"It's about time," she told Rick Parker as he delivered a
mug of black coffee to her desk. "I haven't had a decent
sale since June. Everybody I had on the hook took off for
the Hamptons or the Cape, but thank God they're all
drifting back into town now. I enjoyed my month off, too,
but now it's time to get back to work."
She reached for the coffee. "Thanks. It's nice to have the
son and heir wait on me."
"No problem. You look great, Lacey."
Lacey tried to ignore the expression on Rick's face. She
always felt as though he were undressing her with his
eyes. Spoiled, handsome, and the possessor of a phony
charm that he turned on at will, he made her distinctly
uncomfortable. Lacey heartily wished his father hadn't
moved him from the West Side office. She didn't want her
job jeopardized, but lately keeping him at arm's length
was becoming a balancing act.
Her phone rang, and she grabbed for it with relief. Saved
by the bell, she thought. "Lacey Farrell," she said.
"Miss Farrell, this is Isabelle Waring. I met you when you
sold a co-op in my building last spring."
A live one, Lacey thought. Instinctively she guessed that
Mrs. Waring was putting her apartment on the market.
Lacey's mind went into its search-and-retrieve mode. She'd
sold two apartments in May on East Seventieth, one an
estate sale where she hadn't spoken to anyone except the
building manager, the second a co-op just off Fifth
Avenue. That would be the Norstrum apartment, and she
vaguely remembered chatting with an attractive fiftyish
redhead in the elevator, who had asked for her business
card.
Crossing her fingers, she said, "The Norstrum duplex? We
met on the elevator?"
Mrs. Waring sounded pleased. "Exactly! I'm putting my
daughter's apartment on the market, and if it's convenient
I'd like you to handle it for me."
"It would be very convenient, Mrs. Waring."
Lacey made an appointment with her for the following
morning, hung up, and turned to Rick. "What luck! Three
East Seventieth. That's a great building," she said.
"Three East Seventieth. What apartment?" he asked quickly.
"Ten B. Do you know that one by any chance?"
"Why would I know it?" he snapped. "Especially since my
father, in his wisdom, kept me working the West Side for
five years."
It seemed to Lacey that Rick was making a visible effort
to be pleasant when he added, "From what little I heard on
this end, someone met you, liked you, and wants to dump an
exclusive in your lap. I always told you what my
grandfather preached about this business, Lacey: You're
blessed if people remember YOU."
"Maybe, although I'm not sure it's necessarily a
blessing," Lacey said, hoping her slightly negative
reaction would end their conversation. She hoped also that
Rick would soon come to think of her as just another
employee in the family empire.
He shrugged, then made his way to his own office, which
overlooked East Sixty-second Street. Lacey's windows faced
Madison Avenue. She reveled in the sight of the constant
traffic, the hordes of tourists, the well-heeled Madison
Avenue types drifting in and out of the designer
boutiques.
"Some of us are born New Yorkers," she would explain to
the sometimes apprehensive wives of executives being
transferred to Manhattan. "Others come here reluctantly,
and before they know it, they discover that for all its
problems, it's still the best place in the world to live."
Then if questioned, she would explain: "I was raised in
Manhattan, and except for being away at college, I've
always lived here. It's my home, my town."
Her father, Jack Farrell, had felt that way about the
city. From the time she was little, they had explored New
York City together. "We're pals, Lace," he would
say. "You're like me, a city slicker. Now your mother, God
love her, yearns to join the flight to the suburbs. It's
to her credit that she sticks it out here, knowing I'd
wither on the vine there."
Lacey had inherited not only Jack's love of this city, but
his Irish coloring as well -- fair skin, blue-green eyes,
and dark brown hair. Her sister Kit shared their mother's
English heritage -- china-blue eyes, and hair the shade of
winter wheat.
A musician, Jack Farrell had worked in the theater,
usually in the pit orchestra, although sometimes playing
in clubs and the occasional concert. Growing up, there
wasn't a Broadway musical whose songs Lacey couldn't sing
along with her dad. His sudden death just as she had
finished college was still a shock. In fact, she wondered
if she ever would get over it. Sometimes, when she was in
the theater district, she still found herself expecting to
run into him.
After the funeral, her mother had said with wry
sadness, "Just as your dad predicted, I'm not staying in
the city." A pediatric nurse, she bought a condo in New
Jersey. She wanted to be near Lacey's sister Kit and her
family. Once there, she'd taken a job with a local
hospital.
Fresh out of college, Lacey had found a small apartment on
East End Avenue and a job at Parker and Parker Realtors.
Now, eight years later, she was one of their top agents.
Humming, she pulled out the file on 3 East Seventieth and
began to study it. I sold the second-floor duplex, she
thought. Nice-sized rooms. High ceilings. Kitchen needed
modernizing. Now to find out something about Mrs. Waring's
place.
Whenever possible, Lacey liked to do her homework on a
prospective listing. To that end, she'd learned that it
could help tremendously to become familiar with the people
who worked in the various buildings Parker and Parker
handled. It was fortunate now that she was good friends
with Tim Powers, the superintendent of 3 East Seventieth.
She called him, listened for a good twenty minutes to the
rundown of his summer, ruefully reminding herself that Tim
had always been blessed with the gift of gab, and finally
worked the conversation around to the Waring apartment.
According to Tim, Isabelle Waring was the mother of
Heather Landi, a young singer and actress who had just
begun to make her name in the theater. The daughter as
well of famed restaurateur Jimmy Landi, Heather had died
early last winter, killed when her car plunged down an
embankment as she was driving home from a weekend of
skiing in Vermont. The apartment had belonged to Heather,
and now, her mother was apparently selling it.
"Mrs. Waring can't believe Heather's death was an
accident," Tim said.
When she finally got off the phone, Lacey sat for a long
moment, remembering that she had seen Heather Landi last
year in a very successful off-Broadway musical. In fact,
she remembered her in particular.
She had it all, Lacey thought -- beauty, stage presence,
and that marvelous soprano voice. A "Ten," as Dad would
have said. No wonder her mother is in denial.
Lacey shivered, then rose to turn down the air
conditioner.
On Tuesday morning, Isabelle Waring walked through her
daughter's apartment, studying it as if with the critical
eye of a realtor. She was glad that she had kept Lacey
Farrell's business card. Jimmy, her ex-husband, Heather's
father, had demanded she put the apartment on the market,
and in fairness to him, he had given her plenty of time.
The day she met Lacey Farrell in the elevator, she had
taken an instant liking to the young woman, who had
reminded her of Heather.
Admittedly, Lacey didn't look like Heather. Heather had
had short, curly, light brown hair with golden highlights,
and hazel eyes. She had been small, barely five feet four,
with a soft, curving body. She called herself the house
midget. Lacey, on the other hand, was taller, slimmer, had
blue-green eyes, and darker, longer, straighter hair,
swinging down to her shoulders, but there was something in
her smile and manner that brought back a very positive
memory of Heather.
Isabelle looked around her. She realized that not everyone
would care for the birch paneling and splashy marble foyer
tiles Heather had loved, but those could easily be
changed, the renovated kitchen and baths, however, were
strong selling points.
After months of brief trips to New York from Cleveland,
and making stabs at going through the apartment's five
huge closets and the many drawers, and after repeatedly
meeting with Heather's friends, Isabelle knew it had to be
over. She had to put an end to this searching for reasons
and get on with her life.
The fact remained, however, that she just didn't believe
Heather's death had been an accident. She knew her
daughter; she simply would not have been foolish enough to
start driving home from Stowe in a snowstorm, especially
so late at night. The medical examiner had been satisfied,
however. And Jimmy was satisfied, because Isabelle knew
that if he hadn't been, he'd have torn up all of Manhattan
looking for answers.
At the last of their infrequent lunches, he had again
tried to persuade Isabelle to let it rest, and to get on
with her own life. He reasoned that Heather probably
couldn't sleep that night, had been worried because there
was a heavy snow warning, and knew she had to be back in
time for a rehearsal the next day. He simply refused to
see anything suspicious or sinister in her death.
Isabelle, though, just couldn't accept it. She had told
him about a troubling phone conversation she had had with
their daughter just before her death. "Jimmy, Heather
wasn't herself when I spoke to her on the phone. She was
worried about something. Terribly worried. I could hear it
in her voice."
The lunch had ended when Jimmy, in complete exasperation,
had burst out, "Isabelle, get off it! Stop, please! This
whole thing is tough enough without you going on like
this, constantly rehashing everything, putting all her
friends through the third degree. Please, let our daughter
rest in peace."
Remembering his words, Isabelle shook her head. Jimmy
Landi had loved Heather more than anything in the world.
And next to her, he loved power, she thought bitterly --
it's what had ended their marriage. His famous restaurant,
his investments, now his Atlantic City hotel and casino.
No room for me ever, Isabelle thought. Maybe if he had
taken on a partner years ago, the way he has Steve Abbott
now, our marriage wouldn't have failed. She realized she
had been walking through rooms she wasn't really seeing,
so she stopped at a window overlooking Fifth Avenue.
New York is especially beautiful in September, she mused,
observing the joggers on the paths that threaded through
Central Park, the nannies pushing strollers, the elderly
sunning themselves on park benches. I used to take
Heather's baby carriage over to the park on days like
this, she remembered. It took ten years and three
miscarriages before I had her, but she was worth all the
heartbreak. She was such a special baby. People were
always stopping to took at her and admire her. And she
knew it, of course. She loved to sit up and take
everything in. She was so smart, so observant, so
talented, so trusting...
Why did you throw it away, Heather? Isabelle asked her
self once more the questions that she had agonized over
since her daughter's death. After that accident when you
were a child -- when you saw that car skid off the road
and crash -- you were always terrified of icy roads. You
even talked of moving to California just to avoid winter
weather. Why then would you have driven over a snowy
mountain at two in the morning? You were only twenty-four
years old; you had so much to live for. What happened that
night? What made you take that drive? Or who made you?
The buzzing of the intercom jolted Isabelle back from the
smothering pangs of hopeless regret. It was the doorman
announcing that Miss Farrell was here for her ten o'clock
appointment.
Lacey was not prepared for Isabelle Waring's effusive, if
nervous, greeting. "Good heavens, you look younger than I
remembered," she said. "How old are you? Thirty? My
daughter would have been twenty-five next week, you know.
She lived in this apartment. It was hers. Her father
bought it for her. Terrible reversal, don't you think? The
natural order of life is that I'd go first and someday
she'd sort through my things."
"I have two nephews and a niece," Lacey told her. "I can't
imagine anything happening to any of them, so I think I
understand something of what you are going through."
Isabelle followed her, as with a practiced eye Lacey made
notes on the dimensions of the rooms. The first floor
consisted of a foyer, large living and dining rooms, a
small library, a kitchen, and a powder room. The second
floor, reached by a winding staircase, had a master suite -
- a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and bath.
"It was a lot of space for a young woman," Isabelle
explained. "Heather's father bought it for her, you see.
He couldn't do enough for her. But it never spoiled her.
In fact, when she came to New York to live after college,
she wanted to rent a little apartment on the West Side.
Jimmy hit the ceiling. He wanted her in a building with a
doorman. He wanted her to be safe. Now he wants me to sell
the apartment and keep the money. He says Heather would
have wanted me to have it. He says I have to stop grieving
and go on. It's just that it's still so hard to let it go,
though...I'm trying, but I'm not sure I can..." Her eyes
filled with tears.
Lacey asked the question she needed to have answered: "Are
you sure you want to sell?"
She watched helplessly as the stoic expression on Isabelle
Waring's face crumbled and her eyes filled with tears. "I
wanted to find out why my daughter died. Why she rushed
out of the ski lodge that night. Why she didn't wait and
come back with friends the next morning, as she had
planned. What changed her mind? I'm sure that somebody
knows. I need a reason. I know she was terribly worried
about something but wouldn't tell me what it was. I
thought I might find an answer here, either in the
apartment or from one of her friends. But her father wants
me to stop pestering people, and I suppose he's right,
that we have to go on, so yes, Lacey, I guess I want to
sell."
Lacey covered the woman's hand with her own. "I think
Heather would want you to," she said quietly.
That night Lacey made the twenty-five-mile drive to
Wyckoff, New Jersey, where her sister Kit and her mother
both lived. She hadn't seen them since early August when
she had left the city for her month away in the Hamptons.
Kit and her husband, Jay, had a summer home on Nantucket,
and always urged Lacey to spend her vacation with them
instead.
As she crossed the George Washington Bridge, Lacey braced
herself for the reproaches she knew would be part of their
greeting. "You only spent three days with us," her brother-
in-law would be sure to remind her. "What's East Hampton
got that Nantucket doesn't?"
For one thing it doesn't have you, Lacey thought, with a
slight grin. Her brother-in-law, Jay Taylor, the highly
successful owner of a large restaurant supply business,
had never been one of Lacey's favorite people, but, as she
reminded herself, Kit clearly is crazy about him, and
between them they've produced three great kids, so who am
I to criticize? If only he wasn't so damn pompous, she
thought. Some of his pronouncements sounded like papal
bulls.
As she turned onto Route 4, she realized how anxious she
was to see the others in her family: her mother, Kit and
the kids -- Todd, twelve, Andy, ten, and her special pet,
shy four-year-old Bonnie. Thinking about her niece, she
realized that all day she hadn't been able to shake
thoughts about poor Isabelle Waring, and the things she
had said. The woman's pain was so palpable. She had
insisted that Lacey stay for coffee and over it had
continued to talk about her daughter. "I moved to
Cleveland after the divorce. That's where I was raised.
Heather was five at that time. Growing up, she was always
back and forth between me and her dad. It worked out fine.
I remarried. Bill Waring was much older but a very nice
man. He's been gone three years now. I was so in hopes
Heather would meet the right man, have children, but she
was determined to have a career first. Although just
before she died I had gotten the sense that maybe she had
met someone. I could be wrong, but I thought I could hear
it in her voice." Then she had asked, her tone one of
motherly concern, "What about you, Lacey? Is there someone
special in your life?"
Thinking about that question, Lacey smiled wryly. Not so
you'd notice it, she thought. And ever since I hit the
magic number thirty, I'm very aware that my biological
clock is ticking. Oh well. I love my job, I love my
apartment, I love my family and friends. I have a lot of
fun. So I have no right to complain. It will happen when
it happens.
Her mother answered the door. "Kit's in the kitchen. Jay
went to pick up the children," she explained after a warm
hug. "And there's someone inside I want you to meet."
Lacey was surprised and somewhat shocked to see that a man
she didn't recognize was standing near the massive
fireplace in the family room, sipping a drink. Her mother
blushingly introduced him as Alex Carbine, explaining that
they had known each other years ago and had just met
again, through Jay, who had sold him much of the equipment
for a new restaurant he'd just opened in the city on West
Forty-sixth Street.
Shaking his hand, Lacey assessed the man. About sixty, she
thought -- Mom's age. Good, solid-looking guy. And Mom
looks all atwitter. What's up? As soon as she could excuse
herself she went into the state-of-the-art kitchen where
Kit was tossing the salad. "How long has this been going
on?" she asked her sister.
Kit, her blond hair pulled back at the nape of her neck,
looking, Lacey thought, for all the world like a Martha
Stewart ad, grinned. "About a month. He's nice. Jay
brought him by for dinner, and Mom was here. Alex is a
widower. He's always been in the restaurant business, but
this is the first place he's had on his own, I gather.
We've been there. He's got a nice setup."
They both jumped at the sound of a door slamming at the
front of the house. "Brace yourself," Kit warned. "Jay and
the kids are home."
From the time Todd was five, Lacey had started taking him,
and later the other children, into Manhattan to teach the
city to them the way her father had taught it to her. They
called the outings their Jack Farrell days -- days which
included anything from Broadway matinees (she had now seen
Cats five times) to museums (the Museum of Natural History
and its dinosaur bones being easily their favorite). They
explored Greenwich Village, took the tram to Roosevelt
Island, the ferry to Ellis Island, had lunch at the top of
the World Trade Center, and skated at Rockefeller Plaza.
The boys greeted Lacey with their usual exuberance.
Bonnie, shy as always, snuggled up to her. "I missed you
very much," she confided. Jay told Lacey she was looking
very well indeed, adding that the month in East Hampton
obviously had been beneficial.
"In fact, I had a ball," Lacey said, delighted to see him
wince. Jay had an aversion to slang that bordered on
pretension.
At dinner, Todd, who was showing an interest in real
estate and his aunt's job, asked Lacey about the market in
New York.
"Picking up," she answered. "In fact I took on a promising
new listing today." She told them about Isabelle Waring,
then noticed that Alex Carbine showed sudden interest. "Do
you know her?" Lacey asked.
"No," he said, "but I know Jimmy Landi, and I'd met their
daughter, Heather. Beautiful young woman. That was a
terrible tragedy. Jay, you've done business with Landi.
You must have met Heather too. She was around the
restaurant a lot."
Lacey watched in astonishment as her brother-in-law's face
turned a dark red.
"No. Never met her," he said, his tone clipped and
carrying an edge of anger. "I used to do business with
Jimmy Landi. Who's ready for another slice of lamb?"
It was seven o'clock. The bar was crowded, and the dinner
crowd was starting to arrive. Jimmy Landi knew he should
go downstairs and greet people but he just didn't feel
like it. This had been one of the bad days, a depression
brought on by a call from Isabelle, evoking the image of
Heather trapped and burning to death in the overturned car
that haunted him still, long after he had gotten off the
phone.
The slanting light from the setting sun flickered through
the tall windows of his paneled office in the brownstone
on West Fifty-sixth Street, the home of Venezia, the
restaurant Jimmy had opened thirty years ago.
He had taken over the space where three successive
restaurants had failed. He and Isabelle, newly married,
lived in what was then a rental apartment on the second
floor. Now he owned the building, and Venezia was one of
the most popular places to dine in Manhattan.
Jimmy sat at his massive antique Wells Fargo desk,
thinking about the reasons he found it so difficult to go
downstairs. It wasn't just the phone call from his ex-
wife. The restaurant was decorated with murals, an idea he
had copied from his competition, La Côte Basque. They were
paintings of Venice, and from the beginning had included
scenes in which Heather appeared. When she was two, he had
the artist paint her in as a toddler whose face appeared
in a window of the Doge's Palace. As a young girl she was
seen being serenaded by a gondolier, when she was twenty,
she'd been painted in as a young woman strolling across
the Bridge of Sighs, a song sheet in her hand.
Jimmy knew that for his own peace of mind he would have to
have her painted out of the murals, but just as Isabelle
had not been able to let go of the idea that Heather's
death must be someone else's fault, he could not let go of
the constant need for his daughter's presence, the sense
of her eyes watching him as he moved through the dining
room, of her being with him there, every day.
He was a swarthy man of sixty-seven, whose hair was still
naturally dark, and whose brooding eyes under thick unruly
brows gave his face a permanently cynical expression. Of
medium height, his solid, muscular body gave the
impression of animal strength. He was aware that his
detractors joked that the custom-tailored suits he wore
were wasted on him, that try as he might, he still looked
like a day laborer. He almost smiled, remembering how
indignant Heather had been the first time she had heard
that remark.
I told her not to worry, Jimmy thought, smiling to
himself. I told her that I could buy and sell the lot of
them, and that's all that counts.
He shook his head, remembering. Now more than ever, he
knew it wasn't really all that counted, but it still gave
him a reason to get up in the morning. He had gotten
through the last months by concentrating on the casino and
hotel he was building in Atlantic City. "Donald Trump,
move over," Heather had said when he'd showed her the
model. "How about calling it Heather's Place, and I'll
perform there, yours exclusively, Baba?"
She had picked up the affectionate nickname for father on
a trip to Italy when she was ten. After that she never
called him Daddy again.
Jimmy remembered his answer. "I'd give you star billing in
a minute -- you know that. But you better check with
Steve. He's got big bucks in Atlantic City too, and I'm
leaving a lot of the decisions to him. But anyway, how
about forgetting this career stuff and getting married and
giving me some grandchildren?"
Heather had laughed. "Oh, Baba, give me a couple of years.
I'm having too much fun."
He sighed, remembering her laugh. Now there wouldn't be
any grandchildren, ever, he thought -- not a girl with
golden-brown hair and hazel eyes, nor a boy who might
someday grow up to take over this place.
A tap at the door yanked Jimmy back to the present.
"Come in, Steve," he said.
Thank God I have Steve Abbott, he thought. Twenty-five
years ago the handsome, blond Cornell dropout had knocked
on the door of the restaurant before it was open. "I want
to work for you, Mr. Landi," he had announced. "I can
learn more from you than in any college course."
Jimmy had been both amused and annoyed. He mentally sized
up the young man. Fresh, know-it-all kid, he had
decided. "You want to work for me?" he had asked, then
pointed to the kitchen. "Well, that's where I started."
That was a good day for me, Jimmy thought. He might have
looked like a spoiled preppie, but he was an Irish kid
whose mother worked as a waitress to raise him, and he had
proved that he had much of the same drive. I thought then
that he was a dope to give up his scholarship but I was
wrong. He was born for this business.
Steve Abbott pushed open the door and turned on the
nearest light as he entered the room. "Why so dark? Having
a seance, Jimmy?"
Landi looked up with a wry smile, noting the compassion in
the younger man's eyes. "Woolgathering, I guess."
"The mayor just came in with a party of four."
Jimmy shoved back his chair and stood up. "No one told me
he had a reservation."
"He didn't. Hizzonor couldn't resist our hot dogs, I
suppose..." In long strides, Abbott crossed the room and
put his hand on Landi's shoulder. "A rough day, I can
tell."
"Yeah," Jimmy said. "Isabelle called this morning to say
the realtor was in about Heather's apartment and thinks it
will sell fast. Of course, every time she gets me on the
phone, she has to go through it all again, how she can't
believe Heather would ever get in a car, to drive home on
icy roads. That she doesn't believe her death was an
accident. She can't let go of it. Drives me crazy."
His unfocused eyes stared past Abbott. "When I met
Isabelle, she was a knockout, believe it or not. A beauty
queen from Cleveland. Engaged to be married. I pulled the
rock that guy had given her off her finger and tossed it
out the car window." He chuckled. "I had to take out a
loan to pay the other guy for his ring, but I got the
girl. Isabelle married me."
Abbott knew the story and understood why Jimmy had been
thinking about it. "Maybe the marriage didn't last, but
you got Heather out of the deal."
"Forgive me, Steve. Sometimes I feel like a very old man,
repeating myself. You've heard it all before. Isabelle
never liked New York, or this life. She should never have
left Cleveland."
"But she did, and you met her. Come on, Jimmy, the mayor's
waiting."
Copyright © 1997 by Mary Higgins Clark