Pretend You Don't See Her (7 page)

 
          
“Do
you remember that the photographers were taking pictures at that time?”

 
          
She
thought back.
The film of powder on the furniture.
The flashes of light.

 
          
“Yes,
I do,” she replied.

 
          
“Would
you look at this picture then, please?” Sloane slid an eight-by-ten photograph
across the desk. “Actually,” he explained, “what you see is an enlargement of a
section of a routine shot taken in the foyer.” He nodded to the younger man.
“Detective Mars picked up this little detail.”

 
          
Lacey
stared at the picture. It showed her in profile, gripping her briefcase,
holding it away from Rick Parker as he reached for it.

 
          
“So
you not only remembered to get your briefcase, but you insisted on carrying it
yourself.”

 
          
“Well,
in good part that’s my nature. And with my coworkers I feel it’s especially
important to be self-reliant,” Lacey explained, her voice low and calm. “In
truth, though, I probably was acting on automatic pilot. I really don’t
remember what was in my head.”

 
          
“No,
I think you do,” Detective Sloane said. “In fact, I think you were acting very
deliberately. You see, Ms. Farrell, there were traces of blood in that
closet—Isabelle
Waring’s
blood. Now how would it have
gotten there, do you suppose?”

 
          
Heather’s
journal, Lacey thought.
The bloodstained loose-leaf pages.
A couple of them had fallen on the carpet in the closet as she was jamming them
into the briefcase. And of course her hands had been bloody. But she couldn’t
tell this to the detective—not yet, anyway. She still needed time to study the
pages. She looked at her hands, resting in her lap. I should say something, she
thought.
But what?

 
          
Sloane
leaned across the desk, his manner more aggressive, even accusatory. “Ms.
Farrell, I don’t know what your game is, or what you’re not telling us, but
clearly this was no ordinary murder. The man who called himself Curtis Caldwell
didn’t rob that apartment or kill Isabelle Waring at random. The whole crime
was carefully planned and executed. Your appearance on the scene was the only
thing that probably did not go according to plan.” He paused,
then
continued, his voice filled with irritation. “You told
us he was carrying Mrs. Waring’s leather binder. Describe it to me again.”

 
          
“The
description won’t change,” Lacey said. “It was the size of a standard
loose-leaf binder and had a zipper around it so that when it was closed nothing
would fall out.”

 
          
“Ms.
Farrell, have you ever seen this before?” Sloane shoved a sheet of paper across
the table.

 
          
Lacey
looked at it. It was a loose-leaf page covered with writing. “I can’t be sure,”
she said.

 
          
“Read
it, please.”

 
          
She
skimmed it. It was dated three years earlier. It
began,
Baba came to see the show again. Took all of us back to the restaurant for
dinner …

 
          
Heather’s
journal, she thought. I must have missed this page. How many more did I miss?
she
wondered suddenly.

 
          
“Have
you ever seen this before?” Sloane asked her again.

 
          
“Yesterday
afternoon when I brought the man I know as Curtis Caldwell to see the
apartment, Isabelle was in the library, seated at the desk. The leather binder
was open, and she was reading loose-leaf pages that she’d taken out of it. I
can’t be positive that this is one of them, but it probably is.”

 
          
At
least that much is true, she thought. Suddenly she regretted not taking time
this morning to make copies of the journal before going to the station.

 
          
That
was what she had decided to do—give the original to the police, a copy to Jimmy
Landi, and keep a copy for
herself
. Isabelle’s
intention was that Jimmy read the journal; she clearly had felt that he might
see something significant in it. He should be able to read a copy as well as
the original, as could she, since, for whatever reason, Isabelle had made her
promise to read the pages too.

 
          
“We
found that page in the bedroom, under the chaise,” Sloane told her. “Maybe
there were other loose pages. Do you think that’s possible?” He didn’t wait for
her to answer. “Let’s get back to the smear of Isabelle Waring’s blood we found
in the downstairs closet. Do you have any idea how that got there?”

 
          
“I
had Isabelle’s blood on my hands,” Lacey said. “You know that.”

 
          
“Oh,
yes, I know that, but your hands weren’t dripping with blood when you grabbed
that briefcase of yours as you were leaving last night. So what happened? Did
you put something in that briefcase before we got there, something you took
from Isabelle Waring’s bedroom? I think so. Why don’t you tell us what it was?
Were there perhaps more pages like the one you just read scattered around her
room? Is that a good guess?”

 
          
“Take
it easy, Eddie. Give Lacey a chance to answer,” Mars urged him.

 
          
“Lacey
can have all the time she wants, Nick,” Sloane snapped. “But the truth is going
to be the same. She took something from that room; I’m sure of it. And don’t
you wonder why an innocent bystander would take something like that from the
victim’s home? Can you guess why?” he asked Lacey.

 
          
She
wanted desperately to tell them she had the journal, and why she had it. But if
I do, she thought, they’ll demand I turn it over immediately. They won’t let me
make a copy for Heather’s father. And I certainly can’t tell them I’m making a
copy for myself; they’re reacting as though I had something to do with
Isabelle’s death, she thought. I’ll give the original to them tomorrow.

 
          
She
stood up. “No, I can’t. Are you finished with me, Detective Sloane?”

 
          
“For
today I am, Ms. Farrell, yes. But please keep in mind that being an accessory
after the fact in a murder investigation carries serious penalties. Criminal
penalties,” he added, putting a touch of menace into the words. “And one other
thing: if you did take any of those pages, I have to wonder just how ‘innocent’
a bystander you were. After all, you did happen to be responsible for bringing
the killer into Isabelle Waring’s home.”

 
          
Lacey
left without responding. She had to get to the office, but first she was going
to go home to get Heather Landi’s journal. She would stay at her desk this
evening until everyone else had left and make the copies she needed. Tomorrow
she would turn over the original to Sloane. I’ll try to make him understand why
I took it, she thought nervously.

 
          
She
started to hail a cab,
then
decided to walk home. The
mid-afternoon sun felt good. She still had the sensation of being chilled to
the bone. As she crossed Second Avenue, she sensed someone close behind her and
spun around quickly to meet the puzzled eyes of an elderly man.

 
          
“Sorry,”
she mumbled as she darted to the curb.

 
          
I
expected to see Curtis Caldwell, Lacey thought, upset to realize she was
trembling. If the journal was what he was after, then he didn’t get it. Would
he come back for it? He knows I saw him and can identify him as a murderer.
Until the police caught Caldwell—if they caught him—she was in danger, she was
certain of that. She tried to force the thought out of her mind.

 
          
The
lobby of her building felt like a sanctuary, but when Lacey got off at her
floor, the long corridor seemed frightening and, key in hand, she hurried to
the apartment and quickly dashed inside.

 
          
I’ll
never carry this briefcase again, she vowed as she retrieved it from under the
couch and carried it into the bedroom and set it on her desk, carefully
avoiding touching the bloody handle.

 
          
Gingerly
she removed the journal pages from the briefcase, wincing at the sight of the
ones stained with blood. Finally she put them all in a manila envelope and
fished around in her closet for a tote bag.

 
          
Ten
minutes later, that bag firmly under her arm, she stepped out onto the street.
As she nervously hailed a cab she tried to convince herself that whoever
Caldwell was, and for whatever reason he had killed Isabelle, he must surely be
miles away by now, on the run.

 
          
SANDY
SAVARANO, ALIAS CURTIS CALDWELL, WAS TAKING no chances of being recognized as
he used a pay phone down the block from Lacey Farrell’s apartment building. He
wore a gray wig over his sandy hair, there was
a graying
stubble covering his cheeks and chin, and his lawyer’s suit had been replaced
by a shapeless sweater worn over faded jeans. “When Farrell left the police
station she walked home and went inside,” he said as he glanced down the
street. “I’m not going to hang around. There’s a squad car parked across from
her building. It may be there to keep an eye on her.”

 
          
He
had started walking west, then changed his mind and turned back. He decided to watch
the police car for a while as a test of his theory that the policemen had been
assigned to guard Lacey Farrell. He didn’t have to wait long. He watched from
half a block away as the familiar figure of a young woman in a black suit,
carrying a tote bag, emerged from the building and hailed a cab. As it sped
away, he looked to see what the cops in the squad car would do. A moment later
a car ran the red light at the corner, and the flashing lights on the roof of
the squad car went on as it leaped from the curb.

 
          
Good,
he thought. That’s one less thing to get in my way.

 
          
AFTER
THEY RETURNED TO THE RESTAURANT FROM MAKING arrangements for Isabelle’s
cremation, Jimmy Landi and Steve Abbott went directly to Jimmy’s office. Steve
poured liberal amounts of scotch into tumblers and placed one of them on
Landi’s desk, commenting, “I think we both need this.”

 
          
Landi
reached for the glass. “I know I do. This has been an awful day.”

 
          
Isabelle
would be cremated when her body was released and her ashes taken to Gate of
Heaven Cemetery in Westchester to be placed in the family mausoleum.

 
          
“My
parents, my child, my ex-wife will be together up there,” he said, looking up
at Abbott. “It doesn’t make sense, does it, Steve? Some guy claims he’s looking
to buy an apartment, then comes back and kills Isabelle, a defenseless woman.
It’s not like she was flashing expensive jewelry. She didn’t have any. She
never even cared for that stuff.”

 
          
His
face contorted in a mixture of anger and anguish. “I told her she had to get rid
of the apartment! Her going on and on about Heather’s death, worrying that it
wasn’t an accident! She was driving herself crazy over it—and me too —and being
in that apartment just made it worse. Besides, she needed the money. That
Waring guy she married didn’t leave her a dime. I just wanted her to get on
with her life. And then she gets killed!” His eyes glistened with tears. “Well,
she’s with Heather now. Maybe that’s where she wanted to be. I don’t know.”

 
          
Abbott,
in an obvious effort to change the subject, cleared his throat and said,
“Jimmy, Cynthia is coming over around ten for dinner. How about joining us?”

 
          
Landi
shook his head. “No, but thanks, I appreciate it. You’ve been wet-nursing me
for almost a year, Steve, ever since Heather died, but it can’t go on. I’ll be
okay. Stop worrying about me and pay attention to your girlfriend. Are you
going to marry her?”

 
          
“I’m
not rushing into anything,” Abbott said, smiling. “Two divorces are enough.”