Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (37 page)

Even a newbie like me could
see that sailing a big, lightweight sailboat in a stiff
twenty-five-knot breeze is a pretty tense endeavor. Well
orchestrated—choreographed if you will—but still tense. And from
what I’ve seen of people in the past, tense
endeavors tend to magnify character flaws. After a solid hour
and a half of pretty much nonstop action, Gaston remained
calm, never once raising his voice in anger. Instead, he
issued commands in a strong, confident leader-style voice. He
was having fun, and his mood was infectious. When corrections
needed to be made, he called them out, but without
reproach. He was free with praise and encouragement. He was
a leader, the kind that inspired a deep loyalty. I
’d seen a few like him—not many, but a
few—in the army.

Of course, the other thing I
learned by watching him was that he was watching me
too. Several times, I glanced over and caught him checking
me out. Was he sizing me up? Probing? Trying to
learn something? Trying to evaluate my performance as a potential
future crew member? Or was he just watching over me
because I was new and he was worried about me
screwing up or falling overboard? Or were his motives more
sinister—the calculating motives of a dangerous person who’d
murdered before and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again
if he felt it necessary. I couldn’t tell. I
was unable to read him without actually questioning him. I
didn’t have much time to ponder the subject anyway
, now that we were tacking back and forth regularly. I
was kept busy hopping from one side of the cockpit
to the other.

“Here we go again!” Gaston yelled. “Ready
to tack!” Everyone got ready, then we repeated the whole
turning procedure, this time in the opposite direction. The boat
went from heeled over hard to the left to flat
level and then heeled over hard to the right. I
moved to the new high side. I was just reaching
for a hold on the lifeline when suddenly the boat
heeled over much more dramatically and much quicker than I
’d expected. The deck, which had been about forty-five
degrees to the water, suddenly seemed almost straight up and
down—perpendicular to the sea. Caught mid-step, I lost
my footing on the wet deck, and my feet slipped
out from beneath me. Immediately, I started to fall from
the high left side of the cockpit straight down toward
the right side rail, which was now actually underwater.

I
managed to lift my legs up as I fell, which
made it so that an instant later I slammed butt
-first onto the inside of the cockpit, which was now
nearly parallel with the water. The jolt fired up my
spine and immediately I saw stars. My legs and feet
cleared the cockpit and shot right under the lowest lifeline
, then over the rail and into the icy water. The
shock of the cold water instantly cleared the stars from
my head. I didn’t have much time to think
about it, though, because almost immediately, the drag of my
legs being pulled through the ocean at ten miles per
hour created a huge force on me—a force which
seemed intent on sucking me right under the lifeline and
into the ocean.

The only thing between me and the
Puget Sound was the vinyl-coated-wire lifeline installed on
what suddenly looked like very thin stainless steel stanchions around
the railing. I was slipping, being sucked right under the
line. I thought fast. Unless I wanted to go swimming
, I needed to grab one of the lines just before
I got swept overboard—grab and hang on. Judging by
the way the water was tearing at my legs, though
, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold
on even if I managed to grab a line in
time.

Suddenly, a strong hand grabbed the back of the
harness that was part of my inflatable life jacket. Immediately
, I stopped sliding.

I turned around and saw that Gaston
had reached out and grabbed me as I slid past
. We looked each other in the eye for what seemed
like ten minutes but was probably only a second. Then
he smiled as he pulled me back onboard with a
mighty heave. The boat returned to a more normal heel
, and I fell into the cockpit floor at his feet
, now back to a more normal forty-five-degree angle
. I took a couple of quick, deep breaths. My heart
rate was on adrenalin-racing overload. I looked up and
saw Gaston looking down at me.

“You okay?” he asked
as he made a correction to the boat’s course
.

I nodded. “Yeah . . . holy shit! Thanks.”

He smiled again. “Don
’t worry about it.” He looked up and made another
slight correction on the wheel, then he looked back down
. “But I gotta say, all things being equal? It’s
probably best to stay on the boat. Saves a lot
of time.” Then, he gave me a little grin.

I
was completely incapable of reading his expression. He might have
been completely sincere, worried that I’d almost lost it
. Then again, he might have been saying, “I got you
, you son of a bitch. I can play with you
all day long until I’m tired of you. And
when that happens? I won’t be pulling you back
. I’ll be pushing you under.”

C
hapter 23

WE MADE
IT TO THE OFFICE
at seven thirty Monday morning, just
in case the FedEx guy got there a little early
. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, but Doc, Kenny
, and Richard were already there.

“Been here since six thirty
,” Doc said.

I nodded. “That oughta cover it.”

A couple
of minutes before eight, the bells on the door jingled
and the FedEx guy walked in with our package. Five
minutes after that, Kenny had the compact flash card we
’d received plugged into a card reader on the conference
room PC. We gathered around to have a look.

The
computer booted up, and Kenny opened the directory.

“What is
this?” I asked as I read the file directory. “Just
six pictures? That’s it?”

“Looks like,” Kenny said, studying
the screen. “There’s nothing else on the card.”

We
stared at the screen for a second. “Look at the
file names,” Kenny said. “They seem to have a project
name followed by a project number. ‘SenbeteSchool002,’ ‘BatiWater006’ . . . that sort
of thing. Judging by the gaps in the numbers, I
’d say that Leonard took more pictures than those he
copied here. He must have had a laptop with him
that he used to copy his original disc. Out of
the camera onto the laptop, out of the laptop onto
this card as a backup.”

“But you found his laptop
?” I asked.

“Yeah. There wasn’t anything on it. If
he used it, he must have erased the folder after
he made copies.”

I looked at the numbers. If Leonard
had taken time to copy only certain of his photos
and leave them with his brother for safekeeping, then presumably
those particular files were the ones he considered important. “Open
up the first one,” I said.

Kenny clicked on the
file name, and a photo popped up on the screen
. The image showed a sign, leaning forward slightly as one
post sagged. The sign’s dusty, faded letters read:
Future
site of Senbete School

Funded by the Beatrice Thoms Memorial
Foundation

Implemented by the Southern Star Relief Fund

The sign
was above a flat, bare parcel of ground, only a
few scrubby weeds here and there to break up the
landscape. There was no school in the photo.

“Next,” I
said.

The next photo was a picture of another sign
, similar condition, this one reading:
Future site of Bati Clean
Water Project #2

Funded by the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation

Implemented by the Southern Star Relief Fund

Behind the sign
, another bare parcel of ground. But no water well.

Each
of the remaining four photographs was similar—each showed a
dilapidated “Coming Soon” sign, but none showed any actual project
.

“What does this mean?” Richard asked. “Leonard went there expecting
to see projects, but instead all he found were empty
signs?”

It was quiet for a second.

“And who the
hell is the Southern Star Relief Fund?” Toni asked.

“Wow
,” I said, quietly. “Gloria said that she and Leonard donated
a million dollars per project, presumably including these since Leonard
went to the trouble to include ’em. That’s six
million from the McKenzies alone just for these six.”

“Got
themselves some nice signs,” Doc said.

“No shit.”

“There had
to have been other donors too,” Kenny said.

The wall
clock ticked off several seconds while we considered the implications
.

“It fits,” Toni said, slowly. “If Leonard took the originals
to Sophie when he got back, that could be why
Ryan said she was preoccupied.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I imagine
this would do it. And then, what’s her next
step? She goes to somebody higher up to report it
, right?”

“Right. And say that somebody was the wrong somebody
—meaning someone who was involved in the fraud,” Toni said
.

“Then maybe that somebody figured they needed to try and
put a lid on it,” Richard said. “Do some damage
control.”

I nodded, looking at Richard, then at Toni. “And
whoever that somebody was killed Sophie and Leonard both, to
keep ’em quiet.”

“That might explain the location of the
missing original disc too,” Richard said.

I nodded. “And whoever
did it likely killed two more since then trying to
throw us and the police off their trail.” I looked
at Doc for a second, then said, “Guess that means
they’re not going to be too happy if they
find out about this new disc, are they?”

He shook
his head. “Good reason to keep all this quiet.”

I
nodded.

“Agreed. But I do think now’s the time
to call Ron,” Richard said. “He’s definitely going to
want to hear this.”

“Maybe,” Toni said, “maybe not. He
seems like he’s looking for something pretty solid to
put in front of his boss.”

“He’s just anticipating
the reaction he’s going to get. His boss is
ready to wrap this up and pin it on Josh
Bannister,” Richard said.

“Exactly,” Toni said. “All the more reason
for us to give him something airtight, right? I say
before we go telling Ron about the
possibility
of fraudulent
activity leading to murders, it might be a pretty good
idea to verify our hunch regarding these photos.”

I looked
at her. “How do we do that?”

She smiled. “Might
be easier than we think. This sounds like a compliance
issue to me if ever there was one. We can
start by calling the compliance person. Asking a few more
questions.”

“Linda Ramos,” I said.

I called the Foundation, and
the receptionist put me straight through.

“Linda Ramos.” Her answer
was curt, businesslike.

“Linda, good morning. This is Danny Logan
.”

There was a brief hesitation, and then she said, “Yes
?” The way she said it—in kind of a drawn
-out, tentative fashion—immediately got me curious. She sounded like
she’d been dreading hearing from me.

“I have a
question or two for you, only take a second.”

“Okay
.”

“First, who is the Southern Star Relief Fund?”

The line
was silent for several long seconds.

“Linda,” I said, “did
you hear? Who is the Southern Star Relief Fund?”

After
another couple seconds, she barely whispered into the phone, “I
can’t answer that. In fact, I can’t be
seen talking to you now. It’s not safe.”

Everyone
leaned forward. “What?”

“Listen . . . I have to go,” she said
. “It’s not safe for me.”

“Wait!” I said. “If
you can’t talk, can we meet instead?”

“Yes,” she
whispered. “I want to. But after work. Tonight. Someplace quiet
and out of the way. I’ll try to get
you something today.”

We were scheduled to meet Gloria McKenzie
at a quiet little restaurant in Bellevue for dinner to
compare Leonard’s photos to the reports that Gloria had
from the Foundation, so I gave Linda the same address
, but for an hour later.

“From what I can see
, the Southern Star Relief Fund is a Cayman Island organization
,” David O’Farrell explained over the phone just before 2:00
p.m. After our meeting broke up earlier that morning
, I’d called and asked him to look into the
Fund for us. “One of my partners specializes in offshore
litigation. He says that the Caymans’ privacy laws make it
just about impossible to get information on the company’s
owners.”

“Great,” I said. “Perfect. Would you say that it
’s normal or suspicious for organizations to be based in
the Cayman Islands?”

“Well, first thing, what I’m told
is that they’re probably not based there,” David said
. “Just organized and formed there. And, as to your question
, no—it’s probably not suspicious. Lots of U.S
. companies nowadays are formed in the Caymans: some for privacy
reasons, some for favorable tax treatment. Now, that said, if
Southern Star was formed in the Caymans for the explicit
reason of preserving the anonymity of its owners, then those
anonymity features would make it a near-perfect vehicle for
those same owners to conduct fraudulent activities. You have to
get a Cayman Islands court order in order to compel
the turnover of the owners’ names, and that’s not
something that’s easy to accomplish—quite unusual, as a
matter of fact. The Cayman government relies on these businesses
for a significant part of its income, and they’re
not in the habit of doing things that might be
construed as jeopardizing their reputation for privacy.”

“And with the
business relationship between the Foundation and Southern Star . . .”

“A normal
arrangement with charitable organizations,” David said. “One company raises the
money; the other does the work.”

“And they’re separate
companies?”

“Usually. Sometimes completely separate—different ownership even. Sometimes an
affiliate.”

I thought about that. “You know, Oliver actually said
that he couldn’t believe the Foundation was involved with
anything because they get audited every year. They’re clean
.”

“Not surprising,” David said. “The Foundation’s audits
would
be
clean because they’re not doing anything wrong—their operation
is
clean. A massive fraud could be happening right under
the Foundation’s nose, in fact, yet the Foundation’s
audits would come up clean every time. In your case
, it would appear that it’s the company beneath them
that’s dirty—the Southern Star Relief Fund, in this
case.”

“And the only way to find out who’s
behind that?”

“Is a court order in the Caymans, or
to have a look at the organization papers,” he said
. “Get ahold of those, and you’ve got the keys
to the kingdom.”

I took a deep breath and considered
the implications of what David said. Then, I slowly shook
my head. “This case is a bitch,” I said. “Every
time we get close, every time we think we’re
onto something, something else pops up and moves the target
on us.”

David smiled. “All hope is not lost. We
’re still doing a lot of digging on the financials
. Even if we don’t have legal documents showing us
who owns Southern Star, maybe the financials will show us
who’s
benefiting
from the ownership. Presumably, whoever's behind
this will eventually want to
spend
some of their ill
-gotten gains. We'll know more soon.”

“Today?” I said
, hopefully.

“I’m expecting a number of calls today. I
hope to be wrapped up late this afternoon.”

“Good,” I
said, “I’m sure you’ll keep us posted.”

Doc
and I were walking north from our office up to
the West Marine store on Westlake Avenue after lunch.