Pretend You Don't See Her (24 page)

 
          
“I’d
be glad to.” Tom took off his coat, and tossed it on a chair. “How about I do
the honors?” he asked. “Wine in the refrigerator?”

 
          
“No,
as a matter of fact it’s in the wine cellar. That’s just beyond my
state-of-the-art kitchen.”

 
          
The
Pullman kitchen in the tiny apartment consisted of a small stove and oven, a
miniature sink, and a bar-sized refrigerator.

 
          
Tom
raised his eyebrows. “Shall I
lay
a fire in the great
room?”

 
          
“That
would be nice. I’ll wait on the verandah.” Lacey opened the cabinet and poured
cashews into a bowl. Two minutes ago I was within an inch of going to pieces,
she thought. Here I am, actually joking with someone. Clearly Tom’s presence
had made the difference.

 
          
She
sat in a corner of the couch; he settled in the overstuffed chair and stretched
out his long legs. He lifted his glass to her in a toast, “Good to be with you,
Alice.” His expression became serious. “I have to ask you a question, and
please be honest. Is there another man in your life?”

 
          
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.

 
          
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
right 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.

 
          
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.”