Pretend You Don't See Her Read online

  Praise for the Remarkable Queen of Suspense and #1 New York Times

  Bestselling Author

  MARY HIGGINS CLARK

  and

  PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE HER

  “Clark’s mastery of suspense will keep ’em guessing, and the bad guys are truly creepy.”

  —New York Post

  “The chase is on, with the story line zipping along at comet speed… What’s amazing is how expertly Clark manages to keep us hooked time after time, and even better, create new plots, each as fresh as a mountain stream.”

  —Ruth Coughlin, Detroit News

  “If the federal witness protection program didn’t exist, Mary Higgins Clark might have had to invent it… Her latest novel, which centers on a likable heroine named Lacey Farrell... covers a lot of ground.”

  —Kimberly B. Marlowe, The New York Times

  “Interesting... Clark plots a good cat-and-mouse game…”

  —Bobbie Hess, The San Francisco Examiner

  “Filled with suspense. Lacey is a fabulous working-class heroine who seems always to rise to the occasion. The federal witness protection program is brilliantly spelled out within the context of the tale.”

  —Harriet Klausner, Under the Covers (online)

  “Clark has created a suspenseful tale... a heck of a good page-turner…”

  —Sara Sue Goldsmith,

  The Greater Baton Rouge Business Report (LA)

  “Chilling, haunting suspense is the hallmark of Clark’s books, and PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE HER is no exception.”

  —Vicki Davis, The Huntsville Times (AL)

  “Numerous ingredients of a compelling mystery are here. Clark’s powerful, suck-you-right-in beginning... does indeed lure you in… Her major characters are engaging... her research... is impressive… Lacey Farrell is a gutsy, appealing heroine.”

  —Kathy Brown, Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)

  “It’s vintage Mary Higgins Clark... an entertaining read [with]... unexpected twists… I fancy myself a good armchair detective and I have to admit I wasn’t sure who the villain was until the end of this book.”

  —Bridget Maloney Janus, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA)

  “Clark knows how to hook her readers with a dynamite opening scene… She is a master craftsman who never fails to entertain... with the unsuspected… Readers won’t be able to put the book down. This is vintage Clark at her spine-tingling best. Each twist of the plot brings danger closer as the chilling suspense rises to its zenith.”

  —Patricia A. Jones, Tulsa World (OK)

  “All the elements are in place…”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Clark weaves a complex web of intrigue.”

  —Jean Graham, American Woman magazine

  “Mary Higgins Clark cleverly drags red herrings across the path, enticing us to sniff down trails left by several suspects. . . . PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE HER is a seductive tale of secrets [and] one of Clark’s best efforts.”

  —Roy E. Perry, Nashville Banner

  “The Queen of Suspense keeps hearts pounding as she tells the story of Lacey Farrell… A fast page-turner that’s difficult to put down...”

  —Kitty Crider, Austin American-Statesman (TX)

  “Ms. Clark has concocted a frothy entertainment, one that relies on surprise twists of plot to create tension as it unwinds, and a surprise resolution…”

  —Eileen Foley, The Toledo Blade (OH)

  Books by Mary Higgins Clark

  All Through the Night

  You Belong to Me

  Pretend You Don’t See Her

  My Gal Sunday

  Moonlight Becomes You

  Silent Night

  Let Me Call You Sweetheart

  The Lottery Winner

  Remember Me

  I’ll Be Seeing You

  All Around the Town

  Loves Music, Loves to Dance

  The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories

  While My Pretty One Sleeps

  Weep No More, My Lady

  Stillwatch

  A Cry in the Night

  The Cradle Will Fall

  A Stranger Is Watching

  Where Are the Children?

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Originally published in hardcover in 1997 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

  “Pretend You Don’t See Her,” words and music by Steve Allen. Copyright © 1957. Revised 1966, 1985. Meadowlane Music, Inc. ASCAP.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  Copyright © 1997 by Mary Higgins Clark

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Simon & Schuster Inc.,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7432-0625-8

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-1675-0 (Print)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-0625-9 (ebook)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  People often ask, “Where do you get your idea for a book?”

  The answer in this instance is very specific. I was considering several plot possibilities with not one of them as yet triggering my imagination. Then one night I was having dinner in Rao’s Bar and Grill, a legendary New York restaurant.

  Toward the end of the evening, Frank Pellegrino, one of the owners and a professional singer, picked up a mike and began to sing a song Jerry Vale made popular many years ago, “Pretend You Don’t See Her.” As I listened to the lyrics, an idea I’d been considering crystallized: A young woman witnesses a murder and to save her life has to go into the Witness Protection Program.

  Grazie, Frank!

  Kudos and heartfelt thanks to my editors, Michael Korda and Chuck Adams. In my school days, I was always the one who worked best under looming deadlines. Nothing’s changed. Michael and Chuck, copy supervisor Gypsy da Silva, assistants Rebecca Head and Carol Bowie, you’re the best and the greatest. May your names be inscribed in the Book of Saints.

  Bouquets to Lisl Cade, my publicist, and Gene Winick, my literary agent, dear and valued friends.

  An author’s research is immeasurably strengthened by talking to the experts. I am grateful to author and retired FBI manager Robert Ressler, who discussed the Witness Protection Program with me; attorney Alan Lippel, who clarified legal ramifications of plot points; retired detective Jack Rafferty, who answered my queries about police procedure; and Jeffrey Snyder, who actually lived as a protected witness. Thanks to all of you for sharing your knowledge and experiences with me.

  A tip of the hat to computer expert Nelson Kina of the Four Seasons Hotel in Maui, who reclaimed crucial chapters I thought I had lost.

  Continuing thanks to Carol Higgins Clark, my daughter and fellow author, who is always my splendidly on-target sounding board.

  Warm wishes to good friend Jim Smith of Minneapolis, who sent me the information I needed about the city of lakes.

  Deep gratitude to my cheering section, my children and grandchildren. Even the little ones were asking, “Have you finished the book yet, Mimi?”

  And finally, a special award to my husband, John Conheeney, who married a writer with a deadline and, with infinite patience and good humor, survived the experience.

  Bless you
all. And now to quote again a fifteenth-century monk, “The book is finished. Let the writer play.”

  For my husband, John Conheeney, and our children

  Marilyn Clark

  Warren and Sharon Meier Clark

  David Clark

  Carol Higgins Clark

  Patricia Clark Derenzo and Jerry Derenzo

  John and Debbie Armbruster Conheeney

  Barbara Conheeney

  Patricia Conheeney

  Nancy Conheeney Tarleton and David Tarleton

  With love.

  Thank you for purchasing this Pocket Books eBook.

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  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Later Lacey tried to find comfort in the thought that even if she had arrived seconds earlier, rather than being in time to help she would have died with Isabelle.

  But it didn’t happen that way. Using the key she had been given as realtor, she had entered the duplex apartment on East Seventieth Street and called Isabelle’s name in the exact instant that Isabelle screamed “Don’t... !” and a gunshot rang out.

  Faced with a split-second decision to run or to hide, Lacey slammed the apartment door shut and slipped quickly into the hall closet. She had not even had time to fully close that door before a sandy-haired, well-dressed man came running down the stairs. Through the narrow opening she could see his face clearly, and it became imprinted on her mind. In fact, she had seen it before, only hours ago. The expression was now viciously cold, but clearly this was the same man to whom she had shown the apartment earlier in the day: affable Curtis Caldwell from Texas.

  From her vantage point she watched as he ran past her, holding a pistol in his right hand and a leather binder under his left arm. He flung open the front door and ran out of the apartment.

  The elevators and fire stairs were at the far end of the corridor. Lacey knew that Caldwell would realize immediately that whoever had come into the apartment was still there. A primal instinct made her rush out of the closet to shove the door closed behind him. He wheeled around, and for a terrible moment their eyes locked, his pale blue irises like steely ice, staring at her. He threw himself against the door but not fast enough. It slammed shut, and she snapped the dead bolt just as a key clicked in the lock.

  Her pulse racing, she leaned against the door, trembling as the knob twisted, hoping there was no way Caldwell could get back in now.

  She had to dial 911.

  She had to get help.

  Isabelle! she thought. That had to have been her cry that Lacey heard. Was she still alive?

  Her hand on the banister, Lacey raced up the thickly carpeted stairs through the ivory-and-peach sitting room where in these past weeks she had sat so frequently with Isabelle and listened as the grieving mother told her over and over that she still could not believe that the death of her daughter, Heather, had been an accident.

  Fearing what she would find, Lacey rushed into the bedroom. Isabelle lay crumpled across the bed, her eyes open, her bloodied hand frantically pulling at a sheaf of papers that had been under a pillow beside her. One of the pages fluttered across the room, carried by the breeze from the open window.

  Lacey dropped to her knees. “Isabelle,” she said. There were many other things she wanted to say—that she would call an ambulance; that it would be all right—but the words refused to pass her lips. It was too late. Lacey could see that. Isabelle was dying.

  Later that scene was played out in the nightmare that came more and more frequently. The dream was always the same: She was kneeling beside Isabelle’s body, listening to the dying woman’s last words, as Isabelle told her about the journal, entreating her to take the pages. Then a hand would touch her shoulder, and when she looked up, there stood the killer, his cold eyes unsmiling, aiming the pistol at her forehead as he squeezed the trigger.

  1

  IT WAS THE WEEK AFTER LABOR DAY, AND FROM THE steady ringing of the phones in the offices of Parker and Parker, it was clear to Lacey that the summer doldrums finally were over. The Manhattan co-op market had been uncommonly slow this past month; now, finally, things would start to move again.

  “It’s about time,” she told Rick Parker as he delivered a mug of black coffee to her desk. “I haven’t had a decent sale since June. Everybody I had on the hook took off for the Hamptons or the Cape, but thank God they’re all drifting back into town now. I enjoyed my month off, too, but now it’s time to get back to work.”

  She reached for the coffee. “Thanks. It’s nice to have the son and heir wait on me.”

  “No problem. You look great, Lacey.”

  Lacey tried to ignore the expression on Rick’s face. She always felt as though he were undressing her with his eyes. Spoiled, handsome, and the possessor of a phony charm that he turned on at will, he made her distinctly uncomfortable. Lacey heartily wished his father hadn’t moved him from the West Side office. She didn’t want her job jeopardized, but lately keeping him at arm’s length was becoming a balancing act.

  Her phone rang, and she grabbed for it with relief. Saved by the bell, she thought. “Lacey Farrell,” she said.

  “Miss Farrell, this is Isabelle Waring. I met you when you sold a co-op in my building last spring.”

  A live one, Lacey thought. Instinctively she guessed that Mrs. Waring was putting her apartment on the market.

  Lacey’s mind went into its search-and-retrieve mode. She’d sold two apartments in May on East Seventieth, one an estate sale where she hadn’t spoken to anyone except the building manager, the second a co-op just off Fifth Avenue. That would be the Norstrum apartment, and she vaguely remembered chatting with an attractive fiftyish redhead in the elevator, who had asked for her business card.

  Crossing her fingers, she said, “The Norstrum duplex? We met on the elevator?”

  Mrs. Waring sounded pleased. “Exactly! I’m putting my daughter’s apartment on the market, and if it’s convenient I’d like you to handle it for me.”

  “It would be very convenient, Mrs. Waring.�
�

  Lacey made an appointment with her for the following morning, hung up, and turned to Rick. “What luck! Three East Seventieth. That’s a great building,” she said.

  “Three East Seventieth. What apartment?” he asked quickly.

  “Ten B. Do you know that one by any chance?”

  “Why would I know it?” he snapped. “Especially since my father, in his wisdom, kept me working the West Side for five years.”

  It seemed to Lacey that Rick was making a visible effort to be pleasant when he added, “From what little I heard on this end, someone met you, liked you, and wants to dump an exclusive in your lap. I always told you what my grandfather preached about this business, Lacey: You’re blessed if people remember you.”

  “Maybe, although I’m not sure it’s necessarily a blessing,” Lacey said, hoping her slightly negative reaction would end their conversation. She hoped also that Rick would soon come to think of her as just another employee in the family empire.

  He shrugged, then made his way to his own office, which overlooked East Sixty-second Street. Lacey’s windows faced Madison Avenue. She reveled in the sight of the constant traffic, the hordes of tourists, the well-heeled Madison Avenue types drifting in and out of the designer boutiques.

  “Some of us are born New Yorkers,” she would explain to the sometimes apprehensive wives of executives being transferred to Manhattan. “Others come here reluctantly, and before they know it, they discover that for all its problems, it’s still the best place in the world to live.”

  Then if questioned, she would explain: “I was raised in Manhattan, and except for being away at college, I’ve always lived here. It’s my home, my town.”

  Her father, Jack Farrell, had felt that way about the city. From the time she was little, they had explored New York City together. “We’re pals, Lace,” he would say. “You’re like me, a city slicker. Now your mother, God love her, yearns to join the flight to the suburbs. It’s to her credit that she sticks it out here, knowing I’d wither on the vine there.”