Quickstep to Murder

Chapter 19

I stopped dead, causing the man behind me to bump into me. He shouldered past with an annoyed grunt.

“Miss Graysin. Stacy,” Victoria said. “Do you have time to talk to me for a minute? Mr. Drake loaned me his limo so that we could have a chat.”

“You stole my wallet,” I said from the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry.” Her dark eyes pleaded with me.

“Oh, all right,” I said ungraciously, curiosity more than anything else propelling me to the limo’s door.

Victoria sat on the back bench usually occupied by Drake, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, her dark hair loose. A suited man I didn’t recognize sat beside her, short hair and a stern face making him look like Hollywood’s idea of a federal agent. He gave me a sharp glance as I climbed in, then returned to contemplating the view out the side window.

“My minder,” Victoria said.

That didn’t exactly clarify things, but I sat opposite them, feeling compelled to apologize for my sweaty leotard and tights. “Ballet class,” I explained.

Victoria waved my apology aside. An awkward silence fell, as if she didn’t know where to start, so I prompted: “You were going to tell me what the heck is going on. How did you hook up with Drake?”

She laughed mirthlessly. “He caught up with me last night when I tried to use your credit card at a hotel in Richmond. His investigator, a woman named Mary-”

“Pearce. We’ve met.”

“She found me and… kidnapped me!”

“Really?” I said, politely disbelieving.

“Well,” Victoria amended, “she fingerprinted me and made me go with her to see Phineas. He’s something else,” she said, admiration and disgruntlement mixed up in her voice.

It hadn’t taken her long to get on first-name terms with the lawyer, I noted. “What did he do?”

“He told me that my fingerprints were on the gun that killed Rafe-”

“What!”

“Stop interrupting,” she said pettishly. “I guess I didn’t tell you the whole story the other night. Rafe tried to give me a gun on Wednesday when he drove me up to the cabin. He handed it to me, so my prints were on it, but I didn’t want it, so I gave it back to him.”

“Really?” I let my disbelief bleed into my voice.

“Yes, really!” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was afraid. Afraid I’d kill Héctor. I didn’t want to be tempted.”

“How did Phineas Drake know your fingerprints were on the gun?”

“He faxed my prints to the police.”

I was sure that even if her prints hadn’t been on the gun, he’d have found a way to incriminate Victoria anyway. Phineas wasn’t above lying or manufacturing evidence, in my opinion. But Victoria had lied, too, at least by omission. I didn’t know whether or not to believe her, so I made a “go on” motion.

“Phineas said he could use the prints on the gun to prove I’d killed Rafe. I wouldn’t end up in jail because of diplomatic immunity, but I’d be deported to Argentina, where Héctor would find me within minutes. I’d be dead within two hours of landing at the airport.”

“I’m assuming there’s an ‘or’ in here.”

She nodded. “Or I could talk to your DEA”-she nodded toward her minder-“and provide details about Héctor’s business dealings, and they would help me reestablish myself somewhere else, maybe in Canada or Australia.”

“The witness protection program?”

“Something like that.”

“So your husband’s a drug dealer?”

“He has many business interests,” Victoria waffled. “He-” She stopped as her minder shook his head sharply. “You’re safer not knowing the details.”

The sincerity in her voice made me shiver. That’s all I needed-an Argentinean drug lord thinking I was clued in on his smuggling routes or something. “I don’t want the details,” I said hastily. “What does all this have to do with me, other than I assume you’re going to return my wallet?”

“Phineas has your stuff,” Victoria said. “Part of the deal is that he’s sharing my fingerprints with the police. Since I can’t be tried here, anyway, and I’ll be set up somewhere else, it can’t hurt me and it will get you off the hook for Rafe’s murder.”

I leaned back against the cushy leather, stunned. “But… did you kill Rafe?”

“Of course not!” Victoria’s eyes flashed.

“If the police think you did, they’ll stop hunting for the real killer.”

“Phineas seemed more concerned with ensuring the police don’t arrest you than with hunting down the murderer,” Victoria said.

“So the murderer gets to wander around, scot-free? I don’t think so.” I didn’t try to hide my indignation.

Victoria shrugged. “Take it up with Drake.”

“I certainly will.”

The minder tapped his watch and Victoria grimaced. “Time’s up.” She looked forlorn, and I tried to place myself in her shoes: betraying her husband to the cops, going into exile alone, leaving behind her family and friends. Her situation had echoes of Taryn’s, but at least Taryn had Sawyer. Both women were object lessons on how one bad decision-not pausing for a condom, saying “I do” with the wrong man-could totally alter the course of your life.

“Take care,” I told Victoria.

She smiled ruefully. “Always.”

As I stood in a semicrouch to climb out the door the chauffeur had opened, the man beside Victoria spoke for the first time. “Is it true you’re a champion ballroom dancer?” he asked, leaning forward to look at me around Victoria.

Startled, I nodded. He had rather attractive blue eyes when he wasn’t concentrating on looking grim and threatening.

“Cool. Can my girlfriend and I come for lessons? She wants to learn the West Coast Swing like they do on Ballroom with the B-Listers.”

“Sure,” I said, bemused. I pulled a slightly dented business card from my bag. “Here.”

Alone on the sidewalk, I hitched my dance bag onto my shoulder and headed for home, intending to have a heart-to-heart with Mr. Phineas Drake.

Mr. Drake was in court, his secretary politely informed me when I called. She’d let him know I was interested in a meeting. I could hear “brush off” in her voice, but I thanked her and hung up gently, rather than slamming the phone down like I wanted to. Picking the phone up again immediately, I dialed Tav Acosta’s number.

“I just talked to Victoria Bazán,” I announced before he could even say hello. “Drake has set it up so the police think she killed your brother, but I don’t think she did, so the killer’s going to get away with it.”

To his credit, Tav didn’t say, “What the hell are you babbling about?” Instead, he said, “I am on my way over. Give me forty-five minutes.”

Feeling antsy, I returned to the studio, where the whir of the refinisher’s sander practically deafened me. The cleaning crew had gone and I was impressed with how much lighter the walls looked, now that they had removed the film of smoke and chemicals. Spotting me, the refinisher shut down his machine and pulled off the white mask that covered the lower half of his face. “It’s coming along,” he observed. “I’ll do the first coat of polyurethane tomorrow and another couple coats by the end of the week. Let it cure over the weekend and you should be good to go early next week.”

“Thanks,” I said, relieved that we could resume classes in the ballroom so soon.

“Oh, here.” He dug in his pocket. “I found this wedged between the baseboard and the floor when I removed the baseboards. It probably got pretty wet, but it doesn’t look burned. I don’t know if you can get anything off it, though.” He handed me a small red item with a metal piece at one end.

It took me half a second to recognize it as a flash drive. My fingers closed over it. “Thanks,” I managed.

I was sitting at my desk, newly showered and changed, turning the flash drive over and over in my hand, when Tav arrived. I hadn’t worked up the nerve to see if there was anything on it, and I hadn’t yet called Sherry Indrebo… I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it felt like a last link with Rafe; he must have had it on him the night he was killed. That alone made me think I should be careful with it. I slid it into my jeans pocket and rose to greet Tav. He kissed me on both cheeks, Continental style, and a little buzz hummed through me.

“What is this about Victoria?” he asked.

We sat on the love seat, where I could look down at the street, and I told him everything Victoria had told me. I ended my summary: “So she’s off to Canada or someplace and Bazán gets to run around doing his thing until the feds get together enough evidence to throw him out of the country, I guess, or turn him over to your country’s authorities, and whoever killed Rafe gets a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

“Victoria’s fingerprints were on the gun?”Tav frowned.

“Yes, but I kind of believed her explanation. I don’t think she killed him.”

Tav tapped his fingertips together. “I have known her family a long time. It is hard for me to believe she could shoot Rafe in cold blood, or to believe that he would do anything that would prompt her to kill him in the heat of the moment.”

“If Victoria didn’t kill him, then who did? Bazán?”

“Possibly.” Tav nodded, and sunlight streaming through the window made his hair glint blue-black. “Say Bazán had some inkling that Victoria had turned to Rafael for help. He comes here, looking to get the truth out of Rafael. Rafael feels threatened-”

“Who wouldn’t?” I put in, remembering Bazán’s quiet menace.

“-and pulls the gun. Either they struggle for it and it goes off accidentally-”

I snorted and finished, “Or Bazán grabs it from him and kills him.”

We fell silent, picturing the scene. After a moment, Tav said, “Is Bazán the only one with a motive for killing Rafael?”

“I liked Leon Hall for it, because he thought Rafe got his daughter pregnant. But it turns out he’s got an alibi.” I told Tav about Taryn and Sawyer stopping by on their way to South Carolina.

“What kind of man kicks a sixteen-year-old out of the house?” he asked, his face darkening. “Not one who deserves the title ‘father.’ ”

“And I wondered-” I stopped.

“What?”

I told him the questions Mark Downey had raised in my mind with his behavior at the competition.

“I met him, yes? The man with the light brown hair?”

I nodded.

Tav looked doubtful. “He seemed intelligent; surely he would realize, since you and Rafael were going to sever your partnership after the competition in England anyway, that killing my brother would be an unnecessary risk. Did many people know you and Rafael were splitting up your dance partnership?”

“Everyone,” I said, impressed and relieved by his logic. “And there could be someone else.” I fingered the flash drive through the denim of my pocket. “I’m not sure what Rafe’s relationship with Sherry Indrebo really was. The floor refinisher found a flash drive. I think it’s the one we were looking for, the one Sherry wanted me to find.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “Rafe must have had it with him that night.”

Tav took it from me. “What is on it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing, what with the fire and the water and all. And it doesn’t have its cap.”

Eagerness lit his eyes. “We can check.” He stood in one fluid motion and moved toward Rafe’s computer.

“Are you sure-?” I didn’t know why I was so hesitant, why I felt like Pandora about to open the fateful box.

“Why not?” He powered up the computer and tapped his fingers impatiently as the machine booted. I moved to peer over his shoulder as he slid the thumb drive into a USB port. He double-clicked on the drive’s icon. I held my breath.

An error message popped up. I let my breath ease out as Tav’s shoulders sagged slightly. He switched the flash drive to another port with the same result. “I guess it is damaged,” he said finally. Pulling the drive out of the port, he pressed it back into my palm, his fingers warm on my skin. I slid the drive into my jeans pocket.

“That’s that, then,” I said, partially relieved that we hadn’t accessed incriminating documents or photos.

“Maybe not,” Tav said thoughtfully. “Congresswoman Indrebo does not know the device is damaged. If you told her you found it…”

“I could-what? Trick her into saying something incriminating? I just can’t see her shooting Rafe. Besides, she was at a fund-raiser that night. Dozens of people saw her, Detective Lissy told me.”

“There is that,” Tav admitted. “All right, then, we will focus on Bazán.”

“We?” Did I look like Emma Peel or that cop Grace Something played by Holly Hunter? My hair hadn’t looked that ratty since I was twelve.

He gave me a serious look. “The police will stop investigating as soon as your Phineas Drake hands over Victoria. They will mark the case ‘closed’ and move on.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” I heard myself say. Now that I wasn’t a suspect…

“You do not mean that,” Tav said, his brows snapping together.

I sighed. “No, I guess I don’t. Sure, let’s go get Bazán. What did you have in mind-rappelling over the embassy walls at midnight, kidnapping him under the noses of the guards, and waterboarding him until he confesses?”

Tav grinned. “You have been watching too many spy movies. I thought we would invite him for a conversation, someplace public, and see what he has to say.”

“He won’t come.”

“He might if he thought you could tell him something about Victoria.”

“Like what? I’m not going to rat her out and tell him she’s working with the DEA.”

“No, but you could tell him about searching Rafael’s cabin, or maybe that she used your credit card in Richmond. What could that hurt?”

I gave it some thought. I didn’t see what it could hurt, but I had no faith that I had thought of all the eventualities. I told Tav that and he laughed. “Sure, you laugh,” I said, “but my dad tried to teach me chess when I was younger and I was always lousy at it… I never thought far enough ahead. ‘If I put my rook here, he’ll move his knight there, and I’ll take his pawn, and he’ll…’ Blecch!” I shuddered at the memory.

“Well, I am pretty sure Bazán is not a chess grand master, so it should go just fine,” Tav said.

I smacked him with a throw pillow.

We agreed Tav would approach Bazán and he left, saying he was close to signing papers on a new import venture. “It might require me to spend more time in Washington,” he said.

He seemed to be watching for my reaction and even though I felt a bubble of anticipation well up, I kept my voice even as I said, “You should hang on to Rafe’s condo, then.”

I met up with Maurice in late afternoon to teach a class in the basement of the Presbyterian church one of his students attended. With tables folded and stacked against the wall, the linoleum-floored space worked well enough and I left at the end of class thinking we might have picked up some new students from the congregation. That was good since my voice mail held several calls from students commiserating about the fire and saying they hadn’t intended to take more classes, anyway. I felt a momentary flutter of panic at the financial abyss gaping in front of Graysin Motion, but pushed it aside. The last message on my voice mail was from Vitaly, saying he would meet me at the studio tomorrow for a practice session. “We are needing many more practicings before Blackpool,” he reminded me. As if I needed reminding.

My phone rang as I deleted Vitaly’s message. “Bazán has agreed to meet,” Tav said. “He is on his way to the consulate in San Francisco and says he will give us ten minutes if we meet him at the airport.”

“Now?” I felt flustered, unprepared.

“Now.”