Pretend You Don't See Her Page 15

  Yes, there is, Lacey thought, but not the way you’re thinking. The man in my life is a killer who’s stalking me.

  “Is there someone, Alice?” Tom asked.

  Lacey looked at Tom for a long minute. I could love you, she thought. Maybe I’ve already started to love you. She remembered the bullets whistling past her head, the blood spurting from Bonnie’s shoulder.

  No, I can’t risk that. I’m a pariah, she thought. If Caldwell, or whatever his name is, learns where I am, he’ll follow me here. I can’t expose Tom to danger.

  “Yes, I’m afraid there is someone in my life,” she told him, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  He left ten minutes later.

  35

  RICK PARKER HAD TAKEN MORE THAN A DOZEN PROSPECTIVE buyers to look at the Waring apartment. A few times he had seemed to be on the verge of a sale, but each time the potential buyer had pulled back from making an offer. Now he had another strong possibility, Shirley Forbes, a fiftyish divorcée. She had been to see the place three times, and he had arranged to meet her there again at ten-thirty.

  This morning, as he had walked in the door of the office, his phone was ringing. It was Detective Ed Sloane. “Rick, we haven’t talked in a couple of weeks,” Sloane said. “I think you’d better come in and see me today. I just want to see if maybe by now your memory has improved a little.”

  “I have nothing to remember,” Rick snapped.

  “Oh yes you do. Twelve o’clock. Be here.”

  Rick jumped as Sloane abruptly broke off their connection. He sat heavily in his chair and began rubbing his forehead, which increasingly seemed to be covered with icy beads of perspiration. The savage pounding going on inside his head made him feel as though his skull was about to explode.

  I’m drinking too much, Rick told himself. I’ve got to slow down.

  He had made the rounds of his favorite bars last night. Did something happen? he wondered. He vaguely remembered that he had ended up at Landi’s for a nightcap, although it wasn’t on his usual circuit. He had wanted to see Heather’s portraits in the murals.

  I had forgotten they were painted out, he thought. Did I do something stupid while I was there? Did I say anything to Jimmy about the paintings? Did I say anything about Heather?

  The last thing he needed this morning was to go back into Heather’s apartment just before he had to go talk to Sloane, but there was no way he could postpone the appointment. Shirley Forbes had made a point of telling him she would be coming there from a doctor’s appointment. He knew that all his father would need to hear was that he had let another potential sale of that apartment slip through his fingers.

  “Rick.”

  He looked up to see R. J. Parker Sr. standing over his desk, scowling at him. “I was in Landi’s for dinner last night,” his father told him. “Jimmy wants that apartment sold. I said you had someone coming back this morning who’s definitely interested. He said he’d gladly settle for a hundred thousand less than the six hundred he’s been asking, just to get rid of it.”

  “I’m on my way to meet Mrs. Forbes now, Dad,” Rick said.

  My God! he thought. R. J. was in Landi’s last night. I could have bumped into him! The very idea of such a disastrous encounter increased the pounding in his head.

  “Rick,” his father said, “I don’t think I have to tell you that the sooner that place is off our hands, the less chance Jimmy has of finding out—”

  “I know, Dad, I know.” Rick pushed his chair back. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s exactly what I want, but I just know I’d never spend a comfortable moment alone here. I’d keep thinking of the way that poor woman died, trapped and defenseless.”

  Shirley Forbes announced her decision as she and Rick stood in the bedroom where Isabelle Waring had died. The apartment had been left with everything still in place. Forbes looked around the room. “I looked up all the newspaper accounts of the murder on the Internet,” she said, dropping her voice as though confiding a secret. “From what I understand, Mrs. Waring was propped up against that headboard.”

  Her eyes unnaturally wide behind oversized glasses, Mrs. Forbes pointed to the bed. “I’ve read all about it. She was resting right here in her own bedroom, and someone came in and shot her. The police think she tried to get away, but her killer was blocking the door, so she shrank back on the bed and put her hand up to protect herself. That’s why her hand was so bloody. And then that real estate agent came in, just in time to hear her beg for her life. Just think, that agent could have been killed too. That would have been two murders in this apartment.”

  Rick turned abruptly. “Okay. You’ve made your point. Let’s go.”

  The woman followed him through the sitting room and down the stairs. “I’m afraid I’ve upset you, Mr. Parker. I’m so sorry. Did you know either Heather Landi or Mrs. Waring?” Rick wanted to rip off those idiotic glasses and grind them under his feet. He wanted to push this stupid woman, this voyeur, down the stairs. That’s all she was, he decided—a voyeur, wasting his time, churning up his guts. She probably had looked at this place only because of the murder. She had no intention of buying.

  He had other listings to offer her, but to hell with them, he decided. She saved him the trouble of telling her to get out by saying, “I really must rush now. I’ll call you in a few days to see if anything else has come up.”

  She was gone. Rick went into the powder room, opened the door of the linen closet, and extracted a bottle from its hiding place. He carried the bottle into the kitchen, got out a glass, and half filled it with vodka. Taking a deep sip, he sat down on a bar stool at the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area.

  His attention became riveted on a small lamp at the end of the counter. The base was a teapot. He remembered it all too well.

  “It’s my Aladdin’s lamp,” Heather had said that day when she spotted it in a secondhand store on West Eightieth. “I’ll rub it for luck,” she had said. Then, holding it up, she had closed her eyes, and chanted in a somber voice: “Powerful genie, grant me my wish. Let me get the part I auditioned for. Put my name up in lights.” Then in a worried voice she had added, “And don’t let Baba be too mad at me when I tell him I bought a co-op without his permission.”

  She had turned to Rick with a frown and said, “It’s my money, or at least he told me I could use it for whatever I wanted, but at the same time I know he wanted to have a say in where I live here. He’s worried enough as it is about my deciding to leave college early and move here and be on my own.”

  Then she had smiled again—she had a wonderful smile, Rick remembered—and rubbed the lamp once more. “But maybe he won’t mind,” she had said. “I bet finding this “magic’ lamp is a sign that everything will be fine.”

  Rick looked at the lamp, now sitting on the counter. Reaching for it, he yanked out the cord as he picked it up.

  The next week, Heather had begged him to cancel the sale and give back her deposit. “I told my mother on the phone that I’d seen a place I loved. She was so upset. She told me that as a surprise my father had already bought an apartment for me on East Seventieth at Fifth Avenue. I can’t let him know that I’ve bought another one without his permission. You just don’t know him, Rick,” she pleaded. “Rick, please, your family owns the agency. You can help me.”

  Rick aimed the lamp at the wall over the sink and threw it with all the force he could muster.

  The genie in the lamp had gotten Heather the part in the show. After that he hadn’t helped her very much.

  Undercover detective Betty Ponds, the woman Rick Parker knew as Shirley Forbes, reported to Detective Sloane at the 19th Precinct. “Parker’s so jumpy that he’s twitching,” she said. “Before too long, he’ll crack like a broken egg. You should have seen the look in his eyes when I described how Isabelle Waring died. Rick Parker is scared silly.”

  “He has a lot more to be worried about,” Sloane told her. “The Feds are talking ri
ght now to a guy who can place Parker in Stowe the afternoon before Heather Landi died.”

  “What time do you expect him?” Ponds asked.

  “Noon.”

  “It’s almost that now. I’m out of here. I don’t want him to see me.” With a wave she left the squad room.

  Twelve-fifteen and twelve-thirty came and went. At one o’clock Sloane phoned Parker and Parker. He was told that Rick had not returned to the office since leaving for a ten-thirty appointment.

  By the next morning it was clear that Rick Parker had disappeared, voluntarily or otherwise.

  36

  IT HAD BECOME CLEAR TO LACEY THAT SHE COULD NOT continue to go to the Twin Cities Gym, because she would just keep running into Tom Lynch. Even though she had told him there was someone else in her life, she was sure that if they saw each other day after day at the gym, inevitably they would end up going out together, and there was just no way she could tolerate the constant fabrication and the web of lies she would have to spin.

  There was no question she liked him, and no question that she would like to get to know him. She could imagine sitting across a table from him, and over a plate of pasta and a glass of red wine, telling him about her mother and father, about Kit and Jay and the children.

  What she could not imagine was inventing stories about a mother who supposedly lived in England, about the school she never attended, about her nonexistent boyfriend.

  Kate Knowles had said that Tom loved New York and would end up there eventually. How well did he know it? Lacey wondered. She thought of how much fun it would be to take him on one of the Jack Farrell tours of the city, “East Side, West Side, all around the town.”

  In the days that immediately followed Tom’s visit to her apartment, Lacey found that when she finally got to sleep, she had vague dreams of him. In those dreams, the doorbell of her apartment would ring and she would open the door and he would say, just as he had on the intercom that last night, “No, Alice, it’s Mr. Lynch.”

  But on the third night, the dream changed. This time, as Tom came down the corridor, the elevator door opened and Curtis Caldwell stepped out, the pistol in his hand aimed at Tom’s back.

  That night Lacey awoke with a scream, trying to warn Tom, trying to pull him into the apartment, to bolt the door so they both could be safe inside.

  Given her generally distressed state, the job with Millicent Royce was a lifesaver. At Millicent’s invitation, Lacey had been out with her on several sales calls, either to show houses to a prospective client or to obtain new listings.

  “It will be more interesting for you if you get to know the area well,” Mrs. Royce told her. “Did you ever hear it said that real estate is all about location?”

  Location, location, location. In Manhattan a park or river view dramatically increased the price of an apartment. Lacey found herself longing to swap stories with Millicent about some of the eccentric clients she had dealt with over the years.

  The evenings were the hardest times. They stretched long and empty in front of her. On Thursday night she made herself go to a movie. The theater was half empty, with rows of unoccupied seats, but just before the film began, a man came down the aisle, went past her row, turned, looked around, and chose the seat directly behind her.

  In the semidarkness she could only tell that he was of medium height and slender. Her heart began to race.

  As the credits rolled on the screen, Lacey could hear the creaking of the seat behind her as he settled into it, she could smell the popcorn he was carrying. Then suddenly she felt his hand tap her shoulder. Almost paralyzed with fright as she was, it took what felt to be a superhuman effort to turn her head to look at him.

  He was holding a glove. “This yours, ma’am?” he asked. “It was under your chair.”

  Lacey did not stay to see the film. She found it impossible to concentrate on what was happening on the screen.

  On Friday morning, Millicent asked Lacey what she would be doing over the weekend.

  “Mostly hunting for a gym or health club,” Lacey said. “The one I joined is fine, but it doesn’t have a squash court, and I really miss that.”

  Of course, that’s not the real reason I won’t go to Twin Cities Gym anymore, she thought, but for once, it isn’t a totally dishonest answer.

  “I’ve heard there’s a new health club in Edina that’s supposed to have a great squash court,” Millicent told her. “Let me find out about it.”

  In a few minutes she came back to Lacey’s desk with the smile of someone who has achieved a goal. “I was right. And because they’re new, there’s a discount for joining right now.”

  When Millicent left later for her appointment, Lacey called George Svenson. She had two requests for him: she wanted to speak to U.S. Attorney Gary Baldwin again. “I deserve to know what’s happening,” she said.

  Then she added, “People are getting too curious at the Twin Cities Gym. I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you to advance the registration fee for a different one.”

  Beggar, she thought despairingly as she waited for his answer. I’m not only a liar but a beggar!

  But Svenson did not hesitate: “I can okay that. The change will do you good.”

  37

  LOTTIE HOFFMAN READ THE NEW YORK PAPERS EVERY morning over her solitary breakfast. For forty-five years, up until a little over a year ago, she and Max had shared them. It was still unreal to Lottie that on that day in early December, Max had gone out for his usual early morning walk and never returned.

  An item on page three of the Daily News caught her eye: Richard J. Parker Jr., wanted for questioning in the murder of Isabelle Waring, had disappeared. What had happened to him? she wondered nervously.

  Lottie pushed her chair back and went to the desk in the living room. From the middle drawer, she took out the letter Isabelle Waring had written Max the very day before she had been murdered. She read it once again.

  Dear Max,

  I tried to phone you today, but your number is unlisted, which is why I am writing. I am sure that you must have heard that Heather died in an accident last December. Her death was a tremendous loss to me, of course, but the circumstances of her death have been especially troublesome.

  In clearing out her apartment I have come across her journal, and in it she refers to her intention of meeting you for lunch. That was only five days before her death. She does not mention either you or the lunch date after that. Instead the next two entries in the journal indicate that she was clearly distraught, although there is no indication of what was actually bothering her.

  Max, you worked at Jimmy’s restaurant for the first fifteen years of Heather’s life. You were the best captain he ever had, and I know how much he regretted your leaving him. Remember, when Heather was two and you did magic tricks to make her sit still for the artist who was painting her into the mural? Heather loved and trusted you, and it is my hope that she may have confided in you when you saw her.

  In any event, will you please phone me? I’m staying in Heather’s apartment. The number is 555-2437.

  Lottie returned the letter to the drawer and went back to the table. She picked up her coffee cup, then realized that her right hand was trembling so much that she had to steady the cup with the fingers of her left hand. Since that terrible morning, when she had answered the doorbell to find a policeman standing there... well, ever since that terrible morning she had felt every one of her seventy-four years.

  She thought back to that time. I called Isabelle Waring, she remembered nervously. She was so shocked when I told her that Max had been killed by a hit-and-run driver only two days before Heather’s death. At that time, I still thought his death was an accident.

  She remembered that Isabelle had asked if she had any idea what Max and Heather might have talked about.

  Max had always said that in his business you heard a lot, but you learned to keep your mouth shut. Lottie shook her head. Well, he must have broken that rule when he talked to Heather, she decid
ed, and now I know it cost him his life.

  She had tried to help Isabelle. I told her what I knew, she thought. I told her that I’d never met Heather, although I had gone with my senior citizen group to see the production of The Boy Friend when she was appearing in it. Then sometime soon after that, Lottie had gone on a day outing with the same group to Mohonk Mountain House, the resort in the Catskills. She had seen Heather there a second—and last—time. I took a walk along the trails, she remembered, and I saw a couple in ski clothes with their arms around each other. They were in a gazebo, all lovey-dovey. I recognized Heather, but not the guy she was with. That night she had told Max about it.

  He asked about Heather’s boyfriend, she remembered. When I described him, Max knew who I was talking about and became terribly upset. He said that what he knew about that man would curl my hair. He said the man had been very careful, that there wasn’t a breath of suspicion against him, but Max said he was a racketeer and a drug dealer.

  Max didn’t tell me the man’s name, Lottie thought, and before I could describe him to Isabelle Waring when she had called that night, Isabelle had said, “I hear someone downstairs. It must be the real estate agent. Give me your number. I’ll call you right back.”

  Lottie remembered how Isabelle had repeated the number several times, then hung up the phone. I waited for the call all evening, Lottie thought, and then I heard the eleven-o’clock news.

  It was only then that the full impact of what must have happened had hit her. Whoever had come in while she and Isabelle were on the phone must have been Isabelle Waring’s murderer. Isabelle was dead because she would not stop looking for the reason for Heather’s death. And now Lottie was convinced that Max was dead because he had warned Heather away from the man she was seeing.

  And if I saw that man, I could identify him, she thought, but thank the Lord no one knows that. If there was one thing Lottie was sure of, it was that whatever Max told Heather when he cautioned her, he had not involved Lottie. She knew Max would never have put her in danger.