Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (11 page)

She
reached for a tissue again before I noticed that she
’d started to cry.

“I’m sorry to put you
through this again.”

She nodded. “Sophie was my sister and
my best friend. I can’t tell you how incredibly
empty I feel now.” She sniffed and dabbed at her
eyes. “I actually even considered moving back to London, if
you can believe that.”

“And have to deal with your
father?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, sniffing. “I suppressed the
urge.”

As she’d promised, Nicki emailed me four
pictures she had of Sophie’s male friends. I had
Kenny open up the files and enhance and enlarge them
. These photos were now taped up on the case board
, and I was studying them a little before 2:00 p
.m. when Toni walked into the conference room. She sat
down beside me and looked at the pictures. “Did Nicki
say who they were?”

“She knew three of them.” I
pointed to a handsome, dark-haired man. “This fellow here
on the left in picture number one is none other
than Lucas Santos.”

She leaned forward and stared at the
photo. Lucas had his arm around Sophie, apparently at a
party. They were part of a group of four other
people. Toni whistled softly. “So that’s the famous Lucas
. Well, I can tell you one thing—ugly he ain
’t.”

I looked at her. “I suppose. If you like
the dark, mysterious Latin type.”

“Yep. Works for me,” she
said, still staring at the picture. Great. I have sandy
blond hair and a fairly light Irish complexion.

I pointed
to the next photo that showed a very young-looking
man. “This guy here in number two is Ryan Crosby
.” He also had dark hair.

“Wait a minute. I’m
not done looking at Lucas.”

I turned and looked at
her. “Really?”

She turned to me and gave me a
sneaky little smile. “Jealous?”

I shook my head. “Of him
? Why?” Why should I be jealous of a good-looking
soccer player who’s also a millionaire? I turned and
pointed to the next photo. “Ryan Crosby.”

She laughed and
turned back to study the new photo. Ryan and Sophie
, accompanied by two other people, stood next to each other
, apparently at the Genesis. “Holy crap,” Toni said. “Look at
Sophie.” I’d been doing it since before Toni’d
walked in, hardly able to take my eyes away. In
the photo, Sophie was wearing a full-length black dress
gathered at the waist with a plunging neckline. Apparently, it
was the dress she’d been wearing when they pulled
her out of the river. The sleeves were long and
shiny black, covered in what looked to be yards of
black lace. Her eyes were heavily made-up, her smiling
lips a deep red. Ryan Crosby, dressed in black slacks
and tails and wearing his own eye makeup, stood next
to her, his arm around her waist. “I expected a
high schooler, based on what Nicki said. He doesn’t
look like a high schooler to me.”

“He’s not
.”

“Wow, he’s a good-looking guy too,” Toni said
.

“Take your word for it,” I said, continuing to stare
at the photo for a minute before moving on. I
pointed to the next photo. “Number three. Nicki didn’t
know this guy here.” The man in the photo with
Sophie was much older than she was. In the photo
, he and Sophie were in formal clothing, apparently at some
sort of gala or another.

“If Nicki didn’t know
who it was, then who took the picture, and how
’d it get on her phone?”

“Good question. Same thing
I asked her. She says she took the picture, but
she didn’t remember the guy. All of these pictures
came off her phone.” I pointed to the next photo
. “She
did
remember this guy in picture number four. His
name is Gary Margolian—Doctor Gary Margolian.”

“A doctor, huh
? He’s an MD?”

“Nope. A physicist. Works at U
-Dub.”

“Really?”

“Nicki said he and Sophie met at some
function, and he asked her out. Nicki says as far
as she knows, they only went out the one time
. She never heard anything else about him.”

“Number five,” I
said, pointing to the last picture. “It’s actually a
close-up of this guy here in picture number one
. See him there, behind Lucas? Check out picture number two
. It’s the same guy. He’s the one with
the group, almost hidden there behind Sophie. I had Kenny
actually pull this guy out of the first photo and
blow him up.”

Toni leaned forward and examined the picture
. The man was thin with blond hair and a big
smile.

“Nicki says she didn’t recognize him,” I said
.

“Really? That’s funny, seeing how he’s in half
the pictures she sent over. Doesn’t seem like he
just accidentally showed up and made his way into her
pictures two separate times.”

“Yeah, I thought that was a
little curious too. Want to see something else funny? Look
at his arms.”

She looked at the picture again. “Those
are tattoos, aren’t they. What’s that? Prison ink
?”

“Looks like it to me. Kenny’s trying to enhance
that part of the photo now.”

“Humph. But Nicki doesn
’t know him?”

“That’s what she said.”

“R-i
-g-h-t,” she said.

I smiled. “You’re starting
to sound like a nonbeliever.”

“Me?” she said. “Moi? Hell
, Danny, I’m sure everything Nicki Thoms says is the
whole truth and nothing but the truth.” She smiled. “Know
what I mean?”

“How is it that you guys are
on the case like, what, less than twenty-four hours
, and you already uncover three people we never even heard
of?” Ron and Yoshi were on the speakerphone. I was
talking to him about our photo discovery and he was
a little peeved. Earlier, I’d emailed copies of
the five photos to Ron, and now I think he
was a little embarrassed. “We knew about Lucas Santos and
about Ryan Crosby, but not about any of the others
.”

“Simple,” Yoshi said. “Nicki never gave us these photos. She
held out on us.”

“What—Nicki Thoms has an agenda
?” Toni said, feigning surprise. “Blame it on whatever you like
, but it looks like we’re already paying off for
you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ron said. “Maybe you
’re right, and by tomorrow you’ll have it all
figured out and we can go home.”

“Probably,” I said
. “Meanwhile, maybe you can help us identify this man in
number three and the mystery ex-con?”

“We’re already
on it. You planning to talk to any of these
people?”

I nodded. “Thought we might.”

“Okay. Listen up—here
’s the deal. You’re cleared to talk to Lucas
and to the Crosby kid for background if you want
. If you really want to make yourself useful, why don
’t you try and ID this mystery guy—the one
with the prison ink. And by ID, I mean ID
—no interview. Not yet.”

“Why not?” Our job would be
a little cumbersome if Ron only allowed us to talk
to suspects that he’d already cleared.

“Because we’re
in the middle of a murder investigation—
my
investigation, and
you’re part of
my
team. Bad enough you’ve
got to ID the suspects for us. But I draw
the line at you conducting the initial interviews.”

When I
thought about it, I could understand his sensitivity. “Okay. We
at least have to be part of it.”

The line
was quiet for a few seconds, and then he said
, “Done.”

“Good. We’ll keep at it.”

“Keep me posted
. And don’t try to arrest anybody.”

I thought the
first place we might start would be to run past
Oliver and Cecilia’s house and ask them if they
knew the two guys we couldn’t identify in the
photos.

“I recognize this man here in the black tuxedo
in your picture number three,” Cecilia said. “His name is
Edward Munsen.”

Oliver looked. “Of course! Edward Munsen. His family
owns automobile dealerships. I missed him.”

“He’s from Scandinavia
,” Cecilia said. “Norway, I think.”

I made a note. “How
about this last man here—number five? He shows up
in two of the original photos, so we figure he
must be someone that Sophie knew.”

Oliver studied the photos
. “I’ve seen him before . . . yes, I believe I’ve
seen him at the office a time or two, believe
it or not. Come to think of it, I’m
certain of it.” He leaned back and closed his eyes
, thinking, then he looked at the picture again and shook
his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t recall
his name.”

“He doesn’t work for the Foundation?” Toni
asked.

Oliver shook his head. “Oh no.” Then he looked
up quickly. “Not unless someone’s hired him without telling
me.”

C
hapter 6

AFTER WE LEFT OLIVER AND CECILIA’S
, we had a decision to make. It was already after
five. If we hustled, we could make the opening kickoff
of the Monday night football game at Duke’s. The
Bears were playing the Lions. Thing was, we like Monday
night football, but we’re Seahawks fans. Neither of us
follows the Bears or the Lions. Toni suggested, “We could
always swing on by Genesis and see if anyone recognizes
the guy in the picture. We could still make it
home by halftime.” Easy call. We headed south.

Seattle’s
SoDo district is a transitional area that runs between the
south end of downtown Seattle to the north end of
the Industrial District, which lies farther south. It includes Safeco
Field, where the Mariners play and CenturyLink Field, home of
the Seahawks and the Sounders. I think SoDo is supposed
to be Seattle’s version of New York’s SoHo
district, except from what I can tell of the area
, whatever it was in New York that led to people
scooping up old manufacturing spaces and turning them into trendy
lofts seemed a little more reluctant to take hold here
. Mostly, except for the stadiums, there’s a bunch of
industrial buildings, building-supply shops and boarded-up old brick
buildings.

Genesis is located south of Safeco Field at the
edge of SoDo, just north of Spokane Street, in an
old masonry building that used to house an air-conditioning
contractor until the construction bust, following the dot-com boom
in 2004, which knocked them out. Since it reopened a
year later as a nightclub, it has become quite trendy
with the black-leather-and-studs crowd. In fact, of
all the Seattle nightclubs, Genesis has developed a reputation as
the real deal, a no-compromise Goth club. For sure
, there were other places that claimed to be Goth clubs
in Seattle, but at Genesis you’d never find “Tuesday
’80s night,” or “Thursday Comedy Club.” The Genesis was pure
Goth—filled with relentless pounding music from the likes of
The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Bauhaus. At Genesis
, there was no Friday night “Dress in Black” night. Here
,
every night
was black leather and chains. From time to
time, the fun was known to get out of hand
. Parking lot fights were not uncommon. That wouldn’t be
the case tonight, though, because it was raining and that
tended to . . . dampen the action. So to speak.

We parked
, walked beneath a little awning at the entry, and went
inside, where we found ourselves in a small vestibule. We
were greeted by a bouncer and a ticket girl wielding
a hand stamp. It took a few seconds to adjust
to the surroundings in the small room: I was struck
by the volume of the bass notes coming from beyond
the swinging doors leading to the bar. It was as
if we were sitting inside a barrel and someone was
pounding on the sides with a sledgehammer. In addition to
the noise, the ambience was enhanced by the dim light
and the unmistakable aroma of cheap bar—your basic full
-frontal assault on the senses. I wondered how these two
could stand it in here for any length of time
.

The bouncer inspected me pretty carefully. I suppose I didn
’t look much like the normal Genesis patron and this
probably made him suspicious. For his part, he looked exactly
like a normal bouncer. He looked Samoan, a little over
six feet tall and well over three hundred pounds: the
man was
big
. I think his arms were bigger around
than my legs. His hair was short and dark, and
he wore a name tag that said
Randy
.

The ticket
girl looked bored as she stared up at him from
her chair behind a plastic folding table, languidly chewing her
gum to the beat of the music. Her name tag
read
Amaranth
. She had long, straight black hair. Her face
was very pale (either because of makeup or because she
got even less sun than a normally sun-deprived Seattleite
), and her eyes were heavily made-up: dramatically dark eyebrows
, eyeliner, and eye shadow. She wore deep red lipstick that
was lined in black. Her long, frilly black dress had
sleeves made of lace that were gathered at her wrists
. I noticed tall, black platform boots sticking out from beneath
the little table where she sat. Around her neck was
a black lace choker with a red rose in the
center.

While Randy was still checking us out, Amaranth looked
at Toni; then she checked me out. She was giving
her chewing gum a real workout, snapping it loudly as
she looked me over. Finally, she said, “Ladies in dress
get in free before eleven. Ten bucks for guys, plus
another ten for out of uniform.”

Uniform? I looked over
at Toni and saw that she wore all black: black
jeans, a tight black T-shirt, and a black leather
jacket. On the ride over, she’d even had time
to put on some dark eye shadow and bright red
lipstick, as if she knew the dress code by heart
. She was stunning. I, on the other hand, was in
my standard Seattle dress for a rainy autumn night: blue
jeans with hiking boots and a dark green polo shirt
under a navy North Face jacket. Works pretty well for
me most of the time—but not so good if
I wanted to get into a Goth club. “Twenty bucks
? Just for me? Just to get in? We just need
to ask a few quick questions.”

She flashed an insincere
little smile for a millisecond—then it disappeared. “Cool. Questions
are good. Twenty bucks, and you can go inside and
knock yourself out.”

“Maybe I should just go in by
myself?” Toni asked at the exact moment two guys staggered
out the swinging double doors, talking and laughing loudly. Both
were tall, near my height, dressed in black leather pants
and leather jackets. They had matching red hair, gelled back
tightly. Each had several rings and studs adorning his face
. They could have been twins—in fact, maybe they were
twins. They definitely reeked of alcohol and leaned heavily on
each other, apparently having a little trouble with the balance
thing. I’d say they were clearly into the .10
-plus percent blood-alcohol range. They paused as the door
swung shut behind them. Together, they sort of propped each
other up and tried to focus on Toni for a
moment, but neither could hold it together long enough to
focus on us. Then, one of them started to get
the heaves. Fortunately, Randy noticed and shoved them both out
the front door just in time.

I glanced at Toni
quickly, then reached for my wallet. “Okay. Twenty bucks it
is.”

After I paid, I pulled the photo of the
still-unidentified man out of my pocket and showed it
to the two of them. “Ever seen this guy?”

Randy
studied the photo; Amaranth didn’t even pretend to. “Nope
,” she said disinterestedly, lifting up her hand and inspecting her
long, glossy black nails. “Never seen ’em.”

Randy looked at
Amaranth, then back at us. He shrugged. “Sorry.”

We held
out our hands and Amaranth stamped us. “Enjoy your evening
,” she said cheerfully between snaps of her gum. We turned
and went through the swinging double doors.

The wall of
sound when we entered felt visceral. I didn’t reach
up and cover my ears because to have done so
would have been decidedly uncool. But I sure as hell
wanted to. “What is this . . . this noise?” I said to
Toni, leaning toward her so that she could hear me
.

“Bella Lugosi’s Dead,” she said. “Bauhaus.”

I looked at
her. “You knew that?” She smiled.

I like almost all
kinds of music—rock, jazz, country, soul, good old Seattle
grunge. But I have to say I had a hard
time with this stuff. Maybe it was the so-called
music combined with the red lights inside, I don’t
know. I do know that I wanted out as soon
as I’d paid my twenty bucks to get in
. Great.

I tried to adjust as I checked the place
out. It wasn’t very crowded—we were early and
apparently things didn’t get rocking at the ole’ Genesis
until later in the evening.

The main room was situated
with a bar on the right and a stage and
large dance floor—both empty now—on the left as
we entered. There looked to be a couple dozen tables
between the bar and the stage, maybe half of them
occupied. Two waitresses wearing black bikini tops and black skirts
shuffled between the tables and the bar. Toward the back
, a half-dozen booths lined the walls but even with
the fake candles on the wall, it was too dark
for me to be able to tell if they were
occupied or not.

“See anybody you know?” I yelled to
Toni over the music.

“Oh, sure!” she yelled back. “Nearly
everybody.” That Toni. What a kidder she is.

We walked
over and took a couple of seats at the bar
. Perhaps because we weren’t standing under a giant speaker
at the doorway, it was maybe just a little less
noisy at the bar. The bartender was working the other
end of the counter. He was tall, maybe six three
or so, and he was completely bald. For a shirt
, he wore a simple black leather vest, unbuttoned, over his
bare chest. His muscular arms and chest were covered with
tattoos. The men he was serving turned to look at
us as we sat down. One of them, a skinny
man with dark hair all spiked up and dressed completely
in black leather, stared openly at us. Then, he leaned
forward and said something to the bartender. The bartender glanced
our direction before he turned back and said something back
to Leatherman, causing all the men to laugh. A few
minutes later, he walked over to our end of the
counter.

“Looks like everyone’s having a good time,” I
said, nodding toward the other group.

“Yeah, we do our
best. What can I get you?”

“You got African Amber
?”

“Nope.” He didn’t say anything else or even offer
another choice.

I nodded and glanced over at the tap
to see what they did have. “Okay. Make it two
Rainiers then.”

He walked over to the tap and poured
the beers, then brought them back. “Eight bucks,” he said
.

Great. Four dollars apiece for a Rainier that I couldn
’t drink even if I wanted to because I was
training for the Seattle half marathon only a month away
. And that on top of a twenty-dollar cover charge
for a place where I didn’t want to be
in the first place. Terrific. We’d have definitely had
a better time at Duke’s. Not to mention being
dollars ahead at the end of the night.

While I
was digging for my wallet, I noticed him giving Toni
a pretty thorough checkout. I think she was trying to
read the label on a bottle of vodka on the
wall behind the bar, so she didn’t notice. Maybe
it was just my quickly deteriorating mood, but the guy
annoyed me. Everyone stares at Toni, and I’m okay
with that. But they’re usually a little circumspect about
it when I’m around. This guy was a bit
obvious about it. It was almost like he was in
a trance, or maybe he just didn’t give a
shit.

Thankfully, the torturous music ended and a slower, slightly
mellower piece started up. I slapped a ten-dollar bill
on the counter, and that seemed to snap the bartender
out of his Toni trance. He snatched up the money
like it was about to blow away, and then he
turned his back to us and marched on down to
the cash register. A minute later, he brought back my
change. He put it on the bar and started to
turn away.