Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (17 page)

“Like a vibe?” Toni asked.

He nodded
. “Yeah. Like something was hanging over her.”

“So she didn
’t say anything? Didn’t give you any reasons?” Toni
asked.

Ryan shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

“When was this
, Ryan?” I asked.

He thought about this for a moment
. “End of June, first of July.”

“So not long before
she went missing.”

“Leading right up to it, actually,” he
said.

Toni wrote this down in her notebook, then looked
up. “If you’re right—if something was bothering her
, hanging over her, even—obviously that’s something that would
be of interest to us.”

“I understand. I’ve tried
to work through this myself for the past three months
.”

“Maybe we can help,” Toni said. “Was Sophie involved with
drugs in any way?”

Ryan shook his head. “No. She
wasn’t into it.” He hesitated. “Some of her friends
were, I think. And her sister too. But not Sophie
—neither drugs or alcohol. She’d barely even take a
drink of anything.”

“You mentioned her sister. Were you aware
of any problems she might have been having with her
family?”

“No. She has three relatives over here: her sister
and her aunt and uncle. She loved them all, but
she was really close to her sister. I’d have
to say that Nicki was definitely Sophie’s best friend
.”

“That’s what Nicki said too.”

He nodded, then his
face got serious. “I should probably say that Nicki doesn
’t like me all that well.” He rolled his eyes
. “She’ll probably say I killed Sophie, for that matter
.” He paused, lost in thought. Then he shrugged. “But still
, Sophie adored her.”

“Actually,” Toni said, “we talked to Nicki
earlier this week. She was actually pretty complimentary. She said
she appreciated the way you made Sophie happy.”

He smiled
. “Really? I’m surprised.”

Toni nodded. “It’s true.”

“Wow
.”

“What about Sophie’s aunt and uncle?”

“I’ve only
met her aunt Cecilia a few times—she doesn’t
come in all that often and frankly, that’s probably
just as well. From what I can see, she’s
a real . . . she’s pushy. I’m being polite, and
please don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“Your secret
’s safe,” I said.

“And Oliver?”

He nodded. “Good guy
. No problems.”

“How about other people at work? Eric Gaston
, for instance?”

“I work mostly with Eric. He’s an
interesting guy. I mean, on the outside, he’s this
smiling, back-slapping, good-natured guy. Underneath, though, I’ve
seen him when he can get pretty tense.” He took
a drink from his water bottle. “Then again, his job
has a lot of responsibility. I guess a little stress
probably goes with the territory, right?”

I nodded. “Probably so
.”

I flipped a page in my notebook. “Did Sophie ever
mention any other problems at work? Any conflicts or problems
that you’re aware of?”

“No, everything was pretty routine
as far as I know—just the normal stuff. Ron
checked this out with Eric and so did I—Sophie
was just working on normal stuff at work.”

I nodded
. “When was the last time you saw Sophie?”

He smiled
. “It was that Thursday—the day before she went missing
. I saw her at work.”

“Did she seem okay?”

He
shrugged. “Yeah. She was busy, but she seemed okay. We
were supposed to go to lunch, but she called and
canceled—she was at a meeting out of the office
and she said she wouldn’t be back in time
.”

“She made it back, though?” Toni asked.

Ryan nodded. “Yeah
. I saw her later that afternoon.”

“Okay,” Toni said. “Would
you normally have gotten together in the evening?”

“Yeah, probably
. Except not on Tuesdays and Thursdays—those are class nights
here at the studio. I’d usually just go home
and study. On that particular night, though, like I said
earlier, after class I went to my parents’ house. My
mom wanted me to go with her to a breakfast
meeting the next morning—some political talk she was giving
.”

Toni looked at her notes, then up. “I haven’t
looked through all the phone records yet. Did you talk
to Sophie at all on the phone that night?”

Ryan
shook his head. “No. I can save you the trouble
. I had class here at the studio, and she was
going out with her sister, so we didn’t get
a chance to talk. I wasn’t supposed to see
her until the next morning.”

“The witnesses said that Sophie
left the Genesis at a little before 10:00 p.m
.,” I said. “She apparently received a phone call and then
told Nicki she had an early meeting. This make sense
to you?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I can’t
explain the phone call, and I didn’t know about
her meeting schedule, but I do know that it wasn
’t unusual for her to have early meetings. She wouldn
’t have normally stayed late at a club on a
weeknight if she had to work the next morning.”

“And
it was normal for her and Nicki to drive separately
?”

He laughed. “Yeah. If Sophie didn’t drive herself, she
’d have had to take a cab to get home
at a decent hour. Nicki would stay at the club
all night if they’d let her.”

“Understood.” I reached
into my notebook. “Speaking of the club,” I said, pulling
out the photograph of the mystery man and placing it
on the table, “do you recognize this guy?”

He picked
up the photo and studied it intently. “Yeah,” he said
, after a few seconds. “Where’d you get this?”

“From
Nicki.”

He nodded slowly, studying the picture. “I haven’t
seen this picture before, but I’ve seen this guy
. A couple times, I think.”

“Do you know his name
?”

He shook his head. “No, I never heard.”

“Does the
name ‘Josh’ ring a bell?”

He thought about it, then
he shrugged. “I don’t know . . . maybe. I honestly don
’t think I ever heard his name.”

“He wasn’t
like part of the group you were with?”

“No—well
, maybe. I don’t know. As I think about it
, when we’d go to the Genesis, he’d just
show up—I think that’s where I’ve seen
him. Now that I see this, I think he may
have been Nicki’s friend, but I don’t remember
her ever actually introducing him or anything.” He studied the
photo for another few moments, and then he said, “Do
you think you could send me a copy of this
?”

I nodded. “Yeah, you bet.”

“Thanks.” He handed the photo
back to me.

After a second, Toni said, “What happened
next?”

“You mean the next day?”

“Yeah.”

“Sophie wasn’t
there the next morning, so I talked to our receptionist
. She told me Sophie hadn’t been in yet. I
thought that was a little odd since she was supposed
to have an early meeting, but I just figured it
must have been out of the office. When I hadn
’t seen her by noon, I talked to Eric. He
said he didn’t know where she was, either. When
I told him she was supposed to have had an
early meeting, he said he didn’t know anything about
it. That got me a little worried. I tried her
cell several times, but there was no answer—went right
to voicemail. She ended up never coming in the whole
day—” he shrugged, “obviously. I must have left fifty messages
on her phone. By about four o’clock, none of
us in the office had heard from Sophie, so we
told Oliver. We didn’t hear anything that night, so
the next morning Oliver called the police.”

“I think it
’s kind of weird.” Toni was talking to me from
the kitchen of our apartment. After we left Ryan, we
went home for dinner, and she was fixing us a
salad while I sat in the living room, barefoot with
my feet on the coffee table, listening to Ana Vidović
absolutely hammer Bach’s “Partita in E Major” on the
classical guitar.

“What’s weird?” I asked, reaching for the
remote to turn the volume down.

“Somebody close to you
dies suddenly. One second they’re there. Next second, they
’re gone. Forever. No good-bye. No see you later
. Nothing.”

“It’s sad. But even if they would have
had the chance to say good-bye, how do you
do it if you know it’s the last time
you’d ever see the person? If you knew that
they were going to die? Take it from me: final
good-byes suck.”

She thought about it and then shook
her head. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had
to face it. When my dad got killed in his
car wreck, it was instant. He left in the morning
, and he didn’t come back. There wasn’t any
chance to say good-bye.” She paused, thinking, and then
she continued. “You went through it in the war?”

I
nodded. “Yep.”

“Did you ever talk to someone you knew
was going to die? Like someone who was mortally wounded
?”

I looked down and remembered, then I nodded. “Yeah. There
were a couple of times.” As a general rule, I
don’t like to talk much about my war experiences
. The war hero stuff mostly makes me feel guilty that
I made it out while some of my friends didn
’t. Thinking about them breaks my heart so, as a
result, I pretty much wall it off and don’t
even like to think much about the war. I’m
not sure if hiding from your own memories is the
right way to deal with them, but whatever works, right
? Toni’s about the only one I’ll open up
with.

“Twice, actually. Both times, guys I went through basic
and shipped out with got hit. I had to hold
their hands and talk to them, and I knew they
were going to die. You could look at ’em and
you just knew. And the thing is, they knew they
were going to die too.” I shuddered as I said
it. “And you know what?” I shook my head. “I
pussied out. I didn’t say good-bye. I don
’t know if I was in denial or if I
was just trying to comfort them, or maybe a little
of both. Instead? What did I do? Both times I
lied to them on purpose. I told them they were
going to be okay when I knew they weren’t
and they knew they weren’t.” Sitting there in my
living room, I could see the faces of my friends
, almost as clearly as the day it had happened. I
could see the look in their eyes, the fear, as
I’d held their hands tightly in their last moments
. They knew I was lying to them. “You wanna know
something else?” I asked.

“What?” She looked at me, clearly
concerned at the expression that had come over my face
as I remembered those times.

“It’s no easier knowing
in advance. In fact, it’s harder.” I stared straight
ahead and rubbed my chin. After a few seconds, I
shook my head. “In advance—or after the fact, for
that matter—there’s no easy way to say good
-bye.” I looked up at her and smiled. “I think
the best thing you can do is to try and
conduct yourself day by day, so if something bad does
happen, you’re not left holding the bag on a
bunch of regrets you’ll have to deal with for
the rest of your life. Or at least the regrets
you’re left with are kind of minor—no big
things.”