Free Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark

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.

  9
                 “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