Pretend You Don't See Her Page 9

  “I know the type,” Wilcox assured her. “But let me tell you something. Tom Lynch has been asking me about you. I think he likes you.”

  Lacey had been careful not to seem too interested in Lynch, but she had been laying the groundwork for a planned encounter. She timed her jogging to be finished just as he was starting. She signed up for an aerobics class that looked out on the jogging track and chose a spot where he would see her as he ran by. Sometimes on his way out he stopped in the juice bar for a vitamin shake or a coffee. She began to go into the shop a few minutes before he finished his run and to sit at a table for two.

  The second week, her plan worked. When he entered the bar, she was alone at the small table and all the other tables were taken. As he looked around, their eyes met. Keeping her fingers crossed, she pointed casually to the empty chair.

  Lynch hesitated, then came over.

  She had combed Heather’s journal and copied down any mention of him. The first time he appeared had been about a year and a half ago, when Heather had met him after one of the performances of her show.

  The nicest guy came out with us to Barrymore’s for a hamburger. Tom Lynch, tall, really attractive, about thirty, I’d guess. He has his own radio program in St. Louis but says he is moving to Minneapolis soon. Kate is his cousin, that’s why he came to the show tonight. He said that the hardest thing about being out of New York was not being able to go to the theater regularly. I talked to him a lot. He said he was going to be in town for a few days. I hoped he’d ask me out, but no such luck.

  An entry four months later read:

  Tom Lynch was in town over the weekend. A bunch of us went skiing at Stowe. He’s really good. And nice. He’s the kind of guy Baba would love to see me with. But he isn’t giving me or any of the girls a second look, and anyhow it wouldn’t make any difference now.

  Three weeks later Heather had died in the accident—if it was an accident. When she copied the references to him, Lacey had wondered if either Isabelle or the police had ever spoken to Lynch about Heather. And what had Heather meant by writing “anyhow it wouldn’t make any difference now”?

  Did she mean that Tom Lynch had a serious girlfriend? Or did it mean that Heather was involved with someone herself?

  All these thoughts raced through Lacey’s head as Lynch settled down across the table from her.

  “It’s Alice Carroll, isn’t it,” he asked in a tone that was more affirmation than question.

  “Yes, and you’re Tom Lynch.”

  “So they tell me. I understand you’ve just moved to Minneapolis.”

  “That’s right.” She hoped her smile did not look forced.

  He’s going to ask questions, she thought nervously. This could be my first real test. She picked up the spoon and stirred her coffee, then realized that very few people felt the need to stir black coffee.

  Svenson had told her to answer questions with questions. “Are you a native, Tom?”

  She knew he wasn’t, but it seemed like a natural thing to ask.

  “No. I was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Not that far from here. Did you see the movie, Fargo?”

  “I loved it,” she said, smiling.

  “And after seeing it, you still moved here? It was practically banned in these parts. Folks thought it made us look like a bunch of hicks.”

  Even to her own ears it sounded lame when she tried to explain the move to Minneapolis: “My mother and I visited friends here when I was sixteen. I loved everything about the city.”

  “It wasn’t in weather like this, I trust.”

  “No, it was in August.”

  “During the black fly season?”

  He was teasing. She knew it. But when you’re lying, everything takes on a different slant. Next he asked her where she worked.

  “I’m just settling in,” she replied, thinking that at least that was an honest statement. “Now it’s time to look for a job.”

  “What kind?”

  “Oh, I worked in billing in a doctor’s office,” she replied, then added hastily, “but I’m going to try something different this time around.”

  “I don’t blame you. My brother’s a doctor, and those insurance forms keep three secretaries busy. What kind of doctor did you work for?”

  “A pediatrician.” Thank God, after listening to Mom all these years, I can sound as though I know what I’m talking about there, Lacey thought. But why on earth did I mention the billing department? I don’t know one insurance form from another.

  Anxious to change the drift of the conversation, she said, “I was listening to you today. I liked your interview with the director of last week’s revival of Chicago. I saw the show in New York before I moved here and loved it.”

  “My cousin Kate is in the chorus of the road company of The King and I that’s in town now,” Lynch said.

  Lacey saw the speculative look in his eyes. He’s trying to decide whether to ask me to go with him to see it. Let him, she prayed. His cousin Kate had worked with Heather; she was the one who introduced them.

  “It’s opening tomorrow night,” he said. “I have two tickets. Would you like to go?”

  19

  IN THE THREE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED ISABELLE’S DEATH, Jimmy Landi felt detached. It was as if whatever part of his brain controlled his emotions had been anesthetized. All his energy, all his thinking were channeled into the new casino-hotel he was building in Atlantic City. Situated between Trump Castle and Harrah’s Marina, it was carefully designed to outshine them both, a magnificent gleaming white showcase with rounded turrets and a golden roof.

  And as he stood in the lobby of this new building and watched the final preparations being made for the opening a week away, he thought to himself, I’ve done it! I’ve actually done it! Carpets were being laid, paintings and draperies were being hung, cases and cases of liquor disappeared into the bar.

  It was important to outshine everyone else on the strip, to show them up, to be different in a special way. The street kid who had grown up on Manhattan’s West Side, who had dropped out of school at thirteen and gone to work as a dishwasher at The Stork Club, was on top now, and he was going to rub another success in everyone’s face.

  Jimmy remembered those old days, how when the kitchen door swung open, he would try to sneak a glance at the celebrities in the club’s dining room. In those days they all had glamour, not just the stars but everyone who came there. They’d never dream of showing up looking as if they had slept in their clothes.

  The columnists were there every night, and they had their own tables. Walter Winchell. Jimmy Van Horne. Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen! Boy, did they all kowtow to her. Her column in the Journal-American was a must-read; everybody wanted her on his side.

  I studied them, Jimmy thought, as he stood in the lobby, workmen milling around him. And I learned everything I needed to know about this business in the kitchen. If a chef didn’t show up, I could take over. He had worked his way up, becoming first a busboy, then a waiter, then maitre d’. By the time Jimmy Landi was in his thirties, he was ready to have his own place.

  He learned how to deal with celebrities, how to flatter them without surrendering his own dignity, how to glad-hand them, but make them glad to get his nod of recognition and approval. I also learned how to treat my help, he thought —tough, but fair. Nobody who deliberately pulled anything on me got a second chance. Ever.

  He watched with approval as a foreman sharply reprimanded a carpet layer who had placed a tool on the mahogany reservations desk.

  Looking through wide, clear-glass doors, he could see gaming tables being set up in the casino. He walked into the massive space. Off to the right, glittering rows of slot machines seemed to be begging to be tried. Soon, he thought. Another week and they’ll be lined up to use them, God willing.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Place looks okay, doesn’t it, Jimmy?”

  “You’ve done a good job, Steve. We’ll open on time, and we’ll be ready.”

 
; Steve Abbott laughed. “Good job? I’ve done a great job. But you’re the one with vision. I’m just the enforcer, the one who rides herd on everyone. But I wanted it done on time too. I wasn’t going to have painters slopping around on opening night. It’ll be ready.” He turned back to Landi. “Cynthia and I are on our way back to New York. What about you?”

  “No. I want to hang around here for a while. But when you get back to the city, would you make a call for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know the guy who touches up the murals?”

  “Gus Sebastiani?”

  “That’s right. The artist. Get him in as fast as possible and tell him to paint Heather out of all the pictures.”

  “Jimmy, are you sure?” Steve Abbott searched his partner’s face. “You may regret doing that, you know.”

  “I won’t regret it. It’s time.” Abruptly he turned away. “You better get going.”

  Landi waited a few minutes, then walked over to the elevator and pushed the top button.

  Before he left he wanted to stop in again at the piano bar.

  It was an intimate corner room with rounded windows overlooking the ocean. The walls were painted a deep, warm blue, with silver bars of music from popular songs randomly scattered against drifting clouds. Jimmy had personally selected the songs. They all had been among Heather’s favorites.

  She wanted me to call this whole operation Heather’s Place, he thought. She was kidding. With a glimmer of a smile, Jimmy corrected himself. She was half kidding.

  This is Heather’s place, he thought as he looked around. Her name will be on the doors, her music is on these walls. She’ll be part of it all, just the way she wanted, but not like in the restaurant where I have to look at her picture all the time.

  He had to put it all behind him.

  Restlessly he walked to a window. Far below, just above the horizon, the half-moon was glistening on churning waves.

  Heather.

  Isabelle.

  Both gone. For some reason, Landi had found himself thinking more and more about Isabelle. As she was dying, she’d made that young real estate woman promise to give him Heather’s journal. What was her name? Tracey? No. Lacey. Lacey Farrell. He was glad to have it, but what was so important in it? Right after he got it, the cops had asked to take his copy to compare it with the original.

  He had given it to them, although reluctantly. He had read it the night Lacey Farrell gave it to him. Still he was mystified. What did Isabelle think he would find in it? He had gotten drunk before he tried to read it. It hurt too much to see her handwriting, to read her descriptions of things they did together. Of course, she also wrote about how worried she was about him.

  “Baba,” Jimmy thought.

  The only time she ever called me “Dad” was when she thought I was sore at her.

  Isabelle had seen a conspiracy in everything, then ironically ended up a random victim of a con man who cased the apartment by pretending to be a potential buyer, then came back to burglarize it.

  It was one of the oldest games in the world, and Isabelle had been an unsuspecting victim. She simply had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Or had she? Jimmy Landi wondered, unable to shake the worrisome residue of doubt. Was there even the faintest chance that she had been right, that Heather’s death hadn’t been an accident? Three days before Isabelle died, a columnist in the Post had written that Heather Landi’s mother, Isabelle Waring, a former beauty queen, “may be on the right track in suspecting the young singer’s death wasn’t accidental.”

  The columnist had been questioned by police and admitted she had met Isabelle casually and had gotten an earful of her theories about her daughter’s death. As for the mention in the column, she had completely fabricated the suggestion that Isabelle Waring had proof.

  Was Isabelle’s death related to that item? Jimmy Landi wondered. Did someone panic?

  These were questions that Jimmy had avoided. If Isabelle had been murdered to silence her, it meant that someone had deliberately caused Heather to burn to death in her car at the bottom of that ravine.

  Last week the cops had released the apartment, and he had phoned the real estate people, instructing them to put it back on the market. He needed closure. He would hire a private detective to see if there was anything the cops had missed. And he would talk to Lacey Farrell.

  The sound of hammering finally penetrated his consciousness. He looked around him. It was time to go. With heavy steps he walked across the room and entered the corridor. He pulled the heavy mahogany doors closed, then stood back to look at them. An artist had designed the gold letters that were to be fastened on the doors. They should be ready in a day or two.

  “Heather’s Place,” they would read, for Baba’s girl, Jimmy thought. If I find that someone deliberately hurt you, baby, I’ll kill him myself. I promise you that.

  20

  IT WAS TIME TO CALL HOME, AN EVENT THAT LACEY BOTH longed for and dreaded. This time the location for the secure phone call was a room in a motel. “Never the same place,” she said when George Svenson opened the door in response to her knock.

  “No,” he agreed. Then he added, “The line’s ready. I’ll put the call through for you. Now, remember everything I told you, Alice.”

  He always called her Alice.

  “I remember every word.” Chanting, she recited the list: “Even to name a supermarket could give away my location. If I talk about the gym, don’t dare refer to it as the Twin Cities Gym. Stay away from the weather. Since I don’t have a job, that’s a safe subject. Stretch it out.”

  She bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry, George,” she said contritely. “It’s just that I get an attack or nerves before these calls.”

  She saw a flicker of sympathy and understanding in his craggy face.

  “I’ll make the connection, then take a walk,” he told her. “About half an hour.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He nodded and picked up the receiver. Lacey felt her palms get moist. A moment later she heard the door click behind him as she said, “Hi, Mom. How’s everyone?”

  Today had been more difficult than usual. Kit and Jay were not home. “They had to go to some cocktail reception,” her mother explained. “Kit sends her love. The boys are fine. They’re both on the hockey team at school. You should see how they can skate, Lacey. My heart’s in my mouth when I watch them.”

  I taught them, Lacey thought. I bought ice skates for them when they barely had started to walk.

  “Bonnie’s a worry, though,” her mother added. “Still so pale. Kit takes her to the therapist three times a week, and I work out with her weekends. But she misses you. So much. She has an idea that you’re hiding because someone may try to kill you.”

  Where did she get that idea? Lacey wondered. Dear God, who put that notion in her head?

  Her mother answered the unasked question: “I think she overheard Jay talking to Kit. I know he irritates you sometimes, but in fairness, Lace, he’s been very good, paying for your apartment and keeping up your insurance. I also learned from Alex that Jay has a big order to sell restaurant supplies to the casino-hotel that Jimmy Landi is opening in Atlantic City, and apparently he has been worried that if Landi knew he was related to you, the order might get canceled. Alex said that Jimmy felt terrible about what happened to his ex-wife, and Jay was afraid that he’d start to blame you somehow for her death. You know, for bringing that man in to see the apartment without checking on him first.”

  Maybe it’s too bad I wasn’t killed along with Isabelle, Lacey thought bitterly.

  Trying to sound cheerful, she told her mother that she was going to a gym regularly and really enjoying it. “I’m okay, really I am,” she said. “And this won’t go on too long, I promise. From what they tell me, when the man I can identify is arrested, he’ll be persuaded to turn state’s evidence rather than go to prison. As soon as they make a deal with him, I’ll be off the hook. Whoever he fingers wil
l be after him, not me. We just have to keep praying that it happens soon. Right, Mom?”

  She was horrified to hear deep sobs coming from the other end of the connection. “Lacey, I can’t live like this,” Mona Farrell wailed. “Every time I hear about a young woman anywhere who’s been in an accident, I’m sure it’s you. You’ve got to tell me where you are. You’ve got to.”

  “Mom!”

  “Lacey, please!”

  “If I tell you, it’s strictly between us. You can’t repeat it. You can’t even tell Kit.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “Mom, they’d withdraw the protection, they’d throw me out of the program if they knew I told you.”

  “I have to know.”

  Lacey was looking out the window. She saw the ample frame of George Svenson approaching the steps. “Mom,” she whispered. “I’m in Minneapolis.”

  The door was opening. “Mom, have to go. Talk to you next week. Kiss everybody for me. Love you. Bye.”

  “Everything okay at home?” Svenson asked.

  “I guess so,” Lacey said, as a sickening feeling came over her that she had just made a terrible mistake.

  21

  LANDI’S RESTAURANT ON WEST FIFTY-SIXTH STREET WAS filled with a sparkling after-theater crowd, and Steve Abbott was acting as host, going from table to table, greeting and welcoming the diners. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch was there. “That new TV show you’re on is fabulous, Ed,” Steve said, touching Koch’s shoulder.

  Koch beamed. “How many people get paid that kind of money for being a judge in small-claims court?”

  “You’re worth every penny.”

  He stopped at a table presided over by Calla Robbins, the legendary musical-comedy performer who had been coaxed out of retirement to star in a new Broadway show. “Calla, the word is that you’re marvelous.”

  “Actually, the word is that not since Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady has anyone faked a song with such flair. But the public seems to like it, so what’s wrong with that?”