Quickstep to Murder

by Ella Barrick

  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 bei
ng 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.

  Chapter 10

  Music poured out of the small studio and I peeked in to see Vitaly rehearsing with one of the competitive students. I gave him a thumbs-up, which he returned behind his partner’s back, along with a slight grimace I took to be a comment on her waltzing. Maurice was instructing his senior group in the ballroom and I smiled to see two new elderly gentlemen circling the floor with Mildred and Edwina. Hoover, watching from his spot under the window, scratched an ear vigorously with his hind paw. It felt almost normal today, the most normal it had felt since Rafe’s death. I hummed a snatch of tango music and walked into my office to see Solange rifling my drawers.

  I stared at her a moment, anger building, before she noticed me. “Can I help you find something?” I asked icily.

  She started and looked up, eyes widening. In a split second, though, she had recovered. “Oh, there you are!” She said it as if she’d been looking for me for hours.

  Like she expected to find me in my desk drawer?

  She came around the desk toward me, moving fluidly in blue leggings, a matching workout bra that bared her tight midriff, and a whiff of sheer skirt. Her hair was caught up in a casual knot and skewered with a couple of combs. “I was just… There was a man here looking for his daughter. I was going to write you a note about him. It’s the scariest thing,” she added, scanning my face to see how I was reacting.

  “Getting caught searching someone’s desk?”

  Annoyance flashed across her face and her voice was indignant as she said, “No! Having your sixteen-year-old daughter go missing. It’s got to be every parent’s nightmare.”

  I had to agree with her on that.

  “I mean, think of all the dreadful things that could happen. Abduction, rape, murder, sold into white slavery…” She shuddered.

  I couldn’t tell if she was acting or genuinely worried about Taryn. “Well, I saw her go off with her dance partner Fr
iday noonish, so I don’t think she’s in that kind of trouble.” She might well be in more trouble when her father caught up with her.

  “Really? Thank goodness for that.” Solange edged toward the door. “Well, I guess I don’t need to worry about that note anymore. Gotta get into the ballroom-Maurice asked me to help with his class.”

  “Solange.”

  Stopping on the threshold, she looked a question at me. Something like defiance or malice lurked in her eyes.

  “Where were you Monday night?”

  Her expression soured. “I’ve already gone over that with the police and I don’t see that it’s any of your business, Stacy.”

  “Maybe not. But I don’t know why you’re ashamed to tell me.”

  “I’m not ashamed! If you must know, I was at a friend’s birthday party. At Technophile. Dozens of people saw me. I didn’t get home until after two.” She whisked out the door before I could question her further.

  I drifted over to my desk and sat, thinking. Technophile was only three blocks from here. It was the current “hot” place in Alexandria, packed to the rafters every night of the week, including Sunday. I was pretty sure Solange could have slipped out at some point, walked to the studio, shot Rafe, and made it back to the party without being missed. Just because she could have, though, didn’t mean she had. And what had she been looking for in my desk? Opening the drawer she’d been poking through, I stared into it, using my index finger to move aside some pencils, sticky note pads, a pair of scissors, and a couple of unlabeled CDs that were probably backup files. Nothing exciting.