Quickstep to Murder Page 23

  Detective Lissy approached me where I sat slumped against the hall wall, guarded by a policewoman assigned to make sure Solange and I didn’t confer about our stories. “Miss Graysin,” he said, looking down at me.

  If he thought I was going to leap to my feet at his appearance, he had another think coming. I was too darned tired. I waited for him to continue.

  “When I got to work today, I had one viable suspect for Rafe Acosta’s murder. You. Now I have three. How do you explain that?”

  “Just lucky?”

  He burped and rubbed at his side. “That’s not how I would characterize it. I’m not happy with this case. No, not happy at all. Fingerprint evidence appeared this morning, suggesting a certain Victoria Bazán was involved. Ms. Bazán, I’m subsequently informed, is uncontactable and untouchable for a variety of reasons I won’t bother you with. Despite not being happy with how this evidence turned up, I’m on the verge of closing the case when you call to say you’ve been attacked by Acosta’s real murderer. Miss Dubonnet supports your contention that Mark Downey attacked you and seemed to have a ‘bizarre fixation’ on you-one she was at a loss to explain since you’re, and I quote, ‘a passably pretty, thirdrate dancer’-that might have included trying to get rid of your dance partners.” He shook his head, bemused.

  “He admitted he tried to poison Vitaly.” At his puzzled look, I clarified. “Voloshin. My new dance partner. Mark spiked his juice with something. And he set the fire. He said it was so I’d realize how much I needed him, but I think that was about revenge because I told him we weren’t going to be dance partners.”

  Rubbing a hand down his face, Lissy said, “Did he cop to Acosta’s killing, too, while he was in confession mode? Or the gang killing near the airport two nights ago? Maybe the convenience store robbery on Prince? We’ve got plenty of open cases-he can have his pick.”

  The sarcasm in Lissy’s voice didn’t faze me. “No, just Vitaly and the fire. You’ll have to solve the rest of those cases on your own. But he must have killed Rafe, don’t you think?”

  “Why not admit it, then, since he seemed to want you to know how far he’d go to win your affections?”

  I gave him an incredulous look. “He’s loony, not stupid. I’m betting murder carries a lot longer prison term than arson does.”

  Lissy sighed. “Okay, Miss Graysin. Come see us in the morning to sign your statement. Do me a favor and leave that Drake character at home. You’re no longer a suspect. I think we’ll hang this one on the Bazán woman, but I’ll look into Downey’s alibi for the night of Acosta’s murder and follow up a little more before we close this.”

  He held down a hand and, after a surprised moment, I took it, letting him haul me to my feet. “Thanks.”

  He burped, nodded, and strode away, leaving me to stagger to the interior door, lock it carefully behind me, and stumble down the stairs. I was beyond exhausted, but I felt compelled to shower before falling into bed, needing to get the scent and feel of Mark Downey off of me. I began to shake under the stream from the shower head as I considered what might have happened if Solange hadn’t been there. Tears joined the droplets of water streaming down my face as I tried to come to terms with the fact that I’d liked Mark Downey, that I’d spent a couple of hours a week with him for three years and never realized he had a screw loose. Maybe several screws. What did that say about my judgment?

  Hair still damp, I tumbled into bed and fell asleep almost instantly, only to dream of Rafe facing a firing squad made up of the Bazáns, Solange, Mark, Sherry Indrebo and various other students, Maurice, and, most disturbingly, me.

  Chapter 21

  The next morning I awoke feeling unrested and grumpy. When I picked my jeans off the floor from where I’d dropped them last night, Sherry’s thumb drive fell out of the pocket. Picking it up, I flipped it in one hand, tempted to just toss it in the trash. After all, it didn’t have anything on it anymore. Instead, I decided to send Sherry an e-mail letting her know I’d found it so she could pick it up if she wanted to. She could take the thing to a computer guru and hope he could resuscitate her documents if the data on it was important to her. I shot her a quick e-mail from the laptop while my coffee dripped, not mentioning that I knew the drive was fried; she didn’t need to know Tav and I had tried to peek at her documents.

  After breakfast, I called a locksmith to get the locks changed and agreed to pay extra if he came today. Then I called Tav and told him about the scene with Mark Downey. “I’m ninety-eight percent sure Mark killed Rafe,” I finished.

  “Why would this Downey be at the studio that late?” Tav sounded thoughtful, not argumentative, and I could picture the line between his brows as he tried to puzzle his way through the details.

  I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “Looking for me? Or maybe he planned it and hung around waiting for an opportunity to get Rafe alone.”

  “Then why not wait at his condo? And if he planned it, would he not bring his own weapon?”

  His points were good ones, but I didn’t want to acknowledge that because I wanted this whole thing over and done with, closed, finished. “I don’t know,” I said grumpily. “He could’ve had a knife with him but decided the gun would do the job better when Rafe pulled it out.”

  “That is probably what happened,” Tav agreed after a short pause. “At any rate, Detective Lissy called earlier to say I was free to return to Argentina, so I have booked a flight for tomorrow afternoon. Before I leave, we have some things to discuss about the business. Does this evening work for you?”

  “Sure,” I said around the lump in my throat. I hung up and swallowed hard, not sure if I was choked up because Tav was leaving or because I was worried about what he planned to do with his share of Graysin Motion. He sounded like he’d made a decision and I wondered what I’d do if he told me he was accepting Solange’s offer. On the whole, I thought I’d be better off with Uncle Nico as a-hopefully-silent partner. Or possibly I’d mistaken my life’s vocation and I should look into flipping burgers for a living; surely it was less frustrating than running a dance studio. But I wasn’t a uniform person-I couldn’t imagine wearing the same thing day in and day out-so that left out fast-food worker, cop, firefighter, and postal employee. Danielle could get me started on the path to career success as a union organizer, I mused. Nope. I wasn’t a beige person, either, so no government jobs or corporate wonk jobs. Let’s face it: I was born to be a dancer.

  Buoyed by that realization, I took the stairs two at a time to meet Vitaly for our practice session. The floor refinisher was hard at work coating the ballroom floor with polyurethane when Vitaly arrived and the Russian dancer wrinkled his face into a grimace of disgust.

  “Is stinking to highest hell in here,” he said, tossing his dance bag into the corner of the small studio.

  “Heaven,” I corrected automatically.

  “Nyet. Heaven is not smelling like this. This is hell.”

  I had to admit there was something to his logic as I opened all the windows and found a couple of fans.

  We danced for almost three hours, with only short breaks for water, snacks, and for me to give directions to the locksmith when he arrived. Handing him a check an hour later and accepting the shiny new keys from him, I felt a load of worry I didn’t even know I’d been carrying drop from my shoulders. I returned to the small studio to finish rehearsing, feeling like a cushion of air between the floor and my feet gave me a new spring. I was able to forget the past few days’ woes and lose myself in the music and the movement, concentrating on the timing of our quickstep locksteps and working on the synchronization of our side-by-side movements. When we segued into the waltz, I envisioned being ethereal, floating, pointing my toes so hard they almost cramped as I raised one leg up and held it high with the strength of my abs while Vitaly pivoted me in a circle. By the time we finished, I felt renewed.

  “We will winning at Blackpool,” Vitaly said confidently, bussing my cheek as he left on the locksmith’s heels
. “Is certain.”

  I returned his toothy smile, feeling confident myself. “We make a good pair,” I said.

  “Da,” he agreed. “You is fulfilling your potentiality with Vitaly. None of that romance to detracting from technique.” He flipped his hands as if shooing romance away.

  I hadn’t thought about that. Had Rafe’s and my relationship detracted from our dancing? I always thought that it gave us a bit of extra zing, especially in the smoldering Latin dances, but maybe we’d been a bit too careful of each other’s feeling in practice, not insisting on perfection, not being ruthless enough in our critiques of each other’s performance.

  “You should being gay,” Vitaly said, grinning widely and throwing back his head to laugh like a donkey braying.

  “I’ll consider it,” I said, closing the door behind him.

  In my office, I wrestled with entry forms and fees for the next dance competition we’d be taking students to, until the logistics of it all drove me batty. I was almost willing to accept even Solange as a partner if she’d be in charge of the business end and let me focus on the dancing and teaching. I e-mailed all the students to let them know classes would resume as normal next week and to offer a “fire sale” discount of ten percent off for the month to coax back some of the wiffle-wafflers. I couldn’t afford to do it, but I also couldn’t afford to lose any more students. I resigned myself to subsisting on homemade bean and cheese tortillas, canned tuna, and carrots for the next month. An incoming e-mail from Sherry Indrebo said “THANKS!” for finding her flash drive and let me know she’d be by later today to pick it up. Swell.

  ***

  When a knock sounded on the outer door shortly after six o’clock, it was neither Tav nor Sherry Indrebo, as I expected. Instead, a man with battleship-gray hair, wearing a belted navy raincoat, stood with his back to the door, looking out across the neighborhood. At the rasp of the dead bolt, he turned and I recognized Sherry’s husband, Ruben Indrebo. The light rain misted his glasses and blurred his slight smile.

  I pulled the door open. “Come in,” I said. “I hadn’t realized it was raining.”

  “Just a sprinkle,” he said, stepping in and running his left hand over his damp hair. His right hand held a cane and he leaned on it slightly.

  “I guess you’re here for the flash drive,” I said, leading the way to the office. “I know Sherry’s anxious to get it back.”

  “Indeed.” Instead of following me into the office, Indrebo continued to the junction with the hall and looked around. “A beautiful old home. It seems quiet,” he observed.

  “We’re not back to our full schedule until next week,” I said, explaining about the floor. Since he seemed interested in a tour, I stepped across the hall and opened the door to the empty ballroom. Newly applied polyurethane shone slickly and the sharp odor rose in almost visible waves. I coughed.

  “I heard about the fire,” Indrebo said in his mild voice. “What a shame. Do they have any idea how it started?”

  “Arson. The police arrested a guy.” I didn’t feel like going into the details; it made me uncomfortable to admit that a student I’d known well had done such a thing. Let the Indrebos read about it in the paper when Mark Downey came to trial.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” Indrebo asked, surprising me with a focused stare. His eyes hovered between blue and slate and I felt some of the force I was sure had propelled him to business success.

  “No, not really.”

  “I’d think you’d be nervous to dance in here, what with your partner being murdered here.” He pointed with his cane to a spot eerily close to where Rafe had lain.

  “I guess I’m not the nervous type,” I said lightly, closing the door. “Look, I don’t mean to seem rude, but I’ve got a dinner thing.” At least, I hoped my meeting with Tav would turn into a dinner date. “Let me get that flash drive for you.”

  “Where did you find it anyway?” he asked. “In there?” He nodded toward the ballroom. “Or maybe you’ve had it all along.”

  I gave him a startled look. “No, of course not. The floor refinisher found it wedged under a baseboard in the-” I bit off the words, suddenly realizing that he knew too much. How did he know where I’d found Rafe? All the paper said was “at a dance studio in Old Town, Alexandria.” And why would he think I’d found the flash drive in the ballroom? Unless-My heart rate seemed to double, my heart pounding against my ribs so hard I was afraid Indrebo would hear. I stopped just outside the office door. “You know,” I said, trying to sound mildly frustrated, not scared witless, “I left it downstairs on my dresser. Wait here and I’ll be right back with it.”

  “I don’t think so.” His voice didn’t get louder, but steel threaded through the words. A gun appeared in his hand, aimed at my stomach, and I gaped at him wordlessly. “You must think I’m a fool, Miss Graysin.”

  “No, no, I don’t,” I stuttered. Killer, yes. Fool, no.

  A smile played at the corners of his mouth, like I amused him. “Your partner made the same mistake of underestimating me. When he tried to blackmail my wife, he took on me, too, little though he understood that at the time.”

  “Rafe tried to blackmail Sherry?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” he said wearily. “I’m sure you were in on it with him.”

  “I wasn’t! I didn’t know that-”

  “No matter. Step back.”

  I took a giant step backward, happy to have a couple more feet between me and the gun. Not that a few feet would make much difference if he shot me. I needed to get out of the confines of the hall to someplace where I could maneuver. I rubbed suddenly damp palms against my jeaned thighs. Surely I could outrun a man with a cane? Maybe, but I couldn’t outrun a bullet.

  I played for time, hoping Tav would walk in, preferably with a SWAT team in tow. “What’s on that drive, anyway? I mean, the Post already broke the story, so what’s the big deal?”

  “As you well know, the Post only had one story,” Indrebo said, “the one that Acosta sold them, trying to get my wife to pay more for the return of the flash drive. She’d have paid it, too, if I hadn’t told her to leave it to me. It’s not just her political future at stake,” he said, “it’s my business. And as I explained to her when she was reluctant to have me meet Acosta in her place, it’s my business-my money-that keeps her in politics. It’s a symbiotic relationship-I have financed her campaigns and she’s finally on the right committees-do you have any idea how long it took to maneuver her onto the House Armed Services committee?-to nudge business my way or pass certain laws that make the business climate more… favorable.” He laughed, a mellow, grandpa-ish sound that didn’t even hint at his ruthlessness. “There’s a vote on the next-gen army helo coming up next week and it’s vital for my company that she be at the HCAS meeting to cast her vote and sway any of her compatriots who seem to be waffling.”

  “You build helicopters?” I tried to keep him talking.

  “Avionics for helicopters,” he corrected me. “Never mind. But we’re talking about hundreds of millions. And now that reporter, that McDill, is sniffing around, trying to connect his story about Sherry planting a spy in the Democrats’ campaign office with Acosta’s death, and I’m told he got the lead from you.” His face hardened and he glared at me. “We’re wasting time. Just give me the drive.”

  “It’s downstairs,” I said. “On my dresser.”

  He studied me, assessing my truthfulness, then stepped aside and waved me past him with the gun. “You go first. And don’t try anything stupid because I’ll be right behind you with this gun aimed at your spine. I don’t think you’d do much dancing with a backbone shot to splinters.”

  The very thought made my calves and feet tingle. I moved as slowly as possible toward the interior door that opened to the stairs. “Why’d you use my gun to shoot Rafe?” I asked, turning slightly to face him.

  “That was serendipitous,” Indrebo said. “I had this gun with me, of course, but Acosta pulled out his gun at the very s
tart of our conversation. It seems he didn’t trust me.” He chuckled again.

  Rafe was smarter than I was, I thought.

  “He wasn’t really prepared to use it, though. It’s harder than most people think to stand face to face and fire a gun at another human being. Shooting someone is a huge mental leap for most people, but physically it’s just one quick step, a slight tightening of the forefinger.” His finger tensed on the trigger and I flinched.

  Indrebo laughed, reading my fear. “I smacked my cane across his wrist”-he tapped my shoulder with the cane to demonstrate-“and he dropped it. I recovered it and the rest, as they say, is history. Unfortunately, the thumb drive went flying when I shot him, and I couldn’t find it. Not enough light, not enough time.”

  He prodded my shoulder with the cane and I opened the door, gesturing for him to precede me.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, smiling. “Ladies first.” He pointed with the gun and I started down the stairs, deliberately not flicking the light switch on the wall. Darkness favored me, I figured, since I knew every inch of these stairs.

  “And Sherry had no trouble with you killing Rafe and wrecking her competition career?”

  “My wife doesn’t know I killed him,” he said, a touch of irritation in his voice.

  “Sure she doesn’t.” I rolled my eyes.

  “She’s good at not seeing what she doesn’t want to see,” he said drily. “An invaluable skill for a politician. I told her he didn’t show for our meeting, that the studio was locked tight. If I’d told her the truth, maybe she wouldn’t have sent you on a wild-goose chase for the damn flash drive and we wouldn’t be here now.”

  A cheery thought and an excellent argument for total truthfulness between marriage partners. We had reached the landing with its pretty oriel window and I looked out, hoping to see someone I could signal. A red Jaguar I thought belonged to the neighbor two doors down nosed past and I half lifted a hand-not that the driver would have seen me or recognized my distress-but Indrebo poked the gun hard between my shoulder blades and said, “Don’t even think about it.”