Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4)

by Grayson, M. D.

  We lay still for several seconds, waiting for the cops to do something. “Remember Ramon’s Cantina?” she asked. Ramon’s was a bar in Kent where we’d nearly got into a fight with three drug cartel guys last year.

  “Yeah.”

  “See any kind of pattern here?”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to,” I said. “I think we need to stay away from bars.”

  “No talking!” one of the officers yelled. We shut up.

  A few seconds later, another squad car drove up, bringing the total now to three. Backups now in place, three officers walked up carefully, guns drawn. One stood watch while the other two placed us in handcuffs, then helped us roll over and get to our feet. Once we were standing, they grabbed us firmly by the arm and marched us over to a patrol car, where they leaned us over the trunk, searched us, and took our sidearms and IDs.

  After a minute, they turned us around. One of the men, apparently the ranking officer, walked over. His name badge read R. Bennett.

  “Why are we being detained?” I asked.

  Bennett ignored me and inspected our credentials. After a minute, he looked up at me, then back down at the paperwork. “PI licenses and concealed carry permits. Logan, Daniel C. and Blair, Antoinette M.” He looked up. “So you’re PIs. Don’t you two know that it’s against the law for a civilian to take a gun into a bar in the state of Washington?”

  “We’re on assignment with SPD. We were working,” I said. Not a great defense, probably not even a valid one for that matter, but it’s the best I could come up with on short notice.

  “On assignment, huh?”

  “Yeah. We’re on the Sophie Thoms Task Force. Call Lieutenant Bergstrom.”

  Bennett gave us a “that’s bullshit” smile. “Nice try. You’re not law enforcement—you’re civilians. You get no extra privileges that your ordinary citizen doesn’t get. You know that, right? Nothing.”

  “Do we look like we belong in this place?”

  He looked at me, then at Toni. “She does.”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “I had to pay twenty bucks to get in because I was ‘out of uniform.’ That’s because we’re working. We wouldn’t even be here if we weren’t on the job. Call Bergstrom.”

  He stared at me for a moment while another officer unloaded our sidearms and inspected them, sniffing them even, looking for the distinct smell of gunpowder residue. “Did you discharge your weapons?”

  “Hell, no. We just used them to get out of the bar. All you’re going to smell there is oil. The bald-headed man inside was threatening us with a switchblade.”

  “We know about that,” Bennett said. “The bouncer called.”

  Right on cue, two officers led Mike with the knife outside in cuffs. On his way to a squad car, he saw us and got all agitated. “Hey! There they are!” He tried to wrest himself free, apparently to make his point. This didn’t go over too well with his escorts. “They’re the ones with the guns!” He protested as one of the officers arm-locked him and shoved him toward a squad car. “Why don’t you throw their asses in jail!”

  “Shut up, mutt,” one of the officers said as he loaded Mike into the car. They read him his rights and two minutes later, they drove him away.

  Not long after, they put me in the back of one car and Toni in the back of another. I expected them to drive us off to jail too, but instead nothing happened. So we waited.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were still waiting. I started to get a little hopeful that perhaps Ron had intervened on our behalf. After still another fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes during which the police gave us the complete silent treatment—we were still sweating it out in our respective backseats when sure enough, I saw Ron and Yoshi drive up. They walked over to Officer Bennett and began talking to him, glancing over in our direction several times through the course of their conversation. Hopefully, Ron wasn’t telling the officer to lock us up and throw the key into the Puget Sound. The gun-in-the-bar thing was dicey and could go either way, depending on whether Ron backed up our task force credentials. Five minutes later, Ron pulled out his phone and dialed a number while Bennett walked over to the car I was in. For better or worse, here goes.

  He swung the car door open and said, “Come on out. You’re clear.” Thank God.

  Getting out of the backseat of a squad car when your hands are cuffed behind your back is a little more awkward than it might seem. I swung my legs out and kind of lurched my way out of the car.

  “Mr. Logan,” he said as he removed the cuffs, “I’m sorry about this misunderstanding tonight.”

  I looked at him, confused. “Misunderstanding?”

  “I didn’t believe you when you said you were on department business.” Then he added, “And I also didn’t recognize your name from the Donnie Martin case. The lieutenant straightened me out both ways.” Donnie Martin was a despicable pimp who was about to shoot a police lieutenant and her partner when I interrupted him. Or, should I say, a 230-grain Hydra-Shok hollow point traveling at about 1,100 feet per second from my .45 interrupted him. Permanently.

  I looked at Ron and he nodded. I turned back to Bennett. “No sweat, Officer.” I shook my hands to get the circulation going again. “You didn’t get in any trouble, did you? You need me to go talk to the lieutenant?”

  “No, no. I’m good.”

  Another officer walked Toni over to us where my guy removed her handcuffs as well. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am?” she said as she, too, shook her hands.

  “You giving the officer trouble, Ms. Blair?” I looked over and saw that Ron and Yoshi had walked over. “Don’t you think the two of you’ve caused enough turmoil for one night?”

  “We’re just about done,” Toni said, smiling.

  “You give these two their weapons back yet, Officer Bennett?”

  “Just about to, Lieutenant.”

  “Good. We got places to go.” Bennett went to retrieve our sidearms.

  I turned to Ron and Yoshi. “Thanks for springing us, guys. We really appreciate it.”

  Ron smiled. “It’s no problem. You were working the case, right?”

  I nodded.

  “See, Yosh. What’d I tell you?” Ron turned back to me. “‘Course, now you owe us.” He smiled. “We like it when you owe us favors.”

  “Big time,” Yoshi added, nodding.

  Uh-oh. This didn’t sound good.

  “Yosh, what’s the going rate for springin’ wayward PIs from felony firearms beefs?”

  “What’re you talking about?” I said.

  Yoshi ignored me. “That’s easy,” he said to Ron. “A medium-rare Delmonico at Daniel’s Broiler.”

  Ouch. A shakedown. And one that was going to be worse than I’d thought. “Daniel’s Broiler?” I protested. “‘C’mon, guys. Bail would have been cheaper.” Daniel’s is a posh steakhouse located in Chandler’s Cove. It’s about 150 yards west of Duke’s, but a whole different world when it comes to price. If Toni and I had to take these guys to Daniel’s, we could be staring at a $400 dinner tab, depending on how much they drank.

  “Well,” Ron said, looking toward the patrol cars, “I can still call Officer Bennett over. I don’t think it’s too late . . .”

  Fortunately, Toni came to our rescue. “Don’t get us wrong, Lieutenant. It’s not that we don’t appreciate you springing us, ’cause we do. So please keep that in mind. But there are a couple of things to consider.”

  Ron looked at her, squinting. He said nothing for a moment, then, still staring at her, he said, “I got a funny feeling about this, Yosh. You pay attention now.”

  Toni smiled. “First, technically speaking, as you made clear to Officer Bennett, we were in fact on police business. In fact, as you’ve made it clear to us just a few hours ago, we’re a part of a team—your team. It’d be a little awkward for you to have a couple of members of your own team arrested for working on your own case.”

  Ron stared at Toni for a second, then he turned and looked at me; then he turn
ed back to Toni. He smiled. “That’s it? That’s all you got?” He rubbed his hands together. “Oh boy, I’m getting hungry! I can just smell that steak. I like it with that peppercorn sauce on top.” He gave Toni a wry smile. “You’re going to need to do better than that, sweetheart.”

  Toni stared at him for a second, and then a smile slowly appeared on her face. I looked at her—she has different smiles for all occasions. This was a sly, little “gotcha” smile that Ron couldn’t have recognized, but I did. I started to have a little hope. “How about this then,” she said. “All this—” she waved her arm around to the squad cars “—this being busted for taking a firearm into a bar—you said it’s a felony beef worthy of Daniels, right?”

  He nodded. “Damn straight.”

  “Your premise is faulty,” she said. “It’s not a felony.”

  Ron didn’t say anything for a second. Then he said, “Sure it is.” But all of a sudden he seemed to recognize what he was up against, and his voice lost its conviction. Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure of himself.

  “No,” Toni continued, shaking her head, “actually, a violation of RCW 9.41.300 section 1 subsection (d) is . . . a misdemeanor.”

  We all looked at her.

  “No shit?” Ron said. “Section what? A misdemeanor? You know that?”

  Toni nodded. “It’s true.”

  He looked at Yoshi. “Damn.”

  “That’s right,” Toni said. “A misdemeanor. A slap on the hand. Maybe a ticket or something if the judge is in a bad mood. Probably not even that, though, given the circumstances—seeing’s how we were working for you and all.”

  It was quiet for a second, and then Yoshi shrugged. “Hell, if we’d have known that, we wouldn’t have bothered coming.” I hoped Toni was right and if she was, shall we say, exaggerating things, I hoped Yoshi wasn’t in the mood to call her bluff.

  Ron considered things for a moment, then he smiled and shook his head, holding up his hands in surrender. “Nah. Fair is fair. I think she’s got us dead to rights, partner.” He thought for a second, then said, “Okay. I got it. You’re lucky. If it’d been a felony, it would have been Daniel’s, for sure. As it is—” he looked at Toni, “—counselor—we’ll dial it back. Merchants Cafe in Pioneer Square.”

  “Done,” I said, before he could change his mind. That was way more reasonable than Daniel’s. “We’ll follow you over.”

  A couple minutes later, we broke and went to our respective vehicles. I leaned over to Toni as we approached the Jeep. “Did you make all that up?”

  She didn’t answer, so I looked over. She was smiling. “Hell, no, I didn’t make it up. And yeah. It’s a misdemeanor.” She shrugged. “A gross misdemeanor, but I call that a misdemeanor.”

  Calling a gross misdemeanor a misdemeanor is a little like calling a lion a cat. But technically speaking, Toni was right. Mostly. Good enough for me, though. I didn’t feel like springing for Daniel’s Broiler.

  The Merchants Cafe on Yesler in Pioneer Square claims to be Seattle’s oldest restaurant; the sign above the door says it opened in 1890. Inside, it’s been modernized a little, but it still carries the look and feel of an old-time bar—not counting the three large flat-screen televisions strategically placed about the bar, each of which was conveniently showing the Bears–Lions game. I shook my head at the irony.

  I looked around, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that we’d just left a bar where we’d been arrested for carrying a firearm inside, and now we were about to enter another one, still armed. I didn’t feel like racking up any more IOUs with Ron. “Say, Ron, we’re not about to walk right back into the same kind of shit storm we just left, are we?”

  He looked at me, unsure of what I meant. When he saw me staring at the bar, he laughed. “Oh, that. Nah, don’t worry about it. Difference between here and back at the Genesis? You’re with us now.” He turned and waved to a very tall, very thin, gray-haired man who appeared to be the restaurant host.

  “Ronnie!” the man said, walking over and beaming. “Long time no see!”

  Ron smiled and walked over to the man. “Hey, Little Earl!” They shook hands warmly. “You got room for my friends and me tonight?”

  Little Earl grinned. “Even if I have to kick somebody out.” He looked around. “Just so happens, though, somebody just left. We’re in luck. Come on back.”

  We followed him to a table near the back; then he left.

  “About your guns? You’re good in here, anyway,” Ron said to me as we slid into our seats. “When they redid the place a couple years ago, they put that brass handrail up there behind the bar stools. It separates the bar from the restaurant. This area over here isn’t even age-restricted, so you’re okay.”

  “Yeah,” Yoshi said, “but if you walk over there?”

  Ron laughed. “Yeah, if you walk over there, we gotta bust you. Again.”

  “Great,” I said. “I haven’t even paid for this dinner yet. I’ll be sure and wait for the waitress to come to us instead.”

  Twenty minutes later, we were working on our dinners. “So,” Toni said, “you didn’t happen to catch Sophie’s killer while we were getting accosted by some Gothed-out drunks, did you?”

  “Or maybe while we were getting busted right afterward for defending ourselves from the aforementioned drunks?” I added.

  Ron shook his head and reached for a french fry. “Sadly, no. After we talked to you this afternoon, the rest of our day was much more uneventful. In fact, I have to admit that the bad guys have eluded us for yet another day.”

  “Yeah, and that sucks,” Yoshi added.

  “Some days are like that,” I said.

  “Well, at least you got to talk with Nicki Thoms,” Ron said. “I had to talk to Yoshi all day.”

  “She’s an interesting woman,” I said.

  Ron looked at me. “Interesting how?”

  “She’s in love with Danny,” Toni said with a smirk, as she worked on her salad. “That makes her interesting.”

  “Please. Will you stop it,” I said.

  “You could see it at the banquet on Saturday, and you should have seen her today,” Toni said. “I thought I was going to have to throw a bucket of water on her.”

  I shook my head. “That’s bullshit. There was none of that today.”

  Toni smiled, then gave a little shrug. She looked at Ron. “Well, let’s just say that I think it’s clear she likes Danny more than she likes me.”

  I nodded. “Maybe that. But she wasn’t hitting on me or anything like that. In fact, I’m not quite sure what to make of her. Did you know she’s an artist?”

  He looked at me. “Artist? Like a painter or something?”

  “Exactly. A painter. And you want to know something? She’s damn good.”

  Ron stared at me for a moment, then he looked over at Toni, apparently seeking a second opinion.

  Toni grudgingly nodded. “It’s true. I wouldn’t have believed it in a million years, but I saw for myself. She’s even got a whole room in her condo set up as a studio.”

  “That’s what that smell was,” Yoshi said, suddenly remembering. “We interviewed her at her place a while back and I smelled something—now that you mention it, it was paint thinner. Or maybe just the paints, I don’t know. But I smelled it, strong; I assumed she’d just had some work done on her place.”

  “Speaking of artwork, when you were there,” Toni said, smiling, “was she displaying the marijuana roaches and the mirror with the cocaine? It was really damn good. Very artsy.”

  Ron looked at her, then he looked at me.

  “It looked like she hosted a hell of a party last night, and she seemed a little hungover,” I said.

  “That fits,” Ron nodded. “She tell you about her drug bust?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t say that I noticed her bust.”

  Toni slugged me.

  “Busts—plural,” Yoshi added.

  “Oh,” I said. “That kind of bust. Why didn’t you say so? No, she didn’
t mention them.”

  “Well,” Toni said, “I can’t say that I’m exactly surprised, based on what her aunt said and what we saw at her condo today, but if that’s the case, then I am a little surprised that there wasn’t anything about a drug bust in the records you sent over. You holding out on us again?”

  “No, I am not. For your information, her arrests and conviction were all expunged from the record. Technically, they didn’t happen.”

  “What were they for?” I asked.

  “Possession. She got caught with an ounce of pot. And she’s been busted two other times before that: both times for possession as well. One of those was for blow, but in both of the earlier cases, they couldn’t prove who owned the stuff, so charges were dropped.”

  “So three little possession busts?” I asked. “One that sticks?”

  “Right. She got charged with the easy one—it’s a misdemeanor. Thousand-dollar fine and ninety days’ probation. She completed her sentence, and then her daddy’s lawyers got it covered up.”

  I thought about this. “She forgot to mention this to us.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Ron said.

  Toni said, “To be fair, we didn’t ask, either. I can’t believe I’m sitting here defending her, but you have to admit that this might not be something you just bring up around people you don’t know. ‘Hi, I’m Nicki. I got busted once, but my dad got it covered up. What’s your name?’”

  Ron shrugged between bites.

  “Anything else you know about her?” I asked. “Anything else we should know that you maybe forgot to tell us?”

  He smiled. “Now don’t go getting all sensitive,” he said. “We got rules. And for the record, we don’t like her for killing her sister.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, we saw she has an alibi.”

  “That’s right. She was at the Genesis until they closed down at 2:00 a.m. Then she went home with that actor, Ricky Silvagni. He backs up her story.”

  I nodded. “Scratch one suspect.”

  “Damn right. That said, this chick’s no Mother Teresa. And she’s no Sophie Thoms for that matter. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows more than she’s telling.”