Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (10 page)

I shook my
head. “That’s unfortunate. I think he should be quite
proud.”

She smiled. “You’re kind.”

“What about Oliver and
Cecilia?” Toni asked. “What do they think?”

She shook her
head. “Who cares?” she said. “I’ve not made any
great efforts to hide my work from my aunt and
uncle, but they’ve not made any effort at all
to find out anything about it, either. My aunt is
definitely my father’s sister—they’re very much alike
. Uncle Oliver, the poor man, I think he just gets
dragged along by her. Who can blame him? I wouldn
’t want to fight my aunt either.” She shrugged. “In
the end, I guess one could say that we simply
coexist.” She thought for a second, then shrugged. “They believe
what they choose to believe. For my part, I no
longer try to influence anyone’s opinion of me. I
live my life. If I’m fortunate, one day my
art will do the talking for me.”

“What are your
plans with it?” Toni asked.

She shrugged. “Oh, you know
, the usual. Build up enough work to have a show
, then take shameless advantage of the Thoms name and convince
some unsuspecting gallery to sponsor me.” She smiled. “Then, I
get discovered and a few years later—just like that
—I’m an instant sensation.”

I stared at her for
a second. “That’s a little sad, you know? That
none of your relatives support you.”

Nicki shrugged. “Sophie did
. She has one of my paintings on her living room
wall.”

I looked at her for a moment. “You cared
for her a lot, didn’t you?”

Nicki nodded. “I
did.”

“What kind of things did the two of you
do together?”

She smiled. “Lots of things.” Her hair had
fallen into her eyes again, so she flipped it back
. “We’d do the galas, some charity dinners, and clubs
. We liked to go to clubs.”

“Which clubs did you
two visit?”

“Oh, you know, there were several. We were
young and alive and single. We had a good time
. We went to Noc Noc and the Mercury. We liked
to go to the Genesis.”

“Really,” I said. “Yeah, I
read that the night Sophie went missing, she’d been
at the Genesis. That’s a little curious. The Genesis
is a pretty rough joint.”

She shrugged. “We never had
any problems. It’s not as if we were into
the lifestyle, nothing like that—no bondage, no BDSM or
anything like that. I think we just fancied the costumes
—the dresses. You know, get dressed up all in black
, that sort of thing. It gave us a chance to
act out. We used to go to Goth clubs in
London, actually. Slimelight. AntiChrist.”

“The two of you must have
made quite an impression.”

She smiled, wistfully. “We did. It
was fun. Basically, Sophie was a bit of a prude
, but she liked to dress up. She had a whole
room full of dresses.” That made sense. Those clubs—particularly
Genesis—were like Halloween all year long.

“Did you meet
guys at these clubs?”

She shrugged. “Some. I don’t
think I ever met anyone serious there.” She paused. “I
know Sophie didn’t. More often, we’d bring guys
with us so we wouldn’t get hit on.”

“Do
you happen to have any photos that might be helpful
?” Toni asked. “Pictures of Sophie with you, your friends, maybe
even other men that she might have met?”

She thought
about it for a few seconds, then she nodded and
glanced at her phone before looking back up at me
. “I think I have a few, but they’re on
my other phone which, unfortunately, I’ve left in my
car.”

“Could you e-mail them to us?”

She nodded
. “I’ll run down as soon as you leave.”

“Thanks
,” I said. “Here’s a sensitive question.” I looked down
at the ashtray and the mirror on the table. “How
about drugs? Did Sophie get high?”

Nicki smiled. “Sophie drank
just a little—barely what you’d call social drinking
. Mostly, she just drank mineral water. If she did drink
, she’d work on the same glass of champagne for
an hour. So naturally,” she smiled slyly, “I felt it
my duty to make up for her. Good name of
the family and all that.”

“And drugs?”

“Same thing. Sophie
would occasionally—and I do mean occasionally—take a hit
off a joint if someone passed it to her.”

“Nothing
else? No coke, no ecstasy?”

“Oh, God no.” She looked
around the room and smiled. “I’m afraid there’s
only one real party girl in the Thoms family. And
I’m quite certain my aunt and uncle must have
identified the nasty culprit.” She raised her hand and smiled
.

“There may have been a word or two,” I said
.

“Aren’t you the discreet one,” she said. She turned
to Toni. “You’re quite lucky, you know, with this
one.” She nodded toward me. “Tall . . . good-looking . . . smart. Listen
—if things between the two of you don’t work
out . . .”

“New question,” I said, cutting her off. “How about
boyfriends? Did Sophie have any boyfriends?”

She smiled. “Aside from
Ryan, not really. You know about Ryan Crosby, right?”

“Just
what we’ve read in the files. We haven’t
talked to him yet.”

“Alright. Sophie went out with a
few basically anonymous guys at first, but I think there
were only two she went out with more than once
. Most of the early ones were just dates for social
events.”

“Ryan Crosby was one of those two?”

She nodded
.

“Who was the other?”

She hesitated for a minute, as
if unsure whether to go on; then I guess she
figured we were okay. “Well, she stole Lucas away from
me.”

“Lucas?” I asked, surprised. “You mean Seattle Sounders Lucas
?”

She nodded. “The very same. Lucas Santos, actually.”

I lifted
an eyebrow. Lucas—I recognized the name immediately even though
I’d never heard his last name. Lucas was one
of those Brazilian soccer superstars who used only one name
. Like Pelé or Ronaldinho—sort of the sports equivalent of
Madonna. Lucas had been recruited to come to Seattle to
play forward for the Sounders a couple years ago.

“That
’s interesting. How’d that start?”

“It started because he
was seeing me at the time, the bastard, and I
introduced them. Earlier this year—New Year’s—right after
New Year’s—something like that. Lucas was at a
party at a teammate’s house. I’d been seeing
him for a while—maybe a month or two. Sophie
and I went together because I thought she might meet
another guy on the team. Instead, Lucas takes one look
at her, and about a week later, he calls me
up and he’s like, ‘I need to cool things
down between us. I’m afraid my wife is going
to find out’—that kind of bullshit. Then, the very
next day, Sophie called and said she was going out
with him! I was pissed!”

“What happened? What’d you
do?”

“I went over to her place to have it
out with her. She said she didn’t even know
I was seeing Lucas—she thought we were just friends
. I yelled and screamed a little, but in the end
I could never stay mad at Sophie—I’d get
mad, and she’d just smile and soak it up
, waiting for my tantrum to pass. Besides, she was right
—I’d never actually told her I was seeing Lucas
. Anyway, she said she was sorry.” She stared at the
ceiling for a second, thinking, then she turned back and
smiled. “But she didn’t stop seeing him, either, the
little thief.”

“What’d you do?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. I
was about tired of Lucas by then. He lied about
being married when we hooked up. He was probably shagging
women all over the world when we were together. Besides
, there are plenty of men in the world to choose
from. I don’t need Lucas. Anyway, Sophie went home
to London the first part of April for a few
weeks. When she got back, she texted me and said
she was done with him too. She figured him out
even faster than I did. It only took her a
couple of months to toss his sorry ass. What a
wanker.”

“So now it’s like, the end of April
or so, right?”

“Right. I think it was in May
—yeah, definitely May, she told me that she met a
new guy. Someone from work.” She smiled and shook her
head. “I don’t know what I expected, but I
remember when she introduced us I definitely
did not
expect
this young kid . . .” She laughed. “I mean, he looked like
he was just out of high school or something.”

“That
would be Ryan Crosby.”

“Yeah, Ryan.” She shook her head
slowly. “At first, I couldn’t see what Sophie saw
in him. He was always pretty quiet and reserved. A
real studious type. I actually think she may have felt
sorry for him.”

“How long did the two of them
go out?”

She shrugged. “Couple months. Right up until she
was killed.” She paused. “You don’t think he had
anything to do with it, do you?”

I shook my
head. “I don’t think so, but I’ve never
met him. What do you think?”

She leaned back. “Wow
. He was such a kid. Honestly, I didn’t know
him all that well—Sophie knew that I didn’t
care for him much at first, so we only went
out together once or twice. But even from that little
time, I can hardly imagine him ever getting mad, never
mind doing something like what happened to Sophie.”

“Why didn
’t you like him?” Toni asked.

Nicki looked at her
, then shook her head. “No particular reason, I suppose. Not
my type? I don’t know. I guess I just
couldn’t figure him out. I mean, he was nothing
like the guys Sophie and I usually hooked up with
.”

“In the sense that—”

“He seemed like a normal bloke
, like an accountant.”

“Sophie never told you about him being
violent? Nothing like that?”

She shook her head. “About Ryan
? No—not a word. She certainly went on about him
, though.”

“And you?” I said, “You changed your opinion?”

She
tilted her head back and forth, thinking. “I think maybe
I grew up a little, watching the two of them
.” She stared at the wall, thinking. “Sophie was really happy
with Ryan. I think maybe I started to appreciate him
a little more just because I saw how he made
Sophie so happy. I started to see things a little
differently. I think he’d have done anything for her
.” She paused. “I really saw that after Sophie disappeared. The
poor guy was devastated.”

I nodded. “Understood.” I flipped a
page in my notebook. “Okay. Other than Lucas and then
Ryan, was there anyone else you can think of? Any
other guys she saw that you’re aware of?”

She
smiled. “No. Just those two guys were the only ones
that you could call regular.”

“And as I understand it
, you were with her the night she disappeared?” Toni asked
.

Nicki nodded. “Yeah. We went to the Genesis together with
a group of friends.” She shrugged. “Sophie took a call
on her cell, then she said she had an appointment
the next morning and that she needed to go home
early. That’s the last time I saw her.”