“A million dollars per project, then,” Toni said. “Very generous.”
“On average. Some more, some less. It seemed to be helping, at least according to the reports.”
I considered what she’d said. On the surface, I didn’t see anything suspicious. “Would you say that everything with the Foundation seemed to be above board? I apologize—I don’t have any idea how the donation process works. But I get the sense that you do. So, in your opinion, was the donation process with the Foundation along the lines of what you’d expect?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes. They were very professional. And besides, Leonard checked them out thoroughly. And when Leonard would check something out thoroughly, you can rest assured it was really checked out. He was satisfied.”
“Okay. And aside from the donations, that was it?” I asked. “No other involvement with Sophie or the Foundation?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s it.” She paused and furrowed her brow.
“Is there something else?” Toni asked.
“Well, I don’t know. But earlier this year, not long before he was killed, actually, Leonard actually went to Africa. He wanted to tour the projects we were donating to, and he wanted to meet some of the people involved. He spent three weeks over there.”
“When was this?” I asked.
She again referred to her iPhone. “He left on June third and returned June twenty-fourth.”
“So he was only back a couple weeks before he was murdered?” Toni asked.
Gloria nodded. “That’s right.”
“What did he find over there?” I asked.
She shrugged. “He said everything was fine—everything checked out just like he’d expected.”
I looked at her. “If that’s the case, why do you seem a little hesitant?”
She stared at me for a few moments before she smiled. “I didn’t believe him,” she said. “Leonard was a lousy liar. He was quite bothered by something—something he’d seen over there, but he never told me what it was.”
I thought about this. “Do you think he went there expecting to find problems, or do you think he was just going to verify that everything was okay?”
“I’m sure it was the latter,” she said. “Before he left, he thought everything was fine. He called this a ‘working vacation.’ He offered to take me, but I had no desire to go, so Leonard took my brother along for company instead.”
“Did you tell the police about the trip?” Toni asked.
She nodded again. “Yes, of course. But they claim they looked into it and found no connection to Leonard’s murder. I think they bought into the mugging-gone-wrong theory pretty early on.”
I thought for a moment. “Gloria, if Leonard found anything wrong over there, why wouldn’t he have told you? Why would he keep it from you?”
She smiled. “That was Leonard’s way. He had this chivalrous notion that it was his role as the man of the house to protect me from what he used to call ‘little problems.’ It’s entirely possible that he found a problem and simply decided to handle it on his own. Over the years, I learned to trust him, to not bother him. If he wanted to tell me—if he thought he needed to tell me, he would. Otherwise,” she shrugged, “I just let him work out the issues as he saw fit. He preferred it that way. Over the years I grew to accept this. It’s just who he was.”
“And you said he went with your brother?”
She nodded. “Gary.”
“What’d Gary say? About the trip?”
She shrugged. “When I talked to him about it, he said nothing seemed wrong. He said they weren’t together all the time—Leonard apparently separated the business part of the trip from the tourist part. He told Gary he needed to take care of some things, and he’d go off on his own. But Gary said that as far as he could tell, Leonard was not upset about anything.”
“Would he have kept some sort of records?” I asked. “Maybe photographs? Did he take pictures while he was there?”
Gloria smiled. “Leonard took pictures of everything. He was quite an amateur photographer. He took his camera with him everywhere. It’s inconceivable that he wouldn’t take pictures of a trip to Africa.”
“Would you mind if we had a look?” I asked, hopefully.
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t mind at all. Except I’ve been looking for them for three months. I can’t find a trace of them anywhere.”
Chapter 20
“WHERE’S YOUR PARTNER THIS MORNING?” RON asked. “If I can only have one of you, I’d rather have breakfast with her than with you anytime. She’s better looking.”
“And she’s nicer,” Yoshi added.
I was just sitting down to breakfast with Ron and Yoshi at the 5-Point Café on Cedar Street just off Denny in the downtown Seattle area known as Belltown, right in the shadow of the Space Needle. The 5-Point is a seventy-year-old diner consistently voted one of the “best dive bar/diners” in Seattle. It was Ron’s favorite.
“She stayed with her mom and her sister last night up in Lynnwood,” I said. “And just for the record? I’d rather have breakfast with her than with you two mutts any day.”
“At her mom’s, huh?” Ron said. “Uh-oh.” He turned to Yoshi. “Methinks our boy here may have fucked up.” He turned back to me. “Out with it. You in the doghouse?”
I smiled. “No. Not that it’s any of your damned business, but it’s a planned thing. Toni likes to spend time up there with her mom once a month or so.” I shrugged. “Last night just happened to be the night. She’ll be home this afternoon.”
Over breakfast, I explained our meeting with Gloria McKenzie, Leonard McKenzie’s trip to Africa, and the link we’d discovered between Sophie and Leonard.
“There’s a connection,” I said, as we were finishing up.
“What? You mean the simple fact that Sophie Thoms was this guy’s contact at the family Foundation and she happened to be murdered the same week as this guy—what’s his name again?”
“McKenzie. Leonard McKenzie. And there’s more than just the fact that they were murdered in the same week.” I told them about McKenzie’s trip to Africa two weeks before his death. When Leonard got back, he’d made several phone calls to Sophie Thoms. We verified this last night on her cell phone records. We’d seen them before when we ID’d the number and it came back to McKenzie, who was on the Thom’s Foundation donor list that Eric Gaston provided, but we didn’t think it was suspicious. Of course, when we saw ’em then, we didn’t know he’d been murdered just afterward.
Ron shrugged. “Yeah. It might sound a little suspicious just on the face of it. But it’s entirely possible—actually, entirely probable, that it’s nothing more than a coincidence. Impressive coincidence, but not enough for me to go to the captain with.”
“Well, tell me something, then,” I said. “How many people connected with the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation would need to go visit the Foundation’s projects in Africa, come home, and then be murdered in the same week as one of the Foundation’s board members in order for it to rise to the level of ‘suspicious enough to go to the captain with’?”
Ron gave me a serious dose of stink-eye. “Smart-ass.” He turned and reached for his coffee cup before turning back to me. “Tell me, smart guy, how many investors does the Foundation have, anyway? From what you describe, the murders sure as hell don’t seem to have anything in common, aside from the fact that this guy gave money to the Foundation. Suspicious?” He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But in the end, ’less you got something else you’re holdin’ back, my guess is that it’s probably just a coincidence.”
I shook my head. “Intransigence is an ugly thing.”
He took a sip from his coffee cup, then set it down and looked at Yoshi. “You know what intrans . . . intrance . . .” he turned back to me. “What was that word again? The big one?”
“Fuck you,” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah, that one. Look, man, I want to believe what you’re saying. Really. I agree there’s en
ough questions about this case that I’m not entirely comfortable pinning it on Bannister—even though my gut says he did it. But he . . . well, let’s just say I’m not close-minded. Ain’t that right, Yoshi?”
Yoshi was reading the paper while he worked on his coffee. “Man’s wide-open,” he said without looking up.
“See?” Ron said. “Now, if you could just come up with something a little more solid? Something that pushed it beyond the level of ‘suspicious coincidence,’ maybe up into the level of ‘solid connection’? Well, then I could actually go to the captain,” Ron raised his voice, “without fear of having him handing me my ass just after he went on national TV and said we’ve got our man.” He took a breath. “As you can probably imagine, he’s likely to find that to be just a tad embarrassing. And if there’s one thing that a high-ranking public servant like Captain Jerry don’t like? Yosh?”
Yoshi looked up. “Being made to look like a jackass.”
“Exactamundo.”
I looked at Yoshi, then back at Ron. “Do you two always finish each other’s sentences like that?”
Ron beamed. “We’re pards.”
“Yeah, I can see.” I sighed. Time for the trump card.
“Alright. What if I could show you pictures?” I asked.
Ron looked at me, then he nodded. “Pictures? Pictures are good. Solid. We love pictures, right, Yosh? What do these pictures show, anyway?”
I cringed a little. “I don’t actually know. We haven’t seen them.”
“Oh, shit,” Ron said, laughing. “You get my hopes all up and then you leave me to go jerk myself off. There’s a word for that. Help me out, Yosh.”
“I don’t want to know!” I interrupted. “Look, we just discovered Leonard McKenzie and his trip to Africa yesterday. We’re working with his wife to try and find the pictures. She feels pretty confident that McKenzie took some—apparently, he was quite the amateur photographer. Her brother—he went on the trip too. We’re trying to contact him and see if he knows anything. Maybe McKenzie left the pictures with him? Who knows? Meanwhile, I’ve got Kenny Hale, our computer wizard, helping Gloria McKenzie sift through their computers looking for records. When they’re done with that, they’re going to go recheck the McKenzies’ safe deposit boxes again today—Gloria already looked once, but it’s possible that she might not recognize what she’s looking for. Kenny will.”
“We didn’t find anything like that at Sophie’s condo, did we, Yosh? No pictures?”
“Nope.”
“Well,” I said, “we’re looking. One thing’s for sure, though: something made Leonard McKenzie upset on that trip. His wife says he was bothered. When he got home, he started calling Sophie Thoms. Two weeks later, both of them are dead. So do the math, guys. What does that point to?”
Ron stared at me. “It points to the fact that it’d sure be handy if you’d just go ahead and find those fuckin’ pictures, that’s what it points to.”
“Because you provided this morning’s entertainment, I’ll buy,” Ron said, as we prepared to leave. He flopped a credit card down on the bill.
“Thanks, I—” I started to say when Ron’s phone rang. He held up his hand and looked at the caller ID and then smiled when he saw who it was. He tapped the screen and answered.
“Carlos, my man. Long time no speak. What could possibly lead to your calling me at this ungodly hour?” He paused, allowing the man to speak.
“Yeah? That’s what they do. Women scream all the fuckin’ time. Could mean anything.”
I couldn’t overhear the actual words of the caller, but I was able to hear that the voice belonged to a man, and that he was excited.
“You saw her? So she screamed out a name,” Ron said. “What name?”
Suddenly, Ron’s face turned stone-cold serious. I think he actually lost a couple of shades of color. “Blue? Where? Give me the fuckin’ address!”
Ron scribbled the number down on a napkin.
“Thanks, man. We’ll talk.” He hung up and pushed back from the table.
“We’re done here. One of our CIs just heard a woman scream up in Magnolia on Twenty-Sixth.”
We looked at him, waiting for him to finish.
“She screamed out ‘Katherine LaRue.’ The nurse.” Now it was my turn to lose color as I had an instant adrenaline rush of my own.
“CI says there’s a blue van parked in the carport.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
“That’s right. We’re close, let’s go,” Ron said. Ron turned to me as we rose. “You carrying?”
“Of course.”
“Good. You ride with us. We might need the backup.”
We piled into Ron’s white, unmarked Crown Vic and took off. As we shot down Denny, Ron grabbed the magnetic-based flashing light and slapped it on the roof of the car, then he hit the sirens.
While Ron was driving, Yoshi called in the incident on the radio. “Dispatch!” he yelled as Ron sped up, “we’re en route to . . .”
“2244 Twenty-Sixth West!” Ron yelled.
Yoshi repeated the address on the radio. “We just had a CI report that the 110 victim Katherine LaRue is there. We’re requesting backup!”
“Get your vests on!” Ron yelled. Yoshi turned around and pointed to a stack of vests lying on the seat next to me. I handed him his and Ron’s and put a third one on as I struggled not to get tossed from side to side as Ron swerved back and forth avoiding traffic. I ended up wedging myself into the corner by the door and holding on to the armrest with both hands.
“We’re only a couple miles away!” Ron yelled. “It’ll take dispatch a second to get the word out. We’re close—we’re likely to be the first on the scene!”
“What’s the plan?” Yoshi yelled.
“If it’s quiet, we’ll wait for the cavalry! If it ain’t, then we’ll just have to figure it out when we get there!”
Morning traffic was heavy as we hurtled west toward the water past the Pacific Science Center. Fortunately, cars, trucks, and busses headed in both directions saw our flashing red light or heard the siren and pulled to the right, leaving the middle lane more or less open for us. Ron didn’t hesitate and pushed the big car for all it was worth. He slowed slightly at each intersection, barely giving Yoshi the opportunity to yell out “Clear!” before he proceeded. A couple of seconds later, he slammed on the brakes and we half-turned, half-slid around the corner onto Western, now northwest bound on Elliott.
Here, the downtown traffic thinned a little—we were headed away from downtown while most of the commuter traffic from Ballard and other points north was heading in. Ron picked up speed until a mile later, when he again slammed on the brakes and hung a sharp right onto the ramp for the Magnolia Bridge. The bridge spans what used to be tidal flats of Smith Cove and has now become a built-up industrial area. The tall bridge itself is an impressive structure, all the more so since it was built more than eighty years ago in 1929. I’ve heard it was damaged in the big earthquake we had here in 2001 and is scheduled for replacement, but budget problems in the city have prevented that from happening yet. Hopefully, it’s not too damaged. I usually just cross my fingers and hurry across whenever I have to use it, kind of a modern version of whistling past the graveyard.
This morning, I barely had time to cross my fingers, whistle, or anything else. The one-way traffic was cooperative, and we were across in just a few seconds. Ron hung a hard right on Thorndyke and then a quick left-right combination on Hayes and Twenty-Eighth. “Our turn is just up ahead!” he said. He didn’t slow down, but he did reach over and kill the siren. “Then it’s two streets over and up a few houses.”
Finally, he slowed, and we entered the neighborhood. The houses were small, well-kept single-family homes with front yards and a strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk. Single-width driveways cut through the grass strips at regular intervals, although many of the homes had long since converted their carports or garages into living space. Twenty seconds later, we turned north
on Twenty-Sixth.
“That’s it,” Yoshi said, pointing. “It’s the white house on the left—the one with the dark green shutters.”
“Where?”
“Right up there,” Yoshi pointed. “Fourth house up. See the blue van on the side?”
“Got it,” Ron said.
As Ron had predicted, ours was the first police car on the scene. Ron killed the flashing light and coasted up slowly. When we were parked against the curb across the street, he turned off the engine.
“Now we wait,” he said. He grabbed his vest and had just finished wriggling into it when we heard a muffled woman’s scream come from the subject house.
“Shit,” Ron said. “Okay. Plan B. Now we go.” We all piled out of the car. “Yoshi,” Ron called as he drew his sidearm, “You got the back. Don’t go in until I call out. I’ll take the front. Danny, you watch the street and direct traffic. Anyone gets past us, they’re all yours. But don’t come inside unless I call for help! Got it?”
“Got it!”
Yoshi sprinted for the side of the house. I ran around the car and placed the flashing strobe back on the roof. No point in secrecy now and besides, I wanted the next police officer to know that at least some good guys were already on the scene. I drew my sidearm and found some cover between the front of Ron’s car and the Toyota parked in front of it. I ducked down and watched the house.
Ron took up a tactical position to the side of the front door, then banged on it hard. “Seattle Police!” he yelled. “Open up!”
The only response was an immediate scream from the woman inside.
“Hey! What’s going on?” a voice behind me demanded.
Startled, I spun around and saw an elderly gentleman standing in the doorway of his home, right behind our car and directly across the street from our subject.
“Get back inside your house!” I yelled. “Police business!” He took a quick look around, and he must have seen the vest or else he saw that I was holding my 1911 in my hand. Something registered with him, and he turned right around and scurried back inside. I turned back just in time to see Ron jump in front of the door and give it a hard kick. The flimsy door folded a little in the middle, but didn’t open. “Shit!” he said. He backed up and kicked it again, harder. Ron’s a big guy, and this time the latch sprung and the door flew open. Before it could bounce back, Ron leapt in, yelling, “Seattle Police!” as he did. Then, he disappeared from view and things got quiet.
Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) Page 25
