They smiled and nodded curtly back. “Mrs. Ward,” Ron said, politely.
I shook her hand and pretended not to notice the contrast in the greetings. “Thank you for inviting us. It was a very impressive event.” I reached over and shook Oliver’s hand as well, and then I turned to Eric Gaston. “I think your words about Sophie were amazing—quite touching.”
“Thank you,” he said with a warm smile. “I meant ’em. I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Eric Gaston.” He stuck his hand out. “To tell the truth,” he said in a jovial manner, “I was actually nervous as a virg—well, let’s just say I was nervous.” He laughed. “I was doing my best not to make a horse’s ass out of myself in front of a group of very influential donors.”
“You did well,” I said, shaking hands. I turned and introduced him to Toni. He shook hands with her, and then he said hello to and shook hands with Ron and Yoshi, apparently already having met them. Whatever Cecilia’s hang-up was with the detectives, Gaston didn’t seem to share it as he greeted them warmly.
“And,” Gaston said politely, turning to Nicki just as she walked up, “in case you’ve not already had the pleasure, please allow me to introduce you to Nicki Thoms, Sophie’s sister.” Nicki looked up from her texting. She was even prettier up close and, judging by the confident, even smug look in her eyes, she knew it. Her gleaming hair was long and dark, nearly black. Her eyes were brown and her skin tanned (the result of either genetics or a serious tanning bed, given that we live in Seattle). She was an inch or so shorter than Toni and equally shapely, which is saying something. She wore a black knit dress and black tights. She slid her phone back into her purse.
As Nicki reached to shake my hand, Cecilia said, “Nicki, Mr. Logan and his partner, Ms. Blair, are the private investigators I told you we’d engaged on behalf of the family.”
I smiled at her. “Hi, Nicki. I’m glad to meet you. I wish it were for a different occasion.”
She quickly looked me over, still holding my hand, and then gave me a coy little flirty smile as she looked straight into my eyes. “Thanks.” She paused, then added, “Me too.” She held my hand just a moment too long, letting go just as I was starting to feel uncomfortable.
Good thing too. I wasn’t certain how Toni would react to Nicki giving me goo-goo eyes so blatantly, and I had no wish to find out, either. If we were going to take this case, I didn’t want to start out on the wrong foot. I turned and looked at Toni and immediately knew that I needn’t have been concerned. Toni smiled at Nicki—a smile that anyone else might interpret as friendly but that I recognized had strong undertones of amused in it as well.
She stepped up to Nicki and offered her hand. “Hi. I’m Toni.” She nodded toward me. “I’m his partner.” Nicki measured Toni up quickly, the shape of her eyes and mouth changing ever so slightly to a little amused look of her own. The two strikingly beautiful women shook hands politely. Nicki took a breath and was about to speak when Toni abruptly ended the confrontation by releasing her hand and turning to face Cecilia. “Well, Cecilia,” she said, “it looks like Sophie’s memorial fund is off to a rousing start.” I don’t know if Toni’d cut Nicki off like that on purpose, or if she just hadn’t noticed Nicki about to say something. I have my suspicions. Either way, Nicki was left with a word frozen on the tip of her tongue and a slightly embarrassed look on her face—from which she quickly recovered.
Cecilia smiled, either unaware of the low-intensity sparks flying beside her or maybe just choosing to ignore them. “Let’s hope that’s the case.” She looked over the room. “Judging from the reception, though, I believe Sophie would be pleased.” She turned to me, staring at me hard for a moment. “Mr. Logan, you promised me an answer this morning. So what’s it to be? Are you prepared to accept our case?”
“Fact is,” I said, “we were just about to go have a little conference with Lieutenant Bergstrom and Detective Hinari here. I’ll be able to give you an answer right after we’re done.”
Cecilia looked at Ron, then back at me. She looked a little miffed about being put off, but in the end, I guess she sensed there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She nodded. “Fine, then. I’ll expect your call later this afternoon. Let’s say, by three o’clock?”
I nodded. “That’ll work. If not sooner.”
“Splendid.” She broke into a smile, business apparently over. “That being the case, I know you’re busy—I don’t mean to take up too much of your time. But while you both are still here, I wanted to take the opportunity to formally introduce you to Nicki and Eric. I imagine you’ll want to speak to both of them as part of your investigation.”
I smiled. “We’d hoped to, assuming, of course, that all goes well with our conversation with Detectives Bergstrom and Hinari.” I turned to Gaston. “Mr. Gaston, if that turns out to be the case and we end up on the job, I’d like to give you a call in the next few days so that we can set up some time to chat. It’s actually going to be important for us to schedule time with you and probably with the other employees at the Foundation. Will that work for you?”
“Call me Eric,” he said, nodding. “Anytime you want to meet, I’ll be available. And I’ll make certain you have access to all our personnel plus any of our records that you’d like to examine—anything you want, you’ve got. We all want to see whoever did this caught and strung up.”
I nodded. “Good. Thank you.” I turned to Nicki. “Nicki?” She’d been looking around the room as I talked to Gaston, but she turned back to me when I spoke.
“We’re guessing that you are the one who was closest to Sophie. Even before we talk to Eric and his people, though, we were wondering if you might have some time to talk to us, maybe on Monday? We’d like you to help us fill in our knowledge gaps.”
She looked at me for a second, and then she gave me a little half smile. “Of course. Where would you like to meet?”
“How about your place, Monday morning. Does ten o’clock work?”
She looked surprised. “Ten in the morning?” She thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “Alright, then. I’m afraid I don’t have an address card handy. Do you have something you can write on?”
“That’s okay,” Toni said cheerfully. “We already have it.”
Nicki glanced at Toni, then back at me. “Excellent, then,” she said. “Monday morning it is.”
“Wonderful,” Cecilia said. “Everything’s arranged, then. We needn’t keep you any longer.”
We said our good-byes and watched them work their way back into the crowd, Cecilia leading the way, working the crowd, shaking hands with the new donors. After a few seconds we turned toward the entry hallway toward the lounge.
As we made our way, Ron started laughing quietly.
“What’s so funny?” Toni asked.
“Wasn’t that just a little slice of fun?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? You and Nicki playing some nasty chick stink-eye.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Toni said, all sweet and innocent.
Ron laughed. “Course not.” He turned to Yoshi. “Yosh, this one’s smooth. We’re going to have to watch out for her.”
“Watch out for me?” Toni cried. “What about you and Cecilia? What’s that all about? That seemed a little . . . frosty.”
“Cecilia? Me? We’re tight.” He crossed his fingers. “We’re like that.”
“Bullshit!” Yoshi said, as he faked a cough.
“Partner . . .” Ron said, a warning tone in his voice.
“Screw it, man,” Yoshi said, smiling. “This is going to be fun. It’s like our own little soap opera around here. There’s a lot of subtext at play.”
Ron smiled. “Well . . . maybe just a little.”
“Well,” Toni said, “I hope you’re not including me in that reference.”
I quickly reached over and put my hand on her shoulder, causing her to look at me.
“Remember, dear,” I said, looki
ng first at her, then at Ron and Yoshi, “and you guys too. Subtext aside, there is the nagging little issue that we’re all supposed to be on the same side.”
“Spoilsport,” Ron said.
“Well, technically, he’s right,” Yoshi said. “Not to mention the fact that somewhere out there, there’s a guy—a bad guy. A killer, in fact. And he’s on the loose.”
Chapter 4
“Now that the preliminaries are behind us, let me start by saying welcome aboard,” Ron said. He lifted his bottle of beer, and we all clinked.
I nodded. “Thanks. Although, we haven’t accepted the job yet.”
“You will,” he said with certainty.
“You sure?”
He nodded. “Yep. One: Cecilia wants you. Two: she’s loaded—her family, anyway. Three: she’s damn near impossible to deny. Four: Why the hell not? It’s a worthwhile case, right?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I suspect we’re about to find out. But before we do, I gotta ask: Why?”
“Why what?”
“You played it pretty cool on the phone yesterday. Why are you guys letting us in?”
Ron smiled. “Ouch! You sound suspicious. Are you implying we wouldn’t normally open a police investigation to a PI?”
“Come on. I think you’d probably be more likely to hire a gang banger to house-sit with your mom.”
He laughed. “Oh, so little faith, and in one so young. I find that somehow . . .” he turned to his partner. “Help me out here, Yosh. What’s the word?”
“Hmm,” Yoshi said, rubbing his chin and staring at the ceiling as if lost in thought. “I’m not sure. I’d say the word’s either ‘discomfiting,’ or maybe you could say ‘refreshingly forthright.’ Take your pick.”
“Okay,” Ron said. “I’ll take ‘discomfiting’ for a hundred.”
“EHH!—wrong answer,” Yoshi said, smiling broadly. He turned to me. “Actually, it was a trick question. ‘Discomfiting,’ ‘refreshingly forthright’—it doesn’t matter. The right answer was behind door number three. That means we got orders.”
“Yoshi! Now you’ve done it,” Ron teased. “Now you’ve really done it. You’ve gone and spilled internal secrets to a couple of civilians.”
“Orders from who?” I asked.
“Orders from who?” Ron scoffed. “Who gives us orders?” He turned to Yoshi.
“That’d be Captain Jerold Cunningham,” Yoshi said.
Ron nodded. “Exactly. Captain Jerry.” He held his hand across his heart. “So here’s God’s gospel whole story, at least as I know it. Yesterday, Captain Jerry calls up and says, ‘Hey, Ron.’ So I say, ‘yessir?’ And then he says, ‘You’re going to be getting a call from this Danny Logan character asking to be let in on the Sophie Thoms Task Force. You’re to let him in, understood? Make him part of the team.’ And I’m wonderin’ to myself, Gee? How the hell’s he know that? But of course I can’t say anything, him being a captain and all, so I just say, ‘Yessir’ again.” He shrugged. “And then he hung up. And that’s pretty much how it went. Sound about right, Yosh?”
Yoshi nodded. “Yeah. I think there was one more ‘yessir’ in there when Captain said something about playing nice, but I think you captured the essence of it.”
I had Ron pegged wrong. Based on my previous talks with him when I was working the Gina Fiore case, I thought he was a buttoned-up military-type hard ass—a regular gunnery-sergeant-type guy. I’m okay with gunnery sergeants, but I could already tell he’s not that guy. This was okay too. If we had to work together, may as well be with someone who’s a little fun.
“Interpretation? If I had to guess,” he continued, “I’d say someone who swings a very heavy bat went to the power guys on the force and asked politely for you to be let in. Or maybe not so politely—who knows? Depends on how heavy the bat was, right? Anyway, the guys downtown are always eager to please the bigwigs, so they said, ‘Sure, why not? We’d be happy to let a civilian into the middle of our high-profile homicide case. Send said civilian on over.’ And, presto! Here you are. Just like magic.”
“Just like magic,” I said, nodding slowly, barely able to hide my skepticism. Something didn’t add up. Cecilia had told us that Ron recommended us. Now, he was saying he was under orders, presumably as a result of a request. “So you’re saying that the family requested us?”
“Uh . . . yeah. That’s the way I remember it, right Yosh?” He looked at Yoshi, but Yoshi just shrugged. Ron turned back to me. “My money lands on Cecilia. Like I said, she’s a peach.”
“Cecilia?” I asked. “I’m confused. You’re saying Cecilia requested us. That’s funny because if she did, why did she tell us that it was you who recommended us to her? I’m confused, here. Which came first?”
Ron looked at Yoshi and Yoshi looked back at him for several seconds before he said, “Hey—‘requested’—‘recommended’—what’s the difference, right?”
“Actually there’s a pretty big difference,” I said. “‘Requested’ means it was her idea. I can understand that. ‘Recommended’ means it was your idea and, to be truthful, like I said when we sat down, that one’s a little harder to figure out.”
He stared at me for a second, and then he turned to Yoshi. “Looks like the cat’s out of the bag, pard.” He turned back to us and took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. “Should have fuckin’ known, right? Lady would go and roll on us after I warned her not to.” He shook his head, disgusted. He took another breath, then said, “All right. Listen up—I’m going to level with you. No bullshit. As you know—or if you don’t, you soon will—Cecilia Ward is a seriously relentless woman. A royal pain in my ass. She was righteously pissed when we didn’t have the case solved after the first week, and then she went positively fucking apoplectic after the second. I almost had to throw her out of a sixth-floor window one afternoon, she started throwing such a fuckin’ scene. Then, after that, it got worse. She’s barely tolerable. She drops in, demands to talk to me, to Yoshi, to Captain Jerry, to the fuckin’ mayor. It’s drop everything and keep Cecilia happy—a mad fire drill every time she’s around. There’s no time left to work the case.” He turned to Toni. “And as to your observation about the ‘frosty’ feeling in the air? At this particular moment, we happen to be pissed at each other.”
Yoshi nodded. “Things are a little strained.”
“That’s right,” Ron continued. “So—bottom line? You want to know the truth?” He stared at me for a second. “Yoshi and me?” A smile started to appear. “We’re not completely dense over here, ya’ know?” He glanced at Yoshi. “This ain’t our first rodeo, right pard?” Turning back to me, he continued. “It’s hard enough trying to solve Sophie Thom’s murder without having to babysit the overbearing Auntie at the same time. So we came up with a plan.”
I nodded. “You need a babysitter. You want someone in between you and Cecilia—a buffer—and you know your captain won’t let you off the hook if you ask directly. So you went end around and started dropping hints and essentially had Cecilia do the asking through her high-powered channels. Like it was her idea.”
Ron pursed his lips. “It’s possible that we may have dropped a little hint here and there with Cecilia.”
“Yeah,” Yoshi said. “Subtle stuff. Like ‘Gee, Cecilia, have you ever thought about hiring a private investigator to serve as your own private liaison? Someone like that Danny Logan fellow? Word is he’s really good. They could probably really help us with the investigation . . . blah, blah, blah.’”
I nodded. “Got it. You set us up. You baited us so that you can drag us into the middle, so Cecilia will come after us instead of you.”
Ron smiled. “Very good.” He turned to Yoshi and shook his head. “See? Told you they were smart. We’re going to have to be careful what we say around here from now on.”
I laughed, nodding. “That’s alright. No problem. Well, guess what? Joke’s on you guys, though. A: we haven’t decided to take the job. And B: if we do, we’re happy for the work—com
es at a good time.”
“That’s right,” Toni said, a touch of defiance in her voice. “And while we’re at it—while we’re babysitting Cecilia? C: we’re going to go ahead and solve the damn case. And when we do, we’ll invite you to the press conference so you can see who dun it.” That’s my baby.
Ron laughed. “Whoa! Outstanding. Classic. You’re as feisty as you are pretty.” He finished laughing and took on a serious tone. “Actually, in all honesty, we’re happy you guys are on this. Your primary assignment as card-carrying members of the Sophie Thoms Homicide Task Force: run interference for us and keep that woman off our asses. On that, I’m serious as a heart attack.” He gave us both a hard look. He really was serious. Then, he softened and added, “But we could also use some help on the case too. Who knows? Maybe a fresh set of eyes might shed some light.”
“Or, like I said, we could just solve this case and find the bad guy,” Toni said. “That way, she wouldn’t annoy anybody.”
Ron nodded. “There is that.” He thought for a second. “Actually, let’s leave the logistics and the motivations right there for now—enough of this administrative bullshit. Let’s talk about the case. Let me start this off by officially turning over this unofficial copy of our evidence so far.” He handed me a DVD he’d had in the pocket of his jacket. “On the electron-laden pages of this disc, you will find complete, unabridged copies of the first responder report, the initial ME report, the complete autopsy, a record of all the interviews we’ve conducted to date, and a copy of the CSI report from Sophie Thoms’s condo, and some miscellaneous other crap. It’s pretty much everything we’ve got to date. It’s confidential—guard it with your life.”
Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) Page 5