Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (16 page)

“Other than charity functions, what did
the two of you do?”

He thought for a second. “
The things that friends do—she was good friend. I
cared for her very much, that’s why her death
is . . . tragic.”

Toni wrote this down in her notebook, then
she looked up at him. “When you say ‘the things
that friends do,’ you mean . . .”

He shrugged. “Dinners. Parties. Like
that.” He smiled. “I was like . . . big brother to her,
her acompañante.”

“Acompañante?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Means companion. Like chaperone.”

“
I get it,” Toni said. “A chaperone. You watched out
for her.”

He smiled. “Sim! Yes. Exactly.”

Toni looked back
down at her notebook and scribbled away before looking up. “
Now this next question is a little more forward, and
I don’t mean to offend you by it, but
it’s something we should know in advance.”

“Please.” He
waved his hand. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. Were you and Sophie
ever lovers?”

The smile quickly left his face, his eyes
flaring briefly. He quickly regained control and smiled before answering. “
Ms. Blair, I am married man. I have beautiful wife.
We have two babies together in Brazil. I don’t
cheat on my wife with other women. I was no
lover with Sophie Thoms.” Lucas ran Sophie’s name together
so quickly it sounded like one word: Sophiethoms. He sounded
indignant, but it’s as if he knew that sounding
indignant was expected, the proper response. So he served it
up. That said, he didn’t sound very convincing.

“I
didn’t think so, but I just had to ask
to get it out of the way.”

He nodded but
didn’t look too pleased.

Toni shuffled through her notes,
then she continued. “When did you stop seeing Sophie? Do
you remember the last time you saw her?”

“Hmmm. I
think it was springtime, March maybe. We played Mexico I
think. Sophie return home from London. We had dinner.”

“And
that was it? You didn’t see her again?”

He
shrugged. “She start seeing another.”

“Ryan Crosby?” I asked.

“I
don’t know the man’s name. Sophie said good-bye. I respected her wishes.”

Toni nodded. “I see,” she
said. “Did you talk to her again after that?”

He
shook his head. “Sadly, no. My season gets busy—I
get busy—Sophie, she
always
busy.” He paused. “Then, she’
s gone. I never get chance to say farewell.”

Toni
flipped back through her notes and studied them for a
few seconds. “You mentioned that you were introduced to Sophie
by her sister, Nicki Thoms.” Toni looked up. “Do you
mind if I ask a couple of questions about Nicki?”

Lucas nodded. “Sim. The wild one.”

Toni tilted her head. “
Why do you call her that? The ‘wild one’?”

He
looked at me, then back at Toni. “You met her,
no?”

Toni nodded.

“Then you must know why I say
this. She’s a painter. Painters are always a little . . .”
he circled his fingers around his temple in the universal
sign for crazy, “loco. Wild. It gives them free spirit.”

Toni nodded. “I can see that in her.” She gave
me a quick sideways glance to make sure I caught
her little dig before she continued. “Let me ask you—
what was your relationship with Nicki?”

“Relationship?” He shook his
head. “No relationship. Again, just friends.” He paused, then added, “
Even if I’m not married to a beautiful woman
with two beautiful babies, there could be no relationship with
Nicki Thoms. Too much bad with her.” He looked over
at me.

“Bad?”

He nodded. “I don’t do drugs,”
he said adamantly.

“I see. And you’re saying Nicki
does?”

He nodded. “I see her a couple of times
with drugs.”

“Marijuana? Cocaine?”

He shrugged. “Both, maybe.”

“Is she
a heavy drug user?”

He thought about this for a
second, then shrugged. “This I don’t know. I don’
t know what means heavy.”

“Did she get high every
time you were with her?” Toni asked.

Lucas shook his
head. “No. Not always.”

“While we’re talking about this,
did you ever see Sophie get high?”

“Sophie?” He shook
his head again. “No. Never even one time.”

Toni nodded. “
Okay. Let me ask you this. Do you recognize this
guy?” She set the close-up photo of the guy
we knew as “Josh” on the table. Lucas picked it
up and studied it.

After a second, he shook his
head. “No. I don’t know this man.”

“Really?” Toni
said. “This picture is a blowup of a section from
this photo.” She showed him the original picture with Sophie,
Nicki, Lucas, and “Josh.” “You can see, you’re all
sitting in a booth at a nightclub. We think the
nightclub was the Genesis.”

A troubled look appeared on Lucas’
s face like a kid who’s just been caught
in a lie. He studied the picture for a few
more seconds, then he said, “I’m sorry. People come
to me all the time with camera and want picture
taken. Same for Sophie and especially same for Nicki too.
I don’t know all these people.”

“But this particular
picture was taken with Nicki’s phone,” I said.

He
looked at the picture for a second, then he looked
back at me. “Then maybe you should ask her.”

The
interview wrapped up shortly thereafter. We thanked Lucas for meeting
us and promised we’d keep him informed. He gave
us a business card with his contact information from the
pocket of his warm-ups.

“What do you think?” Toni
asked as I drove up I-5 in very slow
rush-hour traffic. We were scheduled to meet Ryan Crosby
at 7:00 p.m., only an hour to go. It
was going to be tight.

“I think it’s amazing.”

“
What?”

I switched to a Brazilian accent or at least
my lame attempt at one. “The blue feathers of the
bird—they are the same as your eyes.”

She went
to slug me in the arm, but I knew it
was coming so I leaned away, and it was only
a glancing blow.

“Butthole. Payback’s a bitch, right?”

“You’
re not supposed to call me a butthole, and what
do you mean, payback?” I smiled. “We’re a team,
sweetheart. I’ll sweet-talk the girls. You sweet-talk
the guys. Together, we can’t lose.”

“Yeah, not as
long as we keep talking to people like Lucas and
Nicki Thoms.”

I swerved around traffic. “You’re saying you’
re not buying Lucas’s story?”

“About whether he knows
who this Josh character is? He’s lying.”

“And the
other?”

“You mean the part about him being ‘just friends’
with the girls? Puh-leeze. He’s lying about that
too. If we can’t figure out who this guy
is, then we should get Ron to haul Lucas in
and lean on him. He’ll crack in front of
the police.”

I nodded. “Good idea.”

“You know,” Toni said, “
I may admit that I’ve been a little hard
on Nicki Thoms—probably justifiably, and we’ll find out.
But this guy Lucas is a pure horndog. His poor
wife. She’s probably sitting at home, half a world
away, barefoot and pregnant with two little ones while this
dimwit who thinks he’s God’s gift is out
screwing every bimbo he bumps into. And then denying it
afterward.”

“Remember, that probably includes Sophie. And Nicki.”

“Well, Sophie
doesn’t sound like a bimbo. Then again, if she
was doing the deed with Lucas, that lowers my opinion
of her a few notches.”

“Why? Just because she wanted
to have some fun in the sheets with a guy
who happened to be a celebrity?”

“No, you moron. Because
she wanted to have some fun in the sheets with
a guy who happens to be married. That’s why.”

I thought about this for a second. “That’s true.”

“
That’s right. And you’d better keep that in
mind with the two of us, mister. Side action is
a deal breaker for me.”

I smiled. “Message received.”

She
leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Good. Don’
t you forget it.”

C
hapter 9

“STEP! BLOCK! PUNCH!” WE
WERE IN
the waiting area of the American Martial Arts
studio watching Ryan Crosby take a class of youngsters through
a beginning karate class. The children, dressed for the most
part in stiff, brand-new white
gis
, struggled to follow
along. Most of them looked like they were new to
the sport, still wearing white belts although a few had
been at it for a couple of months and had
progressed to yellow-belt status. Despite their inexperience, all but
a couple seemed tuned in and very enthusiastic.

I closed
my eyes and breathed in deeply. The moment I’d
stepped through the door, the sights and sounds, even the
musty smell of the rubber mats caused memories of my
youth to come rushing over me. I suppose I had
Tony Faraldo to thank for this.

Tony was a big
kid, a little older. Also, he was the neighborhood bully
—the kind of guy who liked to throw his considerable
weight around, especially against skinny, nerdy types like me (or
at least, like I was at the time; I’m
still a little skinny but not so nerdy). Our defining
moment came in an alley on the way home from
school one afternoon when I was in seventh grade. I
made the mistake of objecting to a standard Tony Faraldo
shakedown and ended up with a bloody nose and a
black eye to show for it. And I still lost
my four dollars.

Later that evening, my mom had already
cleaned up my bloody nose, of course, but there was
no hiding the shiner from Dad. He was not happy
. Given his prominence in the legal community, I expected he
’d march right over to the Faraldos and demand that
old man Faraldo fork over my money, probably with penalties
. If old man Faraldo failed to comply, Dad would no
doubt hit him with a lawsuit.

Boy, did I get
that wrong. Instead, the Irishman in Dad came out: he
explained to me in no uncertain terms that it was
mostly
me
who he was not happy with. He asked
me if I’d had to work hard for that
money. Recalling the hilly rides on my bicycle in the
rain delivering papers, I said I had. Then, Dad explained
, it was my job, not his, to go get my
money back, and that he expected me to do so
within a very short period of time. At twelve years
old, he said, I was quite old enough to stick
up for myself against neighborhood bullies. When I countered with
the logical question of how I was supposed to accomplish
this little recovery operation against a fourteen-year-old who
outweighed me by sixty pounds and probably already shaved, Pop
leaned back and considered this for a minute. Then, quite
abruptly, he dug out his phone book. Twenty minutes later
, we were on our way to the Queen Anne Shotokan
Karate studio—a place where I spent three or four
afternoons a week for the next four years. The sights
and sounds of Ryan’s studio brought back fond memories
.

Incidentally, I never did get my money back from Tony
Faraldo. His old man got arrested and sent up to
Walla Walla for six years for possession with intent to
distribute and his mom moved the rest of the family
out of state before I’d even got my yellow
belt (I wasn’t about to try tackling Tony until
I had some color). Fortunately, Dad forgot about it. And
, I guess, so did Tony because he still owes me
my four dollars. Plus penalties. That’s okay. I didn
’t forget. And I’m patient. Who knows? Maybe one
day, I’ll collect.

Ryan’s class ended a couple
of minutes later, and after he said his good-byes
to the kids and their parents, we walked up.

“You
must be Danny Logan and Toni Blair,” he said with
a smile as we approached. We’d seen the photo
of him and Sophie at the Genesis, but in person
he was boyishly handsome with dark brown hair and blue
eyes.

“That’s us,” I said, shaking hands. “Quite a
crowd of kids you’ve got here.”

Ryan nodded. “They
’re enthusiastic, that’s for sure. They keep me hopping
.” He nodded toward the back of the studio. “We have
a little office in the back if you want a
little privacy.”

“Great.”

We followed him through a door at
the back of the studio to a little room not
much bigger than a large closet, with barely enough space
for a small desk and a couple of metal folding
chairs. It would have been completely claustrophobic in there were
it not for the wall next to the desk, which
was a one-way mirror that looked out onto the
studio.

“Reminds me of when I was a kid,” I
said. “I started out in a studio laid out very
much like this one.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, “me too. Must
be a standard dojo footprint.”

“Probably.” We took our seats
. “So as I understand it,” I said, “you’re a
third-year law student at U-Dub Law and you
intern at the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation. How do you
find time to run a karate studio?”

He smiled. “Oh
, I don’t run it. It belongs to my cousin
Wayne. He started it about three years ago, hoping to
be able to use my dad’s police connections to
get customers. He asked me to help, and I’ve
been a part-time instructor ever since. I teach here
a couple nights a week.” He opened a desk drawer
and pulled out a small bottle of water. “You guys
like one?”

We both declined.

He took a drink and
then screwed the top back on the bottle. “I want
to do everything I can to help find out who
killed Sophie.” He paused for a second, then added, “But
—and I’m not complaining and I’ll answer whatever
questions you have—but you know, the police already asked
me all the same questions you guys are probably going
to ask. I spent hours going over everything with Ron
Bergstrom. More than once, actually. You can probably just get
all this information from him.”

I nodded. “I know. Ron
sent over the transcript of your interview. I think we
have a pretty good handle on it, and we know
you even passed a polygraph. What we’re looking to
do here is to fill in around the edges, maybe
uncover something that might point us in a new direction
. Could be something that doesn’t even seem important to
you but could connect with something we’ve heard from
someone else. We’re looking for angles here, right? We
’re hoping that if we can reconstruct Sophie’s background
based on what we learn, something might turn up.”

He
nodded. “I get it. Well, like I said, whatever I
can do to help, I’ll do. I’ve been
racking my brain trying to put things together, but I
don’t have any ideas, either. I’m just about
to the point where I’m thinking it might have
been just completely random—some kind of insane psychopath asshole
.”

I nodded. “That’s a possibility.”

“If it is—some
random killer, that’ll make it harder to catch the
son of a bitch who did it, won’t it
?”

I nodded. “Yeah, yeah it will. But before you get
too far down that road, I think it’s a
little early to come to that conclusion. Personally, we’re
not there yet. In fact, we haven’t reached
any
conclusions.”

“That’s good.”

“So with that,” Toni said, “why
don’t you start by telling us about your relationship
with Sophie.”

He looked down at the desk for a
second, then said, “I met Sophie in March of this
year. Before that—sometime in my second year in law
school, I knew I was going to need an intern
position for my last year in school, and I knew
that if I waited ’til the summer, the good positions
would all be taken. I was doing pretty well with
my classes, so I figured I’d get a jump
on the competition by grabbing an intern slot early—before
the end of the second year. I wanted to intern
at a nonprofit because it fit in with what I
want to do when I graduate. Someone mentioned the Beatrice
Thoms Memorial Foundation, so this past March I went over
and checked it out. I met with Eric Gaston and
Oliver Ward. Eric walked me through the Foundation’s mission
and its activities. I liked what the Foundation was doing
, so after Eric offered me the position, I jumped at
it. He’s actually the person who hired me and
technically I answer to him.”

“Is this when you met
Sophie, then?”

“No. Sophie was in London at the time
, I think. A week or so after I got hired
though, I met her when she got back to Seattle
.” He cleared his throat, then he continued. “Eric loaded me
up with work right away. He seemed pretty relieved to
have someone actually willing to do some work; the Foundation
has been around for a while, but Eric was still
in the process of converting it to professional management. It
was still a little disorganized. It’s what you’d
call a ‘work in progress.’ We’re still pretty understaffed
, for example. Eric wants to keep it lean, and I
get that. Anyway, I was the best person there at
spreadsheets and because I was in law school, Eric gave
me all the legal documents to look at. He saved
a little on legal bills that way. I did what
I could and referred the rest of the stuff to
an outside firm. I was busy—real busy—so I
didn’t see too much of Sophie; I didn’t
have a chance, really. Then, one afternoon, I think it
was Good Friday, I was working late, and she came
into my office. Eric had let everyone go home at
noon, and Sophie didn’t have a ride home. She
asked me if I’d take her.” He paused and
reflected as he recalled the events. “Sorry,” he said. “It
’s still a little tough.”

“That’s okay,” I said
.

“I was pretty flattered that she’d even ask me
, so I drove her to her condo.” He paused for
a second. “I mean, I’d noticed her, of course
—she was awesome. But I mean, she was
Sophie Thoms
. I figured she didn’t even know who I was
. We’d never even talked to each other, so I
didn’t pay her too much attention. But there I
was, driving her home to her condo. I remember she
got a kick out of my truck—it’s a
Toyota Tacoma—pretty much tricked out for off-road. It
’s pretty rugged, not at all the smooth ride she
was used to: she drove a Mercedes. It sits up
pretty high, so I had to help her in and
out. We talked a little bit on the way and
after that, you can be sure I paid attention to
her. Sophie was . . .” he paused and looked out the window
at the empty studio for a moment. “Well, she was
beautiful and nice and totally classy. And the amazing thing
? After that ride home, she seemed to notice me too
.” He shrugged. “Things just kind of got started from there
.”

Toni nodded. “Was she happy? A happy person, generally? Did
she seem troubled by anything?”

He thought about this for
a second, then he said, “She was happy almost all
the time until there at the last. Then she was
a little different, maybe like she was preoccupied, you know
what I mean?”

“Yeah, I read where you told Ron
that.” Toni looked at her notes. “Ron’s notes say
that you couldn’t pinpoint any reason why she might
have felt that way?”

He shook his head. “No, I
asked her if everything was okay, and she said it
was. It’s just something I noticed—maybe like a
feeling I had.”