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

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.”
                 “You’re
right. That’s why I stayed single all these years. And you’re young still.
You’ve got a long way to go.”
                 “Not
so long. Don’t forget I turned forty-five last spring.”
                 “Yeah? Well, I turn sixty-eight next month,” Jimmy said with
a grunt. “But don’t go counting me out yet. I’ve still got a long way to go
before I cash in my chips. And don’t you forget it!”
                 Then
he winked at Abbott. Both men smiled. Abbott swallowed the last of his scotch
and stood. “You bet you have. And I’m counting on it. When we open our place in
Atlantic City, the rest of them might as well close their doors. Right?”
                 Abbott
noticed Jimmy Landi glancing at his watch and said, “Well, I’d better get
downstairs and do some glad-handing.”
                 Shortly
after Abbott had left, the receptionist buzzed Jimmy. “Mr. Landi, a Miss
Farrell wants to talk to you. She says to tell you she’s the realtor who was
working with Mrs. Waring.”
                 “Put
her on,” he snapped.
                 Back
in the office, Lacey had responded to Rick Parker’s questions about her
interview with Detective Sloane with noncommittal answers. “He showed me
pictures. Nobody looked anything like Caldwell.”
                 Once
again she declined Rick’s offer of dinner. “I want to catch up on some
paperwork,” she said with a wan smile.
                 And
it’s true, she thought.
                 She
waited until everyone in the domestic real estate division left before carrying
the tote bag to the copier, where she made two copies of Heather’s journal, one
for Heather’s father, one for herself. Then she placed a call to Landi’s
restaurant.
                 The
conversation was brief: Jimmy Landi would be waiting for her.
                 Pretheater was a busy taxi time, but she was in luck: a cab
was just discharging a passenger right in front of her office building. Lacey
raced across the sidewalk and jumped in the taxi just before someone else tried
to claim it. She gave the address of Venezia on West
Fifty-Sixth Street, leaned back and closed her eyes. Only then did she relax
her grip on the tote bag, though she still held it securely under her arm. Why
was she so uneasy? she wondered. And why did she have
the sensation of being watched?
                 At
the restaurant she could see that the dining room was full and the bar jammed.
As soon as she gave her name, the receptionist signaled the maitre d’.
                 “Mr.
Landi is waiting for you upstairs, Ms. Farrell,” he told her.
                 On
the phone she had said simply that Isabelle had found Heather’s journal and
wanted him to have it.
                 But
when she was in his office, sitting opposite the brooding, solid-looking man,
Lacey felt as though she were firing at a wounded target. Even so, she felt she
had to be straightforward in telling him Isabelle Waring’s dying words.
                 “I
promised to give the journal to you,” she said. “And I promised to read it
myself. I don’t know why Isabelle wanted me to read it. Her exact words were
‘Show … him … where.’ She wanted me to show you something in it. I suspect that
for some reason she thought I’d find what it was that apparently confirmed her
suspicion that your daughter’s death was not a simple accident. I’m trying to
obey her