Pretend You Don't See Her (9 page)

 
          
She
closed and locked the door behind them. Then she looked around her apartment
and shuddered. What have I gotten myself into?
she
wondered.

 
          
MASCARA
AND A LIGHT LIP LINER WERE USUALLY ALL THE cosmetics Lacey wore, but in the
morning light, when she saw the shadows under her eyes and noted the pallor of
her skin, she added blush and eye shadow and fished in the drawer for lipstick.
They did little, however, to brighten her outlook. Even wearing a favorite
brown-and-gold jacket didn’t help dispel a sense of gloom. A final check in the
mirror told her she still looked limp and weary.

 
          
At
the door of the office she paused, took a deep breath, and straightened her
shoulders. An incongruous memory hit her. When she was twelve and suddenly
taller than the boys in her class, she had started to slump when she walked.

 
          
But
Dad told me height was delight, she thought, and he made a game of the two of
us walking around with books on our heads. He said walking tall made you look
confident to other people.

 
          
And
I do need that confidence, she said to herself a few minutes later, when she
was summoned to Richard Parker Sr.’s office.

 
          
Rick
was in with his father. The elder Parker was obviously angry. Lacey glanced at
Rick. No sympathy there, she thought. It really is Parker and Parker today.

 
          
Richard
Parker Sr. did not mince words. “Lacey, according to security, you came in here
last night with a detective. What was that all about?”

 
          
She
told him as simply as she could, explaining that she had decided she had to
turn the journal over to the police, but first she needed to make a copy for
Heather’s father.

 
          
“You
kept concealed evidence in this office?” the older Parker asked, raising an
eyebrow.

 
          
“I
intended to give it to Detective Sloane today,” she said. She told them about
her apartment having been burglarized. “I was only trying to do what Isabelle
Waring asked me to do,” she said. “Now it seems I may have committed an
indictable offense.”

 
          
“You
don’t have to know much law to know that,” Rick interjected. “Lacey, that was
really a dumb thing to do.”

 
          
“I
wasn’t thinking straight,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but—”

 
          
“I’m
sorry about it too,” Parker Sr. told her. “Have you any appointments today?”

 
          
“Two this afternoon.”

 
          
“Liz
or Andrew can handle them for you. Rick, see to it. Lacey, you plan on working
the phones for the immediate future.”

 
          
Lacey’s
sense of lethargy disappeared. “That’s not fair,” she said, suddenly angry.

 
          
“Nor
is it fair to drag this firm into a murder investigation, Ms. Farrell.”

 
          
“I’m
sorry, Lacey,” Rick told her.

 
          
But
you’re Daddy’s boy on this one, she thought, fighting down the urge to say
more.

 
          
As
soon as she got to her desk, one of the new secretaries, Grace
MacMahon
, came over with a cup of coffee and handed it to
her. “Enjoy.”

 
          
Lacey
looked up to thank her,
then
strained to hear as Grace
tried to tell her something without being overheard. “I got in early today.
There was a detective here talking with Mr. Parker. I couldn’t tell what he was
saying, but I did hear that it had something to do with you.”

 
          
Sloane
was fond of saying that good detective work began with a hunch. After
twenty-five years on the force, he had ample proof, for many of his hunches had
turned out to be correct. That was why he expounded his theories to Nick Mars
as they studied the loose-leaf pages that comprised Heather Landi’s journal.

 
          
“I
say that Lacey Farrell still isn’t coming clean with us,” he said angrily.
“She’s more involved in this thing than she’s letting on. We know she took the
journal out of the apartment; we know she made a copy of it to give to Jimmy
Landi.”

 
          
He
pointed to the bloodstained pages. “And I’ll tell you something else, Nick. I
doubt we’d have seen these if I hadn’t scared her yesterday by telling her that
we’d found traces of Isabelle Waring’s blood on the floor of the closet, right
where she’d left her briefcase.”

 
          
“And
have you thought of this, Eddie?” Mars asked. “Those pages aren’t numbered. So
how do we know that Farrell hasn’t destroyed the ones she didn’t want us to
see? It’s called editing. I agree with you. Farrell’s fingerprints aren’t just
all over these pages. They’re all over the whole case.”

 
          
*

 
          
An
hour later, Detective Sloane received a call from Matt Reilly, a specialist in
the Latent Print Unit housed in room 506. Matt had run a fingerprint that had
been lifted from the outer door of Lacey’s apartment through SAFIS, the
Statewide Automated Fingerprint Identification System. He reported it was a
match with the fingerprint of Sandy Savarano, a low-level mobster who had been
a suspect in a dozen drug-related murders.

 
          
“Sandy
Savarano!” Sloane exclaimed. “That’s crazy, Matt. Savarano’s boat blew up with
him in it two years ago. We covered his funeral in Woodlawn Cemetery.”

 
          
“We
covered someone’s funeral,” Reilly told him dryly. “Dead men don’t break into
apartments.”

 
          
F
or the rest of the day, Lacey watched helplessly as clients she had developed
were assigned to other agents. It galled her to pull out the tickler files,
make follow-up calls regarding potential sales, and then have to turn the
information over to others. It was the way she had started out when she was a
rookie, but that was eight years ago.

 
          
She
was also made uncomfortable by the feeling of being watched. Rick was
constantly in and out of the sales area where her cubicle was located, and she
sensed that he was keeping close tabs on her.

 
          
Several
times when she went to get a new file, she caught him looking at her. He seemed
to be watching her all the time. She had a hunch that by the end of the day,
she would be told to stay away from the office until the investigation was
concluded, so if she was going to take the copy of Heather’s journal with her,
she would have to get it out of her desk when Rick wasn’t looking.

 
          
She
finally got her chance to retrieve the pages at ten minutes of five, when Rick
was called into his father’s office. She had barely managed to slip the manila
envelope into her briefcase when Richard Parker Sr. summoned her to his office
and told her she was being suspended.

 
          
“NOT TOO HUNGRY, I HOPE, ALEX?”
JAY TAYLOR ASKED AS he
checked his watch again. “Lacey isn’t usually this late.”

 
          
It
was obvious that he was irritated.

 
          
Mona
Farrell jumped to her daughter’s defense. “The traffic is always terrible this
time of day, and Lacey might have gotten delayed before she even left.”

 
          
Kit
shot her husband a warning glance. “I think with what Lacey has been through,
nobody should be upset that she’s a little late. My God, she came within a hair
of being killed two days ago, then had her apartment burglarized last night.
She certainly doesn’t need to be hassled anymore, Jay.”

 
          
“I
agree,” Alex Carbine said heartily. “She’s had a rough couple of days.”

 
          
Mona
Farrell looked at Carbine with a grateful smile. She was never totally at ease
with her frequently pompous son-in-law. It didn’t take much to make him testy,
and he usually had little patience with anyone, but she had noticed that he was
deferential to Alex.

 
          
This
evening they were having cocktails in the living room, while the boys were
watching television in the den. Bonnie was with the grown-ups, however, having
begged to stay up past her bedtime to see Lacey. She was standing at the
window, watching for her.

 
          
It’s
eight-fifteen, Mona thought. Lacey was due here at seven-thirty. This really
isn’t like her. What can be keeping her?

 
          
The
full impact of everything that was happening hit Lacey when she arrived home at
five-thirty and realized that for practical purposes she was out of a job.
Parker Sr. had promised that she would continue to receive her base salary
—“For a short time to come, at least,” he had said.

 
          
He’s
going to fire me, she realized. He’s going to use the excuse that I jeopardized
the firm by copying and concealing evidence there. I’ve worked for him for
eight years. I’m one of his best agents. Why would he even want to get rid of
me? His own son gave me Curtis Caldwell’s name and told me to set up an
appointment. And I bet he’s not planning to give me any of the severance due
after so many years of employment. He’ll say the firing’s for cause. Can he get
away with that? It looks like I’m about to be in trouble on several fronts, she
thought, shaking her head at the sudden bad fortune that had come her way. I
need to talk to a lawyer, but
who
?

 
          
A
name came to her mind. Jack Regan!

 
          
He
and his wife, Margaret, a couple in their mid-fifties, lived on the fifteenth
floor of her building. She had chatted with them at a cocktail party last
Christmas and remembered hearing people ask him about a criminal case he had
just won.

 
          
She
decided to call right away, but then found that their phone number wasn’t
listed.

 
          
The
worst thing that can happen is that they’ll slam the door in my face, Lacey
decided, as she took the elevator to the fifteenth floor. Ringing their bell,
she realized that she was glancing nervously around in the corridor.

 
          
Their
surprise at seeing her gave way to a genuinely warm welcome. They were having a
predinner
sherry and insisted she join them. They had
heard about the burglary.

 
          
“That’s
part of the reason that I’m here,” she began.

 
          
Lacey
left an hour later, having retained Regan to represent her in the likely event
that she was facing indictment for holding on to the journal pages.

 
          
“The
least of the charges would be obstructing governmental administration,” Regan
had told her. “But if they believe you had an ulterior motive for taking the
journal, it could get a lot more serious than that.”

 
          
“My
only motive was to keep a promise to a dying woman,” Lacey protested.

 
          
Regan
smiled, but his eyes were serious. “You don’t have to convince me, Lacey, but
it wasn’t the smartest thing to do.”

 
          
She
kept her car in the garage in the basement of her building, a luxury that, if
everything went as she feared, she probably could no longer afford. It was one
of several unpleasant realizations she had had to face that day.

 
          
The
rush hour was over, but even so there was a lot of traffic. I’ll be an hour
late, Lacey thought as she inched her car across the George Washington Bridge,
where a blocked lane was creating havoc. Jay must be in a wonderful mood, she
thought, smiling ruefully but genuinely worried about keeping her family
waiting.