Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

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.

  6
                 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a gray wig over his sandy hair, there was a graying stubble covering his cheeks and chin, and his lawyer’s suit had been replaced
by a shapeless sweater worn over faded jeans.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.

  7
                 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?”