I chuckled. “I’ve never showed you where my dad lives, have I?” I asked. “He’s about half a mile north of here.”
“Is it like this?”
“Yeah, a little,” I said. “It’s a Victorian, like this one. Very old. My great-great-grandfather built it in 1920. Different color, thank God.”
“If it’s anything like this,” she said, looking wide-eyed at the large, impressive home, “then the answer is yes.”
“Yes? Yes what? What’s the question?”
“Yes, I will marry you and have your children. When do we move in?”
I laughed. The white-iron entry gates were open, so I swung around and parked in the circular drive. Promptly at 2:00 p.m., we rang the bell.
“Danny, Toni,” Robbie said when he answered the door, “Thanks so much for coming. Please come in.”
Robbie closed the ten-foot doors behind us, and we found ourselves in a foyer with bright white wainscoting and shiny dark-oak flooring. Centered above us was a crystal chandelier, perhaps six feet in diameter. A large vase of stargazer lilies sat atop a walnut entry table to our right. On the wall to our left was a huge French Impressionist painting of a seacoast village. “Is that real?” I asked Toni. I couldn’t tell.
“Hard to say,” she said. “Looks real.” She’d taken art history in college and it was a hobby of hers. Real or not, the overall effect of the home was very impressive—all the more so because it achieved an elegant style without seeming to try very hard.
“Please come this way,” Robbie said, walking with us. “My parents are waiting for us.” We followed him to the back of the home where the family room was located. Floor-to-ceiling windows trimmed in gloss white formed the back wall. The room overlooked a backyard that featured a brilliant blue swimming pool set amid red-brick decking and rich, well-tended landscaping. The mature trees completely sheltered the yard from the surrounding urban area.
Natural daylight flooded the room. We stepped from the wood flooring into the carpeted room, and it felt like I sank in up to my ankles. A large flat-screen television was on, tuned to a news channel with the sound muted. As we entered, a small man and a taller woman rose to greet us.
“Mother, Father,” Robbie said, “I don’t know, but you may remember Danny Logan—Gina had Danny here for Thanksgiving dinner with us several years ago. And this is Miss Toni Blair, also of the Logan agency. Danny, Toni, my parents Angelo and Carina Fiore.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Fiore,” I said, reaching to shake hands, “we’re very pleased to see you. We only wish it could be in happier times.”
“Thank you,” the woman said. “We’re very grateful to have you here.”
Angelo Fiore was a short, thin man who appeared to be in his late sixties. He hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen him, five years before. His hair was still full and, along with his goatee, was still mostly dark, not much gray. His face, though, was lined with wrinkles, which gave away his age. His eyes were more tired than I remembered, but this may have had more to do with the stress brought on by his daughter’s disappearance than with his age. He was dressed neatly in gray slacks and a yellow knit shirt.
Carina Fiore was a striking woman—it was easy to see Gina in her. She was in her mid-fifties and was five five or five six—nearly as tall as Angelo. She had a very attractive figure. Her hair was mostly blonde with maybe a little gray mixed in. Her eyes were a deep blue, but swollen and lined with red—she’d been crying recently. She was very pretty, but her distress was obvious.
Carina Fiore nodded and said, “It’s very good to see you again. Please, sit down.” She pointed to a sofa. “Let’s talk. May we bring you something to drink? Iced tea, bottled water?”
“Yes, please. Water would be very nice,” Toni said. I nodded in agreement. Robbie stepped away to the kitchen while the four of us sat down.
There was silence for a second, then Angelo leaned in and said to me, “You’re the soldier.”
I nodded. “Yes sir, I was in the army when Gina had me over.” I glanced at Carina. I had no idea what Gina had told them about why I was there for dinner with them those several years ago or, maybe even more important, why I seemed to disappear from her life shortly thereafter.
“I do remember, indeed,” Carina said. “My daughter bringing any man home is something to remember, for certain. She seemed to like you a great deal, as I recall, but then you had to go off to school.” So—Gina’d told them the truth.
“That’s right. I was a special agent for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. I had to go back east for more training.”
Angelo stared at me. “I’m not on all that good of terms with the federal government at the moment, young man. Let me ask you—do you have any connection with the federal government now?”
“None, sir,” I answered. “I was discharged in December 2007.”
Angelo nodded. “Good.”
“Have you seen my daughter recently?” Carina asked.
“No ma’am, I’m sad to say I haven’t seen her since shortly after our Thanksgiving dinner here in 2006. We hadn’t been seeing each other for very long before the dinner. After I left, we eventually lost contact altogether.”
“People flow into and out of each other’s lives, don’t they?” she said.
I nodded. “That’s true.”
“And you,” Angelo said to Toni. “This guy tell you about any of this—this history?”
Toni looked directly at him for a moment, and then blasted him with the dazzling megawatt smile. “He tells me everything, Mr. Fiore.”
Angelo was only human. He couldn’t resist. He melted and smiled back. The ice was broken.
“My daughter’s gone,” he said, sober again. “Can you help us?”
~~~~
The last time I’d been at this house, Gina had been laughing and happy. She was twenty-two then, a recent magna cum laude graduate from the University of Washington, and on top of the world. At that time, the home had been decorated for Thanksgiving and had a warm, comfortable feel about it. Gina and I had arrived around noon. I remember making small talk with her dad, but mostly I’d wanted to talk to Gina. I was hooked—completely enthralled. She knew it, and she played with me, but I didn’t mind. I was done. Stick a fork in me.
It had been a rare sunny November day, and after dinner we’d decided to go for a ride. We drove over to Gasworks Park at the top of Lake Union and found a bench that looked out over the water to the south. I had my arm around her as she explained her idea. “Let’s take a couple of weeks off just after New Year’s and go to Hawaii,” she said. “By then, we’ll be sick and tired of the gray Seattle winter. I want to share a Hawaiian sunset with you. We’ll have them bring us boat drinks—the kind with the coconut and the pineapple slices and the umbrellas. We’ll get a little drunk, but not too much. We’ll watch the sunset. Then we’ll run back to our room and get naked.” I reminded her of the fact that I was due to report to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, for Advanced Training. “No problem,” she’d said. Just reschedule it. Truly nothing sounded better to me than spending two weeks—or two years for that matter—in Hawaii with Gina. But she didn’t know about the realities of the military—my world.
I never got to take that trip with her. I reported for training in Virginia and what started as nightly phone calls quickly turned into weekly phone calls and then, within a month, no phone calls at all. I got a one-week leave for Christmas, but when we talked over the phone about it, it seemed like the enthusiasm had waned—maybe for both of us. I ended up going to St. Thomas with a couple of guys from the school.
I think that the idea of having absolutely no control over things was most likely too hard for Gina to deal with. She wasn’t used to things she couldn’t control, and even Gina couldn’t control the U.S. Army. It didn’t matter if she got pissed and jumped up and down; if the military said go, I had to go. Period. In the end, I don’t think she was prepared for that. That little conflict ended us before we ever
even really got started. My last happy memories of us together were sitting on the park bench together, my arm around her, watching the sailboats on Thanksgiving Day on Lake Union.
Now, of course, she was beyond reach. All I could do was take everything I’d learned, including some of the stuff from the very class that split us up, and try to find her and keep her safe. That is, if she wasn’t already gone.
~~~~
“Let me begin by saying, sir, that we’re starting with a completely blank slate. Not even a hint of a clue. This isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, in the schools I’ve attended, I’ve been trained not to jump to any conclusions early in any case. We’ve been taught to let the facts speak for themselves. What that means is that if we come to an agreement here this afternoon, then my team will begin to methodically collect evidence until the evidence itself speaks to us and tells us where to find Gina. We’ll do that as quickly as we can.”
The Fiores both nodded, so I continued.
“Now if I may, I need to be honest—brutally honest—for a minute.”
“Go ahead,” Angelo said.
I continued. “In all of my training and in all of my experience with missing person cases, I’ve found that there are basically three possible scenarios. As of right now, I don’t have any reason to believe that Gina’s disappearance is unique to this, so I’m going to give them to you in no particular order. Again, I don’t know what’s happened and I don’t have any clues or evidence yet.”
“Scenario one is that Gina’s been kidnapped. Somebody who wants something—it’s usually money—has grabbed her. Typically, some sort of ransom demand is made within forty-eight hours or so—most often sooner. Usually this demand comes by phone, sometimes by mail or even by courier. The initial problem I have with this scenario is that apparently, there’s been no ransom demand. Have either of you heard from anyone in any manner that might suggest a kidnapping? A ransom demand? A note? A phone call? Even an e-mail or a text message?”
“Nothing,” Angelo said. Carina shook her head to signal no.
“Robbie?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
“Exactly,” I said. “The question I have is why go to the trouble of kidnapping somebody to get something, and then not go ahead and make a demand? Because there’s been no ransom demand after Gina’s been gone for more than four days, I doubt this is what has happened to her. The police have already placed a monitor on the house line here. Aside from that, if we all jointly decide that my firm will be helping you look for Gina, we probably won’t spend any time on this scenario.”
The Fiores nodded their understanding.
“Second scenario. And I remind you, I have no reason to believe this is what’s happened. It’s just a possibility that we must face. Gina’s been abducted by a predator—either a serial murderer or a serial rapist. This is hard to say, and I hate to say it, but I have to tell you that if this is the case, she is almost certainly already gone. This type of person would have probably killed her within the first few hours after abduction, almost certainly by now. The good news is that I believe the probability of this happening to Gina is quite low, but it is a possibility and this might have happened.”
The Fiores were stone-faced. They’d surely already danced around this possibility in their minds, probably even out loud to each other. But hearing it from an outsider tended to make it more sobering.
“I should add that if we go to work for you, we will spend some time on this scenario, probably just at first. Eventually, though, we’ll want to shift our focus and our resources to scenario number three—and the one that I think is by far the most likely. That is, Gina’s gone because she wants to be gone. She’s hiding. She’s either run away with someone, or she’s run away from someone, or she has some other reason to disappear. I don’t know her all that well, but I think I know her well enough to say that she’s a very smart girl. I don’t know what might be driving her to want to disappear, but my guess is that she’s out there, and she thinks she has good reason to vanish.” When I looked at them, I saw hope in their eyes that Gina herself might be responsible for her own disappearance. I knew I’d said the right thing. Certainly, from my perspective, I wanted to believe Gina was alive.
“I will commit my four-person staff full-time to this case. If she’s hiding, we’ll do our best to find out why. Then, we’ll do our best to track her down and find her. We’re experienced at finding missing persons. I’ve already cleared this through Detective Brown at the Seattle Police Department—I believe you talked to him last week. He welcomes our help. In fact, as you know, he recommended us. We’ll be working as a team. We can go places and do things that he cannot. He recognizes this and is glad to have our participation because of it. When I was in the army, Detective Brown and I worked together on several cases. We get along well.”
“Again, if Gina’s alive—and I believe she is—we’ll find her,” I said with confidence, glancing at Toni. She smiled at me.
Angelo and Carina nodded, almost in unison.
“Good. Do you mind if I ask a question that came up in our internal meeting earlier today?”
“Go ahead,” Angelo said.
“Could there be any possible connection between Gina’s disappearance and your relatives in Chicago?”
“You mean is the Chicago mob involved in this somehow?” Angelo said, a puzzled look on his face.
“Yes.”
“No. No chance,” he said resolutely. “I talk to my cousins from time to time, but none of us has anything to do with the business of the other—completely separate. No connection at all.”
“Okay. Thank you,” I said. “I didn’t mean any offense, just had to ask.”
Angelo nodded. “Given the reality of the family connection, I suppose I’d have questioned your competence if you hadn’t.”
“Don’t want that to happen,” I said, smiling. “Would you do me a favor? It’s completely up to you if you want to turn to them for help. But if you decide to ask for their assistance—please let me know.”
“I’m sure I won’t be asking my cousins for help, but if I do, I agree to notify you.”
I smiled. “Thanks. Then, as to our business arrangement—”
“Mr. Logan,” Angelo interrupted, “Let me interrupt you. My wife and I have been fortunate. We don’t worry about money anymore. We’ll pay your going rate.”
“Thank you for that, Mr. Fiore,” I said. “But don’t you want to know what it is?” Before he could answer, I said, “You need to know that, as a four-man firm, we bill out at two thousand dollars a day, or sixty thousand dollars per month plus expenses.”
Again, Angelo interrupted. “Mr. Logan, I apologize. I should have phrased it differently. I realize that even though my wife and I don’t have to worry about money, I’m quite aware that you, as a young businessman, are not yet in that position. Your employees certainly have their own money concerns. I don’t want you worrying about money when I would prefer you should be thinking about my daughter.” He turned to Robbie. “Roberto, please have a check drawn for $120,000 on account for Mr. Logan.” He turned to me. “Will that be satisfactory?”
“Thank you. More than sufficient, sir.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re hired.” He stood up and reached for my hand. “Now, please. Stop wasting time. Go find my daughter and bring her home to us.”
Chapter 4
THE NEXT MORNING, Wednesday, August 17, at 8:00 a.m., Toni and I met Dwayne and Gus in the parking lot of Gina’s condo. The day was bright and sunny and already warm with just a couple of little, puffy cumulus clouds drifting in from the southwest.
“I see they have no dress code at Logan PI,” Dwayne said, as he and Gus walked up to meet us. I think he was talking to me because I was wearing faded jeans, Nikes, and a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt that I hadn’t tucked in. Then again, he could have been talking to Toni because she was wearing black denims and her Doc Marten black shit-kicker boots t
hat made her nearly six feet tall. She wore a pink V-necked blouse with no sleeves. Her sleeve tat on her left arm and the Celtic armband tat on her right were on full display. Each ear had three pierced earrings, including a bar that pierced the same ear twice. Plus, she had some sort of tiny diamond stud in her nose. The effect was memorable.
“Unlike you fat cats, we don’t work on a union pay scale,” I said in our defense. “We can’t afford the fancy suits.”
Dwayne fingered his lapels and smiled. “I assume you’re referring to me. Pretty snappy, isn’t it?” he said. Then he turned and nodded toward Gus, who was wearing another plaid sport jacket. “I gotta balance out Gus, here. He does his shopping at the bargain bin at Joseph A. Bank.”
Gus acted offended until Toni said, “I think Gus looks quite dapper.”
“Dapper?” Dwayne said. “Dapper? I never knew anyone who looked dapper before. I’m impressed.”
“As well you should be,” Gus said, beaming at the compliment from Toni.
“Anyway,” Toni added, “When we dress in plainclothes, we actually try to not look like cops.”
Dwayne laughed. “Touché.”
“Sweetheart,” Gus said, reaching for Toni’s hand and kissing it. “Let me say that you look absolutely lovely this fine morning. And you don’t for one second look a goddamned bit like any cop I’ve ever seen.”
“See?” Toni replied, batting her eyelashes at him. “It worked.”
I smiled. “This is going to be fun, guys.” I noticed Robbie driving up to let us into the condo. “Robbie’s here. How about we get to work.” I pointed to the door of Gina’s condo. “Let’s start inside first; then we can take a look at her car.”
At the landing in front of Gina’s condo, Dwayne handed me a large envelope. “I got your paperwork in my e-mail. Thanks for that. This is a copy of the first responder report, a copy of the missing person report, a copy of my interview notes, and a copy of the CSI report. We’ve already filed with NCIC and WACIC.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Yesterday afternoon, we met with the Fiores. I assume you know that Angelo is directly related to the Calabria family in Chicago.”
Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) Page 6