Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (31 page)

“July six—the day
after Sophie was killed,” I said, as I read the
notice.

“And?”

I kept reading.

“And?”

“That’s interesting,” I
said quietly as I reached the end. “Donations to the
Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation?” I looked up at her. “I
wonder if that means anything?”

She smiled. “You wanted a
connection?” she said dramatically. “I give you . . . a connection.”

Just
after he got back from lunch, Kenny hacked into some
kind of unlisted number directory and got me the McKenzies
’ home phone number. I dialed the number, and two rings
later, Gloria McKenzie answered. I introduced myself.

“You’re with
the police?” she asked.

“No ma’am, I’m not
. We’re working with the Seattle Police Department on the
Sophie Thoms homicide investigation. Are you familiar with the case
?”

“I watch the news.”

“Good. We’re working with the
task force assigned to that investigation, but we’re not
police. We’re private investigators.”

“Private investigators? I wasn’t
aware that the police brought in private investigators when they
need help.”

“I don’t think they do,” I said
. “At least, not around here. But the families sometimes do
. We’re working
with
the police, but we actually work
for
the Sophie Thoms family.”

“I see. I had no
idea you could do that,” she said. “I mean, hire
someone to work with the police. Maybe I should have
done that.” She paused for a second, then added, “As
a matter of fact, maybe when you’re done with
your current assignment, we can talk about helping the Kirkland
police with my husband’s investigation. They’re not having
much luck, either.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I
said. “And we’d surely be interested in talking to
you when we’re all done. Meanwhile, though, as to
this particular case, we’re working on a theory that
Sophie Thoms’s death might in some way be connected
to others. You may have heard about the murder of
a young woman named Judie Lawton?”

“I did,” Gloria said
. “I saw it on television.”

“We believe Sophie Thoms’s
murder is somehow related to Judie Lawton’s. We’re
not exactly sure how they’re related, but there seem
to be too many coincidences for the murders to be
unrelated. We started wondering if there might be other connections
like this as well, to other crimes. Along those lines
, our office did some digging and noticed that your husband
was killed the day after Sophie was murdered. And we
noticed in the obituary that the
Seattle Times
ran that
there was a request for donations to the Beatrice Thoms
Memorial Foundation in lieu of flowers. Did you know that
that’s the same organization where Sophie worked? We’re
wondering if you happen to know if there might have
been some sort of connection between your husband and the
Foundation?”

“Well, Leonard absolutely adored Sophie,” Gloria said.

I froze
. “You’re saying your husband knew Sophie Thoms?”

She laughed
. “Knew her? Why of course. We both did. Sophie was
our liaison with the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation.”

“Your family
was a donor with the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation?”

“We
certainly were. That’s why it was so coincidental that
Leonard and Sophie were both killed during the same week
.”

I was floored. I needed to talk to this woman
, and not over the phone. Fortunately, she agreed to meet
Toni and me at her house in Medina later that
same afternoon.

The McKenzies lived in Medina on the eastern
shore of Lake Washington. Medina is a small town with
about three thousand residents, best known for being the home
of Bill Gates. In addition, several other tech titans make
the small community their home as well. Medina’s median
family income is nearly $200,000, and the median home price
over a million bucks. We oohed and ahhed at the
impressive homes as I slowly drove us down Evergreen Point
Road. Medina is small, though, and the ride didn’t
take long. We scoped out the impressive grounds as I
turned into the circular drive of the McKenzie home a
couple of minutes before three.

“Wow,” Toni said. “It looks
like the widow McKenzie isn’t going to have to
worry about making ends meet.”

I nodded. “You got that
right.” From my quick background study in the office before
we left for the meeting, I’d learned that Leonard
McKenzie left a senior position at Microsoft in 1999 to
form an Internet travel agency. The company prospered, and in
2007 one of the industry giants made Leonard an offer
he couldn’t refuse, so the McKenzies sold the business
and walked away with $350,000,000—not too shabby for eight
years of work. “I don’t see any ramen noodles
in her future.”

I parked the Jeep in the circular
drive, and by the time we got out and made
it to the front door, Gloria McKenzie had already opened
it to greet us. Gloria was a pretty woman: she
probably looked a few years younger than her actual age
. She was short with auburn hair pulled loosely back into
a knot, which Toni told me later was called a
chignon. She wore navy slacks and a white blouse. My
two-word label for the overall effect: understated elegance.

We
introduced ourselves and shook hands—her hand was small, but
her grip was warm and firm. We spoke for a
few minutes outside, explaining again our role in the Sophie
Thoms investigation after which Gloria invited us to follow her
inside. As we entered, I noticed that the home was
furnished in what I think is called “modern” style. The
walls were stark white, accented by a large, colorful painting
of what looked to me like two boxes that one
of her children probably did. The floors were shiny oak
hardwood. Two rectangular white sofas in the living room faced
each other, separated by a glass table with a few
artsy coffee-table books. The overall effect was a little
too stark for my taste, but clearly had been put
together by someone with a keen eye for interior design
—I don’t think an amateur could just run down
to Pottery Barn and throw stuff together and accidentally end
up with this
Architectural Digest
look. I sure as hell
couldn’t.

“Thank you for coming over,” Gloria said, as
she gestured toward one of the sofas.

“Thank you for
agreeing to talk with us on basically no advance notice
.” I pulled out my notepad, and we all sat down
. “We were surprised to find that you and your husband
had any connection at all with Sophie Thoms—we had
no idea. As a matter of fact, when you said
that you and Leonard had actually worked with Sophie, I
thought we needed to come talk to you as soon
as we could.”

Gloria nodded. “You know, based on the
evidence the police found, they think that Leonard was killed
by a random armed robber. They think he fought back
and got killed.”

I watched her as she spoke, wondering
how emotional she might still be as she recounted the
murder of her husband. God knows it would certainly have
been understandable. As it turned out, I needn’t have
worried: Gloria’s eyes were clear, and she spoke steadily
and confidently, more like an investigator than a victim. “Leonard
was killed on July sixth—it was a Friday night
. We’d just opened an office for our foundation at
Carillon Point in Kirkland, and Leonard was there late that
night.” She shook her head. “He never made it home
. He got into a confrontation in the parking lot. Single
worst day of my life.” She paused for a second
, then continued. “I think word went out that Sophie was
missing a couple days later, but by then we were
so distraught about Leonard that I’m not sure we
noticed or, honestly, were even paying attention to the news
, for that matter. By the time they found Sophie’s
body and made the announcement that she’d been murdered
, we’d finished Leonard’s funeral, and I’d already
been gone with the girls for two weeks at my
parents’ home in New York. I needed to get away
, to go somewhere I could hide in a hole. My
parents’ farm was perfect. We didn’t hear about Sophie
until we got back.”

“And that would have been . . . ?” Toni
asked.

Gloria said, “Let me see.” She reached for her
iPhone and started scrolling backward on her calendar. “We left
Seattle on July thirteenth, and we got back on the
twenty-eighth.”

I looked at my notebook. “And my notes
say that the police made the announcement about finding Sophie
on the seventeenth—eleven days before you got back.” I
looked up. “By the time you got home, Sophie’s
murder probably wasn’t even in the front section of
the
Times
anymore.”

“I can’t remember if it was
front section or not,” Gloria said. “But I do remember
reading about it, and seeing it on the news.” She
pursed her lips in thought, then said, “I thought that
it was a really tragic coincidence, but that’s as
far as I went with it.” She shook her head
slowly. “Honestly, I was just starting to come to grips
with facing the rest of my life without Leonard.” She
paused. “It’s not something I’d ever thought I
’d have to do.”

I nodded. “I understand, and like
I said, we’re very grateful that you’re willing
to talk to us today.”

She smiled. “Maybe it will
help.”

“Let’s hope. It would help us out of
you’d fill us in on how you and Leonard
came to be involved with Sophie and the Beatrice Thoms
Memorial Foundation.”

She nodded. “Do you know anything about our
background?”

I smiled. “Yes. I did some Internet research after
we spoke on the phone.”

“Good. Leonard worked hard to
take advantage of the opportunity that was in front of
us, and we were fortunate—in the right place at
the right time. After we sold the company, we wanted
to use some of the money to help other people
.” She pursed her lips and stared at the window for
a second, thinking. Then she said, “I don’t recall
for certain how we chose the plight of the people
in Africa.” She shrugged. “Anyway, we decided that we’d
use our money to try and make a difference there
. Even a small amount of money can make a big
difference in people’s lives in eastern Africa. So we
formed the McKenzie Foundation. Not long afterward, we heard of
the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation. They were several orders of
magnitude bigger than us, of course, and they were already
established. In fact, several of Leonard’s friends were Beatrice
Thoms Memorial Foundation donors. We called them and arranged a
meeting.”

“This would have been . . . ?” I asked.

“Early 2011. Sophie
said she’d only been there a couple of months
.”

“You were there at the meeting?” Toni asked.

Gloria nodded
. “I was.”

“What’d you think?”

Gloria smiled. “I was
impressed—we both were. Leonard looked Sophie up on the
Internet, and we saw that her father was the big
money behind the Foundation. And I mean
really
big money
. Sophie had a passion for the work. She’d actually
been to east Africa two or three times, and she
was able to relate firsthand her experiences with the people
there. We were both completely enthralled. When Sophie showed us
the kind of projects that the Foundation was investing in
, we decided that rather than have the McKenzie Foundation duplicate
the project management and administrative functions that BTMF was already
good at, we’d just streamline our organization and start
making donations to BTMF and others that were already established
at that sort of thing. That way, Leonard could just
focus on using his network to raise funds, along with
our own money, of course.”