Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (7 page)

“Watch out for me?” Toni cried. “What about you and
Cecilia? What’s that all about? That seemed a little
. . . frosty.”

“Cecilia? Me? We’re tight.” He crossed his fingers
. “We’re like that.”

“Bullshit!” Yoshi said, as he faked
a cough.

“Partner . . .” Ron said, a warning tone in his
voice.

“Screw it, man,” Yoshi said, smiling. “This is going
to be fun. It’s like our own little soap
opera around here. There’s a lot of subtext at
play.”

Ron smiled. “Well . . . maybe just a little.”

“Well,” Toni
said, “I hope you’re not including me in that
reference.”

I quickly reached over and put my hand on
her shoulder, causing her to look at me.

“Remember, dear
,” I said, looking first at her, then at Ron and
Yoshi, “and you guys too. Subtext aside, there is the
nagging little issue that we’re all supposed to be
on the same side.”

“Spoilsport,” Ron said.

“Well, technically, he
’s right,” Yoshi said. “Not to mention the fact that
somewhere out there, there’s a guy—a bad guy
. A killer, in fact. And he’s on the loose
.”

C
hapter 4

“Now that the preliminaries are behind us,
let me start by saying welcome aboard,” Ron said. He
lifted his bottle of beer, and we all clinked.

I
nodded. “Thanks. Although, we haven’t accepted the job yet.”

“
You will,” he said with certainty.

“You sure?”

He nodded. “
Yep. One: Cecilia wants you. Two: she’s loaded—her
family, anyway. Three: she’s damn near impossible to deny.
Four: Why the hell not? It’s a worthwhile case,
right?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I suspect we’re about to
find out. But before we do, I gotta ask: Why?”

“
Why what?”

“You played it pretty cool on the phone
yesterday. Why are you guys letting us in?”

Ron smiled. “
Ouch! You sound suspicious. Are you implying we wouldn’t
normally open a police investigation to a PI?”

“Come on.
I think you’d probably be more likely to hire
a gang banger to house-sit with your mom.”

He
laughed. “Oh, so little faith, and in one so young.
I find that somehow . . .” he turned to his partner. “Help
me out here, Yosh. What’s the word?”

“Hmm,” Yoshi
said, rubbing his chin and staring at the ceiling as
if lost in thought. “I’m not sure. I’d
say the word’s either ‘discomfiting,’ or maybe you could
say ‘refreshingly forthright.’ Take your pick.”

“Okay,” Ron said. “I’
ll take ‘discomfiting’ for a hundred.”

“
EHH!
—wrong answer,” Yoshi
said, smiling broadly. He turned to me. “Actually, it was
a trick question. ‘Discomfiting,’ ‘refreshingly forthright’—it doesn’t matter
. The right answer was behind door number three. That means
we got orders.”

“Yoshi! Now you’ve done it,” Ron
teased. “Now you’ve really done it. You’ve gone
and spilled internal secrets to a couple of civilians.”

“Orders
from who?” I asked.

“Orders from who?” Ron scoffed. “Who
gives us orders?” He turned to Yoshi.

“That’d be
Captain Jerold Cunningham,” Yoshi said.

Ron nodded. “Exactly. Captain Jerry
.” He held his hand across his heart. “So here’s
God’s gospel whole story, at least as I know
it. Yesterday, Captain Jerry calls up and says, ‘Hey, Ron
.’ So I say, ‘yessir?’ And then he says, ‘You’re
going to be getting a call from this Danny Logan
character asking to be let in on the Sophie Thoms
Task Force. You’re to let him in, understood? Make
him part of the team.’ And I’m wonderin’ to
myself, Gee? How the hell’s he know that? But
of course I can’t say anything, him being a
captain and all, so I just say, ‘Yessir’ again.” He
shrugged. “And then he hung up. And that’s pretty
much how it went. Sound about right, Yosh?”

Yoshi nodded
. “Yeah. I think there was one more ‘yessir’ in there
when Captain said something about playing nice, but I think
you captured the essence of it.”

I had Ron pegged
wrong. Based on my previous talks with him when I
was working the Gina Fiore case, I thought he was
a buttoned-up military-type hard ass—a regular gunnery
-sergeant-type guy. I’m okay with gunnery sergeants, but
I could already tell he’s not that guy. This
was okay too. If we had to work together, may
as well be with someone who’s a little fun
.

“Interpretation? If I had to guess,” he continued, “I’d
say someone who swings a very heavy bat went to
the power guys on the force and asked politely for
you to be let in. Or maybe not so politely
—who knows? Depends on how heavy the bat was, right
? Anyway, the guys downtown are always eager to please the
bigwigs, so they said, ‘Sure, why not? We’d be
happy to let a
civilian
into the middle of our
high-profile homicide case. Send said
civilian
on over.’ And
, presto! Here you are. Just like magic.”

“Just like magic
,” I said, nodding slowly, barely able to hide my skepticism
. Something didn’t add up. Cecilia had told us that
Ron recommended us. Now, he was saying he was under
orders, presumably as a result of a request. “So you
’re saying that the family requested us?”

“Uh . . . yeah. That
’s the way I remember it, right Yosh?” He looked
at Yoshi, but Yoshi just shrugged. Ron turned back to
me. “My money lands on Cecilia. Like I said, she
’s a peach.”

“Cecilia?” I asked. “I’m confused. You
’re saying Cecilia
requested
us. That’s funny because if
she did, why did she tell us that it was
you who
recommended
us to her? I’m confused, here
. Which came first?”

Ron looked at Yoshi and Yoshi looked
back at him for several seconds before he said, “Hey
—‘requested’—‘recommended’—what’s the difference, right?”

“Actually there’s
a pretty big difference,” I said. “‘Requested’ means it was
her idea. I can understand that. ‘Recommended’ means it was
your idea and, to be truthful, like I said when
we sat down, that one’s a little harder to
figure out.”

He stared at me for a second, and
then he turned to Yoshi. “Looks like the cat’s
out of the bag, pard.” He turned back to us
and took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly
. “Should have fuckin’ known, right? Lady would go and roll
on us after I warned her not to.” He shook
his head, disgusted. He took another breath, then said, “All
right. Listen up—I’m going to level with you
. No bullshit. As you know—or if you don’t
, you soon will—Cecilia Ward is a seriously relentless woman
. A royal pain in my ass. She was righteously pissed
when we didn’t have the case solved after the
first week, and then she went positively fucking apoplectic after
the second. I almost had to throw her out of
a sixth-floor window one afternoon, she started throwing such
a fuckin’ scene. Then, after that, it got worse. She
’s barely tolerable. She drops in, demands to talk to
me, to Yoshi, to Captain Jerry, to the fuckin’ mayor
. It’s drop everything and keep Cecilia happy—a mad
fire drill every time she’s around. There’s no
time left to work the case.” He turned to Toni
. “And as to your observation about the ‘frosty’ feeling in
the air? At this particular moment, we happen to be
pissed at each other.”

Yoshi nodded. “Things are a little
strained.”

“That’s right,” Ron continued. “So—bottom line? You
want to know the truth?” He stared at me for
a second. “Yoshi and me?” A smile started to appear
. “We’re not completely dense over here, ya’ know?” He
glanced at Yoshi. “This ain’t our first rodeo, right
pard?” Turning back to me, he continued. “It’s hard
enough trying to solve Sophie Thom’s murder without having
to babysit the overbearing Auntie at the same time. So
we came up with a plan.”

I nodded. “You need
a babysitter. You want someone in between you and Cecilia
—a buffer—and you know your captain won’t let
you off the hook if you ask directly. So you
went end around and started dropping hints and essentially had
Cecilia do the asking through her high-powered channels. Like
it was her idea.”

Ron pursed his lips. “It’s
possible that we may have dropped a little hint here
and there with Cecilia.”

“Yeah,” Yoshi said. “Subtle stuff. Like
‘Gee, Cecilia, have you ever thought about hiring a private
investigator to serve as your own private liaison? Someone like
that Danny Logan fellow? Word is he’s
really
good
. They could probably really help us with the investigation . . . blah
, blah, blah.’”

I nodded. “Got it. You set us up
. You baited us so that you can drag us into
the middle, so Cecilia will come after us instead of
you.”

Ron smiled. “Very good.” He turned to Yoshi and
shook his head. “See? Told you they were smart. We
’re going to have to be careful what we say
around here from now on.”

I laughed, nodding. “That’s
alright. No problem. Well, guess what? Joke’s on you
guys, though. A: we haven’t decided to take the
job. And B: if we do, we’re happy for
the work—comes at a good time.”

“That’s right
,” Toni said, a touch of defiance in her voice. “And
while we’re at it—while we’re babysitting Cecilia
? C: we’re going to go ahead and solve the
damn case. And when we do, we’ll invite you
to the press conference so you can see who dun
it.” That’s my baby.

Ron laughed. “Whoa! Outstanding. Classic
. You’re as feisty as you are pretty.” He finished
laughing and took on a serious tone. “Actually, in all
honesty, we’re happy you guys are on this. Your
primary assignment as card-carrying members of the Sophie Thoms
Homicide Task Force: run interference for us and
keep that
woman off our asses
. On that, I’m serious as
a heart attack.” He gave us both a hard look
. He really was serious. Then, he softened and added, “But
we could also use some help on the case too
. Who knows? Maybe a fresh set of eyes might shed
some light.”

“Or, like I said, we could just solve
this case and find the bad guy,” Toni said. “That
way, she wouldn’t annoy anybody.”

Ron nodded. “There is
that.” He thought for a second. “Actually, let’s leave
the logistics and the motivations right there for now—enough
of this administrative bullshit. Let’s talk about the case
. Let me start this off by officially turning over this
unofficial copy of our evidence so far.” He handed me
a DVD he’d had in the pocket of his
jacket. “On the electron-laden pages of this disc, you
will find complete, unabridged copies of the first responder report
, the initial ME report, the complete autopsy, a record of
all the interviews we’ve conducted to date, and a
copy of the CSI report from Sophie Thoms’s condo
, and some miscellaneous other crap. It’s pretty much everything
we’ve got to date. It’s confidential—guard it
with your life.”

I nodded. “Understood. Thanks.” I looked at
the disc. “So what’s it say—who did it
?”

Ron laughed. “Well-l-l-l, that’s a tough
one, ain’t it. We’ve been three months busting
our asses over here trying to answer that very question
, chewing through one bullshit lead after the next.” He shook
his head. “So far, not much to go on. If
you really do come up with something, please feel free
to cut us in. Matter of fact, now that you
’re a member of the team, I insist. We meet
downtown on the sixth floor every morning at eight.” He
shook his head. “Honestly, we’re sure as hell not
doing all that well on our own.”

I nodded. “That
’s what we suspected. There hasn’t been much in
the way of news.”

“There’s a good reason for
that. We don’t have anything we want to give
to the press yet.”

“Can you summarize what you do
have for us?”

“Sure. First off, the fuckin’ papers are
wrong, as usual. There
is
evidence. Plenty. It’s just
that it’s all over the board—there’s nothing
yet that comes together and points to a particular suspect
. Sophie was strangled—she was dead before she hit the
water. We know this. There were no drugs in her
system, no alcohol. She was fully clothed in a bizarre
-looking black dress that was consistent with what she’d
been seen wearing at the Genesis club the night before
she was found. There was no sexual assault. No unusual
hairs, no fibers, no DNA—nothing. The autopsy says that
the ligature looks to be a thin rope or line
of some sort. The ME down there actually did find
a few fibers from the rope embedded in her skin
, but they haven’t been able to ID them yet
. Some kind of synthetic thing, apparently. But the killer didn
’t leave the actual rope around her neck. For that
matter, we don’t have any other physical evidence anywhere
near where her body washed up.”