“When I got to work today, I had one viable suspect for Rafe Acosta’s murder. You. Now I have three. How do you explain that?”
“Just lucky?”
He burped and rubbed at his side. “That’s not how I would characterize it. I’m not happy with this case. No, not happy at all. Fingerprint evidence appeared this morning, suggesting a certain Victoria Bazán was involved. Ms. Bazán, I’m subsequently informed, is uncontactable and untouchable for a variety of reasons I won’t bother you with. Despite not being happy with how this evidence turned up, I’m on the verge of closing the case when you call to say you’ve been attacked by Acosta’s real murderer. Miss Dubonnet supports your contention that Mark Downey attacked you and seemed to have a ‘bizarre fixation’ on you-one she was at a loss to explain since you’re, and I quote, ‘a passably pretty, thirdrate dancer’-that might have included trying to get rid of your dance partners.” He shook his head, bemused.
“He admitted he tried to poison Vitaly.” At his puzzled look, I clarified. “Voloshin. My new dance partner. Mark spiked his juice with something. And he set the fire. He said it was so I’d realize how much I needed him, but I think that was about revenge because I told him we weren’t going to be dance partners.”
Rubbing a hand down his face, Lissy said, “Did he cop to Acosta’s killing, too, while he was in confession mode? Or the gang killing near the airport two nights ago? Maybe the convenience store robbery on Prince? We’ve got plenty of open cases-he can have his pick.”
The sarcasm in Lissy’s voice didn’t faze me. “No, just Vitaly and the fire. You’ll have to solve the rest of those cases on your own. But he must have killed Rafe, don’t you think?”
“Why not admit it, then, since he seemed to want you to know how far he’d go to win your affections?”
I gave him an incredulous look. “He’s loony, not stupid. I’m betting murder carries a lot longer prison term than arson does.”
Lissy sighed. “Okay, Miss Graysin. Come see us in the morning to sign your statement. Do me a favor and leave that Drake character at home. You’re no longer a suspect. I think we’ll hang this one on the Bazán woman, but I’ll look into Downey’s alibi for the night of Acosta’s murder and follow up a little more before we close this.”
He held down a hand and, after a surprised moment, I took it, letting him haul me to my feet. “Thanks.”
He burped, nodded, and strode away, leaving me to stagger to the interior door, lock it carefully behind me, and stumble down the stairs. I was beyond exhausted, but I felt compelled to shower before falling into bed, needing to get the scent and feel of Mark Downey off of me. I began to shake under the stream from the shower head as I considered what might have happened if Solange hadn’t been there. Tears joined the droplets of water streaming down my face as I tried to come to terms with the fact that I’d liked Mark Downey, that I’d spent a couple of hours a week with him for three years and never realized he had a screw loose. Maybe several screws. What did that say about my judgment?
Hair still damp, I tumbled into bed and fell asleep almost instantly, only to dream of Rafe facing a firing squad made up of the Bazáns, Solange, Mark, Sherry Indrebo and various other students, Maurice, and, most disturbingly, me.
Chapter 21
The next morning I awoke feeling unrested and grumpy. When I picked my jeans off the floor from where I’d dropped them last night, Sherry’s thumb drive fell out of the pocket. Picking it up, I flipped it in one hand, tempted to just toss it in the trash. After all, it didn’t have anything on it anymore. Instead, I decided to send Sherry an e-mail letting her know I’d found it so she could pick it up if she wanted to. She could take the thing to a computer guru and hope he could resuscitate her documents if the data on it was important to her. I shot her a quick e-mail from the laptop while my coffee dripped, not mentioning that I knew the drive was fried; she didn’t need to know Tav and I had tried to peek at her documents.
After breakfast, I called a locksmith to get the locks changed and agreed to pay extra if he came today. Then I called Tav and told him about the scene with Mark Downey. “I’m ninety-eight percent sure Mark killed Rafe,” I finished.
“Why would this Downey be at the studio that late?” Tav sounded thoughtful, not argumentative, and I could picture the line between his brows as he tried to puzzle his way through the details.
I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “Looking for me? Or maybe he planned it and hung around waiting for an opportunity to get Rafe alone.”
“Then why not wait at his condo? And if he planned it, would he not bring his own weapon?”
His points were good ones, but I didn’t want to acknowledge that because I wanted this whole thing over and done with, closed, finished. “I don’t know,” I said grumpily. “He could’ve had a knife with him but decided the gun would do the job better when Rafe pulled it out.”
“That is probably what happened,” Tav agreed after a short pause. “At any rate, Detective Lissy called earlier to say I was free to return to Argentina, so I have booked a flight for tomorrow afternoon. Before I leave, we have some things to discuss about the business. Does this evening work for you?”
“Sure,” I said around the lump in my throat. I hung up and swallowed hard, not sure if I was choked up because Tav was leaving or because I was worried about what he planned to do with his share of Graysin Motion. He sounded like he’d made a decision and I wondered what I’d do if he told me he was accepting Solange’s offer. On the whole, I thought I’d be better off with Uncle Nico as a-hopefully-silent partner. Or possibly I’d mistaken my life’s vocation and I should look into flipping burgers for a living; surely it was less frustrating than running a dance studio. But I wasn’t a uniform person-I couldn’t imagine wearing the same thing day in and day out-so that left out fast-food worker, cop, firefighter, and postal employee. Danielle could get me started on the path to career success as a union organizer, I mused. Nope. I wasn’t a beige person, either, so no government jobs or corporate wonk jobs. Let’s face it: I was born to be a dancer.
Buoyed by that realization, I took the stairs two at a time to meet Vitaly for our practice session. The floor refinisher was hard at work coating the ballroom floor with polyurethane when Vitaly arrived and the Russian dancer wrinkled his face into a grimace of disgust.
“Is stinking to highest hell in here,” he said, tossing his dance bag into the corner of the small studio.
“Heaven,” I corrected automatically.
“Nyet. Heaven is not smelling like this. This is hell.”
I had to admit there was something to his logic as I opened all the windows and found a couple of fans.
We danced for almost three hours, with only short breaks for water, snacks, and for me to give directions to the locksmith when he arrived. Handing him a check an hour later and accepting the shiny new keys from him, I felt a load of worry I didn’t even know I’d been carrying drop from my shoulders. I returned to the small studio to finish rehearsing, feeling like a cushion of air between the floor and my feet gave me a new spring. I was able to forget the past few days’ woes and lose myself in the music and the movement, concentrating on the timing of our quickstep locksteps and working on the synchronization of our side-by-side movements. When we segued into the waltz, I envisioned being ethereal, floating, pointing my toes so hard they almost cramped as I raised one leg up and held it high with the strength of my abs while Vitaly pivoted me in a circle. By the time we finished, I felt renewed.
“We will winning at Blackpool,” Vitaly said confidently, bussing my cheek as he left on the locksmith’s heels. “Is certain.”