Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (9 page)

I
nodded, familiar with the feeling but not really knowing how
to articulate it. “Yeah. Gratitude.”

She looked at me. “What
?”

“Gratitude.”

She looked at me, waiting for me to continue
.

“Gratitude that we might have a paying job.”

She glanced
at me and shook her head. “Really? A paying job
? You look at the picture of that girl, and that
’s what you take away? A paying job?” She gave
me a bit of a scowl. “Jesus, Logan, you know
, for someone who comes from a wealthy family, you sure
worry about money a lot. It’s not only about
the money, you know.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “That’s
not fair, and you know it. It’s funny how
your attitude shapes up when people are relying on you
for their paychecks every other Friday.” We were down to
less than a month’s reserve in the company checking
account, and this little factoid weighed heavily on me.

She
looked over at me. “You don’t have to get
sanctimonious. I know about the money.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, well
it’s hard for me to forget.”

“I know. So
when you call Cecilia up and tell her we’ll
take the job, then, do it for the money if
you must,” she said. She turned and looked at me
. “But don’t do it
only
for the money.”

I
smiled and I nodded. “I hear what you’re saying
.”

We drove for another couple of minutes, listening to the
music. Just before we got home, Toni said, “You’re
right about one thing. I look at that picture, and
I look into those eyes, and I think maybe she
is
talking to me.”

I glanced over at her. “Really
? What’s she saying?”

She thought about it, then she
shook her head. “I don’t know. Not yet. But
I guess I’m feeling like she wants us to
be here . . . looking.”

I pictured Sophie in my mind—her
eyes, her smile, the way a lock of hair had
dropped casually across her forehead. I felt something, to be
sure, but I can’t honestly say I felt the
same way Toni did. Maybe I’d get there.

Meanwhile
, a paying job is a paying job, and I was
thankful for that. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll call Cecilia
when we get back. We’re in.”

C
hapter 5

WE
SPENT SUNDAY AT HOME REVIEWING
the evidence DVD Ron had
given us. After nearly eight solid hours of going through
the notes, transcripts, photos, and all the other documents, the
only conclusion we could draw was that the police had
done a very thorough job of gathering up the obvious
evidence and interviewing the typical suspects. In the end, though
, Ron was right: there wasn’t anything they’d uncovered
that made anyone stand out as a suspect. There were
no smoking guns.

Based on this, we decided that, at
least initially, it might be useful to recover some of
the same ground that SPD had already covered. We wanted
to re-interview some of the people they’d talked
to three months ago. Most of the time, it’s
best to talk to witnesses and potential witnesses right after
a crime’s been committed when their memories are fresh
. Occasionally, though, with some people, the passing of time aged
their recollections of the sights, sounds, and impressions. Sometimes, their
overall perspective might shift a little. And with these new
angles opening up came the possibility of a new light
being flicked on. Admittedly, it wasn’t much, but it
was a start.

Monday morning we showed up at the
Millennium Tower in downtown Seattle at ten for our meeting
with Nicki Thoms. The uniformed security guard in the lobby
was all business. He checked our credentials carefully before calling
upstairs for clearance. After a very short conversation, he nodded
and waved us through to the elevator. We rode up
to the sixteenth floor, where Nicki met us at the
front door of her condo. She was barefoot and wore
faded blue jeans with fashionable rips in the knees and
a long-sleeved green-and-blue T-shirt with “Seattle
Sounders” printed on it. She’d just gotten out of
the shower—her hair was still wet and slicked back
. She had that sexy-morning-woman smell: soap and shampoo
and makeup. “Come in,” she said, sounding sleepy and a
little hungover. “Excuse the mess.” Gone was the flirty coyness
I’d noticed at the Memorial kickoff on Saturday. We
entered the foyer, and Nicki led us back to the
living room.

Two maids were hard at work clearing away
what had apparently been a hell of a party last
night. Half-full champagne flutes and wineglasses were strewn about
the table. Sofa cushions were in disarray. Fifteen or twenty
beer bottles had already been assembled on the bar, ready
for recycling. A large ashtray in the center of a
glass coffee table held what looked to be a dozen
marijuana roaches. A mirror with decorative flowers around its border
sat beside it, cocaine residue and razor-blade tracks plainly
visible across the shiny surface.

Nicki looked around as we
settled in and shook her head.

I was deciding whether
to make some sort of clever comment when Toni jumped
in and said, “Looks like it was one helluva party
.”

Nicki glanced up at her, then rolled her eyes and
nodded. “Yeah, it was. I’m completely knackered this morning
.” She grimaced and reached up, rubbing her temple.

“You gonna
be okay?” I asked.

She smiled and nodded. “I will
be in another hour or so. I just took three
Tylenol. Some friends are in town, and we all ended
up here last night.” She looked around and shook her
head. “What a fuckin’ disaster.”

I smiled. “Looks like your
friends came to the right place.”

“Yeah, I’m sure
they think so.”

The room was furnished with a striped
sofa and two overstuffed chairs on either side of the
table in the center. A very large, colorful oil painting
of a moonlit grass hut in a mystical tropical landscape
dominated the wall behind us. The exterior wall of the
condo was floor-to-ceiling glass and featured a magnificent
view of the morning sun playing peekaboo with the clouds
, causing dappled shadows to skim across the bright blue waters
of Elliott Bay.

The main Seattle ferry terminal was two
blocks due west of Nicki’s condo; the ferry to
Bainbridge Island was loading while the Bremerton ferry approached the
dock. On the bay, the water was crowded with ships
and boats of all sizes, from huge cargo ships to
the small tugs that pushed and pulled them into position
on the unloading docks with their massive orange cranes. Looking
past the ships and boats, I could see straight across
the bay to the north end of Alki Beach at
the top of West Seattle with Bainbridge Island six or
seven miles beyond and the snowcapped Olympic Mountains far away
to the west. “Fantastic view.”

“Thank you.”

I turned to
her. “Thanks for seeing us this morning. You ready to
get started?”

She smiled and gave a quick little nod
. “Sure. Have a seat.” She dragged herself up on the
sofa and sat cross-legged as Toni and I took
seats in the chairs across from her.

“You don’t
mind if we take notes, do you?”

She shook her
head. “No. I’m getting used to talking to people
who are looking down, furiously scribbling away as I speak
.” She smiled. “Makes a person feel rather important, doesn’t
it? As if you’re hanging on my every word
.”

“I suppose. When you say ‘people taking notes,’ I take
it you’re probably on a first-name basis with
the police investigators, then?”

She nodded. “I am. They’ve
been here three or four times in the last few
months. They’re quite deliberate.”

“I’m sure you can
imagine that sometimes these things take time,” Toni said.

“Time
?” she said, looking at Toni. “Let me guess. That’s
police code for saying that at this particular time, they
don’t have the slightest idea of what happened to
my sister.”

There was a clear hardening in Nicki’s
tone when she spoke to Toni as compared with when
she spoke to me—definitely more of an edge there
. I didn’t know if this was because of what
Toni’d said at the memorial fund kickoff, or what
she had said just now, or maybe Nicki didn’t
like pretty women in general, but it was there, nonetheless
. I looked over at Toni to see if she picked
up on it, and she gave me a barely noticeable
little nod. I gathered this was a signal for me
to take the lead in conducting the interview.

“Okay,” I
said. “On that note, let’s get started, shall we
? Just to be clear, we’re officially working for your
family.”

She nodded. “Good old Aunt Cecilia. She must be
in heaven. You know, she’s not happy unless she
’s got her hand firmly on the controls.” In the
kitchen, one of the maids dropped a cup, and it
clattered loudly on the countertop. Annoyed, Nicki turned in their
direction. “Maria!” she said sharply. “Can’t you two go
work on the other side for a while?” She rubbed
her head. “You’re killing me here!”

The maids looked
alarmed for a moment. The older woman said something in
Spanish to the other girl, and they both hurried down
the hall.

When they were gone, Nicki turned back to
us. “So. She can’t control the police, so she
hires you instead.” She smiled. “Lucky you.” When I didn
’t respond, she added, “Well, then, what would you like
to know?”

“Why don’t you start by telling us
about your relationship with Sophie? How close were you? Did
the two of you talk frequently? That sort of thing
.”

“Humph,” Nicki said. “We can shorten this up some. Do
either of you have a brother or a sister?”

Toni
nodded. “I do. A sister. She’s nine years younger
than me.”

“And you’re close?”

Toni nodded again. “Very
.”

Nicki shrugged. “So there you are. You already know. I
loved my sister. Very much. We were extremely close as
well.” Nicki pushed back a strand of hair that had
fallen into her eyes. “I am—was—two years older
than Sophie. We shared everything.”

“Except a place to live
,” I said. “Your uncle Oliver told us
when
you both
moved here, but he didn’t say why the two
of you didn’t move in together. You already had
a place. Why didn’t Sophie just move in with
you?”

“Well,” she said slowly, “I’d been living alone
for a number of years. Frankly, I didn’t want
a roommate—don’t actually have room. Not even for
my sister. And in the end, I don’t think
Sophie fancied a roomie, either. She’d been living on
her own in London for several years. As it turns
out, she picked a place that’s only a couple
blocks away. It was just about perfect. Almost next door
, but not quite.”

“So it was a mutual decision, then
?”

Nicki nodded. “Definitely.”

“Did you see each other often?”

“Yeah
, sure. Just about every day.”

“At work?”

Nicki smiled. “By
‘work,’ I presume you mean the Foundation?”

I nodded. “Yes
.”

“My aunt and uncle must have told you about my
interests there.”

“Or lack thereof.” It just jumped out.

She
gave me a sly smile. “Precisely. The Foundation does meaningful
work—Sophie certainly thought so. But I think mostly the
Foundation is a salve for my father’s guilty capitalistic
conscience. A public-relations ploy, nothing more. I chose not
to get involved for that reason. But, to answer your
question, Sophie and I would get together in the evenings
, after she was done with her work, and after I
was done with mine.”

I looked at Toni, then back
at Nicki. “Your work? I didn’t know you had
a job outside of the Foundation. Do you mind telling
us about it?”

She shrugged. “I’m an artist.”

“Really
?” I asked. “Nobody mentioned that.”

She sniffed. “They wouldn’t
, would they?”

“I don’t know why not,” I said
. “What type of work do you do?”

“I’m a
painter.” She nodded to the large tropical landscape painting on
the wall we’d passed when we walked in.

“That
?” I asked, surprised. “You painted that?” I was impressed.

“Can
you imagine,” she said, coyly.

“Damn.” I got up and
walked over to look at the painting more closely. The
rich, deep greens and blues of the jungle in the
cloudy moonlight gave way to a clearing that contained a
pool and a small hut. A towering waterfall fell into
the pool. A Polynesian woman with no top kneeled, faced
away toward the pool as she brushed her long black
hair. “This is fantastic, Nicki. Where’d you learn to
do this?”

“Slade. The Slade School of Fine Arts at
UCL—University College London.”

“We had no idea.”

“I’ve
turned my other bedroom back there into a studio. It
’s nice—looks out over the water.”

“You certainly have
a gift,” Toni said.

Nicki smiled. “Thank you.” Then the
smile faded. “But I can assure you that a career
in the arts is not much appreciated in the Thoms
family.”

I returned to my seat. “Why not?”

“As you
probably already know, my father is very wealthy. He took
a small fortune given to him by his father and
turned it into a very large fortune. I think he
considers anything other than making money—or, I suppose, in
Sophie’s case, giving it away—to be a complete
waste of time. I don’t hold this against him
—to each his own, right? For me, though, I’ve
never been terribly interested in any of that. It’s
not for me. And for his part, my father has
never been interested at all in my work. It’s
as if it simply doesn’t exist.”