Quickstep to Murder Page 10

  “Sorry?” She’d lost me.

  “How much? How much to go back to Rafe’s and find my thumb drive? Tonight?” Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a checkbook and waited expectantly.

  “You can’t pay me to do it!”

  “Certainly I can,” she said calmly. “There’s very little that money won’t buy.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. She studied my face for a moment, and I got a flash of what she must be like in a congressional committee meeting or at the poker table. Favors and back-scratching and bartering were coin of the realm in political circles. She and Uncle Nico would probably get along like Bonnie and Clyde. Come to think of it, she did kind of look like Faye Dunaway.

  “Okay, then.” She put the checkbook back. “If the carrot doesn’t do the trick, it’ll have to be the stick.”

  I didn’t like where this was going.

  “What if I told you there were documents on that thumb drive that would destroy Rafe’s reputation?”

  I shifted uneasily. “Like what?”

  “Photos. I don’t need to draw you a picture, do I? Sleeping with students isn’t exactly the height of professionalism. And-”

  “It happens all the time,” I said, ignoring the pang I felt at this confirmation of Rafe’s routine unfaithfulness, and trying not to envision what those photos looked like. Ew. “You and Rafe are both over twenty-one. Way over,” I added cattily. “I’d think photos like that would do you more damage than Rafe.”

  “And,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “evidence of payoffs to ballroom dance judges. That might reflect badly not only on Rafe but on Graysin Motion, don’t you think?”

  I did, indeed. “Rafe wouldn’t do that.”

  “He was desperate to make this studio successful,” she countered. “And he needed the money.”

  “What for?” I knew, of course, that Rafe was looking for money, and it lent a tiny bit of credence to her accusation.

  She shrugged. “How would I know? He asked me to float him a loan, but I told him I had a firm rule about not doing business with friends. It’s a surefire way to lose both your friends and your money. I leased him a car instead, so he could sell his Camry.”

  Staring at her, I wondered suddenly where Rafe’s new Lexus was. Had the police found it? Maybe not if it was leased under Sherry’s name. I was about to suggest that she locate the Lexus and search it for the flash drive when something stopped me. Maybe my dislike of being blackmailed. I gnawed on my lower lip as Sherry rose.

  “Think about it,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll realize that we both have a vested interest in making sure the documents and photos on that thumb drive stay private.” Flicking a minute speck of dust or lint from one of her cuffs, she walked out, her stiletto heels pock-pocking on the wood floor.

  I sat trancelike for ten minutes after she left, my mind whirring with what she’d told me. I was ninety-eight percent sure she was lying about the bribes, but could I risk it? Sliding my desk drawer open, I fingered the key I’d dropped in there. Another visit to Rafe’s condo was probably no big deal. The police undoubtedly had been through the place by now and wouldn’t have a need to return. And whoever was there when I’d dropped in yesterday was long gone, surely. The cold, jagged edges of the key bit into my hand as I closed my fist around it.

  The area around Rafe’s condo was busier in the early evening than it had been at midday. People returning from work, I presumed, watching the sporadic trail of cars disappearing into the garage. That would work in my favor, I decided, crossing the street from where I’d parked my Beetle. I’d be one in the crowd. Anonymous. The condominium complex housed young professionals-singles and couples-and people pretty much kept to themselves. I let myself into the building with the key, holding the door open for a fit-looking woman wheeling a bicycle out, then took the elevator to the fourth floor.

  As the elevator door closed behind me, I scanned the hallway. No one in sight. Good. I paced rapidly toward Rafe’s door and leaned my ear close, listening for a moment. A shower ran in the next door unit and a phone rang somewhere down the hall, but I didn’t hear anything from within Rafe’s place. Dings from the elevator warned me it was coming up and might spit out someone on this floor. Jabbing the key into the lock, I pushed open the door and quickly closed it behind me, leaning against it. I surveyed the room without moving, noting immediately that the laptop was gone. The cops had taken it, I’d bet. That didn’t bode well for my search for the thumb drive.

  I pushed away from the door, intending to start my search around the coffee table where the computer had been, when the slap of bare feet on wood made me whirl to my left.A man stood in the dim hallway, towel wrapped around his waist, water dripping from his hair, knife held confidently in one hand and pointed at my stomach.

  Chapter 9

  I gasped and the key fell from my nerveless hand, clinking on the floor. The man took a step forward, moving into the light, and I recognized him: Tav Acosta.

  “What are you doing here?” we said simultaneously.

  Tav lowered the knife so it dangled at his side. I thought it was from the knife block in Rafe’s kitchen, but I was too distracted by Tav’s bare torso, glistening with water, to care much. A sprinkling of black hairs covered strong pecs and tapered across defined abs to disappear beneath the towel. His skin was smooth and unblemished, the color of caramel. He looked so much like Rafe that my mouth went dry. My gaze flew to his face, catching the flicker of heat in his eyes before a more wary look came over his face.

  Seeming suddenly conscious of his lack of apparel, Tav gripped the towel with one hand-not the one holding the knife-and told me, “Wait here. Do not leave.” He disappeared back down the hall and closed the door to Rafe’s bedroom with a thunk.

  I remained by the door for a moment, trying to remember how to breathe, then eased into the living room and retrieved the key from the floor. I wasn’t about to compound my difficulties by getting caught searching the room, so I sank onto the sofa and picked up the dance magazine that had been on the floor. My fingers trembled as I tried to turn the pages and I set the magazine down, clenching my hands into fists. Who knew getting caught sneaking into one’s dead former fiancé’s condo was so unnerving?

  Tav was back within four minutes, wet hair combed back, wearing chino shorts and a red-striped golf shirt. His feet were still bare. His expression was stern and the hint of suspicion in his eyes gave me a pang after our enjoyable lunch and conversation. “Talk,” he said.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” I said, as he sank onto the chair opposite me. “I-” Trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for being here, I bit my lower lip. I finally decided on the truth; hell, I didn’t owe Sherry Indrebo anything. I spilled out the story of Sherry’s request-demand-and watched Tav’s face. It didn’t reveal much. “So I’m here to find the thumb drive,” I finished.

  “Because you think my brother might have been bribing judges?” Tav sounded skeptical.

  I couldn’t much blame him; telling the story out loud made it sound pretty unlikely. I nodded unhappily. “Might,” I emphasized. “I don’t really think he was, but he did seem to be in a real financial bind lately, and maybe that drove him to…”

  “How much money could he win at a ballroom dance competition?” Tav asked. The way he relaxed back into the chair made me think that he believed me and I let out my breath, unaware until then that I’d been holding it. “It’s hard to say,” I said, “because there are so many prize categories. But if we’d taken home the top studio award and a few division prizes, maybe ten to twelve thousand-not a fortune by any stretch. The money in ballroom dancing is in teaching and competing with amateur students… or getting a gig on Ballroom with the B-Listers.”

  “Hardly seems worth bribing judges,” Tav said, almost to himself. He stood and held out a hand to pull me up. “Let us begin.”

  “Begin?”

  “Our search.”

  It wasn’t until half an ho
ur later, when we had gone over every inch of the living room and were pulling utensils out of kitchen drawers and checking the ice tray in the freezer for the thumb drive that I thought to ask, “Hey, what are you doing here, anyway?”

  Tav looked up from where he was systematically removing spices and canned goods from the lazy Susan in a low cupboard and smiled. “When I picked up Rafael’s effects, his keys were among them. The police had no objection to my staying here. A week in a hotel in this area would eat my profits for the month.”

  “Were you here yesterday morning?”

  “No. My plane did not land until late last night and I did not get the key until this morning. Why?”

  I told him about my visit yesterday and the intruder who had hidden in the closet and snuck out while I was in the bedroom.

  “You thought it was me?” Tav said, a smile lurking in his brown eyes. “I am not much of one for hiding in closets.”

  No, he was more the type to grab a knife and confront an intruder. I washed my hands after sorting through the cleaning supplies under the sink and accidentally shifting a roach motel.

  “Who do you think it was?” Tav asked, brow furrowed.

  We headed toward the bedroom and began rifling through the drawers and closet, and I gave him the thoughts I’d already hashed out with Danielle. It felt weird to be in Rafe’s bedroom, which still smelled like Rafe, with a man who looked so much like Rafe but wasn’t Rafe. I remembered the last time I’d woken up in here, dawn just creeping through the slatted blinds and striping the cherry chest of drawers and Rafe’s chest and arms as he snored softly. A plip-plip sound had drifted in from the kitchen as the automatic coffeemaker kicked on. The smell of coffee followed moments later. The scent had half awakened Rafe and he’d turned to embrace me, his beard stubble rasping my face as he kissed me. I’d still had a ferocious case of beard burn when I walked in on him and Solange later that afternoon. I couldn’t face the bed with its rumpled sheets, so I drifted into the bathroom to search while Tav tore apart the bed, seemingly unaware of the conflicted thoughts and images chasing one another through my head.

  We gave up forty minutes later without having found my love letters-Rafe must have trashed them-or the flash drive. Either the police had taken it along with the computer, Rafe had put it somewhere else (possibly planning to return it to Sherry), or someone else had lifted it. I discounted the possibility that Sherry Indrebo was wrong about where she’d left it; she didn’t strike me as a woman who got details confused.

  “I will ask the police about it,” Tav said, offering me a glass of water in the kitchen when we’d finished.

  Leaning against the sink, I swallowed it in one long gulp-rifling someone’s condo was hard work-and said, “Just don’t make them suspicious.”

  “Never fear.” He grinned.

  “Did they give you Rafe’s car keys, too?”

  Tav nodded.

  “Is the Lexus in the garage?” I didn’t see how Rafe’s car could be in its slot below the condo building when he’d been shot at the studio.

  “No. My rental is parked in his space. Why?”

  I explained my thinking and he disappeared into the bedroom momentarily, emerging with Rafe’s key ring in his hand. He lobbed it at me and I caught it. “You’re giving me Rafe’s keys?” I felt a spark of warmth at his trust.

  “It is not his car, correct? So I have nothing to lose if you turn out to be a clever car thief.”

  “Oh.” His prosaic logic deflated me.

  “Search the car if you come across it, or return the keys to Ms. Indrebo,” Tav said.

  I pocketed the keys. “I should go.”

  “Let me buy you dinner. I would offer to cook for you, but my brother did not keep the refrigerator well stocked.” Pulling the fridge door open, he gestured at the mostly bare shelves that featured only a bottle of salad dressing, a carton of take-out Chinese, and some yogurts. “You can tell me about your compulsion to chase after aging punk rockers. I hear Rod Stewart is between wives again.”

  I punched him on the shoulder. “Just for that, you can pick up the check.”

  ***

  Over a delicious seafood dinner at a casual restaurant two blocks from the condo complex, I confessed to my initial assault on the mysterious limo and my conviction that its occupant knew something about Rafe’s death. “Or, if not his death exactly, something about why he was so worried these past weeks, why he needed money.” I sawed a small slice of bread from the crusty loaf the waiter had brought and ate it dry, watching jealously as Tav ripped off half the loaf and slathered it with butter. Watching my weight like a jockey was part of the price I paid for being a professional dancer.

  “The limo’s license plates started with DPR,” I said, “which means it belongs to a diplomat.”

  “From Argentina,” Tav said, setting his knife down slowly, his attention caught. “PR is the country code for Argentina.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was at the embassy earlier today, dealing with issues related to shipping Rafael’s body back to Argentina. The cars all had plates starting with SPR or DPR.”

  “S for staff, D for diplomat,” I said. “See, it proves that limo had something to do with Rafe.”

  “I must return to the embassy tomorrow,” Tav said. “Perhaps I can ask around and find out why someone from the embassy might be meeting with Rafael.”

  “That’d be great.” Our food arrived then and we ate our meals-sole for me, crab cakes for Tav-in silence for a few minutes. I broke it to ask, “So what happened between you and Rafe that you didn’t keep in touch?”

  Tav looked up from his plate, his dark eyes serious. He seemed to be looking at something past me, but after a moment, his expression lightened and he focused on me. “It wasn’t so much what happened between me and Rafael as what happened between our parents. My father took up with Rafael’s mother, Suzette, when I was only three. She was in Argentina to study tango-she was a dancer, too-and it was love at first sight for her and my father.” His grimace betrayed what he thought of that. “He divorced my mother to marry her. I split my time between the two households, spending the school year with my mother and my summers with my father, Suzette, and Rafael. When I was nineteen and Rafael was sixteen, my father and mother decided that they were meant to be together after all and he divorced Suzette to remarry my mother. You can see that Rafael came by his womanizing honestly,” Tav said with a wry smile.

  “What a plate of emotional spaghetti,” I said.

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  “Everything all tangled up and stuck together.”

  “That’s exactly how it was. Suzette returned to America-she was from Texas-and took Rafael with her. He was angry, so angry, with my mother and his anger leaked over onto me.” Tav said. “I do not know if Suzette forbade him to keep in touch, or if he was not inclined to do so, but I did not hear from him for several years. Not until after Suzette died. Breast cancer.”

  “Rafe never told me any of this,” I said, saddened by this evidence of our lack of true intimacy. “I mean, I knew he was semi-estranged from his dad and I knew his mom was dead, but I didn’t know the details.”

  “Did he talk about me?”

  I hesitated a moment, on the brink of a comforting lie, then said, “Never.”

  “Ah, well.” He scooped some crab cake onto his fork and fell silent.

  I half reached out a hand to him, but drew it back, glad he hadn’t seen it. I felt like I knew him because he was so like Rafe in some ways; I had to keep reminding myself that I didn’t know him at all.

  “And you?” Tav interrupted my thoughts. He was smiling at me over the rim of his wineglass.

  “Me?”

  “Family? Siblings?”

  “My parents divorced when I was fifteen. They both live in the area and I see them pretty often. My dad’s remarried. Two sibs-a brother and a sister. No half siblings, stepsiblings, or ex-husbands. Rafe’s as close as I ever got to marry
ing.” On the verge of asking if he was married, I became aware that our conversation had shifted from investigating Rafe’s murder to first date sorts of topics. Uncomfortable with the segue, I finished with, “So when do you think you can get hold of your embassy contact?”

  “Monday.” Signaling for the check, he pulled out his wallet.

  I pushed a twenty across the table to cover my share and was slightly surprised when he accepted it without comment. Did that mean he needed help financially? Or was he an enlightened man who accepted women as equals? Rafe had always insisted on paying when we went out, even though we made roughly the same amount. It had seemed charming at first, gallant, but then had grown irksome.

  Tav and I walked back toward the condo and my car in near silence, each absorbed by our own thoughts. We said good night on the sidewalk and I was halfway home when I realized we hadn’t discussed Graysin Motion at all. I hadn’t asked him to let me have a say if he decided to sell his half of the studio. I didn’t want to end up with Mark Downey as a partner, or any other well-off student with more money than talent (and we had a lot of those), or a stranger who didn’t know a foxtrot from a fox hunt. I banged the steering wheel and vowed to make it our first topic of conversation the next time we met.

  As I turned onto my block, I slowed the car to a crawl, looking for Rafe’s-Sherry’s?-black Lexus. Traffic was relatively light this late in the evening and no one seemed too perturbed that I was creeping along at five miles an hour. In a three-block radius, I spotted a silver Lexus and a green one, and several black luxury cars, but no black Lexus. Hmm. I knew Rafe used to park his Camry on the street, but maybe he was more cautious with the Lexus? I made my way to the parking garage two blocks down from my house and parked on the curb across from it, unwilling to pay a fee to spend a few minutes in the garage looking for the Lexus.

  Enough passersby strolled the streets at ten o’clock on a Friday that I didn’t feel too isolated. I crossed the street and slid around the moveable arm blocking the garage’s driveway. No attendant. The garage was a dark cave lit by strips of fluorescent lights and my footsteps echoed weirdly off the cement floors. With my arms crossed over my chest, Rafe’s car keys clutched in one hand, I methodically walked up and down the aisles on the ground level. More than half the spaces were empty and I didn’t spot the Lexus. I felt fairly stupid and vaguely criminal to be scoping out people’s cars, and I wondered if the chance of finding Sherry’s flash drive was worth it. It wasn’t really about the flash drive, I realized; it was about the hunt. I’d already invested so much time in looking for the stupid thing that I hated to give up now. I’d give it ten more minutes, I decided, reaching the stairs.