Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (14 page)

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.”

I nodded. “Could
be.”

“That’s why I keep her on our POI
list, and I think you should keep her on yours
. Or put her on yours—whatever. I don’t know
how you guys do what it is that you do
. But I’ll say that from what we’ve learned
, there’s probably no one who was closer to Sophie
Thoms than Nicki Thoms.”

I think he was probably right
about that, with the possible exception of Ryan Crosby. I
pulled copies of the five photos out of my jacket
. “Have a look at these guys in the pictures we
sent you this morning. Let’s see—we ID’d
Lucas Santos, Ryan Crosby, and Gary Margolian, right?” I laid
the photos on the table.

“Technically,” Ron said, “for the
record, the only new one was Gary Margolian. We already
knew about those other two.”

I looked at him, then
shrugged. “Whatever. Okay—we gave you Margolian,” I tapped his
picture, “and you had these two. That leaves these two
guys unidentified, right?”

“That guy there in picture number three
is—”

“Edward Munsen,” I said, “Cecilia recognized him.”

“Right,” Ron
said as he reached for his napkin.

“What’d you
find out about him?” Toni asked.

“This Munsen guy inherited
an automobile dealership kingdom—the family owned half the Toyota
dealerships in the Northwest. Fifteen years ago, the kid’s
a thirty-something-year-old screwball, one of those permanent
student types, probably not unlike Nicki Thoms. Next day, his
old man keels over with a heart attack and bam
! Kid’s worth something like half a billion dollars. The
old man was fifty-seven years old. He drops stone
cold dead, just like that.”

I studied the photo of
Munsen. He looked to be of medium height with thin
blond hair. “We can go ahead and get started on
looking at him.”

“We already did,” Ron said. “We talked
to him just before we came and bailed your ass
out.”

“Hey,” I protested. “I thought we agreed we were
going to be involved.”