Quickstep to Murder

by Ella Barrick

  I took another reluctant step down. The front door was tantalizingly near the foot of the stairs. I thought about hurtling down the last stairs, lunging for the door, and escaping through it. That plan relied on Indrebo being partially immobilized by his limp (so he couldn’t catch me while I opened the door) and a lousy shot (so he couldn’t shoot me while ditto). I decided to take the risk; once he got the flash drive, he was going to shoot me-I knew too much-so I didn’t have much to lose by forcing the issue now. I was tensing my muscles for the leap when the cane’s rubber tip dug into the small of my back and nudged me forward so I stumbled down the last three steps, landing hard on my knees and hands. The hardwood floor sent jolts up my arms to my shoulders and the pain in my knees brought tears to my eyes. I scrunched my lids together, determined not to let Indrebo see me cry.

  “Where’s the drive?” Indrebo asked, staring dispassionately down at me from one step up.

  I breathed heavily for a moment on all fours, assessing my condition. Slightly winded, achy, and undoubtedly bruised, but not truly injured. I made a show of examining my hands, gingerly rotating my wrists like they were sprained, and rolling sideways to take the pressure off my knees. I tried to roll my jeans up high enough to inspect them.

  “Stop stalling,” Indrebo said, “or your knees will have bigger problems than a few scrapes and splinters.” He aimed the gun at my right knee.

  I gave him a wounded look and pushed to my feet, staggering slightly in an effort to make him think I was more shaken up than I really was. “Dizzy,” I muttered, hanging my head by my knees.

  “Oh, come-”

  Before he could finish the sentence, I exploded from the crouch with all the force of my athletic dancer’s legs, ducking my head and twisting slightly so my shoulders slammed into him at knee height. Suddenly off balance on the stair, he teetered and a shot rang out. White dust drifting onto me told me he’d drilled the ceiling. Locking my arms around his knees, I yanked with all my strength and he fell-smack-on his tailbone, letting out a yelp and a curse. He tried to bring the gun level to fire it at me, but the force of the fall had flung his arm upward and his elbow cracked against the stair behind him.

  Unsure if I could wrestle the gun away from him without getting shot in the process, I whirled, sprinted three steps across the foyer, and reached for the doorknob. Crouching, I jerked the door open. Indrebo fired again. The bullet struck my left arm, twisting me with its force. I cried out. The pain burned through my arm like someone had hammered a red-hot spike through it. Blood dripped, splotching the floor. I was shot! The shock of it threatened to freeze me, but I knew hesitation equaled death. Flinging the door wider, I stumbled through it, gripping my bleeding arm with my good hand.

  Wham! I thudded into someone running toward the door. The impact knocked me back, but the man-Tav, I realized-caught my wounded arm and I shrieked with pain. Large raindrops splatted me.

  “My God, Stacy, I heard-”

  “Gun, gun, he’s got a gun,” I babbled.

  Tav scooped me up into his arms, ignoring my yips of pain, and ran toward the street. His feet slapped on the wet walkway. A steady stream of cars filled with people-witnesses, saviors, I thought-hissed past. Without hesitation, Tav jumped in front of a white van slowing for the stoplight. The startled driver hit her brakes. Horns sounded. Craning my head to look over Tav’s shoulder, I saw Ruben Indrebo in my doorway, rage mottling his face, the gun pointed at Tav’s back.

  “Duck,” I screamed in his ear. He threw us forward across the van’s hood and a metallic ping told me the bullet had struck a car. When I opened my eyes to look, Indrebo had disappeared.

  “Call the police,” Tav was yelling at the frightened driver, who already had a cell phone pressed to her ear.

  “And an ambulance,” I whispered, strangely drowsy.

  Chapter 22

  “Another suspect, Miss Graysin?” The first thing I heard as I drifted up from an anaesthetized fog was Detective Lissy’s dry voice.

  I mumbled something and Lissy leaned closer, offering me a glass of water. I sucked on the straw, grateful for the water sliding coldly down my throat. “Not suspect,” I croaked. I cleared my throat. “Killer.”

  “I’m inclined to think you’ve got it right this time,” Lissy said, setting the cup back on the metal table.

  “He admitted it,” I said. My arm throbbed dully and I looked at it, seeing a bulky bandage beneath the abbreviated sleeve of the hospital gown.

  “A flesh wound,” Lissy said, making it sound like I’d stubbed my toe. “The docs stitched it up with a little IV sedation and gave you some antibiotics. A little rest and it’ll be good as new.” I frowned at him, unhappy with the way he was downplaying my gunshot wound. I’d been shot; I wasn’t going to have the bullet hole in my arm dismissed as “a flesh wound.”

  Seemingly unaware of my pique, he stroked his yellow tie flat with one hand and said, “In case you were worrying, Indrebo’s in custody. We caught up with him trying to board a charter flight for Minnesota.”

  I hadn’t gotten around to wondering about Indrebo, but I was glad to hear the cops had apprehended him.

  “We’re not sure how involved the congresswoman was,” Lissy continued, “and neither of them is talking.”

  “No surprise there,” I muttered. The pair had been involved in politics long enough to know when there was no way to put a positive spin on a story.

  “What I don’t understand is why Indrebo came after you,” Lissy said, leaning forward. “Did you see him the night Acosta was shot?”

  “Flash drive.” I fumbled for the water and drank again before explaining about the flash drive. “But there’s nothing on it anymore,” I finished. “The fire must have wrecked it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Lissy said, a gleam in his gray eyes. “Where is it?”

  He bolted from the room, cell phone in hand, when I told him. Kevin McDill, the reporter, was the next person through the door. I blinked in surprise at the sight of him. The fluorescent lights turned his dark skin muddy, but his eyes snapped with vitality and the ubiquitous toothpick was lodged firmly in the corner of his mouth.

  “I hear you caught a bullet and got Ruben Indrebo arrested,” he said. He glanced at my bandaged arm. “Doesn’t look too bad. Care to tell me about it?”

  Not too bad? Why was everyone determined to write off the bullet hole in my arm as nothing more serious than a paper cut or a scraped knee? I pouted but gave him the highlights of my encounter with Indrebo.

  “I’ve been working this story since you pointed me toward it,” McDill said, scrawling notes across a steno pad. “I’ll tell you now, if you can keep your lips buttoned, that it was a source on Congresswoman Indrebo’s challenger’s staff who gave me the original story. He said that his source hinted that there might be more incriminating documents. I don’t suppose you stumbled across anything?” His dark eyes fixed on my face.

  So Rafe had gone to Sherry’s Democratic nemesis with data from the flash drive, just as I suspected. I sighed. “I haven’t seen any documents,” I said truthfully.

  McDill flipped his notebook closed. “Oh, well. It was worth a shot. This story will be big enough with your attempted murder, Indrebo’s arrest, and the congress-woman’s resignation.”

  “Sherry resigned?”

  “She had no choice,” McDill said. “Dirty campaign tricks, influence peddling for her husband, hints of an affair with a younger man, financial improprieties. She could have ridden out the scandal from one, or maybe two, allegations, but all of them? No way. She can kiss her political career bye-bye.” He kissed his bunched fingers and flung them open, a strangely Gallic gesture from such a practical-seeming man. Plucking the toothpick from his mouth, he pointed it at me. “I owe you one.”

  A crowd of people filed in after he left: Mom, Dad, Danielle, Maurice, and even Vitaly. They crowded around the bed, surrounding me with flowers and kisses and concern, properly horrified by the bullet hole in my arm and eag
er to nurse me back to health. The only one missing was Tav Acosta.

  He still hadn’t shown up or called by the time Danielle ushered me down to her car to drive me home. I couldn’t believe the hospital wasn’t keeping me overnight-hadn’t they noticed I’d been shot?-but the doctor dismissed me with a bottle of antibiotics, some pads and gauze, and advice to take it easy for a few days and visit the ER if my temperature spiked. Danielle seemed to tune into my feelings.

  “You know,” she said, “they send total mastectomy patients home after only twenty-four hours nowadays. Can you imagine them slicing off your boobs and whisking you out the door in less than a day? It happened to my friend Renee’s mother when she had breast cancer.”

  Okay, breast cancer trumped my bullet wound. I quit moaning, even to myself, and said a quick prayer of thanks that Indrebo hadn’t killed or crippled me. I flexed my arm carefully and it hurt, but I thought maybe I’d still be able to compete at Blackpool.

  I felt markedly better after a good night’s sleep and was trying a few cautious squats and lunges-exercises that didn’t involve my arm-waiting for my coffee to brew, when the doorbell rang. An involuntary stab of fear took my breath for half a second, but then I remembered that Ruben Indrebo was safely parked behind bars and strode to the door. A peep out the window showed me Tav Acosta’s tall, handsome form.

  Happiness fizzed through me and I pulled the door wide. “I thought you were flying back to Argentina today.”

  “You did not think I would leave without saying good-bye?” He looked down at me with a lazy smile.

  “I didn’t know.” Why did I feel so flustered? Maybe it was an aftereffect of the drugs from yesterday. “Oh, thank you for saving my life yesterday.”

  “You had done most of the saving before I got here,” he said. “May I come in?”

  “Oh, yes.” I stood back to let him enter, automatically heading to the kitchen and coffee.

  “You are injured. I will get it,” Tav said, competently pulling mugs from the cupboard and filling them. I sat and watched him, enjoying the sight of him working-sort of-in my kitchen. Rafe never-I stopped the thought before it fully formed. I was determined to quit comparing the two men.

  Tav brought my coffee to the table and then propped himself against the counter. “So you have solved the case and identified my brother’s murderer.”

  “Well, I maybe half solved it,” I said. “The solving gets easier when someone points a gun at you and confesses.”

  A half smile slanted across Tav’s face. “Do not sell yourself short. If you had not kept after it, the police would have pinned it on Victoria Bazán and Indrebo would be free to kill again.” I buried my nose in my coffee cup, uncomfortable with his praise.

  “So,” he said in a brisker tone, “about the studio.”

  I raised my eyes anxiously to his. “Yes?” Please don’t say you’re selling to Solange. Please, please, please.

  “I have a proposition for you. You must promise to be honest in your response.”

  “Oookay,” I said doubtfully. My knuckles whitened on the mug’s handle.

  “I have made arrangements to expand my export business to this area; I have signed agreements with several outlets-stores-in D.C., Virginia, and Pennsylvania. I need to be here to oversee the business for a while, maybe as much as a year. Since I will be here anyway, I thought I would hold on to Rafe’s share of the studio for now and run it with you.”

  “As partners?” Doubt and hope collided in me.

  He nodded and stepped closer until he was standing right in front of me. “I have a degree in accounting and I am a whiz with numbers and organization. I could not help noticing when I went through the paperwork that you were-”

  “Hopeless with numbers.” I laughed weakly. “But you don’t dance.”

  “True. But I am a fast learner.” He smiled and reached his hand out. “Know where I can find a good teacher?”

  I put my hand in his, feeling a tingle that had nothing to do with my wound as his fingers closed over mine. I stood and we were a mere breath apart. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  I raised our clasped hands to dance position and put my left hand carefully on his shoulder. My stitches protested, but I ignored them. His left arm automatically encircled my waist and I leaned into his strength and warmth and steadiness. He smiled down at me, gaze slipping to my lips, and my voice trembled a little as I said, “Lesson number one: the frame.”

  “Now?” he said, looking a little uneasy. “Here? There’s no music.”

  “Oh, there’s always music.” I squeezed his hand and we began to dance.

  Ella Barrick

  ***

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