Pretend You Don't See Her
Read Pretend You Don't See Her Online
Authors: Mary Higgins Clark
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Suspense
Mary Higgins Clark
Pretend You Don’t
See Her ~ Mary Higgins Clark
Later
Lacey tried to find comfort in the thought that even if she had arrived seconds
earlier, rather than being in time to help she would have died with Isabelle.
But
it didn’t happen that way. Using the key she had been given as realtor, she had
entered the duplex apartment on East Seventieth Street and called Isabelle’s
name in the exact instant that Isabelle screamed “Don’t …!” and a gunshot rang
out.
Faced
with a split-second decision to run or to hide, Lacey slammed the apartment
door shut and slipped quickly into the hall closet. She had not even had time
to fully close that door before a sandy-haired, well-dressed man came running
down the stairs. Through the narrow opening she could see his face clearly, and
it became imprinted on her mind. In fact, she had seen it before, only hours
ago. The expression was now viciously cold, but clearly this was the same man
to whom she had shown the apartment earlier in the day: affable Curtis Caldwell
from Texas.
From
her vantage point she watched as he ran past her, holding a pistol in his right
hand and a leather binder under his left arm. He flung open the front door and
ran out of the apartment.
The
elevators and fire stairs were at the far end of the corridor. Lacey knew that
Caldwell would realize immediately that whoever had come into the apartment was
still there. A primal instinct made her rush out of the closet to shove the
door closed behind him. He wheeled around, and for a terrible moment their eyes
locked, his pale blue irises like steely ice, staring at her. He threw himself
against the door but not fast enough. It slammed shut, and she snapped the dead
bolt just as a key clicked in the lock.
Her
pulse racing, she leaned against the door, trembling as the knob twisted,
hoping there was no way Caldwell could get back in now.
She
had to dial 911.
She
had to get help.
Isabelle!
She thought. That had to have been her cry that Lacey heard. Was she still
alive?
Her
hand on the banister, Lacey raced up the thickly carpeted stairs through the
ivory-and-peach sitting room where in these past weeks she had sat so
frequently with Isabelle and listened as the grieving mother told her over and
over that she still could not believe that the death of her daughter, Heather,
had been an accident.
Fearing
what she would find, Lacey rushed into the bed room. Isabelle lay crumpled
across the bed, her eyes open,
her
bloodied hand
frantically pulling at a sheaf of papers that had been under a pillow beside
her. One of the pages fluttered across the room, carried by the breeze from the
open window.
Lacey
dropped to her knees. “Isabelle,” she said. There were many other things she
wanted to say—that she would call an ambulance; that it would be all right—but
the words refused to pass her lips. It was too late. Lacey could see that.
Isabelle was dying.
Later
that scene was played out in the nightmare that came more and more frequently.
The dream was always the same: She was kneeling beside Isabelle’s body,
listening to the dying woman’s last words, as Isabelle told her about the
journal, entreating her to take the pages. Then a hand would touch her
shoulder, and when she looked up, there stood the killer, his cold eyes
unsmiling, aiming the pistol at her forehead as he squeezed the trigger.
1
IT
WAS THE WEEK AFTER LABOR DAY, AND FROM THE steady ringing of the phones in the
offices of Parker and Parker, it was clear to Lacey that the summer doldrums
finally were over. The Manhattan co-op market had been uncommonly slow this
past month; now, finally, things would start to move again.
“It’s
about time,” she told Rick Parker as he delivered a mug of black coffee to her
desk. “I haven’t had a decent sale since June. Everybody I had on the hook took
off for the Hamptons or the Cape, but thank God they’re all drifting back into
town now. I enjoyed my month off, too, but now it’s time to get back to work.”
She
reached for the coffee. “Thanks. It’s nice to have the son and
heir wait
on me.”
“No
problem. You look great, Lacey.”
Lacey
tried to ignore the expression on Rick’s face. She always felt as though he
were undressing her with his eyes. Spoiled, handsome, and the possessor of a
phony charm that he turned on at will, he made her distinctly uncomfortable.
Lacey heartily wished his father hadn’t moved him from the West Side office.
She didn’t want her job jeopardized, but lately keeping him at arm’s length was
becoming a balancing act.
Her
phone rang, and she grabbed for it with relief. Saved by the bell, she thought.
“Lacey Farrell,” she said.
“Miss
Farrell, this is Isabelle Waring. I met you when you sold a co-op in my
building last spring.”
A
live one, Lacey thought. Instinctively she guessed that Mrs. Waring was putting
her apartment on the market.
Lacey’s
mind went into its search-and-retrieve mode. She’d sold two apartments in May
on East Seventieth, one an estate sale where she hadn’t spoken to anyone except
the building manager, the second a co-op just off Fifth Avenue. That would be
the
Norstrum
apartment, and she vaguely remembered
chatting with an attractive fiftyish redhead in the elevator, who had asked for
her business card.
Crossing
her fingers, she said, “The
Norstrum
duplex? We met
on the elevator?”
Mrs.
Waring sounded pleased.
“Exactly!
I’m putting my
daughter’s apartment on the market, and if it’s convenient I’d like you to
handle it for me.”
“It
would be very convenient, Mrs.
Waring
.”
Lacey
made an appointment with her for the following morning, hung up, and turned to
Rick. “What
luck!
Three East
Seventieth.
That’s a great building,” she said.
“Three East Seventieth.
What apartment?” he asked quickly.
“Ten B.
Do you know that one by any chance?”
“Why
would I know it?” he snapped.
“Especially since my father, in
his wisdom, kept me working the West Side for five years.”
It
seemed to Lacey that Rick was making a visible effort to be pleasant when he
added, “From what little I heard on this end, someone met you, liked you, and
wants to dump an exclusive in your lap. I always told you what my grandfather
preached about this business, Lacey: You’re blessed if people remember you.”
“Maybe,
although I’m not sure it’s necessarily a blessing,” Lacey said, hoping her
slightly negative reaction would end their conversation. She hoped also that
Rick would soon come to think of her as just another employee in the family
empire.
He
shrugged,
then
made his way to his own office, which
overlooked East Sixty-second Street. Lacey’s windows faced Madison Avenue. She
reveled in the sight of the constant traffic, the hordes of tourists, the
well-heeled Madison Avenue types drifting in and out of the designer boutiques.
“Some
of us are born New Yorkers,” she would explain to the sometimes apprehensive
wives of executives being transferred to Manhattan. “Others come here
reluctantly, and before they know it, they discover that for all its problems,
it’s still the best place in the world to live.”
Then
if questioned, she would explain: “I was raised in Manhattan, and except for
being away at college, I’ve always lived here. It’s my home, my town.”
Her
father, Jack Farrell, had felt that way about the city. From the time she was
little, they had explored New York City together. “We’re pals, Lace,” he would
say. “You’re like me, a city slicker. Now your mother, God love her, yearns to
join the flight to the suburbs. It’s to her credit that she sticks it out here,
knowing I’d wither on the vine there.”
Lacey
had inherited not only Jack’s love of this city, but his Irish coloring as
well—fair skin, blue-green eyes, and dark brown hair. Her sister Kit shared
their mother’s English heritage—china-blue eyes, and hair the shade of winter
wheat.
A
musician, Jack Farrell had worked in the theater, usually in the pit orchestra,
although sometimes playing in clubs and the occasional concert. Growing up,
there wasn’t a Broadway musical whose songs Lacey couldn’t sing along with her
dad. His sudden death just as she had finished college was still a shock. In
fact, she wondered if she ever would get over it. Sometimes, when she was in
the theater district, she still found herself expecting to run into him.
After
the funeral, her mother had said with wry sadness, “Just as your dad predicted,
I’m not staying in the city.” A pediatric nurse, she bought a condo in New
Jersey. She wanted to be near Lacey’s sister Kit and her family. Once there,
she’d taken a job with a local hospital.
Fresh
out of college, Lacey had found a small apartment on East End Avenue and a job
at Parker and Parker Realtors. Now, eight years later, she was one of their top
agents.
Humming,
she pulled out the file on 3
East
Seventieth and began
to study it. I sold the second-floor duplex, she thought.
Nice-sized
rooms.
High ceilings.
Kitchen needed
modernizing. Now to find out something about Mrs. Waring’s place.
Whenever
possible, Lacey liked to do her homework on a prospective listing. To that end,
she’d learned that it could help tremendously to become familiar with the
people who worked in the various buildings Parker and Parker handled. It was
fortunate now that she was good friends with Tim Powers, the superintendent of
3 East Seventieth. She called him, listened for a good twenty minutes to the
rundown of his summer, ruefully reminding
herself
that
Tim had always been blessed with the gift of gab, and finally worked the
conversation around to the Waring apartment.
According
to Tim, Isabelle Waring was the mother of Heather Landi, a young singer and
actress who had just begun to make her name in the theater. The daughter as
well of famed restaurateur Jimmy Landi, Heather had died early last winter,
killed when her car plunged down an embankment as she was driving home from a
weekend of skiing in Vermont. The apartment had belonged to Heather, and now
her mother was apparently selling it.