Pretend You Don't See Her (12 page)

 
          
I
can’t write about a job because I don’t have one yet. I can say that my fake
birth certificate and my fake social security card just came through, so now I
can look for a job. I suppose I can tell them that now I have a driver’s
license, at least, and my advisor, a deputy U.S. marshal, took me to buy a
secondhand car.

 
          
The
program pays for it. Isn’t that great? But of course I can’t say that the
marshal’s name is George Svenson, and I certainly won’t let Mom and Kit know
that I bought a three-year-old maroon Bronco.

 
          
Instead
she wrote:

 
          
My
advisor is a good guy. He’s got three
teenaged
daughters.

 
          
No,
take that last part out, she thought.
Too specific.

 
          
My
advisor is a good guy.
Very patient.
He went with me
to buy furniture for the studio.

 
          
Too specific.
Make that apartment.

 
          
But
you know me. I didn’t want a lot of matched stuff, so he humored me and we went
to some garage sales and house sales and I found some really nice secondhand
furniture that at least has character. But I sure miss my own digs, and do tell
Jay that I’m really grateful to him for keeping up the maintenance on the place
for me.

 
          
That
was safe enough, Lacey thought, and I really am grateful to Jay. But I will pay
him back every nickel, she vowed to herself.

 
          
She
was allowed to call home once a week on a secure telephone hookup. The last
call she had made, she could hear Jay in the background, hurrying Kit. Well, it
was a pain in the neck to have to sit and wait for a call at a specific time;
she couldn’t deny that. And no one could call her back.

 
          
It
sounds as though the holidays were fun for the kids, and I’m so happy that
Bonnie’s arm is getting stronger.
Sounds like the boys’
skiing trip was a blast.
Tell them I’m nutty enough to try snowboarding
with them when I get back.

 
          
Take
care of yourself, Mom.
Sounds as though you and Alex are
having fun.
So what if he talks your ear off once in a while? I think
he’s a nice guy, and I’ll never forget how helpful he was that awful night
while Bonnie was in surgery.

 
          
Love
you all. Keep praying that they find and arrest Isa belle
Waring’s
murderer and he plea-bargains and I get off the hook.

 
          
Lacey
signed her name, folded the letter and put it in an envelope. Deputy Marshal
Svenson would mail it for her through the secure mail-forwarding channel.
Writing to her mother and Kit or speaking to them on the phone took away
something of the sense of isolation. But when the letter was finished or the
phone call completed, the letdown that followed was rough.

 
          
Come
on, she warned herself, knock off the self-pity. It won’t do any good and,
thank God, the holidays are over. “Now they were a genuine problem,” she said
aloud, realizing suddenly that she was getting in the habit of talking to
herself.

 
          
To
try to break up Christmas Day she had gone to the last Mass at St. Olaf’s, the
church named for the warrior king of Norway,
then
ate
at the
Northstar
Hotel.

 
          
At
Mass when the choir sang “
Adeste
Fidelis
”
tears had sprung to her eyes as she thought of the last Christmas her father
was alive. They had gone to midnight Mass together at St.
Malachy’s
in Manhattan’s theater district. Her mother had always said that Jack Farrell
could have made it big if he had chosen to try for a career as a singer rather
than as a musician. He really did have a good voice. Lacey remembered how that
night she had stopped singing herself, just to listen to the clarity of tone
and warmth of feeling he put into the carol.

 
          
When
it was over, he had whispered, “Ah, Lace, there’s something grand about the
Latin, isn’t there?”

 
          
At
her solitary meal, her tears had welled up again as she thought about her
mother and Kit and Jay and the children. She and her mother always went to
Kit’s house on Christmas, arriving with the presents for the kids that “Santa
had dropped off” at their houses.

 
          
At
ten, Andy, like Todd at that age, was still a believer. At four, Bonnie was
already savvy. Lacey had sent gifts to everyone through secure channels this
year, but that didn’t hold a candle to being there, of course.

 
          
As
she had tried to pretend she was enjoying the food she had ordered at the
Northstar
, she found herself thinking of Kit’s festive
holiday table with the Waterford chandelier sparkling, its lights reflected off
the Venetian glassware.

 
          
Knock
it off! Lacey warned herself as she dropped the envelope into a drawer, where
it would await Deputy Marshal Svenson’s pickup.

 
          
For
lack of something else to do, she reached into the bottom drawer of her desk
and pulled out the copy she had made of Heather Landi’s journal.

 
          
What
could Isabelle possibly have wanted me to see in it?
she
asked herself for the hundredth time. She had read it so often she felt as
though she could quote it word for word.

 
          
Some
of the entries were in a close sequence, daily and sometimes several times a
day. Others were spaced a week, a month, or as much as six weeks apart. In all,
the journal spanned the four years Heather had spent in New York. She wrote in
detail about looking for an apartment, about her father insisting she live in a
safe building on the East Side. Heather clearly had preferred Manhattan’s West
Side; as she put it, “It isn’t stuffy and has life.”

 
          
She
wrote about singing lessons, about auditioning and getting her first part in a
New York production—an Equity showcase revival of The Boy Friend. That entry
had made Lacey smile. Heather had ended it by writing “Julie Andrews, move
over. Heather Landi is on her way.”

 
          
She
wrote in detail about the plays she had attended, and her analysis of them and
of the actors’ performances was thoughtful and mature. She wrote interestingly
as well about some of the more glamorous parties she attended, many of them
apparently through her father’s connections. But some of the gushing about her
boyfriends was surprisingly immature. Lacey got the clear impression that
Heather had been pretty much held down by both her mother and father until,
after two years of college, she opted to come to New York and try for a career
in the theater.

 
          
It
was obvious that she had been close to both parents. All the references to them
were warm and loving, even though several times she had complained about the
need to please her father.

 
          
There
was one entry that had intrigued Lacey from the first time she read it:

 
          
Dad
exploded at one of the waiters today. I have never seen him that angry before.
The poor waiter was almost crying. I see what Mom meant when she warned me
about his temper and said that I should rethink my decision to tell him that I
wouldn’t live on the East Side when I moved to New York. He’d kill me if he
ever found out how right he was about that. God, I was stupid!

 
          
What
had happened to make Heather write that? Lacey wondered. It can’t be too
important. Whatever it was, it took place four years before she died and that’s
the only reference to it.

 
          
It
was clear from the last few entries that Heather was deeply troubled about
something. She wrote several times about being caught “between a rock and a
hard place. I don’t know what to do.” Unlike the others, those last entries
were on unlined paper.

 
          
There
was nothing specific in those entries, but obviously they had triggered
Isabelle Waring’s suspicions.

 
          
But
it could have had to do with a job decision, or a boyfriend, or anything, Lacey
thought hopelessly, as she put the pages back in the drawer. God knows I’m
between a rock and a hard place right now.

 
          
That’s
because someone wants to kill you, a voice inside her head whispered.

 
          
Lacey
slammed the drawer shut. Stop it!
she
told herself
fiercely.

 
          
A
cup of tea might help, she decided. She made it,
then
sipped it slowly, hoping to dispel the heavy sense of fear-filled isolation
that was again threatening to overwhelm her.

 
          
Feeling
restless, she turned on the radio. Usually she flipped the dial to a music
station, but it was set on the AM band, and a voice was saying, “Hi, I’m Tom
Lynch, your host for the next four hours on WCIV.”

 
          
Tom
Lynch!

 
          
Lacey
was shocked out of her homesickness. She had made a list of all the names
mentioned in Heather Landi’s journal, and one of them was Tom Lynch, an
out-of-town broadcaster on whom it seemed Heather had once had a mild crush.

 
          
Was
it the same person? And, if so, was it possible Lacey could learn something
about Heather from him?

 
          
It
was worth pursuing, she decided.

 
          
TOM
LYNCH WAS A HEARTY MIDWESTERNER. RAISED IN North Dakota, he was one of the
breed of stalwarts who thought twenty degrees was a bracing temperature, and
believed that only sissies complained about the cold.

 
          
“But
today they’ve got a point,” he said with a smile to Marge Peterson, the
receptionist at Minneapolis radio station WCIV.

 
          
Marge
looked at him with maternal affection. He certainly brightened her day, and
since he had taken over the station’s afternoon talk show, he apparently had
been having the same effect on many other people in the Minneapolis–St. Paul
area. She could tell from the steadily increasing volume of fan mail that
crossed her desk that the popular thirty-year-old anchorman was headed for
big-time broadcasting. His mixture of news, interviews, commentary, and
irreverent humor attracted a wide age range of listeners. And wait until they
get a look at him, she thought as she looked up at his bright hazel eyes, his
slightly rumpled medium brown hair, his warm smile, and his attractively uneven
features. He’s a natural for television.

 
          
Marge
was happy at his success—and therefore the
station’s—
but
realized that it was a double-edged sword. She knew that several other stations
had tried to hire him away, but he had announced his strategy was to build WCIV
into the number-one station in the listening area before considering moving on.
And now it’s happening, she thought with a sigh, and soon we’ll be losing him.

 
          
“Marge, anything wrong?”
Tom
asked,
his expression solicitous. “You look worried.”

 
          
She
laughed and shook her head.
“Nothing wrong at all.
You’re off to the gym?”

 
          
As
Lynch was signing off that afternoon, he had told his listeners that since even
a penguin couldn’t jog outside in this weather, he would be heading off to the
Twin Cities Gym later on, and he hoped to see some of them there. Twin Cities
was one of his sponsors.

 
          
“You
bet. See you later.”

 
          
“How
did you hear about us, Miss Carroll?” Ruth Wilcox asked as Lacey filled out the
membership form for the Twin Cities Gym.