will make you bleed, Robert Caley. So help me God, I will make your life a living hell, just like mine.’

  Lorraine stared out of the car window at the ranks of gracious colonnaded houses which the new American arrivals in New Orleans had built for themselves in the Garden District when cotton, sugar and slaves had begun to make them rich: street after street offered the same vista of dazzling white columns, black iron-work fences and the dark green of shade trees and glossy clipped shrubs. Much of the area dated from the decades before the Civil War when the natural wealth of the whole region had poured into New Orleans, and it was as though the magnificent Italianate and neo-classical houses had been erected to show the world that the South was an empire to rival any that had been seen upon earth.

  ‘Nice area,’ said the driver. He was slowly warming to Lorraine; he liked the fact that she never felt the need to patronize him or involve him in some inane conversation, and that she didn’t hide her moods. He liked it that sometimes she was really attractive as a woman and sometimes she was not. Tonight she was. She looked sexy and classy, and it made him straighten up in his seat. When they arrived at the tall, double-galleried mansion on one of the most exclusive streets in the district, he was out of his seat fast to hold open the passenger door. Lorraine held her hand up for a moment, took a swig from a can of Coke, which she had brought with her, then tucked it back against the seat. The soft drink was laced with vodka, and she had already bought another bottle back at the hotel.

  ‘Okay, just hang in there, pal, ’cos I don’t know if they are gonna let me over the door-mat.’ She looked up at the great white house, framed between two chestnut trees behind an austere spearpoint fence, and straightened her jacket.

  ‘Right, ma’am, I’m here, no place else to go, ready and waiting.’

  She turned and stared at him for a moment. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Frankie, short for François.’

  She touched his shoulder lightly. ‘Keep your fingers crossed, François.’

  He liked it that she didn’t call him Frankie; François sounded cool.

  Missy, one of the Caleys’ maids, ushered Lorraine into the drawing room.

  ‘Will you please wait just one moment while I inform Miss Elizabeth you are here. I think she is resting a while.’

  ‘Thank you, and would you stress that it is very important that I speak to her?’

  Elizabeth hung up the phone and smiled; she hadn’t even had to persuade Juda, she agreed instantly. She then called Edward to tell him to return to LA immediately and collect Mrs Juda Salina – it was imperative that she arrive as soon as possible.

  She felt more confident now – she’d get Robert put into his place, she’d make him pay. She smiled at her reflection in the large gessoed and gilded mirror above her bureau, and the feeling of compressed rage lifted until she was almost light-headed just thinking about taking revenge. Robert Caley was no more than a cheap con man, he’d been one when she met him. He was very attractive, that had helped, and he’d taken the bait even faster than she believed he would. But it had had to be fast because she had already been three months pregnant, and neither she nor Lloyd, who was already married, had wanted any scandal. And after Caley had signed the prénuptial agreements, and the various other deals for a considerable amount of money, Lloyd and Elizabeth had toasted each other with chilled champagne.

  ‘He’s a good find, Elizabeth,’ Dulay had said admiringly.

  ‘Well, we didn’t have too much choice.’

  Dulay had leaned over and patted her belly. ‘Con men are easy enough to control. Never let him handle the purse strings, my darling, I’ll always oversee all that, and I’ll get trust funds set up for you and my baby.’

  ‘If it’s a boy, Lloyd, what then?’

  ‘Screw the scandal. You get rid of the creep, I’ll get a divorce, and we’ll get married.’ They had toasted each other again.

  They had even decided that they would call him Louis if it was a boy. She had wept when a girl was born, and Anna Louise was named after the son Lloyd had wanted so badly. But he had been true to his word and made watertight financial settlements, hiring advisers to handle the money and trust funds, for both herself and Anna Louise. But his visits grew further and further apart, until she only saw him once a year at Mardi Gras. Anna Louise never knew who her real father was because
Caley had kept his side of the bargain, had brought her up as his own, and was named as the father on the birth certificate.

  Missy peeked in. ‘A Mrs Page downstairs asking to see you, said it’s important ma’am.’

  Elizabeth frowned, irritated at the interruption of her daydreaming, but then felt guilty. ‘I’ll be right down, Mssy, just powder my nose.’

  She opened one of the drawers of her satinwood bureau and stared at the rows of pill bottles, then she slammed it shut. ‘Now don’t, Elizabeth, don’t get it started all over again,’ she said sharply to her own reflection. ‘Just stay calm.’

  Lorraine waited downstairs, looking around her at the double parlour whose elegant proportions and furnishings exhaled restraint and grace as unmistakably as those of the Dulay house screamed for attention. Whatever impulses Elizabeth had towards movie star glamour she had kept in their place in the Los Angeles house, while here little had changed since the inventory taken by her great-grandmother. The ceiling frescoes painted shortly after the house had been erected had never been covered, while the Russian carpets, the piano and music box, and the delicate chairs and side tables had been part of the young bride’s dowry: curtains that fell straight and plain to the floor did not try to compete with the magnificent plasterwork of the cornices, and for fifty years the walls had been a deep and quiet Nile blue. The two fireplaces were unashamedly empty of dried flowers or fake logs; above one hung a family portrait, above the other, a Corot.

  It was a quarter of an hour before Elizabeth Caley came into the room, looking stunningly beautiful in a cream silk suit.

  ‘Mrs Page. I am so sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  Lorraine smiled. ‘That’s all right, really.’

  ‘Now, what can I offer you? Champagne, or wine, or maybe a real Southern sloe gin?’

  ‘I don’t drink, Mrs Caley.’

  ‘Oh, well, maybe an iced tea?’

  ‘That would be fine.’

  Elizabeth rang for the maid, drew up one of the chairs and sat opposite. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  She was bright-eyed, not a hair out of place, groomed and manicured and more confident than Lorraine had ever seen her before.