Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online Page B

yes.”
                 “Do
you remember that the photographers were taking pictures at that time?”
                 She
thought back. The film of powder on the furniture. The flashes of light.
                 “Yes,
I do,” she replied.
                 “Would
you look at this picture then, please?” Sloane slid an eight-by-ten photograph
across the desk. “Actually,” he explained, “what you see is an enlargement of a
section of a routine shot taken in the foyer.” He nodded to the younger man.
“Detective Mars picked up this little detail.”
                 Lacey
stared at the picture. It showed her in profile, gripping her briefcase,
holding it away from Rick Parker as he reached for it.
                 “So
you not only remembered to get your briefcase, but you insisted on carrying it
yourself.”
                 “Well,
in good part that’s my nature. And with my coworkers I feel it’s especially
important to be self-reliant,” Lacey explained, her voice low and calm. “In
truth, though, I probably was acting on automatic pilot. I really don’t
remember what was in my head.”
                 “No,
I think you do,” Detective Sloane said. “In fact, I think you were acting very
deliberately. You see, Ms. Farrell, there were traces of blood in that
closet—Isabelle Waring’s blood. Now how would it have
gotten there, do you suppose?”
                 Heather’s
journal, Lacey thought. The bloodstained loose-leaf pages. A couple of them had fallen on the carpet in the closet as she was jamming them
into the briefcase. And of course her hands had been bloody. But she couldn’t
tell this to the detective—not yet, anyway. She still needed time to study the
pages. She looked at her hands, resting in her lap. I should say something, she
thought. But what?
                 Sloane
leaned across the desk, his manner more aggressive, even accusatory. “Ms.
Farrell, I don’t know what your game is, or what you’re not telling us, but
clearly this was no ordinary murder. The man who called himself Curtis Caldwell
didn’t rob that apartment or kill Isabelle Waring at random. The whole crime
was carefully planned and executed. Your appearance on the scene was the only
thing that probably did not go according to plan.” He paused, then continued, his voice filled with irritation. “You told
us he was carrying Mrs. Waring’s leather binder. Describe it to me again.”
                 “The
description won’t change,” Lacey said. “It was the size of a standard
loose-leaf binder and had a zipper around it so that when it was closed nothing
would fall out.”
                 “Ms.
Farrell, have you ever seen this before?” Sloane shoved a sheet of paper across
the table.
                 Lacey
looked at it. It was a loose-leaf page covered with writing. “I can’t be sure,”
she said.
                 “Read
it, please.”
                 She
skimmed it. It was dated three years earlier. It began, Baba came to see the show again. Took all of us back to the restaurant for
dinner …
                 Heather’s
journal, she thought. I must have missed this page. How many more did I miss? she wondered suddenly.
                 “Have
you ever seen this before?” Sloane asked her again.
                 “Yesterday
afternoon when I brought the man I know as Curtis Caldwell to see the
apartment, Isabelle was in the library, seated at the desk. The leather binder
was open, and she was reading loose-leaf pages that she’d taken out of it. I
can’t be positive that this is one of them, but it probably is.”
                 At
least that much is true, she thought. Suddenly she regretted not taking time
this morning to make copies of the journal before going to the station.
                 That
was what she had decided to