Quickstep to Murder

by Ella Barrick

  Chapter 4

  I gaped at the stranger as a dozen questions flitted through my head. Who are you? Who’s your daughter? How do you know she’s pregnant? The only one I verbalized was, “You mean Rafe?”

  “Señor Rafael Acosta.” The man oozed sarcasm and butchered the first word by pronouncing it “senior.” A shade under six feet tall, he had shoulders that almost filled the doorway and hands clenched into fists the size of grapefruits. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his booted feet, a bull about to charge.

  “Who are you?” Solange thrust herself into the conversation. She had her hands balled on her hips, with her chin jutting out.

  “Leon Hall.”

  My face must have shown my shock and dismay because Hall nodded with grim satisfaction. “That’s right. Taryn’s dad. She’s pregnant. By that wetback.”

  Solange gasped. “Rafe wouldn’t do that! He and I were seeing each other, almost engaged. He wouldn’t ch-” She broke off, eyes darting to me and then to the floor.

  I took little satisfaction in her stricken expression as I asked Hall, “How do you know? That it was Rafe, I mean?” Rafe liked his women on the sophisticated side; I had trouble seeing him romantically involved with an inexperienced teenager.

  “My daughter told me so this morning. So tell the miserable child molester to come out from wherever he’s hiding”-his voice rose to shouting level, as if he were trying to scare Rafe out of a closet or hidey-hole-“so I can kill the sorry bas-”

  “Someone beat you to it,” I said quietly.

  It took several moments for my words to penetrate his shell of anger.

  “Wha-?” He looked confused, glancing from me to Solange. “You’re telling me he’s dead? Acosta’s dead?”

  I nodded. “Maybe we should discuss this in my office.”

  Solange pulled a cell phone out of her purse and started punching in a number. “I’m calling the police,” she announced, her green gaze fixed on Hall. “Obviously, you killed Rafe.”

  Unease flickered across Hall’s face. “You’re crazy. I didn’t even know he was dead.”

  “So you say.”

  A voice squawking into her ear distracted Solange. As she talked, I led Hall away. The door to the outside stairs was ajar, leading me to believe Solange had left it open when she came in and Hall had taken advantage of that. I’d had enough surprise visitors for one morning, so I locked it again before ushering Hall into my office and gesturing him toward the love seat under the window.

  He shook his head, remaining by the door. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  “So you just stopped by to beat Rafe up on your way to the office?”

  He looked at me wearily, drawing a meaty hand over his face. “What will Taryn do now? I was gonna make him do right by her-”

  “You mean marry her? I thought you wanted to kill him.” I eyed him skeptically. The way he tossed around terms like “wetback” didn’t lead me to believe Rafe would have been a welcome addition to the Hall family.

  “That was just an expression,” he said, thoughts of the police obviously troubling him. “I wanted him to do the right thing, marry my Taryn and give her baby a name. Now…” He looked around the office as if confused about where he was, his gaze lighting on the Blackpool trophy on the corner of my desk, the framed caricature of me and Danielle we’d paid fifteen bucks for at a carnival, the sunny yellow afghan my grandma had knitted draped over the love seat’s back. “I’ve gotta go. The foreman’ll dock me.”

  “But the police-” I called to his retreating figure.

  He didn’t bother to answer. I heard the door slam shut and his footsteps clomping down the stairs. Sighing, I left the office to lock the door again, and went looking for Solange. She was nowhere to be found. Huh. She must have slipped out while Hall and I were talking.

  Returning to my office, still sweaty from my earlier dance workout and exhausted from a sleepless night, I tried to concentrate on business tasks I needed to accomplish in the wake of Rafe’s death. The police would notify his family in Argentina, Detective Lissy had said, but I needed to tell his dance partners, our staff and students, our lawyer and accountant, the bank, the Capitol Festival and the Blackpool organizers… I drew up a list and stared at it, weary before I started. Did I need to write an obituary? What about funeral arrangements? I supposed his family would take his body back to Buenos Aires. Well, then, a memorial service?

  My mind slid away from the dreary list and latched on to the subject that had been uppermost since the detectives left me last night: Who killed Rafe? Who hated him enough to shoot him to death? Leon Hall, obviously. My list ended there. I couldn’t think of any dance student or partner who would want Rafe dead. Okay, maybe Sawyer if Rafe really did get Taryn pregnant. I flipped through a mental Rolodex of the people Rafe saw regularly. Maurice and Rafe got along fine. There were professional rivalries, of course, and dancers who resented Rafe’s success. A British dancer came to mind. The flamboyant newcomer had lost the American Smooth Champion title to Rafe last year and had tried to get him disqualified. But as far as I knew, he was in England, running a studio in Manchester.

  Sherry Indrebo? She’d been livid when Rafe stood her up yesterday. But shooting him wasn’t going to help her win a dance championship. Like me, she was now up the creek without a partner. I realized that I didn’t know much about Rafe’s private life. Even before we split up, our time together had revolved around the studio and dance competitions; I’d only met one friend of his, a schoolmate from Rafe’s high school days who was in D.C. on business. I’d never met his father-his mom was dead-or other family members. We had broken up two weeks before a planned trip to Argentina to introduce me to his family.

  A knock on the outside door made me jump. I got up to answer it, figuring it was a cop in response to Solange’s phone call. I was right. Not Detective Lissy, thank goodness. I told the officer about Leon Hall’s visit and threats. “I got the impression he didn’t know Rafe was dead,” I finished, wanting to be fair, even though it would be nice if the police had a suspect besides yours truly.

  “We’ll look into it, ma’am,” was all the officer said before tucking his notebook away and departing.

  My phone rang as I was about to go downstairs and shower so I detoured into the office to answer with a less sprightly “Graysin Motion” than I usually managed.

  “Thank God you’re not dead,” Danielle’s voice greeted me. “Don’t ever scare me like that again!”

  “What are you talking about?” Just hearing my sister’s voice cheered me up.

  “The article in today’s paper.” The rustle of newspaper pages crackled over the phone. “ ‘Alexandria police report the discovery of a body at an Old Town dance studio last evening. Name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. Police are treating the case as a homicide.’ I know it was silly to jump to the conclusion that the article was referring to Graysin Motion-there are several dance schools in Alexandria. Maybe they’re referring to that Li’l Twinkletoes place?”

  “It’s us,” I said. “I mean, they’re talking about Graysin Motion. Someone shot Rafe last night.”

  “Get out! Rafe? Who-? When-? I’m on my way over there.” The line went dead.

  I had showered and dressed in an ankle-length patio dress of fuchsia and blush pink and cream-I don’t own anything somber-looking-by the time Danielle dingdong ed. She greeted me with a compulsive hug and an order: “Tell me everything.”

  When I had finished, she gave me another hug. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure,” I said with a grimace, “for a woman who’s about to be locked up for life. Or for so long that my quickstep will be more of a quickshuffle and I’ll need a walker when I try to rumba.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Danielle said decisively. “Look, I’ve got to get to work. I called to tell my boss I had car trouble, but I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss at ten. Will you be okay? I’ll come back this evening. I’ll even bring
dinner.”

  “Thanks,” I said, grateful for her caring.

  After she left, I made a list of people who needed to know about Rafe’s death and picked up the phone. I called Maurice and listened to his exclamations of shock, sorrow, and concern. I told him classes would resume tomorrow and he sounded relieved. Maurice must need the money, I thought as I hung up. I e-mailed several others, including ballroom dance organizations like Dance Visions and American Dancesport, and our students. Staring at the final name on my list, Sherry Indrebo, I reluctantly decided that she deserved a call rather than an e-mail. I found a number for her congressional office and dialed. The officious-sounding man who answered refused to put me through, saying that the congresswoman was headed to the floor for a vote. Even when I explained that I was calling about a death, he refused to give me her cell phone number or patch me through to her. His tone of voice made it clear he considered me a nuisance caller, no better than the pests who call during dinner to get you to renew your magazine subscriptions. Fine.

  “Tell her that Rafe Acosta won’t be her pro-am dance partner any longer,” I told him, finally losing my temper. I banged the phone down on the table.

  It rang almost before my hand left it.

  “You can’t do this to me, Rafe,” Sherry Indrebo said in a voice like liquid nitrogen. “I told you I’m working on it. It’s not as easy-”

  “It’s Stacy Graysin,” I broke in. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Ms. Indrebo, but Rafe’s dead.”

  The hiss of an indrawn breath was the only proof she’d heard me. Thirty seconds went by before she said, “How? What happened?”

  “Someone killed him at the studio last night,” I said.

  More silence. “I have to talk to you in person,” she finally said. “Can you meet me at, oh, the Grant Memorial in an hour? It’s right outside the Capitol.”

  “I don’t know-” Her request surprised me and I wasn’t really in the mood to trek downtown.

  “Please?”

  The urgency in the word got to me. I’m not sure I’d ever heard her use it before. And I had to admit I was curious. “Okay. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  General Ulysses S. Grant presided over the memorial from atop a placid-looking bronze horse. Larger-thanlife maned lions lay at the four corners of Grant’s stone dais, facing out. Perhaps they were watching for danger: pigeons or taggers. I wasn’t quite sure the lions worked with the Civil War-era general and the cannon behind him with soldiers draped over it, but they probably had some mythological significance. A few tourists loitered around the statues and a boy of eight or nine climbed onto the lion nearest me to have his photo taken, but I didn’t see Sherry Indrebo. I was just lowering myself to sit on the marble stairs when I spotted her coming toward me from the Capitol. Her brisk walk and the way she focused straight forward set her apart from the herd of tourists.

  “This is an absolute nightmare,” she said as she drew even with me. A frown pinched her refined features and, despite the oomph of her red suit, she looked washed out and somehow older than the last time I’d seen her. Maybe it was the harsh sunlight.

  Noting that she hadn’t bothered with “Hello, Stacy,” or a “Thanks for coming, Stacy,” I waited for her to tell me why she’d dragged me all the way downtown.

  “I can’t believe someone shot Rafe. It’s unbelievable.” Her fingers twiddled the strand of marble-sized pearls gracing her neck.

  I reared back slightly at her words. “I didn’t tell you Rafe was shot,” I said carefully.

  She gave me a scornful look, completely unfazed by the implication that her knowledge was suspicious. “I made some calls after we talked,” she said. “To the police. They say an arrest is imminent.”

  “Really?” I said, trying to swallow around the lump that swelled in my throat. “Did they say who?”

  Surprisingly, she didn’t seem too concerned about the identity of Rafe’s killer. She waved my question away as her eyes scanned the disinterested tourists as if she suspected one of them might be taping our conversation. Paranoia: the hallmark of the true Washington insider. “What I have to discuss with you is… sensitive. Can I trust you not to tell anyone?”

  “Maybe,” I said. Why in the world would the congresswoman from Minnesota want to tell me something sensitive?

  Her mouth twisted with dissatisfaction. “This is awkward.” She paced toward the edge of the pool that reflected Grant’s image and motioned for me to join her. My patio dress swished around my ankles as I stepped closer to the pool and stared into its inky depths. A hopeful duck swam over and looked up at us. “I left something at Rafe’s condo the last time I was there,” she said in a low voice. “I need you to get it for me.”

  “What?” I was so startled by her request that the word came out louder than I intended.

  “Shh.” She looked over her shoulder. “I’m sure you can understand why I can’t go myself to fetch it. In my position, the media would be all over me if someone saw me and they might… misinterpret my presence, put a negative spin on what was a completely aboveboard dance partnership.”

  Uh-huh. Just like I was currently misinterpreting the fact that she’d obviously been to Rafe’s place.

  “I can’t afford to be connected in any way to a murder investigation, not when I’m up for reelection this fall.”

  I’d bet she didn’t need her husband and chief campaign contributor getting wind of her visits to a single man’s condo. “Why me?”

  “Well, I figured since you and Rafe were… Since he and you… I thought you might have a key.”

  I did have a key, as a matter of fact. It was in a box with one of Rafe’s sweaters I’d found a few days after our breakup, the bottle of contact lens solution and toothbrush he’d left in my bathroom, the half-finished thriller abandoned on my bedside table, and some other odds and ends. I’d tried to give him the box a couple of times, but he always had some excuse for not taking it, like “It’s too hot now for me to need that sweater.” Danielle thought it meant he still had hopes that we’d get back together. I wasn’t sure what I thought it meant, if anything.

  “What did you leave at Rafe’s place?” I asked, my mind on sweaters and books.

  She hesitated, then, obviously deciding there was no way I could retrieve the object if I didn’t know what I was looking for, said, “My thumb drive. We were going over video of our cha-cha when my chief of staff called and needed a document. I got on Rafe’s computer and e-mailed it to him, but then I forgot to take my thumb drive out of his computer.”

  Sounded innocent enough. “So why not ask the police to find it and return it to you?”

  She looked at me as if I’d suggested she rent a horse and trot naked around Dupont Circle. “There are extremely sensitive political documents on it. I can’t afford to have some nosy cop flipping through them and maybe passing my campaign strategy to my Democratic opponent or details of my fund-raising to the media.”

  It all sounded logical as she laid it out, but I couldn’t help thinking she was hiding something. Of course, “hiding something” is synonymous with “politician,” so maybe it was just her natural furtiveness sounding warning pings in my head. I slipped one foot out of my strappy lizard sandal and trailed a toe in the cool water. The duck glided over with little quacking murmurs to see if it was edible.

  “I’ll owe you,” Sherry said in a voice barely louder than the duck’s quack.

  I suddenly remembered that I’d written Rafe some fairly hot love letters early in our relationship. Surely he’d burned or shredded them when we broke up. I’d torn his letters into confetti and ground them in the sink’s garbage disposal. I bit my lower lip. If he hadn’t, I didn’t want his father or-worse-Detective Lissy and company reading my letters. Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone.

  “I’ll try to take a look today,” I told Sherry Indrebo.

  The door to Rafe’s condo swung open easily, revealing the familiar taupe-painted walls, the glass and steel ceiling l
ight fixture, and the closed closet door of the entryway. I’d come here straight from meeting with Sherry, stopping by my house only briefly to pick up the key and my car. No police officer had been waiting to arrest me and I took that as a good sign, although I didn’t stick around to press my luck. If Sherry was right about the police being on the verge of an arrest, I figured it might be smart to play least in sight for a while.

  The living room-dining room space opened directly off the entryway and I moved forward, looking to see if anything had changed in the four months since I’d been here. Didn’t look like it. Rafe’s condo was decorated in what I thought of as traditional male: more money spent on electronics than furniture. A navy sofa and matching armchair faced a large-screen television and DVD player like postulants before an altar. Wires snaked from the set to a Wii, speakers, and a laptop computer resting on a glass-topped coffee table. A ballroom dance magazine and a Spanish-language periodical had slid onto the rug.

  Crossing to the laptop, I saw Sherry’s thumb drive sticking out from a port. When I tugged on the drive to remove it, the monitor blinked to life, bringing up a photo of me and Rafe doing the Argentine tango. Tears sprang to my eyes. He hadn’t changed his computer wallpaper since we broke up. I wondered what my sister would make of that. He probably just didn’t get around to it, I told myself briskly, wiping away the tears with the back of my hand. I slid the drive into my pocket. My gaze fell on the mug next to the computer, and lipstick stains on the rim jumped out at me. I suddenly felt a lot less weepy.

  Ignoring the kitchen, I hurried to the bedroom, conscious that the police might be arriving at any moment to search the place. Did they search the homes of murder victims when the crime had taken place elsewhere? I was fuzzy on police procedure, but I didn’t want to risk getting caught, even though I had a perfect right to retrieve my own property, didn’t I? Averting my eyes from the unmade bed (king-sized, of course), I pulled open the drawer on his nightstand. On top of an address book, a notepad, and a clutter of coins and old receipts I remembered from when I used to stay here, there lay a strip of photos. They were black and white and looked like they’d come from one of those photo booths at the mall, where you ducked behind the curtain and took goofy photos with your friends. Except these weren’t goofy. They featured a dark-haired woman I didn’t recognize staring directly at the camera. Huh.