Pretend You Don't See Her

  As the plane flew over the snow-covered Midwest, Lacey considered her options. She could call Gary Baldwin and agree to go back into the witness protection program. The marshals would whisk her away again, she would stay in a safe house for a few weeks before being sent to another unfamiliar city, where she would emerge as a newly created entity.

  No way, she vowed silently. I’d rather be dead.

  Lacey thought back to the chain of circumstances that had led her to this point. If only she had never received the call from Isabelle Waring, leading to the exclusive listing on Heather Landi’s apartment. If only she had picked up the phone and talked to Isabelle when she had called the night before she was murdered.

  If I had talked to Isabelle that night, she might have given me a name, Lacey thought. She might have told me what she’d discovered in Heather’s journal. Man... that was her last word. What man? But I’m getting closer to whoever is behind all this. That’s obvious. One of two things had happened. Either Mom somehow gave me away, or someone is getting inside information from the police about me. Svenson may have had to get an okay from New York for me to get another fifteen hundred dollars to register at the Edina Health Club. If there was a leak in the U.S. Attorney’s office, that information might have been passed on. That scenario seemed unlikely, though. There were many people in the program; surely those who were in charge were carefully selected and closely monitored.

  What about her mother? Mom had dinner last night at Alex Carbine’s restaurant, Lacey thought. I like Alex a lot. He was especially wonderful the night Bonnie was injured. But what do we really know about him? The first time I met him, when he came to dinner at Jay and Kit’s, he told us that he’d met Heather.

  Jay may have known Heather too, a voice whispered to her. He denied it. But for some reason when her name came up he was upset and tried to change the subject.

  Don’t even think that Kit’s husband might be involved in this, Lacey told herself. Jay may have his quirks, but he’s basically a very good and solid person.

  What about Jimmy Landi? No, it couldn’t be him. She had seen the grief in his eyes when he took the copy of Heather’s journal from her.

  What about the cops? Heather’s handwritten journal disappeared after I gave it to them, Lacey thought. Now Jimmy Landi wants to know if there were entries written on unlined paper at the end of the journal. I remember those three pages. They had spatters of blood on them. If the copies of those three pages disappeared while they were in police custody, then there had to be something important on them.

  Her copy of the journal was in her tote bag, pushed under the seat in front of her. Lacey was tempted to take it out and look at it but decided to wait until she could study the unlined pages undisturbed. The guy on her right, with the computer, seemed to her the kind who would comment on them, and she had no intention of talking to anyone about all this. Not even complete strangers. Especially not complete strangers!

  “We are beginning our descent...”

  Chicago, she thought. Then New York. Home!

  The flight attendant finished the speech about seats upright in a locked position and buckling up, then added, “Northwest apologizes for the weather-related delay you encountered. You may be interested to learn that the visibility lowered immediately after we took off. We were the last plane to leave the airport until flights were resumed only a few minutes ago.”

  Then I’m at least an hour or so ahead of anyone who may be following me, Lacey told herself.

  Whatever comfort that thought provided, however, was driven away by another possibility. If someone was following her and thought she was planning to go to New York, wouldn’t it be smart for him to have taken a direct flight and be waiting for her there?

  49

  EVERY NERVE IN TOM LYNCH’S BODY HAD SHOUTED AT HIM not to leave Alice alone. He drove five miles in the direction of his apartment in St. Paul before he made a fast U-turn and headed back. He would make it clear to her that he had no intention of getting in her way while she spoke to her mother and whatever other family members might be involved in their rift. But, he reasoned, surely she could have no objection to his waiting in the lobby of her building, or even in his car, until she was ready for him to come up. Clearly she’s in trouble, and I want to be there for her, he thought.

  Having made the decision to go back, Tom became wildly impatient with the overly cautious drivers who, because of the blowing snow, were moving at a snail’s pace.

  His first indication of trouble came at the sight of police cars parked to the front and side of Alice’s building, their lights flashing. A cop was there directing traffic, firmly prodding rubbernecking drivers to keep moving.

  A sickening sense of inevitability warned Tom that the police presence had to do with Alice. He managed to find a parking spot a block away from her building and jogged back. A policeman stopped him at the entrance to the building.

  “I’m going up,” he told the cop. “My girlfriend lives here, and I want to see if she’s all right.”

  “Who’s your girlfriend?”

  “Alice Carroll, in 4F.”

  The change in the police officer’s attitude confirmed Tom’s suspicion that something had happened to Alice. “Come with me. I’ll take you upstairs,” the officer told him.

  In the elevator, Tom forced himself to ask the question he dreaded to put in words. “Is she all right?”

  “Why don’t you wait till you talk to the guy in charge, sir?”

  The door to Alice’s apartment was open. Inside he saw three uniformed cops taking instructions from an older man whom he recognized as the one who had driven Alice home the other evening.

  Tom interrupted him. “What’s happened to Alice?” he demanded. “Where is she?”

  He could see from the surprise on the other man’s face that he had been recognized, but there was no time wasted in greeting him. “How do you know Alice, Mr. Lynch?” George Svenson asked.

  “Look,” Tom said, “I’m not going to answer your questions until you answer mine. where is Alice? Why are you here? Who are you?”

  Svenson responded succinctly. “I’m a deputy federal marshal. We don’t know where Ms. Carroll is. We do know that she had been getting threats.”

  “Then that guy at the gym yesterday who claimed to be her father was a phony,” Tom said heatedly. “I thought so, but when I told Alice about him she didn’t say anything except that she had to go and call her mother.”

  “What guy?” Svenson demanded. “Tell me everything you know about him, Mr. Lynch. It may save Alice Carroll’s life.”

  When Tom finally got home, it was after four-thirty. The flashing light on the answering machine indicated he had received four messages. As he had expected, none of them was from Alice.

  Not bothering to take off his jacket, he sat at the table by the phone, his head in his hands. All Svenson had told him was that Ms. Carroll had been receiving threatening phone calls and had contacted his office. She had apparently had a bad fright this morning, which was why they were there. “She may have gone out to visit a friend,” Svenson told him, his tone unconvincing.

  Or she may have been abducted, Tom thought. A child could see that they were avoiding telling him what was really going on. The police were trying to find Ruth Wilcox from Twin Cities Gym, but she was off duty over the weekend. They said they hoped to get a fuller description of the man claiming to be Alice’s father.

  Tom had told Svenson that Alice had promised to call. “If you hear from her, tell her to call me—immediately,” Svenson ordered sternly.

  In his mind, Tom could see Alice, quiet and lovely, standing at the window of the banker’s home in Wayzata only a week ago. Why didn’t you trust me? he raged at that image. You couldn’t wait to get rid of me this morning!

  There was one possible lead that the police had shared with him. A neighbor reported that she thought she had seen Alice getting in her car around eleven o’clock. I only left her at quarter of eleven, Tom
thought. If that neighbor was right, then she left only ten minutes after I did.

  Where would she go? he wondered.

  Who was she, really? he asked himself.

  Tom stared at the old-fashioned black rotary-dial phone. Call me, Alice, he half demanded, half prayed. But as the hours ticked by, as the morning light made its dim appearance, and the snow continued its steady fall, the phone did not ring.

  50

  LACEY ARRIVED IN CHICAGO AT FOUR-THIRTY. FROM THERE she took a five-fifteen plane to Boston. Once again she used her credit card, but she planned to pay cash for the Delta shuttle from Boston to New York. That plane landed at Marine Terminal, a mile from the main terminals at La Guardia Airport. She was sure anyone who followed her to New York wouldn’t look for her there, and by not using her credit card for the shuttle, she might lead Baldwin’s office to think she had stayed in the Boston area.

  Before she boarded the plane from Chicago she bought a copy of The New York Times. Midway through the flight she glanced through the first section of the paper. Realizing that she was absorbing nothing of what she was reading, she began to fold the remaining sections. Suddenly she gasped. Rick Parker’s face was looking up at her from the first page of Section B.

  She read and reread the account, trying to make sense of it. It was an update on an earlier story about Rick. Last seen on Wednesday afternoon, when he brought a prospective buyer to see the apartment of the late Isabelle Waring, Richard J. Parker Jr., police now confirmed, was a suspect in Waring’s death.

  Was he in hiding? Lacey wondered. Was he dead? Had the information she passed on to Gary Baldwin Tuesday night played a part in this? She remembered that when she had told him about Rick being in Stowe hours before Heather Landi’s death, Baldwin had offered no reaction. And now the police were naming Rick as a suspect in Isabelle’s murder. There must be a connection, she decided.

  It was only as the plane was landing in Boston that Lacey realized she had finally figured out the one place she could stay in New York where no one would ever think of looking for her.

  It was 8:05 local time when she got off the plane at Logan Airport. With a silent prayer that he would be home, Lacey made a phone call to Tim Powers, the superintendent of Isabelle Waring’s building.

  Four years ago, when she was leaving 3 East Seventieth after showing an apartment, Lacey had been instrumental in preventing what surely would have been a terrible accident, and one for which Tim Powers would have been blamed. It had all happened so quickly. A child broke free from his nanny and raced into the street, thanks to the fact that Tim had left the building’s front door open while he worked on it. Lacey’s quick action had kept the child from being hit by a passing delivery truck.

  Tim, trembling from the shock of the near disaster, had vowed, “Lacey, it would have been my fault. If you ever need anything—anything at all—you can count on me.”

  I need it now, Tim, she thought as she waited for him to answer.

  Tim was astonished to hear from her. “Lacey Farrell,” he said. “I thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  That’s almost exactly what I’ve done, Lacey thought. “Tim,” she said, “I need help. You once promised—”

  He interrupted her. “Anything, Lacey.”

  “I need a place to stay,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She was the only one at the bank of phones. Even so she looked around, fearful of being overheard.

  “Tim,” she said hurriedly, “I’m being followed. I think it’s the man who killed Isabelle Waring. I don’t want to put you in danger, but I can’t go to either my apartment or my family. He’d never look for me in your building. I want to stay, at least for tonight, in Isabelle Waring’s apartment. And please, Tim—this is very important—don’t tell anyone about this. Pretend we never spoke.”

  51

  THE DAY CLEARLY WAS NOT OVER FOR DETECTIVE ED Sloane. After leaving Rick Parker at the rehabilitation center in Hartford, he rode with Priscilla Parker to her Greenwich estate, where he picked up his own car.

  On the drive to Manhattan, he phoned the precinct to check in. Nick Mars was there. “Baldwin’s been calling for you, practically every few minutes,” he told Sloane. “He wants to see you ASAP. He couldn’t reach you on your car phone.”

  “No,” said Sloane, “I’m sure he couldn’t.” Wonder what he would say if he knew I’d been riding around in a chauffeured limousine, he thought. “What does he want now?”

  “All hell is breaking loose,” Mars told him. “Lacey Farrell almost got nailed in Minneapolis, where the Feds had her stashed. She’s disappeared, and Baldwin thinks she’s headed for New York. He wants to coordinate with us to find her before she gets nailed here. He wants to take her into custody as a material witness.” Then he added, “How did you make out, Ed? Any luck finding Parker?”

  “I found him,” Sloane said. “Call Baldwin and arrange a meeting. I’ll join you at his office. I could be there by seven.”

  “Better than that. He’s in midtown. He’ll talk to us here at the precinct.”

  When Detective Sloane arrived at the 19th Precinct, he stopped at his desk and took off his jacket. Then, with Nick Mars in tow, he went in to see U.S. Attorney Gary Baldwin, who was waiting in the interrogation room.

  Baldwin was still angry that Lacey Farrell had disappeared but took time from his anger to congratulate Sloane on finding Rick Parker. “What did he tell you?” he asked.

  Glancing only once or twice at his notes, Sloane gave a full report.

  “Do you believe him?” Baldwin asked.

  “Yeah, I think he’s telling the truth,” Sloane said. “I know the guy who sells Parker drugs. If he was the one who told Parker to set up that appointment that got Savarano into Isabelle Waring’s apartment, it was nothing he actually planned himself. He was just a messenger. Somebody passed the word to him.”

  “Meaning we won’t get the big boys through Parker,” Baldwin said.

  “Exactly. Parker’s a jerk, but he’s not a criminal.”

  “Do you believe that his father ordered him roughed up when he tried to hit on Heather Landi?”

  “I think it’s possible,” Sloane said. “If Heather Landi went to Parker Sr. to complain about Rick, it’s even probable. On the other hand, that doesn’t seem likely, because I’m not sure she would trust Parker Sr. I think she’d be afraid he might say something to her father.”

  “All right. We’ll pick up Rick Parker’s supplier and lean on him, but I suspect you’re right. Chances are he’s only a link, not a player. And we’ll make damn sure that Rick Parker doesn’t set foot outside that rehabilitation center without one of us alongside him. Now to Lacey Farrell.”

  Sloane reached for a cigarette, then frowned. “They’re in my jacket. Nick, would you?”

  “Sure, Ed.”

  The round trip took Mars about a minute. He plunked the half-empty cigarette pack and a grimy ashtray on the table in front of Sloane.

  “Has it ever occurred to you to give up smoking?” Baldwin asked, eyeing both cigarettes and ashtray with disdain.

  “Many times,” Sloane responded. “What’s the latest on Farrell?”

  As soon as Baldwin opened his mouth it was obvious to Ed Sloane that he was furious with Lacey. “Her mother admits she knew Farrell was in Minneapolis, but she swears she didn’t tell anyone. Although I don’t believe that for a minute.”

  “Maybe there was a leak somewhere else,” Sloane suggested.

  “There was no leak from my office or from the federal marshal’s office,” Baldwin said, his tone icy. “We maintain security. Unlike this precinct,” he added.

  I let myself in for that one, Sloane acknowledged silently. “What’s your game plan, sir?” he asked. It gave him a fleeting sense of satisfaction to know that Baldwin would not be sure if his addressing him as “sir” was meant as sarcasm or a sign of respect.

  “We’ve flagged the credit card we gave Farrell. We know she used it to fly t
o Chicago, then to Boston. She’s got to be on her way to New York.

  “We have a tap on the phone in her apartment, not that I think she’d be stupid enough to go there,” Baldwin continued. “We’ve got that building under surveillance. We have taps on her mother’s phone, her sister’s phone, and Monday there’ll be taps on the phones in her brother-in-law’s office. We’ve got a tail assigned to each family member, in case they try to meet her somewhere.”

  Baldwin paused and looked at Sloane appraisingly. “It also occurred to me that Lacey Farrell just might try to call you directly,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I seriously doubt it. I didn’t exactly treat her with kid gloves.”

  “She doesn’t deserve kid gloves,” Baldwin said flatly. “She concealed evidence in a murder case. She gave away her location when we had her protected. And now she’s putting herself in an extremely risky position. We’ve invested a hell of a lot of time and money in keeping Ms. Farrell alive, and we’ve gotten nothing much back for it except complaints and lack of cooperation on her part. Even if she doesn’t have any common sense, you’d think she’d at least be grateful!”

  “I’m sure she’s eternally grateful,” Sloane said as he got up. “I’m also sure that even if you hadn’t spent all that time and money, she’d probably like to stay alive.”

  52

  AS THEY HAD AGREED, LACEY CALLED TIM POWERS FROM the Marine Terminal. “I’m getting in a cab,” she told him. “Traffic should be light, so at this hour, I should be there in twenty minutes, a half hour at the most. Be watching for me, please, Tim. It is very important that nobody else sees me come in.”

  “I’ll give the doorman a coffee break,” Tim promised, “and I’ll have the key ready to hand you.”

  It feels so strange to be back in New York, Lacey thought, as the cab sped over the Triborough Bridge into Manhattan. When the plane had made its final approach before landing, she had pressed her face against the window, drinking in the New York skyline, realizing how much she had missed it.