Pretend You Don't See Her

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Nothing would go wrong, he told himself.

  He glanced at the street sign. He was on Hennepin Avenue in the 400 block.

  The other end of Hennepin was near Nicollet Mall with all its fancy stores. The hotels and new office building were there too. This end wasn’t much of a neighborhood, he noted.

  He found 520. It was a nondescript corner building, seven stories high, not large, which was better for him. Savarano was sure the building would have little in the way of security.

  He drove around the side and through the parking lot. It had numbered spaces for residents, with only a few off to the side marked for visitors. They were all occupied. Since he had no intention of drawing notice by taking a resident’s spot, he drove back out, parked across the street, and walked to the building entrance. The door to the small vestibule was unlocked. The names and apartment numbers of the residents were on the wall above the mailboxes. Alice Carroll was in apartment 4F. Typical of such buildings, in order to gain admittance to the lobby, it was necessary to either have a key or to use the intercom to get a resident to buzz down and release the lock.

  Savarano waited impatiently until he saw someone coming up the walk, an elderly woman. As she opened the outer door, he dropped a key ring on the floor and bent down to retrieve it.

  When the woman unlocked the door that opened to the lobby, he straightened up and held it for her, then followed her in.

  She gave him a grateful smile. He followed her to the elevator, then waited until she had pushed the button for the seventh floor before he pushed four. A necessary precaution, the kind of attention to detail that made Sandy Savarano so good—and so successful. He didn’t want to find himself getting off the elevator with Farrell’s next-door neighbor. The less he was seen, the better.

  Once on the fourth floor, he turned down the corridor, which was quiet and poorly lighted. All to the good, he thought. Four F was the last apartment on the left. Sandy’s right hand was in his pocket, holding his pistol, as he rang the bell with his left hand. He had his story ready if Farrell wanted to know who was there before she opened the door. “Emergency Services, checking a gas leak,” he would say. It always had worked for him.

  There was no answer.

  He rang the bell.

  The lock was new, but he had never seen a lock he couldn’t take apart. The necessary tools were in a kit he kept around his waist. It looked just like a money belt. It had always amused him that the night when he went to the Waring apartment, he had been able to let himself in with the key she had kept on a table in the foyer.

  In less than four minutes of working with the lock on the door to 4F, he was inside, the lock securely back in place. He would wait for her here. It was better that way. Somehow he didn’t think that she would stay out long. And wouldn’t she be surprised!

  Maybe she’s gone to have her ankle x-rayed, he thought.

  He flexed his fingers; they were encased in surgical gloves. He had been uncharacteristically careless that night he had been in Farrell’s apartment in New York, and he had left a fingerprint on the door. That night he hadn’t noticed that the index finger of the right glove had split. That was a mistake he wouldn’t make a second time.

  He had been told to search Farrell’s apartment to be sure she hadn’t made a copy of Heather Landi’s journal for herself. He started toward the desk to begin the search.

  Just then the phone rang. With swift, catlike steps he crossed the room to stand beside it, glad to see that the answering machine was turned on.

  Farrell’s voice on the tape was low and reserved. “You have reached 555-1247. Please leave a message,” was all it said.

  The caller was a man. His voice was urgent and authoritative. “Alice, this is George Svenson,” he said. “We’re on the way. Your mother just phoned the emergency number in New York to report you were in trouble. Stay inside. Bolt your door. Don’t let anyone in until I get there.”

  Savarano froze. They were on the way! If he didn’t get out of there immediately, he was the one who would be trapped. In seconds he was out of the apartment, down the corridor, and onto the fire stairs.

  Safely back in his car, he had just joined the light traffic on Hennepin Avenue when police cars, lights flashing, roared past him.

  That had been as near a miss as any he had ever had. For a few moments he drove aimlessly, forcing himself to calm down, to think carefully.

  Where would Farrell go? he asked himself. Would she be hiding at a friend’s place? Would she hole up in a motel somewhere?

  Wherever she was, he figured she wasn’t more than thirty minutes ahead of him.

  He had to try to figure out how she would be thinking. What would he do if he were in the witness protection program and had been tracked down?

  I wouldn’t trust the marshals anymore, Sandy told himself. I wouldn’t move to another city for them and wonder how long it would take to be found again.

  Usually people who left the witness protection program voluntarily did so because they missed their families and friends. They usually went back home.

  Farrell hadn’t called the Feds out here when she realized she had been traced. No, she had called her mother.

  That’s where she was headed, he decided. She was on her way to the airport and New York. Sandy was sure of it.

  He was going there too.

  The woman had to be scared. She wouldn’t trust the cops to protect her. She still had a New York apartment. Her mother and sister lived in New Jersey. She would be easy enough to find.

  Others had evaded him for a while, but no one had ever really gotten away. In the end he always found his prey. The hunt was always fun, but the actual kill was the best.

  He went to the Northwest Airlines counter first. From the number of agents there, it was obviously the busiest carrier in Minneapolis. He was told that at present all flights were grounded by the snow. “Then maybe I’ll be able to join my wife,” he said. “She left about forty minutes ago. Her mother was in an accident in New York, and I imagine she took whatever flight she could get. The name is Alice Carroll.”

  The ticket agent was warmly helpful. “No direct flight to the New York airports left in the last hour, Mr. Carroll. She might have made a connection through Chicago, though. Let’s check the computer.”

  Her fingers tapped the keys. “Here we are. Your wife is on Flight 62 to Chicago, which departed at 11:48.” She sighed. “Actually, it only pulled away from the gate. Her plane is sitting right out there on the runway. I’m afraid I can’t put you on it, but would you want to meet her in Chicago? There’s a plane boarding right now. Chances are, they’ll end up arriving only minutes apart.”

  47

  DETECTIVE ED SLOANE AND PRISCILLA PARKER SAT TOGETHER as they waited for her son, Rick, to appear. The Harding Manor sitting room was exceptionally comfortable. The estate was a private home that had been donated as a rehabilitation center by a couple whose only son died of a drug overdose.

  The cheerful blue-and-white-chintz sofa and matching chairs, complemented by the Wedgwood blue walls and carpet, were clear evidence to Sloane that these were the original furnishings and that those who could afford to pay to come here to kick their habits were being charged a fortune.

  On the drive from Greenwich, however, Mrs. Parker had told him that at least half the clients paid nothing.

  Now, as they waited for Rick Parker, she nervously explained, “I know what you must think of my son. But you don’t realize how much goodness and promise there is in him. Rick could still do so much with his life. I know he could. His father has always spoiled him, taught him to think of himself as above any discipline, or even any sense of decency. When he got into trouble over drugs in prep school, I pleaded with my husband to make him face the consequences. But instead he bought people off. Rick ought to have done well in college. He’s smart, but he just never took time to apply himself. Tell me what seventeen-year-old kid needs a Mercedes convertible? What kid that age needs unlimited spend
ing money? What young man learns about a sense of decency when his father puts a maid’s uniform on his mistress of the month and brings her into his own home?”

  Sloane looked at the Italian-marble fireplace, admiring the delicate carving. “It seems to me that you have put up with a lot for a long time, Mrs. Parker. More than you should have, maybe.”

  “I didn’t have much choice. If I had left, I would have lost Rick altogether. By staying, I think I accomplished something. The fact that he’s here and willing to talk to you bears me out.”

  “Why did your husband change his mind about Rick?” Sloane asked. “We know that about five years ago he cut off his income from his trust fund. What brought that on?”

  “Let Rick tell you,” Priscilla Parker replied. She tilted her head, listening. “That’s his voice. He’s coming. Mr. Sloane, he’s in a lot of trouble, isn’t he?”

  “Not if he’s innocent, Mrs. Parker. And not if he cooperates… It’s up to him.”

  Sloane repeated those words to Rick Parker as he waited for him to sign a Miranda warning. The younger Parker’s appearance shocked him. In the ten days or so since he had last seen him, Rick’s appearance had changed dramatically. His face was thin and pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Kicking a drug habit isn’t fun, Sloane reminded himself, but I suspect there’s more to the change than the rehabilitation program.

  Parker handed him the signed release. “All right, Detective,” he said. “What do you want to know?” He was seated next to his mother on the sofa. Sloane watched as her hand reached for and covered his.

  “Why did you send Curtis Caldwell—and I’ll call him that since it’s the name he was using—to Isabelle Waring’s apartment?”

  Beads of perspiration appeared on Parker’s forehead as he spoke. “At our agency...” He stopped and looked at his mother. “Or as I should say, at my father’s agency, there’s a policy of not showing an apartment unless we check out potential buyers. Even then you still get window-shoppers, but at least they’ll be qualified.”

  “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 aprés-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.”

  48

  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.