Quickstep to Murder (13 page)

“No way,” I said. “I’m sorry, Sherry, but—”

“Then give me the key and I’ll find someone else.” She held out a peremptory hand, palm up.

“I can’t do that.”

“You mean you won’t.”

I didn’t answer.

The anger in her eyes turned to calculation after only a few seconds. “Okay, what’ll it take?”

“Sorry?” She’d lost me.

“How much? How much to go back to Rafe’s and find my thumb drive? Tonight?” Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a checkbook and waited expectantly.

“You can’t pay me to do it!”

“Certainly I can,” she said calmly. “There’s very little that money won’t buy.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. She studied my face for a moment, and I got a flash of what she must be like in a congressional committee meeting or at the poker table. Favors and back-scratching and bartering were coin of the realm in political circles. She and Uncle Nico would probably get along like Bonnie and Clyde. Come to think of it, she did kind of look like Faye Dunaway.

“Okay, then.” She put the checkbook back. “If the carrot doesn’t do the trick, it’ll have to be the stick.”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“What if I told you there were documents on that thumb drive that would destroy Rafe’s reputation?”

I shifted uneasily. “Like what?”

“Photos. I don’t need to draw you a picture, do I? Sleeping with students isn’t exactly the height of professionalism. And—”

“It happens all the time,” I said, ignoring the pang I felt at this confirmation of Rafe’s routine unfaithfulness, and trying not to envision what those photos looked like.
Ew
. “You and Rafe are both over twenty-one. Way over,” I added cattily. “I’d think photos like that would do you more damage than Rafe.”

“And,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “evidence of payoffs to ballroom dance judges. That might reflect badly not only on Rafe but on Graysin Motion, don’t you think?”

I did, indeed. “Rafe wouldn’t do that.”

“He was desperate to make this studio successful,” she countered. “And he needed the money.”

“What for?” I knew, of course, that Rafe was looking for money, and it lent a tiny bit of credence to her accusation.

She shrugged. “How would I know? He asked me to float him a loan, but I told him I had a firm rule about not doing business with friends. It’s a surefire way to lose both your friends and your money. I leased him a car instead, so he could sell his Camry.”

Staring at her, I wondered suddenly where Rafe’s new Lexus was. Had the police found it? Maybe not if it was leased under Sherry’s name. I was about to suggest that she locate the Lexus and search it for the flash drive when something stopped me. Maybe my dislike of being blackmailed. I gnawed on my lower lip as Sherry rose.

“Think about it,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll realize that we both have a vested interest in making sure the documents and photos on that thumb drive stay private.” Flicking a minute speck of dust or lint from one of her cuffs, she walked out, her stiletto heels
pock-pock
ing on the wood floor.

I sat trancelike for ten minutes after she left, my mind whirring with what she’d told me. I was ninety-eight percent sure she was lying about the bribes, but could I risk it? Sliding my desk drawer open, I fingered the key I’d dropped in there. Another visit to Rafe’s condo was probably no big deal. The police undoubtedly had been through the place by now and wouldn’t have a need to return. And whoever was there when I’d dropped in yesterday was long gone, surely. The cold, jagged edges of the key bit into my hand as I closed my fist around it.

 

The area around Rafe’s condo was busier in the early evening than it had been at midday. People returning from work, I presumed, watching the sporadic trail of cars disappearing into the garage. That would work in my favor, I decided, crossing the street from where I’d parked my Beetle. I’d be one in the crowd. Anonymous. The condominium complex housed young professionals—singles and couples—and people pretty much kept to themselves. I let myself into the building with the key, holding the door open for a fit-looking woman wheeling a bicycle out, then took the elevator to the fourth floor.

As the elevator door closed behind me, I scanned the hallway. No one in sight. Good. I paced rapidly toward Rafe’s door and leaned my ear close, listening for a moment. A shower ran in the next door unit and a phone rang somewhere down the hall, but I didn’t hear anything from within Rafe’s place. Dings from the elevator warned me it was coming up and might spit out someone on this floor. Jabbing the key into the lock, I pushed open the door and quickly closed it behind me, leaning against it. I surveyed the room without moving, noting immediately that the laptop was gone. The cops had taken it, I’d bet. That didn’t bode well for my search for the thumb drive.

I pushed away from the door, intending to start my search around the coffee table where the computer had been, when the slap of bare feet on wood made me whirl to my left.A man stood in the dim hallway, towel wrapped around his waist, water dripping from his hair, knife held confidently in one hand and pointed at my stomach.

I gasped and the key fell from my nerveless hand, clinking on the floor. The man took a step forward, moving into the light, and I recognized him: Tav Acosta.

“What are you doing here?” we said simultaneously.

Tav lowered the knife so it dangled at his side. I thought it was from the knife block in Rafe’s kitchen, but I was too distracted by Tav’s bare torso, glistening with water, to care much. A sprinkling of black hairs covered strong pecs and tapered across defined abs to disappear beneath the towel. His skin was smooth and unblemished, the color of caramel. He looked so much like Rafe that my mouth went dry. My gaze flew to his face, catching the flicker of heat in his eyes before a more wary look came over his face.

Seeming suddenly conscious of his lack of apparel, Tav gripped the towel with one hand—not the one holding the knife—and told me, “Wait here. Do not leave.” He disappeared back down the hall and closed the door to Rafe’s bedroom with a
thunk
.

I remained by the door for a moment, trying to remember how to breathe, then eased into the living room and retrieved the key from the floor. I wasn’t about to compound my difficulties by getting caught searching the room, so I sank onto the sofa and picked up the dance magazine that had been on the floor. My fingers trembled as I tried to turn the pages and I set the magazine down, clenching my hands into fists. Who knew getting caught sneaking into one’s dead former fiancé’s condo was so unnerving?

Tav was back within four minutes, wet hair combed back, wearing chino shorts and a red-striped golf shirt. His feet were still bare. His expression was stern and the hint of suspicion in his eyes gave me a pang after our enjoyable lunch and conversation. “Talk,” he said.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, as he sank onto the chair opposite me. “I—” Trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for being here, I bit my lower lip. I finally decided on the truth; hell, I didn’t owe Sherry Indrebo anything. I spilled out the story of Sherry’s request—demand—and watched Tav’s face. It didn’t reveal much. “So I’m here to find the thumb drive,” I finished.

“Because you think my brother might have been bribing judges?” Tav sounded skeptical.

I couldn’t much blame him; telling the story out loud made it sound pretty unlikely. I nodded unhappily. “Might,” I emphasized. “I don’t really think he was, but he did seem to be in a real financial bind lately, and maybe that drove him to . . .”

“How much money could he win at a ballroom dance competition?” Tav asked. The way he relaxed back into the chair made me think that he believed me and I let out my breath, unaware until then that I’d been holding it. “It’s hard to say,” I said, “because there are so many prize categories. But if we’d taken home the top studio award and a few division prizes, maybe ten to twelve thousand—not a fortune by any stretch. The money in ballroom dancing is in teaching and competing with amateur students . . . or getting a gig on
Ballroom with the B-Listers
.”

“Hardly seems worth bribing judges,” Tav said, almost to himself. He stood and held out a hand to pull me up. “Let us begin.”

“Begin?”

“Our search.”

 

It wasn’t until half an hour later, when we had gone over every inch of the living room and were pulling utensils out of kitchen drawers and checking the ice tray in the freezer for the thumb drive that I thought to ask, “Hey, what are you doing here, anyway?”

Tav looked up from where he was systematically removing spices and canned goods from the lazy Susan in a low cupboard and smiled. “When I picked up Rafael’s effects, his keys were among them. The police had no objection to my staying here. A week in a hotel in this area would eat my profits for the month.”

“Were you here yesterday morning?”

“No. My plane did not land until late last night and I did not get the key until this morning. Why?”

I told him about my visit yesterday and the intruder who had hidden in the closet and snuck out while I was in the bedroom.

“You thought it was me?” Tav said, a smile lurking in his brown eyes. “I am not much of one for hiding in closets.”

No, he was more the type to grab a knife and confront an intruder. I washed my hands after sorting through the cleaning supplies under the sink and accidentally shifting a roach motel.

“Who do you think it was?” Tav asked, brow furrowed.

We headed toward the bedroom and began rifling through the drawers and closet, and I gave him the thoughts I’d already hashed out with Danielle. It felt weird to be in Rafe’s bedroom, which still smelled like Rafe, with a man who looked so much like Rafe but wasn’t Rafe. I remembered the last time I’d woken up in here, dawn just creeping through the slatted blinds and striping the cherry chest of drawers and Rafe’s chest and arms as he snored softly. A
plip-plip
sound had drifted in from the kitchen as the automatic coffeemaker kicked on. The smell of coffee followed moments later. The scent had half awakened Rafe and he’d turned to embrace me, his beard stubble rasping my face as he kissed me. I’d still had a ferocious case of beard burn when I walked in on him and Solange later that afternoon. I couldn’t face the bed with its rumpled sheets, so I drifted into the bathroom to search while Tav tore apart the bed, seemingly unaware of the conflicted thoughts and images chasing one another through my head.

We gave up forty minutes later without having found my love letters—Rafe must have trashed them—or the flash drive. Either the police had taken it along with the computer, Rafe had put it somewhere else (possibly planning to return it to Sherry), or someone else had lifted it. I discounted the possibility that Sherry Indrebo was wrong about where she’d left it; she didn’t strike me as a woman who got details confused.

“I will ask the police about it,” Tav said, offering me a glass of water in the kitchen when we’d finished.

Leaning against the sink, I swallowed it in one long gulp—rifling someone’s condo was hard work—and said, “Just don’t make them suspicious.”

“Never fear.” He grinned.

“Did they give you Rafe’s car keys, too?”

Tav nodded.

“Is the Lexus in the garage?” I didn’t see how Rafe’s car could be in its slot below the condo building when he’d been shot at the studio.

“No. My rental is parked in his space. Why?”

I explained my thinking and he disappeared into the bedroom momentarily, emerging with Rafe’s key ring in his hand. He lobbed it at me and I caught it. “You’re giving me Rafe’s keys?” I felt a spark of warmth at his trust.

“It is not his car, correct? So I have nothing to lose if you turn out to be a clever car thief.”

“Oh.” His prosaic logic deflated me.

“Search the car if you come across it, or return the keys to Ms. Indrebo,” Tav said.

I pocketed the keys. “I should go.”

“Let me buy you dinner. I would offer to cook for you, but my brother did not keep the refrigerator well stocked.” Pulling the fridge door open, he gestured at the mostly bare shelves that featured only a bottle of salad dressing, a carton of take-out Chinese, and some yogurts. “You can tell me about your compulsion to chase after aging punk rockers. I hear Rod Stewart is between wives again.”

I punched him on the shoulder. “Just for that, you can pick up the check.”

Over a delicious seafood dinner at a casual restaurant two blocks from the condo complex, I confessed to my initial assault on the mysterious limo and my conviction that its occupant knew something about Rafe’s death. “Or, if not his death exactly, something about why he was so worried these past weeks, why he needed money.” I sawed a small slice of bread from the crusty loaf the waiter had brought and ate it dry, watching jealously as Tav ripped off half the loaf and slathered it with butter. Watching my weight like a jockey was part of the price I paid for being a professional dancer.