Free Blue Molly (Danny Logan Mystery #5) by M.D. Grayson Page A

watching TV?”
    She smiled. “Then maybe we’d not be talking so nice.”
    “But,” David said, “since Danny does in fact have an alibi, is SPD still considering him a suspect in this case?”
    Inez smiled again. “Oh, come on, gentlemen. He was never a suspect, more a person of interest. I know him well enough not to think the worst of him. But you must see why I needed to talk to him?”
    I nodded. “Fair enough. So are you ready for me to talk?”
    She nodded. “By all means. Start by filling us in as to your involvement with this man, Markovic.”
    I shook my head. “Easy. There is no involvement. None. I never saw him before Wednesday. I will say that as of yesterday morning, my new clients are Sylvia and Mike Lyon. Someone is trying to buy the building they own in Pioneer Square, called the Lyon Building. It’s on Main across from Occidental Park. We’re thinking that whoever’s trying to buy the building is trying to harass them to get them to agree to sell. Markovic
may
—and I repeat,
may
—have been part of the harassment team, but we don’t know for sure. It’s also possible that Markovic might work for a man named Pavel Laskin—we met him yesterday morning. He said Markovic was his employee. He apologized to us for his actions. He said it was a mistake. We have no reason not to believe him.”
    “So what you’re saying is that the incident in the bar might not have been random?” Inez asked.
    I shook my head. “Almost certainly not.”
    “What makes you so certain?”
    “Markovic started the fight in the bar for some reason. It’s possible that when he did that, he violated some sort of order by Laskin.”
    John and Inez looked at each other. Then John turned back to me. “And violating that order might have led to punishment by Laskin?”
    I shrugged. “It’s possible.”
    John nodded as Inez leaned back in her chair and stared at the wall for a solid minute. Then, she looked at John and shook her head. “Guess we’ll need to be tracking down this Pavel Laskin character, won’t we?”
    He shrugged.
    She turned to me. “You said Pioneer Square?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Occidental Park. He’s hard to miss. Man’s big. And very mean looking.”
    Inez nodded. “Good. We appreciate all this.”
    “No problem. Maybe next time, you can just call me up.”
    She smiled but didn’t answer.
    * * * *
    Toni has dinner every couple of weeks with her mom and sister up in Lynnwood. The Blair family is very close, brought on, I suppose, by the shared hardships they went through after Toni’s father was killed in an auto accident when she was eleven. The girls not only survived; after much hard work and sacrifice, they eventually thrived.
    Toni’s mom never remarried. She blended her role as single mom with the new role of career woman. She took a job as a waitress and now, eighteen years later, she was the regional manager for the same chain with eight restaurants in the Seattle area under her supervision. Along the way, she’d worked her butt off to help the girls through college. Toni graduated from the University of Washington. Her younger sister, Kelli, was nearly halfway through a degree in drama, also at U-Dub. All three of the Blair girls were tall and striking and of similar (feisty) temperament. I didn’t begrudge Toni her time with them even a little bit.
    By agreement, Toni called when she arrived to let me know she was okay. I think she thought it was a little silly that I’d insisted, but after yesterday, I was tempted to go with her. She’s highly proficient in Krav Maga, and she’s almost always armed (a crack shot), so I shouldn’t worry about her too much, but what can I say? I’m in love with her, and with a wild card like Maroni and a potential murderer like Pavel Laskin out there, I was concerned.
    Nothing I could do about it now, though, so I settled in for three or four hours in which I got to watch TV, listen to music, and play the guitar. The rain had started