Pretend You Don't See Her (21 page)

 
          
Lacey
remembered that in the message she had left on the answering machine, Isabelle
said she had found Heather’s journal and declared that something in it made her
think she might have proof that Heather’s death hadn’t been an accident.

 
          
But
the next morning, when she phoned me at the office, she wouldn’t talk about it,
Lacey recalled. Then she stayed in the library reading the journal when I
brought Curtis Caldwell in. And a few hours later she was dead.

 
          
Mental
images suddenly threatened to close her throat as she finished the last bite of
the sandwich: Isabelle in the library, weeping as she read Heather’s journal.
Isabelle with her last breath begging Lacey to give that journal to
Heather’s father.

 
          
What
is it that’s been bothering me? Lacey asked herself. It was something about the
library that last afternoon, something I noticed when I spoke to Isabelle in
there. What was it? She mentally revisited that afternoon, struggling to make
the elusive image come into focus.

 
          
Finally
she gave up. She simply couldn’t remember.

 
          
Let
it go for now, Lacey told
herself
. Later I’ll try to
put my mind in the search-and-retrieve mode. After all, the mind is a computer,
isn’t it?

 
          
That
night in her dreams she had vague visions of Isabelle holding a green pen and
weeping as she read Heather’s journal in the last hours of her life.

 
          
AFTER
CHECKING INTO THE RADISSON PLAZA HOTEL, HALF a block from the Nicollet Mall,
Sandy Savarano spent the rest of his first day in Minneapolis poring over the
phone book and making a list of the health clubs and gyms in the metropolitan
area.

 
          
He
made a second list of all the real estate agencies, putting in a separate
column the ones whose ads indicated they were geared to commercial sales. He
knew that Lacey Farrell would have to try to find a job without benefit of
references, and the odds were those agencies would be unwilling to hire anyone
without some kind of background check. He would start calling the others
tomorrow.

 
          
His
plan was simple. He would just say that he was conducting an informal survey
for the National Association of Realtors because there was growing evidence
that adults in the twenty-five to thirty-five age
group
were not entering the real estate field. The survey would ask two questions:
Had the agency hired anyone in that age group as an agent, secretary, or
receptionist in the last six months, and if so, were they a male or female?

 
          
He’d
need another plan for checking out health clubs and gyms. Those survey
questions wouldn’t work there, since most of the people who joined them were in
that age group. It meant that locating Farrell through the clubs would be
riskier.

 
          
He
would have to actually go to them, pretend he was interested in joining, then
flash Farrell’s picture. It was an old photo, cut from her college yearbook,
but it still looked like her. He would claim that she was his daughter and had
left home after a family misunderstanding. He was trying to find her because
her mother was sick with worry about her.

 
          
Checking
out the health clubs would be a long shot, but fortunately there were not too many
in the metro area, so it wouldn’t take him too long.

 
          
At
five of ten, Sandy was ready to go out for a walk. The mall was dark now, the
windows of the
toney
stores no longer glittering.

 
          
Sandy
knew that the Mississippi River was within walking distance. He turned right
and headed in that direction, a solitary figure
who
to
a casual viewer would appear to be a man in his sixties who probably ought not
to be walking alone at night.

 
          
A
casual observer would have no idea how misdirected that concern was, since on
that walk, Sandy Savarano began to experience the curious thrill that came to
him whenever he began to stalk a victim and sensed that he was approaching the
habitat of the hunted.

 
          
ON
TUESDAY MORNING, LACEY WAS WAITING IN FRONT OF Royce Realty when Millicent
Royce arrived at nine o’clock.

 
          
“The
pay isn’t that good,” Millicent Royce said with a laugh.

 
          
“It’s
what we agreed on,” Lacey said. “And I can tell I’ll like the job.”

 
          
Mrs.
Royce unlocked and opened the door. The warmth of the interior greeted them. “A
Minnesota chill in the air,” Royce said.
“First things first.
I’ll put the coffee on. How do you like yours?”

 
          
“Black,
please.”

 
          
“Regina, my assistant who just left to have a baby, used two
heaping
teaspoonsful
of sugar and never gained an
ounce.
I told her it was serious cause for simple hatred.”

 
          
Lacey
thought of Janey Boyd, a secretary at Parker and Parker, who always seemed to
be munching a cookie or a chocolate bar but remained a size six. “There was
a girl like
that at—” She stopped herself. “At the doctor’s
office,” she finished,
then
quickly added. “She didn’t
stay long. Just as well. She was setting a bad example.”

 
          
Suppose
Millicent Royce had picked up on that and suggested calling a coworker for a
personal reference. Be careful, Lacey told herself, be careful.

 
          
The
first phone call of the day came right then and was a welcome interruption.

 
          
At twelve Lacey left for the luncheon date with Kate Knowles.
“I’ll be back by two,” she promised, “and after this, I’ll have a sandwich at
the desk so if you want to make outside appointments, I’ll be here.”

 
          
She
arrived at the Radisson at 12:25 to find that Kate was already at the table,
munching on a roll. “This is breakfast and lunch for me,” she told Lacey, “so I
started. Hope you don’t mind.”

 
          
Lacey
slid into the seat opposite her.
“Not at all.
How’s
the show going?”

 
          
“Great.”

 
          
They
both ordered omelets, salads, and coffee. “The necessaries out of the way,”
Kate said with a grin. “I have to admit I’m getting curious. I was talking to
Tom this morning and told him we were having lunch. He said he wished he could
join us and sent his best to you.”

 
          
Kate
reached for another roll. “Tom was telling me that you just decided to pick up
and move here, that you’d only been here once on a visit as a kid. What makes a
place stick in your mind like that?”

 
          
Answer
the question with a question.

 
          
“You’re
on the road a lot with shows,” Lacey said. “Don’t you remember some cities
better than others?”

 
          
“Oh, sure.
The good ones, like here, and
the not-so-good ones.
Let me tell you about the all-time not-so-good one
…”

 
          
Lacey
found
herself
relaxing as Kate told her story, her
timing perfect. So many show business people are like that, Lacey thought
nostalgically. Dad had the same talent; he could make a grocery list sound
interesting.

 
          
Over
a second cup of coffee she managed to steer the conversation to the friend
named Bill that Kate had mentioned. “You talked the other night about someone
you’re dating,” she began. “Bill something, wasn’t it?”

 
          
“Bill
Merrill. Nice guy. Could even be Mr. Right, although the way things are going I
may never know. I’ll keep trying, though.” Kate’s eyes brightened. “The trouble
is that I’m on the road so much, and he travels all the time too.”

 
          
“What
does he do?”

 
          
“He’s
an investment banker and practically commutes to China.”

 
          
Don’t
let him be in China now, Lacey prayed. “Which bank is he with, Kate?”

 
          
“Chase.”

 
          
Lacey
had learned to watch for the flicker of curiosity that signaled she was being
studied. Kate was smart. She sensed now that she was being probed for
information. I’ve got what I need to know, Lacey thought. Get back to letting
Kate do the talking.

 
          
“I
guess the best of all possible worlds for you is to get a Broadway hit that
runs for ten years,” she suggested.

 
          
“Now
you’re talking,” Kate said with a grin. “That would be having my cake and
eating it too. I’d love to be able to stay put in New York.
Primarily
because of Bill, of course, but there’s no question that Tom’s going to end up
there in the next few years.
He’s clearly headed for success, and New
York will be where he lands. That really would be the icing on the cake for me.
We’re both only children, so we’ve been more like siblings and best friends
than cousins. He’s always been there for me. Plus Tom’s just naturally the kind
of guy who seems to sense when people need help.”

 
          
I
wonder if that’s why he asked me out last week and called me last
night?
Lacey thought. She signaled for a check. “I’ve got to
run,” she explained quickly.
“First full day on the job.”

 
          
At
a pay phone in the lobby, she called and left a message for George Svenson. “I
have new information concerning the Heather Landi case that I must give
directly to Mr. Baldwin at the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

 
          
When
she hung up, she hurried through the lobby, aware she was already late getting
back to the agency.

 
          
Less
than a minute later, a hand with brown age spots picked up the receiver that
was still warm from her touch.

 
          
Sandy
Savarano never made phone calls that could be traced. His pockets were filled
with quarters. His plan was to make five calls here, then go to a different
location and make five more until his list of local real estate offices was
exhausted.

 
          
He
dialed, and when someone answered, “Downtown Realty,” he began his spiel. “I
won’t take much of your time,” he said. “I’m with the National Association of
Realtors. We’re conducting an informal survey …”

 
          
AS
U.S. ATTORNEY GARY BALDWIN TOLD NYPD DETECTIVE Ed Sloane, he did not suffer
fools gladly. He had been infuriated by the phone call from Sloane the previous
afternoon, informing him that several pages of Jimmy Landi’s copy of his
daughter’s journal apparently had vanished while it was in the police station.
“How is it you managed to not lose the whole thing?” he had raged. “That’s what
happened to the original.”

 
          
When
Sloane phoned again twenty-four hours later, it gave Baldwin a second chance to
air his grievances: “We’re busting our chops going over the copy of the journal
you gave us, and we find that we don’t have several pages that obviously were
of some importance, since someone took the risk of stealing them from under
your nose! Where’d you leave the journal when you got it?
On
the bulletin board?
Where’d you leave the copy?
On the
street?
Did you hang out a sign on it?
‘Evidence in a
murder case.
Feel free to take’?”

 
          
As
he listened to the tirade, Detective Ed Sloane’s thoughts about what he would
like to do to Baldwin yanked him back to his Latin 3 Class at Xavier Military
Academy. When he preached on a grave sin, St. Paul had cautioned, “Ne
nominatur
in
vobis
”—Let it not be
named among you.