Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (19 page)

“My official title is director of
tax compliance,” the dark-haired woman sitting across from us
said. I’d never stopped to imagine what a director
of compliance and internal audit is supposed to look like
, but seeing Linda Ramos, I’d have to say that
she certainly looked the part.. She was a short, serious
-looking woman, probably in her late twenties, maybe early thirties
. She wore a light blue blouse over a navy skirt
. Her dark hair was curled under in a shoulder-length
bob. She sat across from us at the conference table
, her arms folded in front of her, waiting patiently for
us to begin our questions.

“Tell us about your position
here,” I said.

She nodded. “Okay. Technically, my main job
as DCIA is to make sure that all of the
Foundation’s actions are in compliance with our IRS 501
(c)(3) exempt status. Aside from the obvious altruistic goal
of providing help to desperately needy people, one of the
other reasons people choose to donate large sums of money
through a Foundation like Beatrice Thoms Memorial is because they
’re able to count the donation as a charitable deduction
on their income tax returns. But that works only if
we remain a qualified organization in the eyes of the
IRS. So, in reality, my job is to make sure
that all aspects of our organization are on the up
-and-up, able to stand up to scrutiny from the
IRS, from the auditors, whomever. I’m the person around
here who reviews all of our procedures—operations, accounting, you
name it—to make sure we’re good to go
.”

We’d already talked to six other people since Eric
Gaston left us and Linda was the last one on
the schedule for the day. So far, we hadn’t
learned much new. All the people we’d interviewed knew
Sophie, but not particularly well. Apparently, although Sophie was friendly
and well liked, she didn’t hang out too much
with the office crowd—Ryan Crosby excepted. In addition, oddly
enough, everyone except Gaston recognized the picture of the man
named Josh—but no one knew him or knew how
to get in touch with him. So far, we hadn
’t picked up much. Maybe with Linda our luck would
change.

“So you knew Sophie, then?” I asked.

She nodded
. “Certainly. I mean, I wouldn’t say we were close
friends, but we got along fine—we even went out
together from time to time. Sophie was an impressive woman
. She had a strong work ethic. In fact, she actually
worked a lot harder than she had to, that’s
for sure, given her situation.” Her tone was confident, not
at all leery or guarded the way some people get
around the police or around private detectives.

“When you say
you went out together—what do you mean?” I asked
.

She shrugged. “Lunches. Dinner once. We went to a movie
once too. Last year.”

“Would Sophie talk to you about
things? Other-than-work kind of things? Did the two
of you have the kind of relationship where you’d
confide in each other?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know
. . . not really. I don’t think she had many friends
. We talked a little, at least until she hooked up
with Ryan Crosby. After Sophie started seeing Ryan, she was
with him most of the time.” She paused, then added
, “Her sister was in every once in a while. She
’d come in, and she and Sophie would go to
lunch, that sort of thing. They seemed close.”

“Do you
know Nicki?” Toni asked.

“I’ve met her, obviously, but
I’m afraid I don’t know her very well
at all. She’s on the board and, occasionally, she
even comes to the meetings. She used to hang out
around here quite a bit. Not anymore, though.”

“When you
and Sophie went out, did Nicki go with you?”

Linda
shook her head. “Never. Nicki was never around when Sophie
and I were together.”

I nodded and jotted this down
, then I looked back up. “Let me ask you something
else.” I placed the photo of Josh on the table
. “Does this guy look familiar to you?”

She nodded immediately
. “Sure. That’s Josh. I’ve seen him.”

“Josh? Do
you know his last name?”

She shook her head. “Sorry
. He was a friend of Sophie and Nicki’s.”

“Both
of them?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Nicki too?” Toni said.

“Yeah
, absolutely.”

Toni and I looked at each other for a
second, then Toni continued. “Did he ever work here?”

Linda
shook her head. “No.”

“I’m confused. Everyone around here
seems to recognize this guy, even Oliver Ward. Everybody seems
to recognize him, but nobody knows anything about him.”

“Maybe
that’s because, like I said,
he
didn’t work
here,” Linda said. “But his girlfriend did. Judie Lawton. Everyone
else probably forgot—it was over a year ago. Or
maybe they weren’t here at the time. Anyway, Judie
needed a job. Sophie somehow knew Josh and through him
, Judie. Sophie wasn’t one to not help if she
could, so despite our reservations she got Judie a job
as a bookkeeper here at the Foundation.” She shook her
head. “Unfortunately, Judie Lawton is a completely clueless woman. She
wouldn’t know a debit from a credit if it
bit her on the butt. We had to get rid
of her at the end of her ninety-day probation
. But—while she was here—Josh would come around fairly
often. I haven’t seen him for a long time
, but back then, that’s when everybody saw him and
got to know him.”

“This would have been . . .”

“Last summer
. Summer of 2011.”

I nodded. “So when you had to
let Judie go, how’d Sophie react?”

Linda smiled. “Relieved
. Sophie was a smart girl—she wasn’t blind. She
knew what was going on. I think she was glad
to see it over, actually. Judie was a nice enough
girl, but it was pretty painful watching her flounder about
. It was better after she left.”

There was a line
waiting to get out of the underground garage at the
Beatrice Thoms Memorial building, and we were about the sixth
vehicle in the queue. A steady stream of pedestrians on
the sidewalk in front of the building kept walking past
the driveway, and the lucky car at the head of
the line had to hope that the flow of walkers
magically parted at the same time the one-way automobile
traffic on Pike had an opening. This didn’t happen
often, hence the line. It was a few minutes before
noon, and we were trying to jump up to Duke
’s for Thursday chowder.

Carrie Wicks was singing the old
classic “You Belong to Me” as we waited our turn
. We hadn’t said much on the elevator on the
way down or as we’d gotten into the Jeep
, but Judie’s revelation that Nicki Thoms had lied to
us about knowing Josh hung like the proverbial eight-hundred
-pound gorilla from a chandelier. Toni knew this, of course
, and she enjoyed making me squirm by feigning ignorance and
not saying anything. Finally, I could take it no longer
. “You’re dying to say it, so just go ahead
and get it over with.”

“Say what?” she said, innocently
, playing with me now. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Just
go ahead . . .”

“Oh, would you be referring to the fact
that your girlfriend was less than completely forthcoming with us
?”

I fired her a dirty look. “My girlfriend? Where’s
that coming from? She’s not my girlfriend, and I
’m not sticking up for her.”

“Good. You’d better
not be,” she sniffed. “Bottom line? Nicki stood there and
said she didn’t know the guy. Now we know
that’s a bold-assed lie. I want to know
why.”

C
hapter 11

“SO DO I NEED A LAWYER?
” Nicki Thoms smiled as she slipped into a chair in
Interview Room 4 on the sixth floor at SPD headquarters
in downtown Seattle. After we’d left the Foundation, I
called Ron to bring him up to date. He was
as annoyed as we were. He called Nicki and basically
demanded that she drop everything and haul her butt downtown
for questioning.

Nicki looked quickly from Ron to Yoshi, to
me, and then to Toni. “It looks like I’m
facing quite the inquisition here.” Despite this observation, she seemed
outwardly cool, not at all alarmed.

Ron placed a thick
file on the table in front of him as we
all took seats across from Nicki. “Thanks for coming in
. To answer your question, let me just repeat what I
’ve told you before—that is: you are
not
considered
a suspect in your sister’s murder. That hasn’t
changed.” He paused for a moment to allow the words
to sink in before continuing. “But I want to tell
you in the clearest terms possible that I expect your
full cooperation in this investigation. I’m a little upset
because I don’t think we’ve been getting it
.”

“Really?” Nicki still seemed unconcerned. “What makes you say that
?”

Ron stared at her for a moment. She stared right
back. “You’ve been holding out on us. You held
back important evidence from us when we talked to you
earlier.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’ve done nothing of the
sort.”

“Is that right?” Ron asked. “Then how do you
explain this?” He slid the blown-up close-up of
the man named Josh across the table in front of
her.

She looked down and stared at the photo for
a few moments. “What is this? Where’s this from
?” she asked without looking up.

“It’s a blowup from
this photo that you gave us on Monday,” I said
. I reached over to Ron’s stack of photos, picked
out the two group photos that included Sophie and this
Josh character, and slid them across the table to Nicki
. She flashed me a quick, nasty look, as if I
’d betrayed her somehow, then she looked down at the
pictures, straightening them out in front of her as she
did so. She stared at one photo, then the other
.

Ron continued. “Not only did you fail to provide us
these photos when we interviewed you earlier—”

“Twice,” Yoshi interrupted
.

“That’s right. Interviewed you twice, but when you finally
did
decide to give them to Danny here, you turned
around and told him that you didn’t know who
this guy was. But this is the same guy that
you
took at least two pictures of with
your
cell
phone. He was in them, alongside Sophie. Don’t you
think that that information might have been useful to us
?”

“You never asked,” she fired back. Then, she nodded at
me. “He did. How am I supposed to know what
’s useful to you or not?
You’re
supposed to
be the detective here. If you’d have asked, I
’d have given them to you.”

Ron glowered at her
for a second, then he looked over at Yoshi, as
if trying to confirm Nicki’s statement. Yoshi shrugged.

He
turned back to Nicki. “Even so,” he said, undeterred, “now
we’ve come to learn from several sources that when
they asked you, you told Danny and Toni you didn
’t know this guy. That was an out-and-out
lie. Is that somehow our fault too? Some other way
Danny should have phrased the question, maybe?”

Nicki glared at
him, without answering.

Ron continued. “It turns out that this
guy’s girlfriend is named Judie Lawton, and she worked
for your Foundation, for Christ’s sake. And this guy
, who, by the way, is named Josh? He used to
hang out at the Foundation office. While you were there
! You actually know this man quite well, don’t you
?”

She looked at the picture for a moment, then she
looked up at Ron. Finally, there was just the beginning
of a deer-in-the-headlights look of concern in
her eyes—maybe the hard veneer was starting to crack
. But she still said nothing.

Ron continued. “Nicki, let me
ask you something else. Does it bother you maybe just
a little bit that your sister’s murderer is still
running around out there somewhere scot-free? Does that matter
to you?”

She gave him a seriously nasty look. “Of
course it bothers me,” she said indignantly. She paused for
a moment. “Listen—I didn’t think he was important
, alright?” She looked back down at the photo for a
moment, then looked up. “You actually think he murdered Sophie
?” She was somewhat incredulous as she tapped the picture.

“How
the hell are we supposed to know?” Ron said impatiently
. “We didn’t even know the guy existed—never even
heard of him until a couple days ago. Apparently, he
was a friend of yours and Sophie’s. Based on
his prison ink, he no doubt has a somewhat dubious
background. And you conveniently forgot to tell us about him
? What the hell, Nicki? Until Danny showed us the picture
you gave him, we’d never even seen him. And
if Danny and Toni hadn’t had the gumption to
keep digging into it further, we wouldn’t even know
his first name or anything at all about him.” Ron
was getting worked up. His voice was raised several notches
above normal. “We wouldn’t know about Judie Lawton. As
it is, we still don’t know his last name
. So no, I can’t tell you if he might
be a suspect, because we haven’t been able to
check him out.” He shook his head and leaned forward
. “I got to say, the fact that you’ve been
sitting here lying to us while we’re in the
middle of your sister’s murder investigation is a little
disappointing, to put it mildly.”

“Never mind exposing yourself to
legal risk for withholding evidence,” Yoshi said.

She glared at
Yoshi. “I did not—”

“Stop!” Ron commanded. She spun to
face him. “Listen, Nicki. That’s enough. No more games
. You need to come clean. You need to help us
move this investigation along now. If you know something—anything
you haven’t told us—now’s your one and
only chance to spill it. Stop playing at whatever it
is you’re playing, and start telling us the damn
truth. Otherwise, I guarantee you I’m going to charge
you with obstruction, and I’m damn sure going to
stop being so goddamned friendly!” Ron practically yelled out the
last line.

Nicki stared at Ron for several seconds. Both
were angry—two strong forces locked in a stare down
. Then she cracked. She glanced at me and then turned
and looked at the wall. She took a deep breath
and brushed her hair back from her face with both
hands. She bit her lower lip and turned back to
the table where she looked back down at the photo
for several seconds. Finally, she looked at Ron and nodded
. “Alright. I apologize. To all of you. I do know
him.” She paused, then added, “For the record, I have
been perfectly honest and complete with everything I’ve said
except as regards him.” She nodded toward the photo.

“Who
is he?” Ron demanded.

“His name is Joshua Bannister.”

Ron
turned to Yoshi. “Go run ’em both, Yosh. Right now
. Judie Lawton and Joshua Bannister.” Yoshi got up and left
as Ron turned back to Nicki. “Why did you say
you didn’t know him?”

She smiled. “One tends to
be somewhat circumspect about one’s drug supplier, wouldn’t
you say?”

Ron stared at her for a few seconds
, then he shook his head. “Wouldn’t know.”

I caught
Ron’s eye and nodded toward Nicki, questioning. He nodded
for me to take over.

“Nicki, was he with you
and Sophie on the night she went missing?”

She stared
at me for a moment, then she nodded. “He was
. But I know what you’re thinking, and you’re
wrong. Josh never had anything to do with it; otherwise
, I’d have already come forward about him.”

“How do
you know?”

“Because I know Josh. He may be into
drugs, he may have even been to prison. But he
’s still a kind, gentle man.”

I nodded. “Okay. So
tell us about him. What’s his connection to Sophie
?”

Nicki nodded slowly. “When Sophie moved into the Four Seasons
at the start of last year, she bought a new
condo on the eighteenth floor. Between the time she bought
it and the time she moved in, she had them
do a great deal of custom work—floors, cabinets, walls
, that sort of thing. It actually wasn’t finished when
she moved in—work continued even after she got here
from London. Josh Bannister is a construction manager at the
Four Seasons. He’s the one who was in charge
of finishing off Sophie’s condo for her. She got
to know him then.”

“Is this when you met him
too?”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t meet
him until later. Sophie knew him first. Judie Lawton was
Josh’s girlfriend. Early last year, Judie needed a job
, and I guess she told Sophie that she was a
bookkeeper, so Sophie helped her get a position at the
Foundation.”

“Which we heard didn’t last long,” Toni said
.

“That’s right. I guess Sophie probably didn’t know
how unqualified Judie was then, or maybe she did, but
being the kind of person she was, got her a
job anyway.” She looked at the one-way mirror on
the wall for a second, then smiled. “Sophie was always
trying to help people out, you know. Anyway, not long
after Judie started work, she let it be known that
she and Josh had access to all sorts of drugs
—weed, blow, crystal, E—you name it.” She smiled. “I
wasn’t spending much time at the Foundation, of course
, but I heard about it. Somebody told somebody else, and
that somebody told Sophie, and Sophie told me. Looking back
, I think that expanding Josh’s drug business may have
been the real reason Judie went to work at the
Foundation in the first place. They were looking for an
in with well-heeled clientele.” She shrugged. “Anyway, after a
while, I guess a few people started buying from them
.”

“Including you?”

She looked at me without answering for a
moment, then she bit her lower lip and nodded. “Yeah
. Including me. That’s when I met Judie and Josh
. Now, I hate to say it, but I’m probably
one of their bigger customers.” She bit her lower lip
and shook her head slowly.

“You said ‘a few people
’ from the Foundation were customers,” Ron said. “Do you know
who? Anyone else we should be talking to?”

She shook
her head. “I heard that there were others, but I
don’t know who. It’s not the type of
business transaction one conducts in the presence of other people
. At least I don’t.” She shrugged. “I suppose most
of the others felt the same way. Besides, it’s
not as if I was friends with anyone else there
.”

“How do you even know that there
were
others, then
?” I asked.

“Judie told me.” She shrugged.

“She’ll talk
about that?” Ron asked.