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

He glanced at me and gave me a
very slight nod and said, “Ya Ta Say.” This actually
means something like, “Welcome, brother” in Apache, but Doc uses
it more as an all-purpose greeting.

Doc was followed
by Kenny Hale two minutes later. Kenny’s what you’
d have to call the opposite of Doc. While Doc
is tall—maybe six four or so—Kenny’s no
more than five eight. Doc weighs in at around 230;
Kenny’s 150 or 160 tops. Doc’s the strong,
silent type. Kenny rarely shuts up. Doc’s an action
guy. Kenny’s a cerebral kind of guy. He gets
in trouble when he tries to become an action guy,
which is why he’s our technology wizard. The firewall
that Kenny can’t breach is yet to be invented.
This comes in pretty handy for us because so much
of PI work these days involves obtaining and interpreting data,
which is invariably kept tucked away on databases somewhere.

This
morning he was breathless. “Dude, I found her. This is
it.”

I cocked my head and looked at Doc. He
rolled his eyes a little and gave a quick shrug.
I turned back to Kenny. “Great, man. I’m really
happy. What are you talking about?”

He slid his chair
back and flopped down. He paused, letting the tension build,
and then he said, “I met someone.”

I studied him
carefully. This had happened before, more than once.

“Not just
anyone,” Kenny continued, “she’s
the one
.” He was beaming,
and then suddenly got very serious. “Danny, I need to
talk to you right after the meeting. Okay?”

I nodded. “
No problem. Anytime.” This could be interesting.

I looked around
and got the meeting started. “Well. Now that the announcements
are out of the way, it appears as though Toni
has a new case she wants to present—” I smiled
at her, “—to those whom she hasn’t already presented
it to.”

We hadn’t discussed how we’d present
the case to the others beforehand. I’d have thought
that my turning it over to her like that an
hour after our meeting would have at least caught her
a little off balance, but she jumped right in like
we’d rehearsed it. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
She’d even found time in the last hour to
prepare a little PowerPoint presentation. She fired up the projector
and had the show all ready to go, one step
ahead of me. She walked to the monitor. “Okay. Let
me get started.” She opened the file, and her first
slide was a close-up of Sophie. “Please meet Sophie
Thoms.”

The room was quiet—we all stared at the
large photo without speaking. I’d only seen newspaper and
TV photos before but seeing her now, larger than life
on the screen in our conference room, I could see
that Sophie had been a hauntingly beautiful young woman. She
had long, golden-blonde hair with bangs and big, dark
brown eyes that seemed to look right inside you. Her
skin was very tan—the contrast with her light hair
was striking. Knowing, as I did, that she was gone
gave the photo a powerful, dramatic effect. Eerily, her eyes
seemed able to look right through me, directly into my
soul. I shuddered and stared, mesmerized, while Toni got started.

“
You’ve all heard over the past few months about
Sophie’s murder,” she said. She proceeded to give the
timeline, such as we knew it, anyway. She flipped through
maps that showed where Sophie lived, worked, and was ultimately
found in the water. She described Sophie’s background—her
parents, her sister, and her aunt and uncle. Her presentation
was surprisingly detailed for one hour’s worth of prep.
She was playing for keeps—she really wanted to sell
the guys on this job. When she was finished, she
concluded by saying, “Apparently, the police aren’t getting anywhere
in finding Sophie’s killer, so when the family brought
it up, SPD recommended that the family bring us in.
This presents us with a wonderful opportunity to step into
a high-profile case and maybe do some good and
raise our image at the same time.” She paused a
second, then advanced the slide back to the start—the
close-up of Sophie. Cleary, she recognized the power of
the photo. She turned to me. “That’s pretty much
it.”

I nodded. “Good. Very good.” I turned to the
group. “Comments?”

“Well, as I said earlier, I think this
is very exciting,” Richard said. “Very exciting. A real opportunity.
My only concern would have to be about coordination with
SPD. But frankly, that’s an easy problem to solve.
If SPD recommended us, then I suppose we just need
to confirm that with Ron Bergstrom and figure out how
they’d like us to fit in.” He looked at
Toni, smiling broadly. “But Toni’s right. This is the
kind of case that puts PI firms on the map.”

I nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate the high-profile aspect
of this case, but there is something for us to
consider.”

“Here he goes,” Toni said. “Mr. Buzzkill.”

I ignored
her. “The last time we tracked down a murderer, three
of us almost got burned up in a barn.”

“And
blown up too,” Doc added.

I nodded. “That’s right.
Who could forget? Anyway, burned up and then blown up.
Nobody’s bothered by that? Nobody’s worried about the
danger of going after a killer?”

Doc’s expression flashed
a picture of contempt before quickly returning to normal. He’
s seen plenty of bad guys in his time, and
they don’t intimidate him much. “That last one didn’
t turn out too bad,” he said. “And those guys
were nasty. I’ll bet they were a lot more
dangerous than whoever killed this girl.” He nodded toward the
picture of Sophie.

“Could be,” I said. “But remember the
old saying—just because you walk through a pit of
snakes and come out the other side without getting bit
the first time doesn’t mean the next snake you
meet’s not gonna kill you.”

He looked at me
and smiled slowly. “I like snakes.”

“Very funny.”

“C’mon,
boss, let’s do it,” Kenny said. I turned to
him. Kenny. Poor Kenny wasn’t even experienced enough to
be scared.

I looked at Toni. “I already know how
you feel,” I said.

She gave me a little shrug,
and then raised her hand, rubbing her thumb and fingers
together in the universal sign for money. She knew where
I was weak, and she was reminding me.

In the
end, she was right: this was a good job for
us—we could definitely use the funds. I made my
decision. “Alright. Let’s go the next step. We’ll
talk to SPD and see how they feel. But listen
to me and listen good: if we get in—we’
re going to be careful, and we’re going to
work as a team. Nobody gets kidnapped this time, right?”

Ron Bergstrom works in the homicide division at SPD headquarters
in downtown Seattle. He was out when I called, so
I left a message. I hoped that he’d call
back sometime that afternoon, because we’d promised the Wards
we’d answer them the next morning. I’d just
checked the time on my computer when Kenny knocked on
the door frame. “Now a good time, boss?”

“You bet.
Come on in.”

He stepped into my office and closed
the door behind him. “Can I sit down?”

“Sure.” I
pointed to one of the chairs across from my desk.

“
Thanks. I’ve got something I need to ask you . . .
it’s kind of a favor.”

“Fire away, man.”

“It’
s big.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“It might piss you
off.”

I tilted my head a little. “Quit screwin’ around—
you’re starting to piss me off now.” I waved
my hand in a “come on” motion. “Out with it.”

He squirmed in his chair. “Okay. I know that technically
I’m supposed to be the head of IT around
here.”

“Technically? Dude, you
are
the head of IT around
here.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’ve got a new
girlfriend . . .”

“So you said.”

“Yeah. It’s like, I was
over at the GameStop in Bellevue Square, right? And I
was checking out a poster for Halo 4.” He looked
at me. “It’s not out yet. Anyway, I was
looking at it, and I was asking this guy at
the counter about video resolution on it, and this good-looking girl walks up and first thing she’s like, ‘
It’s native 720p’ and I’m like, ‘No way,’
and she just nods her head.” He nodded his head
to show me. “So I look at her and I’
m like, ‘Really?’ And she says, ‘Yeah. I work for
3-4-3 in Kirkland. I’m on the development team.’” He
leaned back and slapped his hand to his forehead. “Can
you believe it? So we started talking and, and—dude,
it was like magic.” He shook his head in wonderment. “
We just hit it.”

I smiled and nodded. “That’s
very cool, man. I’m happy for you.”

“Right.” He
leaned forward and spoke softly. “Danny, she’s the one,
I’m telling you. I never felt this way before.”

I smiled. “Congratulations. I can see she made an impression.”

“
I knew you’d understand,” he said, “with you and
Toni and all.”

I will say that even though I’
d seen Kenny pretty worked up from time to time,
I don’t think I’d ever seen him as
excited as he was then. “So what’s all this
have to do with you being head of IT?”

He
sobered up fast. “That’s just it. I kind of
fucked up.”

I stared at him for a few moments
and, when he didn’t say anything, I made the
little “c’mon” motion again with my hand.

“When I
met Meghan—that’s my girlfriend’s name, Meghan. Anyway,
when I met Meghan, I told her I was a
private investigator.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Well, she heard me, and
she immediately interpreted that to mean I was like a
field guy—kind of like Magnum, P.I.”

I nodded. “
I can see where she might mistake you.”

“C’mon,
boss,” he protested. “This is serious shit! She thought I
was out doing hard-core investigation, like the kind of
work you and Toni and Doc do.”

“You didn’t
straighten her out? You didn’t tell her that you’
re our computer specialist?”

He squirmed some more. “Not exactly.
I mean, by that time, it was kinda too late.
I couldn’t. I mean, she knows I work with
computers. But she thinks I do that just as part
of my bigger job.”

“Your ‘bigger job’ meaning Joe Super
PI?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

I leaned back and rubbed my
chin with my fist. “You tell her you sit in
on stakeouts?”

“Yeah. She was impressed. But I think she
believes I do more. She thinks I’m out solving
cases.”

I thought for a few moments. Without doubt, Kenny
does as much to solve cases around here as anyone. “
Dude,” I said. “Hell, anyone can park their sorry ass
in a van and stare at a door all day.
No one
can do what you do on computers though.”

He nodded. “I know.” He paused for a moment and
didn’t say anything.

“So where’s all this leading,
anyway? What do you want me to do?”

“Well, if
it’s okay with you, I want to do more
fieldwork for a while. I figure I can always move
back into office work from the field later. That way,
eventually I can tell Meghan I got kicked upstairs from
the field, and it would be truthful.”