by J. D. Robb
He paused when Mirium came over with a tray holding three tall glasses. “I don’t mean to interrupt. Just something cold to drink while you talk. If you need me for anything, I’ll be out front.”
“They’re good people,” Lloyd commented when she left them. “Her, her husband. They come up clean. Ran the whole staff when I caught the case. Got some bumps here and there, but nobody popped.”
“What’s the time line?”
When he didn’t refer to his notes, Eve knew the case had him, and his teeth were still in it.
“Beata Varga went to her regular dance class, eight a.m. to ten. Hit a rehearsal for the show she just landed at Carmine Theater on Tenth at eleven. Reported here for work at one, all excited about the show. Worked a split shift, so she was off at three, hit her acting class from three thirty to five, back to work at five thirty, off at eleven. Walked down the block with a couple friends from work—names in the file—then split off to go home. That’s the last anyone can verify seeing her. Eleven ten, then poof.
“Apartment’s not big on security. No cams,” he added. “No log-in. The neighbors can’t say whether she came in that night, but nobody saw her. A bag and some of her clothes and personal items are gone, and there was no money in the place. According to statements, she pulled in hefty tips and was saving. It looks like she got itchy feet, tossed what she wanted in a bag, and took off.”
“That’s not what you think,” Eve said, watching his eyes.
“Nope. I think between here and home she ran into trouble. Somebody snatched her. I think she’s been dead since that night. You know as well as I do, Lieutenant, we don’t always find the bodies.”
No, Eve thought. “If she’s dead, then someone she knew killed her. Why else try to make it seem like she took off? Why pack clothes?”
“I lean that way, but I can’t find anything.” Frustration rippled around him. “It could be whoever did her used her ID for her address, had her key—she carried all that in her purse. Tried to cover it up. I’m still working it, when I can, as an MP, but my sense is it’s more in your line.”
He glanced around as he sipped his drink. “The old woman didn’t buy it for cheap,” he said. “Claimed she talked to the dead, and if the girl was dead, she’d know. I don’t buy that for free, but . . . Now the old woman gets murdered? People get dead in the city,” he added as he set his glass down. “But it’s got a smell to it. I’d appreciate you giving me what you’ve got on it. Something or somebody might cross somewhere.”
“You’ll get it,” Eve promised. Because something or somebody would cross.
Five
The ballet studio ranged over the fourth floor of an old building on the West Side. Under the glare of streetlights the pocked bricks were dull and grayed with time and pollution, but the glass in every window sparkled.
Out of Order signs hung on the chipped gray doors of both elevators. Students, staff, and visitors had expressed their opinions on the situation with varying degrees of humor or annoyance by tagging the doors with obscenities, anatomically impossible suggestions, and illustrations on how to attempt the suggestions. All in a variety of languages.
“Guess they’ve been out of order for a while,” Peabody commented.
Eve just stared at one of the series of strange symbols and letters while her mind—something in there—translated it with a kind of dry humor.
“Fuck your mother,” she murmured, and Peabody blinked.
“What? Why?”
“Not your mother.”
“But you just said—”
Eve shook her head impatiently. “It’s Russian. A classic Russian insult.” She reached out, ran a fingertip over the lettering on the door. “Yob tvoiu mat.”
Peabody studied the phrase Eve traced and thought it might as well be hieroglyphics. “How do you know that?”
“I must have seen it somewhere else.” But that didn’t explain how she knew—knew—the elevators had been down for weeks. Turning away, she started up the stairs.
Nor could she say why her heart began to beat faster as they climbed, passed the other studios and classrooms. Tap, jazz, children’s ballet sessions. Or why, as she approached the fourth floor, the music drifting out hit some chord inside her.
She followed the music, stepped into the doorway.
The woman was whiplash thin in her black leotard and gauzy skirt. Her hair, wildly red, slicked back from a face that struck Eve as thirty years older than her body. Her skin was white as the moon, her lips red as her hair.
She called out in French to a group of dancers at a long bar who responded by sliding their feet from one position to another—pointed toes, flat feet, lifted leg, bended knees.
In a corner of the studio a man played a bright and steady beat on an old piano. He seemed to look at nothing at all with a half smile on his face, dark eyes dreamy in a sharp-featured face surrounded by dark hair with wide, dramatic white streaks.
As Eve and Peabody entered the room, one of the dancers, a man in his twenties, dark hair restrained in a curling tail, turned his head a fraction to stare, to scowl.
Interesting, she thought, a guy wearing a leotard and ballet shoes would make a couple of cops so quickly.
The woman stopped, planted her hands on her hips. “You want lessons, you sign up. Class has started.”
Eve merely held up her badge.
The woman sighed hugely. “Alexi, take the class.”
At the order, the scowling man tossed his head, sniffed, then strode out from the bar. The woman gestured them into the hallway.
“What could you want?” she demanded in a voice husky, impatient, and thick with her homeland. “I’m teaching.”
“Natalya Barinova?”
“Yes, yes. I am Barinova. What do I want with police?”
“You know a Gizi Szabo?”
“Yes, yes,” she said in the same dismissive tone. “She looks for Beata, who ran off to Las Vegas.”
“You know Beata Varga went to Vegas?” Eve demanded.
“Where else? They think, these girls, they go make big money showing their tits and wearing big feathers on their heads. They don’t want to work, to sweat, to suffer, to learn.”
“Beata told you she was leaving?”
“No, she tells me nothing, that girl. But she doesn’t come back. She’s not the first, will not be the last. Her old grandmother comes—a good woman—looking for this flighty girl who has talent. Wasted now. Wasted.”
The way she cut her hand through the air made her anger clear.
“I tell her this, tell Gizi, Beata has talent. Needs discipline, needs practice. Should not waste so much time with the tap and the jazz and the modern business. I tell Beata the same, but she only smiles. Then poof, off she runs.”
“When did you last see Madam Szabo?”
“Ah . . . ” Barinova frowned, waved a hand in the air. “A day ago, I think. Yes, on yesterday. She comes often. Sometimes we have tea. She was a dancer in her day, she tells me, and we talk. She’s a good woman, and Beata shows no respect to her. She thinks harm has come to Beata, but I say how could this be? Beata is strong and smart—except she’s stupid to run to Las Vegas. So, she asked you to come? Like the other police?”
“No. Madam Szabo was killed this afternoon.”
“No.” Barinova held out both hands as if to push the words away. “No. How does this happen?”
“She was stabbed in the alley outside her apartment building.”
Barinova closed her eyes. “Such cruelty. I will pray she finds peace and her killer roasts in hell. Beata must bear some blame for this. Selfish girl.”
“When did you last see Beata?”
“Ah.” She cut a hand through the air again, but now there were tears in her eyes for the old woman and disgust for the young. “Weeks now, maybe months. She comes to class excited about a part in some musical. She works hard, this is true. I give her the pas de deux with Alexi in our autumn gala. My son,” she added. “She dances well with him in pr
actice, then she says she has this part—maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. But soon after, she doesn’t come to class anymore. I have my brother Sasha to call her on the ’link, but she doesn’t answer. We tell all this to the police when they come.”
“Did Madam Szabo tell you she was concerned about anyone? That she had any leads on Beata?”
“She said the last she was here she believed Beata was close. She was Romany, you understand, and had a gift. Me, I have Romany in my blood, but from long ago. She used her gift and said Beata was close, but trapped. Below, behind a red door.” Barinova shrugged. “She was very old, and gifted, yes, but sometimes hope and wishes outweigh truth. The girl ran off as girls do, and now a good woman is dead.”
“It would be helpful if we could talk to your son and brother, maybe some of the students who took classes with Beata.”
“Yes, yes, we will help. I will miss tea with Gizi and our talks.” She turned back into the studio, moved to her son. She spoke quickly in Russian, gestured, then took his place as he strode out.
“You’re interrupting my practice.” Unlike his mother, he had no trace of an accent. What he had was attitude.
“Yeah, murder interrupts a lot of things.”
“What murder?” His sneer twisted off his face. “Beata? She’s dead?”
“I don’t know, but her great-grandmother is.”
“Madam Szabo?” His shock looked sincere enough, and so, Eve noted, did his relief. “Why would anybody kill an old woman?”
“People always seem to have a reason. In this case, maybe because she was getting close to finding out what happened to Beata.”
“Beata left.” He jerked a shoulder sharply. “She didn’t have what it takes.”
“To what?”
“To dance, to live life full.”
Eve cocked her head. “Wouldn’t sleep with you?”
He tipped back his head to look down his long nose. “I don’t have a problem getting women into bed. If we’d danced together for the gala, we’d sleep together. One is like the other.”
“I thought you did dance together.”
“Practice.”
“So it must’ve annoyed you that she wouldn’t have sex with you.”
“This woman, that woman.” He smiled slowly. “One is like the other.”
“Charming. When did you last see Madam Szabo?”
“Just yesterday. She’d visit class, and my mother, a lot. Talk to the other dancers here, and the other studios down on two and three where Beata took some classes. She’d have tea with my mother, sit with my uncle at the piano. She said she felt close to Beata here.”
“And she mentioned something about Beata being close. Being below.”
“She was a Gypsy—and took it seriously. I don’t buy into that, but yeah, she said some stuff about it. Didn’t make any sense, because if Beata was close, why did she stop coming to class? Why did she bail on the part she got, and screw the understudy position she had? Dancers dance. She took off, that’s what she did, to dance somewhere else. Found a bigger brass ring to grab.”
“Where were you today, Alexi? Say from noon to four?”
“Cops.” He sniffed again. “I slept late in the apartment of Allie Madison. She and I will dance in the gala, and she and I sleep together. For now,” he added. “We stayed in bed until about two, then met friends for a little brunch. Then we came here, to practice, then to take class. She’s the blonde, the tall one with the tattoo of a lark on her left shoulder blade. I need to practice.”
“Go ahead. Ask your uncle to come out.”
Eve waited until he’d strode off again. “Did you run him?” she asked Peabody.
“Oh yeah. He’s got a few drunk and disorderlies, a couple of minor illegals possessions, an assault—bar fight, which added destruction of private property, public nuisance, resisting. He’s twenty-six, listed as principal dancer and instructor here at the school, and lives with his mother upstairs on six.”
Got a temper, Eve thought as the piano player stepped out.
“Officer?”
“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. And you’re Sasha?”
“Sasha Korchov, yes. My nephew said you came because Madam Szabo was killed.” His dreamy eyes were soft and sad, like this voice. Like the slow glide of a bow over violin strings. “I’m very sorry to know this.”
“Were you here when she came in yesterday?”
“I didn’t see her. Natalya was using the music disc—advanced students to work on dances for the gala. I am in the storeroom, I think, with the props when she was here. My sister tells me I missed her. We enjoyed talking music and dance. I saw her the day before, on the street, not far from here. I was going to the market. But she was across the street and didn’t hear when I called out to her. We talked in Russian,” he said with a ghost of a smile. “Her mother was Russian, like mine and my papa, so sometimes we talked in Russian. I will miss it, and her.”
“What about Beata?”
“Beata.” He sighed. “My sister, she thinks Beata ran off to Las Vegas, but no, I think something bad happened to her. I don’t say so to Gizi, but . . . I think she knows I believe this. She could see inside if she looked, so I think sometimes she was sad to talk to me. I’m sorry for it.”
“What did you think happened to Beata?”
“I think she loved her family, and to dance, and New York. I don’t think she would leave all of that by choice. I think she’s dead, and now so is Gizi. Now Gizi will find her, so they will, at least, have each other.”
“Your nephew was interested in Beata—personally.”
“He likes pretty girls,” Sasha said cautiously. “What young man doesn’t?”
“But she wasn’t interested in him?”
“She was more interested in dance than in men. Pure of heart, and with music in her blood.”
“Can you tell me where you were this afternoon?”
“I went to market after morning classes—I like to go most days. I came home to have my lunch and to play. I opened the windows so the music could go out. I came down to talk to my sister, and play for the two o’clock class. When that’s done, we have tea, Natalya and me.”
“Okay, thank you. Would you send Allie Madison out?”
“Will they send her body home?”
“I don’t have that information.”
“I hope she goes home,” Sasha murmured, then wandered back inside.
“He immigrated here from Russia with his sister and her kid—Alexi was a couple months old—twenty-six years ago,” Peabody added. “Sister’s husband’s listed as dead, right before the kid was born. Korchov was thirty-five and had been a big-deal ballet guy until he got messed up in a car wreck. They fixed him, but his career was shot. The sister was thirty, and had a pretty decent career herself. They opened the school. He has his own apartment on six. No criminal record. No marriages on record, two cohabs, both in Russia. The second one died in the same wreck that messed him up.”
“Okay.” Eve watched the willowy blonde glide out.
“You wanted to see me?” She had a breathy, baby doll voice that made Eve think it was Allie’s good luck ballet didn’t require vocals.
“Just verifying some information. Would you mind telling me where you were this afternoon?”
“Sure. Alex and I had brunch with some friends at Quazar’s. Caviar and champagne—it was CeeCee’s birthday—which probably wasn’t a good idea right before practice. I’m still carrying those blinis.” She smiled easily. “Doesn’t bother Alex, I guess, because he jumped right in when we got here. Pushed me through that damn pas de deux until I thought about just sticking my fingers down my throat. But Barinova will skin you for purging, and she always knows. Anyway, I got through it. My Angel to his Devil.”
“His what?”
“Devil.” She lifted the water bottle she carried, took a long sip. “We’re performing the final pas de deux from Diabolique. I’m dancing Angel. Alex is Devil. Let me tell you, it
’s a killer.”
Eve looked past her to the studio doorway. “I just bet.”
Six
“That’s what I’d call a devil of a coincidence,” Peabody commented when they stepped out on the street.
“Are you buying it?”
“Not even for the couple of loose credits in my pocket.”
“I want you to check with the other people the blonde gave us, and the restaurant. We’ll see if Alexi could’ve managed to slip away. See what the timing is from the restaurant to the alley, from the school to the alley.”
“Beata turned him down, pissed him off. He kills her, buries the body.” Peabody scanned the area. “God knows where, but that would fit in with the west of the alley, underground deal.”
“She’s not dead. She’s trapped.” Eve snapped it out furiously, shocking herself as much as Peabody.
“Okay . . . So you think—”
“It’s what she thought. Szabo.” Eve rubbed a hand between her breasts where her heart beat, hard and dull, a hammer against cloth. “I’m saying Szabo thought Beata was alive.”
“Right. Behind a red door. Why do people have to be so cryptic?”
Think like a cop, Eve ordered herself. Facts, logic, instinct. “Szabo spends time at the school, with Alexi et al, sniffs it out, suspects, hints around. Maybe trying to get Alexi to make a move. He kills her.” Eve rolled it around. “Awful damn tidy, but sometimes it just is.”
“Well, the old lady told everybody Beata was still alive, so that doesn’t ride the train very well.”
“She poofs. She’s got a job, her classes, landed a part. Sounds like everything’s working out for her, but she poofs. Odds are she didn’t poof voluntarily—that’s Lloyd’s take, and I agree.”
“Three months is a long time,” Peabody put in. “A long time to hold somebody who doesn’t want to be held. And for what reason?”
“Szabo didn’t want to believe the girl was dead, and who can blame her?” Eve added. “Not only her great-granddaughter, but she overrode the rest of the family so Beata could come to New York.”
“Had to feel sick about it.” Like Eve, Peabody scanned the street, the buildings, the traffic. “What did she say exactly? To you, I mean.”