Pretend You Don't See Her (35 page)

 
          
Forty
minutes later she was sitting wrapped in blankets on the couch in the library.
The copy she had made of Heather Landi’s journal was lying on the desk, the
three unlined pages spread out side by side. In the dim light from the foyer,
the bloodstains that had smeared Heather’s handwriting on the original pages
resembled a Rorschach test blot. What does this mean to you?
it
seemed to ask.

 
          
What
do you see in it? Lacey asked herself. As exhausted as she was, she knew she
was not going to fall asleep anytime soon. She turned on the light and reached
for the three unlined pages. They were the hardest to read because of the
bloodstains.

 
          
A
thought came to her. Was it possible that Isabelle had been making a special
effort to touch these particular pages in her last moments of life?

 
          
Once
again Lacey began to read these pages, searching for some clue as to why they
were so important that someone had stolen the only other copies that existed.
She had no doubt that these were the pages that Caldwell had found it worth
killing for, but why? What was the hidden secret in them?

 
          
It
was on these pages that Heather had written about being caught between a rock
and a hard place, about not knowing what to do.

 
          
The
last entry that seemed upbeat was the one at the top of the first unlined page,
where Heather wrote that she was going to have lunch with Mr. or Max or Mac
Hufner, it was impossible to tell. She had added, “It should be fun. He says
he’s grown old and I’ve grown up.”

 
          
It
sounds like she was going to meet an old friend, Lacey thought. I wonder if the
police have talked to him to see if Heather dropped any hint to
him?
Or did she have their reunion lunch before things went
so drastically wrong for her?

 
          
The
original journal had been stolen from the police. Had they made a list of the
people mentioned in it before it was taken? Lacey wondered.

 
          
She
looked around the room,
then
shook her head. If only I
had someone I could talk to about this, she thought, someone to bounce ideas
off of. But, of course, there is not, she told herself. You are completely
alone, so just get on with it.

 
          
She
looked at the pages again. Neither Jimmy Landi nor the police have these three
pages now, she reminded herself. Mine is the only copy.

 
          
Is
there any way I can find out who this man is? Lacey wondered. I could look in
the phone book, she thought, make some calls. Or maybe I could simply phone
Jimmy Landi himself.

 
          
Again
she paused. She knew she had to get to work on trying to solve the mystery
hidden in those pages. If anyone was going to unravel the secret, clearly it
would have to be her. But could she do it in time to save her own life?

 
          
WHEN
FLIGHTS FROM THE MINNEAPOLIS AIRPORT WERE resumed, Sandy Savarano took the
first available direct flight to New York. He reasoned that Lacey Farrell must
have grabbed the first plane she could get on, which was the only reason she
had gone to Chicago. He was sure that from there she would connect to New York.
Where else would she go?

 
          
While
he waited for his flight, he got a list of scheduled departures of major
airlines from Chicago to New York. His bet was that Lacey Farrell would stick
with Northwest. It would make sense that when she deplaned she would go
directly to the nearest Northwest agent and make inquiries.

 
          
Even
though his instinct told him she would be on that airline, Sandy managed to
cover most of the areas through which passengers deplaning from Chicago would
have to pass.

 
          
Finding
and gunning down Lacey Farrell had become more than a mere job for him. At this
point, it was consuming him. The stakes had become higher than he wanted to
play for. He liked his new life in Costa Rica; he liked his new face; his young
wife intrigued him. The money he was being paid to get rid of Lacey Farrell was
impressive but not necessary to his lifestyle.

 
          
What
was necessary to him was not having to live with the knowledge that he had
botched his final job—that, and eliminating someone who could send him to
prison for life.

 
          
After
checking all the New York flights for a stretch of five hours, Sandy decided to
call it quits. He was afraid that he would only draw attention to himself if he
hung around any longer. He took a cab to the brownstone apartment on West Tenth
Street that had been rented for him. He would wait there for further
information on Lacey Farrell.

 
          
He
did not have the slightest doubt that by mid-afternoon tomorrow he would once
again be closing in on his quarry.

 
          
JIMMY
LANDI HAD INTENDED TO GO TO ATLANTIC CITY FOR the weekend to see for
himself
that everything was in readiness for the opening of
the casino. It was an exciting time for him, and he found it difficult to stay
away. There were millions to be made, plus there was the genuine thrill of
glad-handing the movers and shakers, the excitement, and the noise of the slot
machines ringing as a hundred buck.’ worth of quarters gushed out from them,
making the players feel like big-time winners.

 
          
Jimmy
knew that real gamblers were contemptuous of people who played the one-armed
bandits. He was not. He was only contemptuous of people who played with other
people’s money. Like people who gambled away salaries that were supposed to pay
the mortgage or keep a kid in college.

 
          
But
the people who could afford to gamble—let them spend as much as they wanted in
his place. That was the way he saw it. His boast was quoted and
requoted
in articles about the new casino: “I’ll give you
better rooms, better service, better food, better entertainment than you’ll
find anywhere else, whether in Atlantic City, Vegas, or even Monaco.” The
opening weeks were booked solid. He knew that some people were coming just to
pounce on anything they could find not to like, to complain about anything they
could. Well, they would change their tune. He had vowed that.

 
          
He
felt it was always important for a person to have a challenge, but it was never
more important to him than now, Jimmy acknowledged. Steve Abbott was taking
care of the day-to-day routine of running the operation, which freed him for
the big picture. Jimmy didn’t want to know who printed the menus or ironed the
napkins. He wanted to know what they cost and how they looked.

 
          
But
he didn’t seem to be able to keep his mind on the casino, no matter how hard he
tried. The problem was that since he had gotten back the copy of Heather’s
journal last Monday, he had become obsessed with it and was spending too much
time reading and rereading it. It was like a gateway to memories he wasn’t sure
he wanted to revisit. To him, the crazy thing about it was that Heather only
started the journal when she moved to New York to try for a show business
career, but throughout it she referred to times in the past when she had done
something with either him or her mother. It was like an ongoing diary and a
memory book.

 
          
One
thing in the journal that had bothered him was a suggestion that Heather had
been afraid of him. What did she think she had to be afraid of? Oh sure, he had
bitten her head off a couple of times, just like he always had with anyone who
stepped out of line, but surely that wasn’t enough for her to be afraid of him.
He hated to think that.

 
          
What
had happened five years ago that she was so anxious to keep from him?
he
wondered. He couldn’t help dwelling on that part of her
journal. The thought that somebody had pulled something on Heather and gotten
away with it was driving him crazy. Even after all this time, he still needed
to get to the bottom of it.

 
          
The
question of those unlined pages from the journal was also gnawing at him. He
could swear he had seen them. Admittedly he had only glanced at the journal the
night Lacey Farrell brought it over, and the next night when he had actually
tried to read it, he had gotten drunk for the first time in years. Still, he
retained a hazy impression of seeing them.

 
          
The
cops claimed they never got any unlined pages. Maybe they didn’t, he told
himself, but assuming that I’m not wrong, and that the pages were there
originally, then chances are they wouldn’t have disappeared unless someone
thought they were important. There was only one person who might be able to
tell me the truth, he thought: Lacey Farrell. When she made the copy of the
journal for me, surely she would have noticed if some of the last pages were
different from the others.

 
          
There
were stains on them—he vaguely recalled that. Jimmy decided to go ahead and
call Lacey Farrell’s mother and again ask her to pass on to Lacey the question
he needed to have answered: Did those pages exist?

 
          
LACEY
GLANCED AT THE CLOCK WHEN SHE WOKE UP. SHE must have been asleep for about
three hours. When she opened her eyes, she felt as she always had when she was
in the dentist’s chair and under light sedation. She experienced a sensation of
something hurting, although now it was her ankle rather than her teeth. She
also felt out of it, but not so much so that she was unaware of what was going
on. She could remember hearing faint street sounds, an ambulance, a police car
or fire engine.

 
          
They
were the familiar Manhattan sounds that always had elicited mixed emotions from
her—she felt concerned for the injured but was aware of a sense of being
protected. Someone is out there ready to come if I need help, she had always
told herself.

 
          
I
don’t feel that way now, she thought as she pushed back the blankets and sat
up. Detective Sloane had been furious because she had taken Heather’s diary;
U.S. Attorney Baldwin must have gone ballistic when he learned that she had
told her mother where she was staying and then had run away.

 
          
In
fact, he had threatened to take her into custody and hold her as a material
witness if she didn’t abide by the rules of the witness protection program, and
she was sure that was exactly what he would do—if he were able to locate her.
She stood up, automatically putting most of her weight on her left foot, biting
her lip at the throbbing discomfort of the swollen right ankle.

 
          
She
put her hands on the desk to steady herself. The three unlined pages still lay
there, commanding her immediate attention. Once again she read the first line
of the first page. “Lunch with Mr.”—or was it Max or Mac?—“Hufner. It should be
fun. He says he’s grown old and I’ve grown up.”

 
          
That
sounds like Heather was referring to someone she had known for a long time,
Lacey thought. Who could I ask? There was only one obvious answer: Heather’s
father.

 
          
He’s
the key to all this, Lacey decided.

 
          
She
had to get dressed, get something to eat. She also had to remove any trace of
her presence here. It was Sunday. Tim Powers said that he would warn her if a
real estate agent intended to bring a potential buyer to see the apartment, but
still she worried that someone might show up unannounced. She looked around,
making a mental inventory. The food in the refrigerator would be a dead
giveaway that the apartment was being used. So would the damp towel and
washcloth.

 
          
She
decided that a quick shower now would help to wake her up. She wanted to get
dressed, to get out of the nightshirt that had belonged to Heather Landi. But
what do I wear?
she
asked herself, hating the fact
that she was once again going to have to find something in Heather’s clothes
closet.

 
          
Shortly
after she had arrived there she had showered, then she had wrapped the big bath
towel around her and made herself go upstairs again, to find something to sleep
in. She had felt ghoulish opening the doors of the walk-in closet off the
bedroom. Even though she only wanted to grab something to wear to bed, she
couldn’t help but notice that there were two different styles of clothes on the
hangers. Isabelle had dressed conservatively, in flawless taste. It was easy to
tell which were her suits and dresses. The rest of the rack and open shelves
contained a collection of mini and long skirts, funky shirts, grandmother dresses,
cocktail dresses that probably didn’t consist of more than a yard of material,
baggy oversized sweaters, and at least a dozen pairs of jeans, all of it
obviously Heather’s.