Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4)

by Grayson, M. D.

  “Don’t forget to wear your life jacket,” Toni said, checking me over at the door before I left.

  “I don’t have a life jacket.”

  “Well, they’d better give you one. Don’t get on the boat without one, understand?”

  I nodded. She reached up and adjusted my collar, then kissed me on the cheek. I felt like it was my first day at school. “If you insist on doing this silly thing, be careful.” She leaned forward and kissed me again. “By the way, if anything does happen to you, but by some stroke of luck you manage to make it back alive? I’m going to hold it over your head and tell you ‘I told you so’ for, like, the rest of your days.” I smiled. She made her little jokes, but having someone who cares about you—really cares—is a pretty cool feeling.

  I grabbed my duffle bag and walked downstairs, Toni’s warning about Gaston replaying in my mind. Ordinarily, I’m not one to rush blindly into a dangerous situation. Okay—maybe a bit from time to time. I call it “controlled aggression.” But I like to think it’s part of my game. Usually, I’ve found that if I can move decisively and put a bad guy back on his heels a little, I can often interrupt his plans and sometimes even steal his momentum. That’s when he tends to make mistakes. The trick, of course, is to not overplay my hand or, worse, find out that by playing my “bold and aggressive” game, I was actually playing right into his. That’s bad. And along these lines, I’d do well to remind myself that the invitation to the boat race was Gaston’s idea, not mine.

  Although it wasn’t raining, the air was damp and cool with partly cloudy skies and a brisk breeze from the southwest. I’ll admit right up front that I’m the ultimate landlubber—I don’t know anything about boats in general, and even less about sailing. Even though I’ve lived near the water in Seattle my whole life, I’ve never even set foot on a sailboat. Nothing against the water or boats, I guess I just never got around to it. In my leisure time, I usually go camping—on dry land. That said, I figured the steady wind that hit me in the face as I walked across the parking lot to my Jeep had to be a good thing if you were a sailor. I jumped in and took off.

  Saturday morning traffic was light, and it only took fifteen minutes to reach the Elliott Bay Marina. I parked and started the walk down to the water level and to Maggie Bluff’s restaurant, our predetermined meeting point before loading up for the race.

  I’ve only been to the Elliott Bay Marina a couple of times—once to go to the Palisade restaurant upstairs and another time to have lunch at Maggie Bluff’s downstairs. The marina’s an impressive place. It’s tucked into the northeast corner of Smith Cove, almost under the Magnolia Bluff (thus the restaurant name). I’m told that boat slips are expensive, and the boats that fill them even more so. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the experience to be able to tell. I had to admit that to my inexperienced eye, some of them sure looked expensive.

  On the water level, I looked out across the vast field of boats. All but the largest were rocking back and forth in the cool breeze, water splashing up onto the docks. The wind caused the ropes on some of the boats to slap against their masts in a rhythmic bang-bang-bang kind of pattern that sounded cool at first—I think they call it “salty.” As I walked to the restaurant though, it occurred to me that the constant banging on a windy day would probably drive you insane over time if you happened to be on the boat parked next door—a maritime version of Chinese water torture. Still, the cool air on my face felt great: moist, heavy—alive even. I was excited about the prospect of going out on the water and trying something new. Never mind the fact that my skipper might be a murderer. I turned and entered the restaurant.

  “Danny Logan!” I heard my name called out as I walked in.

  I looked and saw Gaston seated with a group of men. Except for Gaston himself, the only one of the group who I recognized was Robert Brownell. Brownell’s bright red hair nearly matched the red foul-weather overalls he wore. In fact, the entire crew wore the same matching red bib-type foul-weather gear.

  “Good morning,” I said as I walked over.

  “Glad you could make it, Danny,” Gaston said. He introduced me all around. “Danny here is the guy I told you all about,” he explained to the others. “He’s filling in for Rod. He’ll be in the cockpit with me. Danny’s new to sailing. Larry and Jonah, I was thinking he might help you guys with trimming if you need it. But with the air this morning the way it is, we can definitely use some extra ballast, in any case.” He looked at me. “Although, Danny, I didn’t realize you were so damn skinny. You might not be the best ballast in the world.” The others laughed.

  “We can just throw a couple of rocks in his coat,” Brownell called out, in his funny-pitched voice. “Remember to take ’em out, though, if we start to go down.” The group laughed again. They seemed like a pretty good bunch of guys.

  I declined the offer of anything to eat. I’d never been seasick, but I was afraid this might be mostly because I’d not spent all that much time on boats. Just in case, I wasn’t about to load up on a big breakfast that might want to come back up an hour later. Gaston stood up. “Well, guys, we’re here. And the course is there. We got to bounce on outta here and sail up to the starting line abeam Shilshole by eleven. Let’s hit it.”

  “Ready to tack!” Gaston yelled. A few minutes ago, we’d rounded the leeward mark—the last turn in the race that marked the start of the final leg toward home. We were now back on a windward leg, zigzagging our way southward into the wind toward the finish line. Gaston turned to me. “Stay right up there on the rail until I call out, Danny!” he called out as the boat blasted its way upwind. I nodded. By now, with two-thirds of the course under my belt, I was getting to be an old pro at this. My job was pretty easy: boat leaned to the left, I sat on the right. Boat leaned to the right, I sat on the left. What’s so hard about that? Besides, on the windward leg, the stiff breeze made the boat heel over so much that if you somehow screwed up and sat on the wrong side, you’d probably be inches from the ice-cold Puget Sound water, if not actually in it.

  “Tacking in three . . . two . . . one . . . tacking!” The crew sprung to action as Gaston spun the huge wheel. Almost immediately, the big boat shifted course to the left. I mean port. Which I think actually means we were on what they called a starboard tack, but I didn’t have that all the way down yet. There was a mad rush of activity: the slack sails thundered as the boom swung across our heads to the opposite side of the cockpit. The guys at the front of the boat moved the big sail up front to the other side. Winches were spun frantically with loud whirring and clicking noises, causing the boat to accelerate and heel to the left dramatically. Like a good human ballast, I scurried up to the opposite rail to my assigned place and leaned back and hung on. With the entire crew except Gaston similarly hiked out over the rail, we helped counterbalance the boat and, I’m told, increase the all-important boat speed by a couple tenths of a knot.

  I have to say, we were really flying. Before the race, I had no idea of the power of the wind. If you’d have asked me the correct music to accompany a sailboat ride, I’d have thought of something light and airy like “A Pirate Looks at Forty” by Jimmy Buffet or maybe if you wanted classical, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Polite music. Mood music. Light, warmhearted, fun stuff. Based on my experience today, I’d have been way wrong. Now, sitting just inches from the water, I’d have to say that the more appropriate music would be the “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin or Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner. Nothing polite about it. I’m talking hard nose: raw, physical, driving kind of stuff. Kicking ass and taking names kind of stuff.

  According to Gaston, his J/133 sailboat weighed in at something like 18,000 pounds. Yet, the way the wind blew the forty-three-foot boat around the course made it seem like it weighed nothing at all, no more than a soap bubble in a bathtub. The constant noise of the wind in the sails and of the deep blue water blasting past—particularly on the windward legs—gave me a sensation of the real power of the elements, something I’d never really experience
d like this before. When the boat pounded into a wave, the cold saltwater flew back and smacked me in the face with the stinging force of gravel on a windshield. I learned to quickly turn away when I saw the spray at the bow launch into the air and still, the spray blasted the foul-weather gear they’d thankfully loaned me. It was like little bullets slamming into the side of a wall. Holy crap! I have to admit, it was awesome—an absolute blast. I can see why people get addicted to this.

  I looked back and saw that we were far out in front of the other boats—only one other had even rounded the final mark. Unless we did something goofy like run into a log, we were certain to cross the finish line first and by a wide margin at that. That said, I’d learned that crossing the finish line first didn’t automatically mean you’d won the race. The handicap ratings that were applied tended to even out the field and allow the slow boats to compete with the fast boats, kind of like a golf handicap.

  The windward legs at the start and end of the race were the busiest for the crew. Since this meant we were trying to go directly into the wind—something even the best sailboats cannot do, we had to constantly tack back and forth to accomplish it, zigzagging our way to a point several miles away. The entire crew was kept jumping. The other two legs of the racecourse with the huge spinnaker sail flying were a little less busy, providing more time for conversation, but still most of the conversation was hard-core sailboat racing—something about laylines and rhumb lines and boat lengths and boat speed—technical stuff like that, mostly over my head. There was never a chance to talk to Gaston directly about the case. I don’t really know what I’d expected, but there was no privacy on the boat anyway. The boat was big—the mast incredibly tall, but the cockpit area where I was stationed with Gaston was small. Even with half the crew forward on the foredeck, there’d have been no way to subtly work in questions about a murder investigation, given that there were never fewer than four or five people in close proximity to the cockpit at any given time. I pretty much had to restrict my investigating to simply watching and observing. Still, I learned some things about Gaston.

  Even a newbie like me could see that sailing a big, lightweight sailboat in a stiff twenty-five-knot breeze is a pretty tense endeavor. Well orchestrated—choreographed if you will—but still tense. And from what I’ve seen of people in the past, tense endeavors tend to magnify character flaws. After a solid hour and a half of pretty much nonstop action, Gaston remained calm, never once raising his voice in anger. Instead, he issued commands in a strong, confident leader-style voice. He was having fun, and his mood was infectious. When corrections needed to be made, he called them out, but without reproach. He was free with praise and encouragement. He was a leader, the kind that inspired a deep loyalty. I’d seen a few like him—not many, but a few—in the army.

  Of course, the other thing I learned by watching him was that he was watching me too. Several times, I glanced over and caught him checking me out. Was he sizing me up? Probing? Trying to learn something? Trying to evaluate my performance as a potential future crew member? Or was he just watching over me because I was new and he was worried about me screwing up or falling overboard? Or were his motives more sinister—the calculating motives of a dangerous person who’d murdered before and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again if he felt it necessary. I couldn’t tell. I was unable to read him without actually questioning him. I didn’t have much time to ponder the subject anyway, now that we were tacking back and forth regularly. I was kept busy hopping from one side of the cockpit to the other.

  “Here we go again!” Gaston yelled. “Ready to tack!” Everyone got ready, then we repeated the whole turning procedure, this time in the opposite direction. The boat went from heeled over hard to the left to flat level and then heeled over hard to the right. I moved to the new high side. I was just reaching for a hold on the lifeline when suddenly the boat heeled over much more dramatically and much quicker than I’d expected. The deck, which had been about forty-five degrees to the water, suddenly seemed almost straight up and down—perpendicular to the sea. Caught mid-step, I lost my footing on the wet deck, and my feet slipped out from beneath me. Immediately, I started to fall from the high left side of the cockpit straight down toward the right side rail, which was now actually underwater.

  I managed to lift my legs up as I fell, which made it so that an instant later I slammed butt-first onto the inside of the cockpit, which was now nearly parallel with the water. The jolt fired up my spine and immediately I saw stars. My legs and feet cleared the cockpit and shot right under the lowest lifeline, then over the rail and into the icy water. The shock of the cold water instantly cleared the stars from my head. I didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because almost immediately, the drag of my legs being pulled through the ocean at ten miles per hour created a huge force on me—a force which seemed intent on sucking me right under the lifeline and into the ocean.

  The only thing between me and the Puget Sound was the vinyl-coated-wire lifeline installed on what suddenly looked like very thin stainless steel stanchions around the railing. I was slipping, being sucked right under the line. I thought fast. Unless I wanted to go swimming, I needed to grab one of the lines just before I got swept overboard—grab and hang on. Judging by the way the water was tearing at my legs, though, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold on even if I managed to grab a line in time.

  Suddenly, a strong hand grabbed the back of the harness that was part of my inflatable life jacket. Immediately, I stopped sliding.

  I turned around and saw that Gaston had reached out and grabbed me as I slid past. We looked each other in the eye for what seemed like ten minutes but was probably only a second. Then he smiled as he pulled me back onboard with a mighty heave. The boat returned to a more normal heel, and I fell into the cockpit floor at his feet, now back to a more normal forty-five-degree angle. I took a couple of quick, deep breaths. My heart rate was on adrenalin-racing overload. I looked up and saw Gaston looking down at me.

  “You okay?” he asked as he made a correction to the boat’s course.

  I nodded. “Yeah . . . holy shit! Thanks.”

  He smiled again. “Don’t worry about it.” He looked up and made another slight correction on the wheel, then he looked back down. “But I gotta say, all things being equal? It’s probably best to stay on the boat. Saves a lot of time.” Then, he gave me a little grin.

  I was completely incapable of reading his expression. He might have been completely sincere, worried that I’d almost lost it. Then again, he might have been saying, “I got you, you son of a bitch. I can play with you all day long until I’m tired of you. And when that happens? I won’t be pulling you back. I’ll be pushing you under.”

  Chapter 23

  WE MADE IT TO THE OFFICE at seven thirty Monday morning, just in case the FedEx guy got there a little early. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, but Doc, Kenny, and Richard were already there.

  “Been here since six thirty,” Doc said.

  I nodded. “That oughta cover it.”

  A couple of minutes before eight, the bells on the door jingled and the FedEx guy walked in with our package. Five minutes after that, Kenny had the compact flash card we’d received plugged into a card reader on the conference room PC. We gathered around to have a look.

  The computer booted up, and Kenny opened the directory.

  “What is this?” I asked as I read the file directory. “Just six pictures? That’s it?”

  “Looks like,” Kenny said, studying the screen. “There’s nothing else on the card.”

  We stared at the screen for a second. “Look at the file names,” Kenny said. “They seem to have a project name followed by a project number. ‘SenbeteSchool002,’ ‘BatiWater006’ . . . that sort of thing. Judging by the gaps in the numbers, I’d say that Leonard took more pictures than those he copied here. He must have had a laptop with him that he used to copy his original disc. Out of the camera onto the laptop, out of the laptop onto this card a
s a backup.”

  “But you found his laptop?” I asked.

  “Yeah. There wasn’t anything on it. If he used it, he must have erased the folder after he made copies.”

  I looked at the numbers. If Leonard had taken time to copy only certain of his photos and leave them with his brother for safekeeping, then presumably those particular files were the ones he considered important. “Open up the first one,” I said.

  Kenny clicked on the file name, and a photo popped up on the screen. The image showed a sign, leaning forward slightly as one post sagged. The sign’s dusty, faded letters read: Future site of Senbete School

  Funded by the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation

  Implemented by the Southern Star Relief Fund

  The sign was above a flat, bare parcel of ground, only a few scrubby weeds here and there to break up the landscape. There was no school in the photo.

  “Next,” I said.

  The next photo was a picture of another sign, similar condition, this one reading: Future site of Bati Clean Water Project #2

  Funded by the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation

  Implemented by the Southern Star Relief Fund

  Behind the sign, another bare parcel of ground. But no water well.

  Each of the remaining four photographs was similar—each showed a dilapidated “Coming Soon” sign, but none showed any actual project.

  “What does this mean?” Richard asked. “Leonard went there expecting to see projects, but instead all he found were empty signs?”

  It was quiet for a second.