Pretend You Don't See Her (8 page)

 
          
“You’re
right. That’s why I stayed single all these years. And you’re young still.
You’ve got a long way to go.”

 
          
“Not
so long. Don’t forget I turned forty-five last spring.”

 
          
“Yeah?
Well, I turn sixty-eight next month,” Jimmy said with
a grunt. “But don’t go counting me out yet. I’ve still got a long way to go
before
I
cash in my chips. And don’t you forget it!”

 
          
Then
he winked at Abbott. Both men smiled. Abbott swallowed the last of his scotch
and stood. “You bet you have. And I’m counting on it. When we open our place in
Atlantic City, the rest of them might as well close their doors.
Right?”

 
          
Abbott
noticed Jimmy Landi glancing at his watch and said, “Well, I’d better get
downstairs and do some glad-handing.”

 
          
Shortly
after Abbott had left, the receptionist buzzed Jimmy. “Mr. Landi, a Miss
Farrell wants to talk to you. She says to tell you she’s the realtor who was
working with Mrs. Waring.”

 
          
“Put
her on,” he snapped.

 
          
Back
in the office, Lacey had responded to Rick Parker’s questions about her
interview with Detective Sloane with noncommittal answers. “He showed me
pictures. Nobody looked anything like Caldwell.”

 
          
Once
again she declined Rick’s offer of dinner. “I want to catch up on some
paperwork,” she said with a wan smile.

 
          
And
it’s true, she thought.

 
          
She
waited until everyone in the domestic real estate division left before carrying
the tote bag to the copier, where she made two copies of Heather’s journal, one
for Heather’s father, one for herself. Then she placed a call to Landi’s
restaurant.

 
          
The
conversation was brief: Jimmy Landi would be waiting for her.

 
          
Pretheater
was a busy taxi time, but she was in luck: a cab
was just discharging a passenger right in front of her office building. Lacey
raced across the sidewalk and jumped in the taxi just before someone else tried
to claim it. She gave the address of
Venezia
on West
Fifty-Sixth Street, leaned back and closed her eyes. Only then did she relax
her grip on the tote bag, though she still held it securely under her arm. Why
was she so uneasy?
she
wondered. And why did she have
the sensation of being watched?

 
          
At
the restaurant she could see that the dining room was full and the bar jammed.
As soon as she gave her name, the receptionist signaled the maitre d’.

 
          
“Mr.
Landi is waiting for you upstairs, Ms. Farrell,” he told her.

 
          
On
the phone she had said simply that Isabelle had found Heather’s journal and
wanted him to have it.

 
          
But
when she was in his office, sitting opposite the brooding, solid-looking man,
Lacey felt as though she were firing at a wounded target. Even so, she felt she
had to be straightforward in telling him Isabelle Waring’s dying words.

 
          
“I
promised to give the journal to you,” she said. “And I promised to read it
myself. I don’t know why Isabelle wanted me to read it. Her exact words were
‘Show … him … where.’ She wanted me to show you something in it. I suspect that
for some reason she thought I’d find what it was that apparently confirmed her
suspicion that your daughter’s death was not a simple accident. I’m trying to
obey her wishes.” She opened her tote bag and took out the set of pages she had
brought with her.

 
          
Landi
glanced at them,
then
turned away.

 
          
Lacey
was sure that the sight of his daughter’s handwriting was starkly painful to
the man, but his only comment was a testy, “These aren’t the originals.”

 
          
“I
don’t have the original pages with me. I’m giving them to the police in the
morning.”

 
          
His
face flushed with sudden anger. “That’s not what Isabelle asked you to do.”

 
          
Lacey
stood up. “Mr. Landi, I don’t have a choice. Surely you understand that it’s
going to take a lot of explaining to the police to make them understand why I
removed evidence from a murder scene. I’m certain that eventually the original
pages will be returned to you, but for now, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do
with a copy.” As will I, she said to herself as she left.

 
          
He
did not even look up as she walked out.

 
          
When
Lacey arrived at her apartment, she turned on the entrance light and had taken
several steps inside before the chaos in front of her registered. Drawers had
been spilled, closets ransacked, furniture cushions had been tossed on the
floor. Even the refrigerator had been emptied and left open. Appalled and
terrified, she stared at the mess,
then
stumbled
through the debris to call the superintendent; while he dialed 911, she put in
a call to Detective Sloane.

 
          
He
arrived shortly after the local precinct cops. “You know what they were looking
for, don’t you,” Sloane said matter-of-factly.

 
          
“Yes,
I do,” Lacey told him.
“Heather Landi’s journal.
But
it’s not here. It’s in my office. I hope whoever did this
hasn’t
gone there.”

 
          
I
n the squad car on the way to her office, Detective Sloane read Lacey her
rights. “I was keeping the promise I made to a dying woman,” she protested.
“She asked me to read the journal and then give it to Heather Landi’s father,
and that’s what I’ve done. I took him a copy this evening.”

 
          
When
they got to her office, Sloane did not leave her side as she unlocked the
cabinet and reached for the manila envelope in which she had placed the
original pages of the journal.

 
          
He
opened the clasp, pulled out a few of the sheets, studied them,
then
looked at her. “You’re sure you’re giving me
everything?”

 
          
“This
is everything that was with Isabelle Waring when she died,” Lacey said, hoping
he wouldn’t press her. While it was the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth: The
copy of the journal pages that she had made for herself was locked in her desk.

 
          
“We’d
better go down to headquarters, Ms. Farrell. We need to talk about this whole
thing a bit more, I believe.”

 
          
“My
apartment,” she protested. “Please. I have to clean it up.” I sound ridiculous,
she thought. Someone may have killed Isabelle because of Heather’s journal, and
I might have been killed if I’d been home tonight, and all I can think of is
the mess there. She realized that her head was aching. It was after ten o’clock
and she hadn’t had anything to eat for hours.

 
          
“Your
apartment can wait to be cleaned,” Sloane told her brusquely. “We need to go
over all this now.”

 
          
But
when they reached the precinct station, he did have Detective Nick Mars send
out for a sandwich and coffee for her. Then he began. “All right, let’s take
this from the top again, Ms. Farrell,” he said.

 
          
The
same questions over and over, Lacey thought, shaking her head. Had she ever met
Heather Landi? Wasn’t it odd that on the basis of a chance meeting in an
elevator months earlier, Isabelle Waring had called her to offer an exclusive
on the apartment? How often had she seen Waring in the last weeks?
For lunches?
dinners
?
end-of-the-day
visits?

 
          
“She
called early evening ‘sober light,’” Lacey heard herself saying, searching her
mind to try to find anything she could tell them that they might not have heard
before. “She said that was what the Pilgrims called it; she said she found it a
very lonely time.”

 
          
“And
she had no old friends to call?”

 
          
“I
only know that she called me. Maybe she thought that because I was a single
woman in Manhattan, I might be able to help her get some insight into her
daughter’s life,” Lacey said. “And death,” she added as an afterthought. She
could visualize Isabelle’s sad face, the high cheekbones and wide-set eyes
hinting at the beauty she must have been as a young woman. “I think it was
almost the way one might talk to a cabdriver or a bartender. You find a
sympathetic ear, knowing that you don’t have to worry about that person
reminding you of what you said when you get over the difficult time.”

 
          
Do
I make sense?
she
wondered.

 
          
Sloane’s
demeanor didn’t give any indication of his reaction. Instead he said, “Let’s
talk about how Curtis Caldwell got back into the Waring apartment. There was no
sign of forced entry. Isabelle Waring clearly didn’t let him in, then go back
and prop herself up on the bed with him there. Did you give him a key?”

 
          
“No,
of course not,” Lacey protested. “But wait a minute! Isabelle always left a key
in a bowl on the table in the foyer. She told me she did it so that if she ran
downstairs for her mail she didn’t have to bother with her key ring. Caldwell
could have seen it there and taken it. But what about my apartment?” she
protested. “How did someone get in there? I have a doorman.”

 
          
“And
an active garage in the building and a delivery entrance. These so-called
secured buildings are a joke, Ms. Farrell. You’re in the realty business. You
know that.”

 
          
Lacey thought of Curtis Caldwell, pistol in hand, rushing to find
her, wanting to kill her.
“Not a very good joke.” She realized she was
fighting tears. “Please, I want to go home,” she said.

 
          
For
a moment she thought that they might keep her there longer, but then Sloane got
up. “Okay. You can go now, Ms. Farrell, but I must warn you that formal charges
may be pending against you for removing and concealing evidence from a crime
scene.”

 
          
I
should have talked to a lawyer, Lacey thought. How could I have been such a
fool?

 
          
Ramon
Garcia, the building superintendent, and his wife, Sonya, were in the process
of straightening up Lacey’s apartment when she arrived. “We couldn’t let you
come back to this mess,” Sonya told her, running a dust cloth over the top of
the bureau in the bedroom. “We put things back in the drawers for you, not your
way, I’m sure, but at least things are not still on the floor.”

 
          
“I
don’t know how to thank you,” Lacey said. The apartment had been full of police
when she left, and she was dreading what she would find when she returned.

 
          
Ramon
had just completed replacing the lock. “This was taken apart by an expert,” he
said. “And he had the right tools. How come he didn’t pick up your jewelry
box?”

 
          
That
was the first thing the police had told her to check. Her several gold
bracelets, her diamond stud earrings, and her grandmother’s pearls were there,
undisturbed.

 
          
“I
guess that wasn’t what he was after,” Lacey said. To her own ears her voice
sounded low and tired.

 
          
Sonya
looked at her sharply. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning. Don’t worry. When you
get home from work everything will be shipshape.”

 
          
Lacey
walked with them to the door. “Does the dead bolt still work?” she asked Ramon.

 
          
He
tried it. “No one’s
gonna
get in while that’s on, at
least without a battering ram. You’re safe.”