Pretend You Don't See Her (32 page)

 
          
“Meaning
they can afford to buy a place you show them?”

 
          
Rick
Parker nodded. “You know the reason I’m here. I have a drug habit. In fact I’ve
got an expensive habit. And I simply haven’t been able to cover it. I’ve been
buying more and more on credit. In early October I got a call from my dealer,
the one I owe the money to, saying that he knew someone who wanted to see the
apartment. He also said he knew this guy might not meet our standards, but if
he liked it, things could he straightened out.”

 
          
“Were
you threatened in case you didn’t go along with that?” Sloane asked.

 
          
Parker
rubbed his forehead. “Look, all I can tell you is I knew what I had to do. It
was clear to me that I wasn’t being asked for a favor; I was being told what to
do. So I made up a story. In the office, we’d just finished selling several
co-ops to some lawyers the firm of Keller, Roland, and Smythe had transferred
to Manhattan, so I made up the name Curtis Caldwell and said he was from that
firm. No one questioned it.
That’s all I did,” he burst out.
“Nothing more.
I figured the guy could be a little
shady, but I had no idea he was that bad. When Lacey Farrell told me that guy
was the one who killed Heather’s mother, I didn’t know what to do.”

 
          
Sloane
noted immediately the familiar way in which Rick Parker referred to Heather
Landi.

 
          
“Okay.
Now, what had been going on between you and Heather Landi?”

 
          
Sloane
saw Priscilla Parker squeeze her son’s hand. “You’ve got to tell him, Rick,”
she said softly.

 
          
Parker
looked directly at Ed Sloane. The misery in his eyes seemed genuine to the
detective. “I met Heather nearly five years ago, when she came to our office
looking for a West Side apartment,” he said. “I started taking her around. She
was … she was beautiful, she was vivacious,
she
was
fun.”

 
          
“You
knew Jimmy Landi was her father?” Sloane asked, interrupting him.

 
          
“Yes,
and that was part of what made me enjoy the situation so much. Jimmy had barred
me from going into his place one night because I was drunk. It made me angry. I
wasn’t used to being denied anything. So when Heather wanted to get out of her
contract for a co-op on West
Seventy-seventh
Street, I
saw my chance to have some fun, at least indirectly, at Jimmy Landi’s expense.”

 
          
“She
signed a contract?”

 
          
“An airtight one.
Then she came back to me in a panic. She
found out her father had already bought her a place on East Seventieth. She
begged me to tear up the contract.”

 
          
“What
happened?”

 
          
Rick
paused and looked down at his hands. “I told her I would tear it up, if I could
take it out in trade.”

 
          
You
bastard, Sloane thought, she was a kid, new to New York, and you pulled that.

 
          
“You
see,” Rick Parker said, and now it seemed to Sloane that he was almost talking
to himself, “I didn’t have the brains to realize what I really felt for
Heather. I had been able to crook my finger, and any number of girls would come
running. Heather had ignored my attempts to seduce her. So in the deal we made
over the co-op contract, I saw a chance to get what I wanted and to even the
score with her father. But the night she came to my apartment, she was clearly
terrified, so I decided to back off. She really was a sweet kid, the kind I
could actually fall in love with. In fact, maybe I did. I do know that I found
myself suddenly very uncomfortable having her there. I teased her a little bit,
and she started crying. So then I just told her to grow up, and to leave, that
I was too old for babies. I guess I succeeded in humiliating her enough to
scare her away from me for good. I tried to call her, to see her after that,
but she wouldn’t have any part of it.”

 
          
Rick
got up and walked to the fireplace as if he needed the warmth of the flames
there. “That night, after she had been to my apartment, I went out drinking.
When I left a bar on Tenth Street in the Village, I was suddenly hustled into a
car. Two guys worked me over good. They said if I didn’t tear up that contract
and stay away from Heather, I wouldn’t live to see my next birthday. I had
three broken ribs.”

 
          
“Did
you tear up the contract?”

 
          
“Oh,
yes, Mr. Sloane, I had torn it up. But not before my father got wind of it and
forced me to tell him what had happened. Our main office had sold the East Side
apartment to Jimmy Landi, for Heather, but that deal was peanuts compared to
another deal that I found out was in the works. At that same time, my father
was brokering the sale of the Atlantic City property to him. If Landi had found
out what I pulled on Heather, it could have cost my father millions. That’s when
Daddy told me to make all this go away, or get out. Don’t forget, for my
father, if there’s a business deal involved, it doesn’t matter that I’m his
son. If I interfere, I will be punished.”

 
          
“We
have an eyewitness who claims that Heather ran from the après-ski lounge in
Stowe the afternoon before she died because she saw you there,” Sloane told
him.

 
          
“I
never saw her that day,” Rick Parker said, shaking his head. He seemed sincere.
“The few times I had run into
her, that
was the
reaction I got: She couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Unfortunately
nothing would have changed that.”

 
          
“Heather
obviously confided in someone, who ordered you roughed up. Was it her father?”

 
          
“Never!”
Rick almost laughed. “And tell him she had signed
that contract! Are you kidding? She wouldn’t have dared.”

 
          
“Then who?”

 
          
Rick
Parker exchanged glances with his mother. “It’s all right, Rick,” she said,
patting his hand.

 
          
“My
father has been a regular at Landi’s for thirty years,” Rick said. “He always
made a fuss over Heather. I think Dad was the one who set the goons on me.”

 
          
WHEN
HER PLANE FINALLY TOOK OFF AT 3:00 P.M., LACEY did not join in the spontaneous
cheering and applause that erupted from the other passengers. Instead she
leaned back and closed her eyes, sensing that the choke collar of terror she
had felt tightening around her neck was easing. She was in a middle seat,
trapped between an elderly man who had napped—and snored—for most of the wait,
and a restless young executive–type who spent the time working on his laptop
computer, but had tried several times to start a conversation with her.

 
          
For
three hours she had been terrified that the flight would be canceled, that the
plane would taxi from the runway back to the
gate, that
she would find Curtis Caldwell waiting for her.

 
          
Finally
they were in the air. For the next hour or so—at least until they reached
Chicago—she was safe.

 
          
She
was still wearing the same sweat suit and sneakers she had worn to the Edina
Health Club earlier that morning. She had loosened the sneaker on her right
foot as much as she could, but had not taken it off for fear she would not be
able to get it back on again. Her ankle was now swollen to twice its normal
size, and the throbbing pains from her injury were shooting up as far as her
knee.

 
          
Forget
it, she told herself. You can’t let it stop you. You’re lucky you’re alive to
feel pain. You’ve got to plan.

 
          
In
Chicago she would get on the first available flight to New York. But what do I
do when I get there?
she
asked herself. Where do I go?
Certainly not to my apartment.
And I could never go to
Mom’s place or Kit’s house—I would only be putting them in danger.

 
          
Then where?

 
          
She
already had put one full-fare coach flight on her Alice Carroll credit card.
Now she would have to book a second full-fare flight to New York. Her card had
a three-thousand-dollar limit, and there might not be enough left to cover a
hotel room in Manhattan. Besides, she was sure that when the U.S. Attorney’s
office became aware she was missing, a trace would be put on that card. If she
registered in a hotel, Gary Baldwin would have his agents there before
midmorning. And then she would be trapped again. He had the power to hold her
as a material witness in flight.

 
          
No,
she had to find a place to stay, one where she wouldn’t be putting anyone in
danger, and where no one would think to look for 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!