We scribbled on our notepads, trying to keep up. After a moment, Toni said, “Okay. Let’s change topics again. Gina has no history of just up and disappearing? Never done this before?”
“Never,” Robbie said.
“Okay,” Toni continued. “I don’t mean to be indelicate, but is Gina straight or homosexual?”
Robbie looked surprised. “I think she’s straight,” he said.
“How about boyfriends or girlfriends?”
Robbie shook his head. “Well, first off, I don’t know of any boyfriends. Certainly nobody she brought home to meet the family. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have boyfriends that I don’t know about. She may have—she’d probably not have told me unless she thought I needed to know.”
That was a pretty good summary of the Gina I thought I knew: she’d tell you if she thought you needed to know. She’d probably not tell you just to share information, like girlfriend-to-girlfriend chitchat.
“As to girlfriends,” he continued, “I think she was friendly with a couple of the girls in the finance and accounting department. Those girls would be good for you to talk to—they probably know more about Gina’s social life than I do.”
“Okay,” Toni said. “Does she use drugs? Any problems with alcohol?”
“As far as I know, she’s never used drugs. She’ll have a social drink or a glass of wine, but she’s not an alcoholic or anything like that.”
“Good,” Toni said. She wrote in her notebook. “How about any sort of personal problems? Any history of mental illness? Depression? Anything like that?”
“No mental illness. No personal problems I’m aware of.”
“Do you think she might be suicidal at all? Has she ever mentioned suicide?”
“Never.”
“Okay. Can you get us some recent photos?”
“Yeah. Mom’s got a bunch.”
“Good.”
I spent a minute reviewing my notes, then said, “Robbie, if we’re able to go to work on the case we’ll need a complete list of people from your organization that you think we should talk to—people who work with Gina or even just know her.”
“Okay,” he said, staring at the wall, concentrating intently on something.
“And—” I started to say when he interrupted me.
“Wait a second,” he said, “I made a mistake.”
“What’s that?” Toni asked, looking up from her notepad.
“Of course there was one guy that Gina brought home to meet my parents.”
My upper body tensed.
“Who?” Toni asked. “Do you have a name for this guy?”
“Yeah,” Robbie said. He turned to me. “It was you.”
~~~~
Toni looked at me, her mouth partly open, questions in her eyes. After a moment she recovered and said, “Danny? Anything you want to add?”
“Give me a second.”
I pictured Gina in my mind the way I remembered her—laughing, witty, happy, on top of the world.
I thought about it and figured that, in front of Robbie, I didn’t know how to say that I’d had a secret crush on Gina probably since the first time I saw her in high school. She was magnetic—everyone was attracted to her.
I didn’t know how to say that I watched her in school for two years and wished that she was somehow as attracted to me as I was to her.
I didn’t know how to say that after high school, I dealt with this by classifying it as a silly boyhood crush. That is, until I bumped into Gina in late 2006 and all the old feelings came back again. This time, at least, I’d grown up enough to find the guts to ask her out. To my never-ending joyous surprise, she’d said yes.
I didn’t know how to say that I spent three of the best weeks of my life with Gina in November of 2006. She was two years younger than I, but she was the one who had all the answers. She was the one who seemed totally sure of what she was doing and where she was going. I was happy just to be there with her.
I didn’t know how to say that I was crushed when I had to ship out to Quantico, Virginia, just after Thanksgiving that year for three months of FBI Advanced Training School and that during that time, our romance fizzled.
Finally, I sure as hell didn’t know how to say that, at least as of November 2006 when we were together, Gina was damn sure straight.
I didn’t know how to say any of this crap, so instead I just said, “No, I only saw her for a few weeks at the end of 2006. I can’t think of anything to add.”
~~~~
Toni stared at me with a cynical expression on her face that made it look like she was about ready to call, “Bullshit!” Rather than stare back at her, I did the manly thing—I looked away. It was quiet for a few seconds, then I turned back, avoiding Toni’s probing glare, and said, “Tell you what, why don’t we leave it at that for now, Robbie. That gives us some really useful background information. We’re not going to solve the case this afternoon. We’re just gathering some basic information to see if we’re able to take the case on. If we do, we’ll have a lot more questions. Toni, do you have anything else?” I turned to her.
Whether she did or not, she could tell I wanted to end the interview, so she looked down at her notes, flipped through a couple of pages and then looked back up and smiled. She said, “No, we’re good for now.” She glanced at me and added, “I think we’ve got plenty to work on here.”
“Okay.” I turned back to Robbie. “Robbie, to summarize, you want to hire our firm to find Gina—whether she’s disappeared voluntarily for some reason or whether, God forbid, she’s fallen victim to foul play.”
Robbie nodded. “That’s right.”
“Alright, we’d like to help,” I said. “Before we can answer you for sure, I need to do three things. First, I have to meet with Detective Brown and find out SPD’s posture on our helping. We need them to approve our getting involved, or, at least, for them to have no insurmountable objections.”
“I don’t think that should be a problem,” he said.
“Good.” I appreciated his optimism. Chalk it up to friends in high places, I suppose. That’s okay. I could use a little benevolence-by-association. “Second thing, I need to have a meeting with my staff to find out from my whole team whether or not we think we can actually be of service or if we’d just get in the way. We like to talk over the big cases like this as a group before we make a commitment. We need to be comfortable that we have the capabilities and that we’d actually be adding something.”
He nodded, and I continued. “If both of those go well, the last thing I’ll need to do is talk to you again, but this time with your parents. We need to get their stories. I think all of these things can happen by tomorrow. Based on that, are you okay if we set a tentative time for two o’clock tomorrow, at your parents’ home?”
“Good,” Robbie said. “The sooner the better.” He stood to leave. “I want you to know that whatever happens, we’ll be extremely grateful if you’d help us try to find her. We feel completely helpless and, frankly, that’s not a position my family often finds itself in. My dad’s a borderline Type A personality and Gina’s the absolute definition of a super–Type A personality.” He looked at us and the scared expression he’d been wearing when he arrived was back. “I’m not that way and neither’s mom. When our family bumps into a problem, usually Dad—or recently, more likely Gina—will take charge and make things happen. With Gina gone, we’re kind of floundering. We don’t know what to do, and it’s killing us.”
I understood. Angelo Fiore may have been the head of the family, but it was sounding like Gina Fiore was the engine that made it run. Now that the engine was missing, the family was powerless and grounded—helpless and confused.
~~~~
Toni took Robbie to the door and said good-bye while I reviewed my notes. A few minutes later, she came back to my office and sat down. She hoisted her Doc Martens up onto the corner of my desk and stared at me while she chewed on the end of a pencil. She said nothing.
Finally, I looked up and said, “What?”
“What, nothing,” she said, a bit of a smirk beginning to show on her face. I recognized the look. It meant different things at different times, but usually it meant that she was about to have some fun at my expense.
“What do you want, you—you little pain in the butt?” I asked.
She didn’t look away. “Oh, nothing. I’m just waiting for you to tell me the whole story about you and this missing mystery woman.” Toni’s eyes sparkle when she’s being mischievous, like now. She enjoyed seeing me on the hot seat, and she was instantly able to ascertain that, indeed, that’s where I was.
Antoinette “Toni” Blair is a twenty-six-year-old Seattle grunge child blessed with strikingly good looks, kind of like a “grunge” fashion model. Think Katy Perry with tattoos. Taller, “grungier,” but the same beautiful face, same breathtaking figure, same medium-length black hair, same brilliant blue eyes. No denying, Toni is easy to look at. She and I went to a charity black-tie function on behalf of the agency a couple of times and let me just say, she dresses up real nice. She swapped her leathers and her studs for a striking evening gown that covered up her tats while uncovering her dazzling cleavage. Her dark hair and blue eyes, not to mention her killer figure, immediately magnetized every set of male eyes in the room. Blam! Game over. I have to admit, it was a pretty cool feeling having her on my arm as we made our way to our table. No doubt the wealthy tech geeks who usually go to those sorts of things thought, “What’s a knockout bomb like her doing with a shithead like him?” Ha! Get over it, propeller-head.
The sparkling blue eyes, drop-dead figure, and stunning intellect notwithstanding, I think my favorite Toni Blair feature just might be her smile. She actually has several she can use, ranging from a coy, seductive grin all the way to a full-power, stupefying Julia Roberts–like megawatt blast that can stop a train. I’m still figuring it out, but I think it has something to do with the connection between the lips and the eyes. Actually, her whole face gets in on the act of smiling. She has a unique ability to convey a wide range of emotions with her smile. Without even seeming to try, she’s a master at it.
Toni’s parents were divorced when she was young. Her mom raised her and her younger sister while working full-time first as a waitress, then later as a manager of a restaurant in Lynnwood, north of Seattle. She saved money her whole life so that Toni would be able to go to college. I met Toni in 2007 when we were both seniors at U-Dub in the Criminal Justice department. I was still in the army at the time, and Toni worked part-time at the restaurant her mom managed—still manages, in fact. In 2008, after I was discharged from the army, I opened Logan Private Investigations. Toni basically hired herself and became my first employee. Turned out to be the best move I ever made.
Toni is a serious private investigator. Not only is she pretty to look at, but she’s tough. And I don’t mean girl tough. I mean take-your-best-shot, kick-your-ass guy tough. Dead shot with the Glock 23 she’s always got tucked somewhere on her person. Also, she’s damn good at Krav Maga—the Israeli army martial art that I picked up in Afghanistan and have been practicing ever since. Toni and I train together once a week or so. Woe be it to the fool who pisses her off. Pick your weapon, but if you go up against Toni, you’d better bring your “A” game.
Attractive as Toni is, I’d seen plenty of workplace romances end badly—most of them, I suppose. I knew better than to mix my work life with my love life, so I always considered her strictly off-limits. I exercised restraint (not always easy), and I never made a move on her. I knew she understood, and I think she felt the same way. But this didn’t stop her from messing with me, just for shits and giggles. For instance, when we’d practice our grappling, if I started to get the better of her, she’d think nothing of grabbing me in the crotch and squeezing, then laughing when I immediately tapped out. Then she’d laugh even more when I’d get pissed afterwards—laugh herself silly, in fact. Shit like that.
She hates to lose. She’s a kick, but she knows me so well that she could tell when she had me pinned down on something. She enjoyed it immensely.
“Give it up, Logan,” she said, smiling. “I can’t do my job unless I have all the details. I need facts, man.”
“Alright, alright,” I said, acquiescing. She wasn’t going to give up until I told her. “It’s simple. For two years in high school, I had a silent crush on Gina—same as probably 90 percent of the other guys at my school. Nothing came of it. Then, six years later, out of the blue, I bump into her at Starbucks. We start talking and end up spending an hour there. I guess I’d grown up, because in high school the thought of approaching her scared the shit out of me. Now, it was easy to talk to her. Asking her out seemed natural. Fortunately, she said yes.”
“Did you fall in love?”
“No, I didn’t fall in love,” I said. “We were only together three weeks.”
Toni smiled her little impish smile. She kept working me. “Did you—you know, did you two . . . consummate the relationship?”
I glared at her. “Fuck you, Blair—none of your goddamned business.”
She laughed out loud, knew she’d gotten to me.
“Laugh it up. If you must know, we had a fabulous few weeks together before I shipped out to advanced training at the FBI Academy in Virginia. I had a dumpy little apartment in south Tacoma then, near Fort Lewis, where I was stationed. I’d drive up to Seattle most every night, and Gina and I’d go to a movie or out to dinner, or sometimes just hang out at her place. She’d just graduated from U-Dub and was working full-time at her dad’s business. She had a nice apartment in Fremont. She took me home for Thanksgiving that year with her family.”
“Go on,” Toni said, when I paused to reflect how nice the holiday had been.
“Yeah. Well, three days after Thanksgiving, I shipped out. Our romance kind of fizzled then. It was hard on me, but I wouldn’t say I was brokenhearted. I guess we’d not been together long enough for those kind of emotional ties to have set in. Disappointed was probably a better word. Not in her or in me—just disappointed in the circumstances that tore us apart.” I thought back about those times—the highs followed by the lows.
Toni was respectfully silent for a few seconds; then she said, “Well, look at the bright side, Danny. When we find her, you’ll be able to light a new fire there.”
“Yeah? I don’t know about that.” I thought for a few seconds, and then said, “Actually, I see two problems with that.”
“One?” she asked.
“One. We have to find her.”
She shrugged. “If she’s alive, we’ll find her,” she said, no doubt whatsoever in her voice. “What’s number two?”
“Remember Thomas Wolfe?” I asked.
She thought for a second, and then smiled. “Ah yes,” she said. “Here it comes. You’re going to say ‘You Can’t Go Home Again,’ aren’t you?”
I was impressed that she guessed where I was going, though I probably shouldn’t have been.
“Well, that’s bullshit, you sentimental sop,” she said. “You can do whatever you want.”
I like Toni. She needles me a lot, but I think I’ll keep her.
Chapter 2
THE PARKING SITUATION at the Seattle Police Department headquarters really sucks. Basically, there isn’t any. Visitors have to park curbside (good luck!) or at a remote lot. And I do mean remote. One time, I got back to the office so frustrated that I figured there had to be a better way. I looked on their website for what I was certain would be a nearby hidden lot that I’d failed to discover even after circling the building four hundred times. The website said, “Take mass transit.” Seriously. Look it up.
Being an optimist, I told myself that this time it’ll be different—this time I’ll find a close spot, right by the lobby. Nope. I circled around and around the block for fifteen minutes looking for someone pulling out. Toni took it in good stride. She pointed to a guy on the corner, “Hey, isn’t that the same homeless guy we saw
on our last orbit?” she said. “And the one before?” Ha, ha. Finally, completely fed up with the whole business, I gave in and parked in a structure five blocks away, same as the last time here. We had a nice little hike back.
The Seattle Police Department is headquartered in the nearly new Seattle Justice Center, located just off I-5 on James Street in downtown Seattle. The idea behind the Justice Center was to house the police department and the municipal courts in the same building. Given their missions, this makes a certain amount of sense. Seattle City Hall is right across the street to the west and the Seattle Municipal Tower—the fourth tallest building in Seattle at sixty-eight stories—is across the street to the north. A tidy little package (if you’re willing to overlook the lack of parking).
When the Justice Center was built in 2002, the architect thought it might be cool to essentially split the building design right down the middle to reflect the different characteristics of its two tenants. The southern half of the building houses the courts and is a light, airy, glassed-in structure meant to signify the transparency and balance of the judicial system. The northern half of the building houses the police department and is meant to look solid and secure. I think they missed, and instead, landed on stark and imposing. The two halves of the buildings are shoved together to form a single structure—sort of an odd-looking architectural chimera. Weird. Then again, I’m not very cool, so I probably don’t get it. And besides, I was in Iraq marching in the desert when the building was designed. Nobody asked my opinion then, and it’s damn sure too late now.
We made it to Dwayne Brown’s floor, fifteen minutes late. I hadn’t seen Dwayne for several years, and I was worried for two reasons. I had a slight concern that he might not remember me. I had a bigger concern that he’d remember me just fine and might not welcome the intrusion of a private investigator into the middle of his case. Usually, police departments need private investigators like ducks need roller skates. We checked in with the secretary on the eighth floor, pinned on our visitors’ badges, and sat down to wait.
Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) Page 3