Quickstep to Murder

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 hour 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 marrying.” 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.

The stairwell door screeched as I opened it and I surprised a couple in their fifties making out on the landing as I climbed to the second level. The gray-haired woman giggled and pressed her face into the man’s chest. He smiled and waved, seemingly unaware that his other hand was cupping the woman’s rear end. The smell of alcohol hung around them as I hurried past. I’d have to be dead drunk before I’d think it was fun or romantic to play kissy-face in a garage stairwell that stank of urine and cigarettes. On the second level, I began marching up the rows again, staying in the center of the driveway, as far as possible from the shadowed spaces between the cars. Coming around a massive concrete post, I spotted a black Lexus in the farthest corner. Finally! I broke into a trot, aiming the clicker at the car.

My heart beat a bit faster as I halted beside the car. I punched the remote buttons again without getting a flash of headlights or the beeping sound that signaled the car was happy to see its owner. Maybe the battery was dead. Making a visor of my hand, I peered into the side window. I could make out nothing but vague shapes at first, but then I recognized the bulky object on the backseat as a child’s safety chair. Oops. I jumped back as if stung just as someone yelled, “Hey! What are you doing? Get away from our car!”

I whirled to see a young couple, him dark and scowling, her blond and obviously pregnant, jogging toward me. Their attire suggested they’d been at a semiformal dinner or reception.

Holding up Rafe’s keys, I stammered, “I thought it was mine. So sorry! I must have left mine on the next level.” I hoped the dimness hid the blush I could feel warming my cheeks.

The scowling man inspected the keys in my hand, walked all the way around his car suspiciously, and then escorted his wife to the passenger seat, giving me a wide berth.

“Drinking and driving is very irresponsible,” the wife murmured as she passed me.

“I’m not-I haven’t been-” I shut up. It didn’t seem worth it. Turning on my heel, I headed back to the stairwell and up to the top level, my breaths coming faster than usual.

With little hope of success, I emerged on the third floor, held my arm out at shoulder height and clicked the remote. Nothing. I turned forty-five degrees and tried it again. A flash of brake lights in the row just to my right rewarded me. Hallelujah. My shoes tap-tapped on the cement as I hurried toward the Lexus. It gleamed a dull black in the stingy light and the door opened smoothly when I pulled up on the handle. I hesitated, running my gaze over the interior, and glints from the passenger seat and footwell caught my eye. Leaning in, I saw that the sparkles came from glass bits strewn over the seat. I looked up, squinting, and realized the passenger side window had a hole stove in it, big enough to admit a hand.

The sight was unexpected and creeped me out. I jerked upright, banging the back of my head against the door frame, conscious of my mother’s admonition to always check the backseat before getting into a parked car. I backed away two steps, rubbing my head. Could there be someone-The ding of the elevator interrupted my thoughts and I turned, expecting to see another couple looking for their car postmovie or postdinner. Instead, a uniformed police officer came toward me, face stiff with suspicion, flashlight describing an arc in front of her.

“I was just about to call you,” I said, intensely relieved.

“Oh, really?” Her tone held polite disbelief and her eyes studied me, lingering on my hands as she said, “We had a report of a suspicious person casing vehicles in this garage.”

I was indignant that the couple with the other Lexus had apparently called the cops on me over a perfectly innocent mistake.

“Is this your car, ma’am?”

“Umm.” I winced inwardly, foreseeing an awkward explanation. I dove in. “Well, not exactly. It’s my ex-fiancé’s, my business partner’s. He-”

The flashlight beam raked the broken window. “Mad at him, were you?”

“I didn’t do that! It was like that. He was killed last week and-”

“Step away from the car and keep your hands where I can see them.” At the word “killed” her voice went all stern and coplike and I sighed, raising my hands, palm out, and dangling the Lexus’s remote between a thumb and forefinger. The cop’s hand went to her holster and she spoke softly into the radio affixed near her shoulder, never taking her eyes off me.

I sighed, anticipating a late night. “Do you know Detective Lissy?”

It was indeed a long night. By the time backup cops arrived and someone called Detective Lissy, and I explained how I came to have Rafe’s keys and Lissy called Tav to verify my story, it was after midnight. Lissy, not surprisingly, wanted to know why I was searching Rafe’s car. I’d had plenty of time to realize the question would come up, and I told him Rafe had some files related to studio business and I thought they might be in the car since Tav had looked for them in the condo and not found them. I blinked at him with great innocence when I finished my explanation. Lissy looked like he didn’t believe me-why was I getting that response so much lately?-but said I could go.

I hesitated, then asked if he thought the murderer had broken into the car, searching for something. I didn’t suggest the “something” might be a flash drive.

“The car’s apparently been sitting here since the day Acosta died,” Lissy said. “A target of opportunity for any petty thief. The stereo system’s missing, so this is probably a random break-in, not connected to Acosta’s death. Unless you know otherwise?” The lift of his brows said he’d be happy to take down my confession.

“You might want to give Sherry Indrebo a call about the car,” I said casually, happy to supply him with a course of action that might distract him from poking around in my affairs. “She leased it for Rafe.”

Lissy sucked his lips in and eyed me wearily. “What a good idea,” he said. “I might not have thought of it on my own, what with having only twenty-seven years on the job.”

“Just trying to help,” I muttered as I moved toward the stairs, avoiding the forensics team who were now going over the Lexus with swabs and little vacuums.

“Well, stop it,” Lissy said, getting the last word for the night.

I didn’t spend too much time over the weekend dwelling on the car. Vitaly and I met to practice on both Saturday and Sunday and then spent two hours practicing Monday morning. I began to have a faint hope that we might not utterly disgrace ourselves at the Capitol Festival, which started Friday. The rest of the morning dissolved in back-to-back private sessions with two other students who were competing with me in the pro-am divisions. One was an older gentleman who had no illusions about his ability but loved to dance and had the money to pay for private lessons, coaching, and trips to competitions. The other was a thirty-something Department of Energy employee who danced, I thought privately, to inject some glamour and excitement into his cubicle-bound life. The Capitol Festival was his first competition. He’d either love it, or find the hours of waiting in a chilly ballroom interspersed by ten minutes on the dance floor a grind and give it up. Vitaly observed the sessions and offered some useful comments, managing to critique the other men without offending or embarrassing them. He was going to be an asset, I decided happily, going downstairs at noon to shower and change.

Before hopping into the shower, I made the phone call I’d been putting off: Sherry Indrebo. This time, her aide put me through immediately. “Tell me you found it,” Sherry said, again skipping the small talk. I wondered how much time we could all save on a daily basis if we eliminated the how-are-yous and have-a-nice-days from our conversations.

“It’s not there.”

“What? Of course it’s there,” she said impatiently. “You didn’t look hard enough.”

“We searched the place from top to bottom.”

“We?”

“Rafe’s half brother. He helped me look.”

“You told someone else?” Anger and disbelief jangled her voice. “What kind of moron are you?”

The kind that didn’t appreciate being called a moron. “The police probably have it,” I said with some satisfaction. “They took his laptop, too.”

“I guess I’m going to have to handle this myself.” She banged the phone down. I debated calling her back to tell her Tav was staying in Rafe’s condo, but decided against it. It might do her good to come face-to-face with a man wielding a knife.

As I finished dressing, the doorbell rang and I jumped. The police again? Fighting off the cowardly urge to pretend I wasn’t there, I walked to the door. The fuzzed outline of a man showed through the wavy glass insets beside the door. I opened it a cautious half inch to find Leon Hall on the stoop. His thick brown hair was mussed and anger or anxiety contorted his face. Before I could guess his intention, he stiff-armed the door and it bounced back, hitting the side of my face, my chest, and my knee. With an exclamation of pain, I stumbled back and he pushed into the hallway.

“Where is she?” He looked around. “She wasn’t upstairs.”

Hall’s habit of charging in to look for people was getting wearisome. Did my place look like the local outlet of Hiding Places ‘R’ Us? My brow and knee hurt where the door had conked them and it made me cranky. “Get. Out. I’m calling the police.” I marched toward the phone in the kitchen. A choking sound halted me and I turned to see Hall standing where I’d left him, hands at his sides, blinking rapidly. Holding back tears? I hesitated.

“Are you looking for Taryn?” I finally asked, compassion getting the upper hand over good judgment.

His jaw worked. “She didn’t come home last night.” I bit my lower lip. Not good. “What makes you think she’s here?”

“She said.”

“What?”

“She called at dinnertime last night and told me she was rehearsing here, getting ready for that competition, and not to expect her until late. She never came home at all. When I went to wake her this morning, her bed hadn’t been slept in.”

His eyes shifted from side to side and I could tell he still thought Taryn might be here. Maybe he didn’t so much think she was here as hope she was here. The alternatives were worse. It felt awkward standing here in the foyer and I invited him back to the kitchen, watched him lower himself heavily into a chair, and brought him a glass of water. “I was out last evening,” I told him once he’d taken a swallow. I leaned back against the counter, ready to get a running start if he went on the attack again. “As far as I know, Taryn wasn’t here.”

“But she might have been?” He was reaching for straws, his bloodshot eyes searching mine. “With another instructor maybe?”

I had to shake my head. “Have you tried her cell phone?”

“You think I’m stupid? It goes straight to voice mail.”

I thought of how I’d last seen her, sliding into the front seat of Sawyer’s car. “Have you checked with Sawyer Iverson?”

He growled. “Taryn knows she’s not supposed to see that poofter outside of dance practice. He’s not good for her. His family has too much money. He doesn’t know how to work.” Hall pounded one anvil of a fist on the table, making it shudder.

I didn’t feel the need to argue with him about Sawyer’s work ethic, and his anger made me hesitate to tell him I’d seen Taryn go off with Sawyer Friday morning… and they certainly hadn’t been planning to practice their cha-cha. After a moment’s thought-he was Taryn’s father and she was only sixteen-I told him about visiting the house and seeing Taryn drive off with Sawyer.

He didn’t react the way I thought he might. “What were you doing at my house?” he asked suspiciously. He seemed to have a limited emotional range: suspicion and anger. Living with him must be exhausting.

“I wanted to talk to Taryn.”

“What couldn’t wait until her next lesson?”

I sighed, wondering how I painted myself into corners like this. Mentioning the pregnancy was going to make him go ballistic. “I didn’t think Rafe got her pregnant and I wanted to ask her about it.”

“You’re saying Taryn’s a liar?” Hall looked outraged and pushed his chair away from the table with a scraping sound.

I didn’t think it would appease him if I told him that all teenage girls were liars. It came with the territory. I’d lied to my folks about completing homework so I could dance, to my friends about who was my BFF at any given moment to avoid hurting feelings, to Danielle about borrowing her favorite green sweater. I wasn’t proud of the lies, but, looking back, I thought they were pretty much par for the course.

“Taryn’s under a lot of pressure.”

“Don’t tell me about my own daughter!” He rose, glaring. “My daughter is not a liar.” He swiveled his jaw from side to side. “I’m going to talk to the Iverson kid. If I find out he’s done anything to hurt Taryn-”

“Have you called the police? Told them Taryn’s missing?” I asked as he surged past me, intent on rending Sawyer Iverson limb from limb.

“They were useless,” he said, continuing toward the door. “Said it’s too soon to consider her a missing person, asked me if she had a history of running away, if I’d checked with all her friends. They don’t give a damn that my baby’s out there somewhere and she’s only sixteen.” Wrenching the door open, he tromped outside and slammed it so hard it bounced open again. I stood at the threshold watching him make his way to the street. The very set of his shoulders betrayed his anger and I saw people give him a wide berth as he bulled down the sidewalk.

Was it possible that Tuesday’s scene with me and Solange was staged, that he knew damned well Rafe wasn’t at the studio because he’d killed Rafe? But how would he have known about my gun? Taryn and Sawyer had been present when Rafe brought my gun up that night… but was it likely that Taryn had mentioned it to her father? Or that he’d broken into my house to steal it? It seemed too convoluted to me, which was too bad because I didn’t much like Mr. Leon Hall and I’d’ve been happy to elect him Rafe’s killer. The thought of Phineas Drake and his implied willingness to set up someone came to mind, but I virtuously put it aside, locked the front door, and headed up the interior staircase to the studio.