Quickstep to Murder

“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 light 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.

I was about to shift the photos to check for my letters underneath them, when a soft whoosh came to my ears, followed by a dull clunk. The front door! Someone had opened it. Someone with a key, since I hadn’t heard a battering ram knocking it down. The police! I looked around frantically for someplace to hide. The closet was too obvious and the space under the bed too cramped, as I knew from having to wriggle under there once to retrieve a shoe kicked beneath it in the heat of passion. On instinct, I raced on tiptoe for the bathroom and stepped into the tub, careful not to rattle the shower curtain rings. Someone-a pre-me girlfriend, I suspected, or maybe the condo’s original owners-had decorated Rafe’s bathroom with a heavy fabric shower curtain in taupe and cream stripes complete with swags and tassels. I dropped to my haunches at the far end of the tub, as if that would hide me from anyone who looked in the tub, and tried to still my breathing. My heart thumped against my chest wall and I felt dizzy. Taking in a deep breath, I held it, listening intently.

Nothing. No scrape of shoes against the floor, no click of cabinet doors opening, no conversation. Not the police, then. I didn’t know if that made me more or less nervous. If not the cops, then who? Had Sherry Indrebo changed her mind and decided to retrieve the thumb drive herself? A couple minutes ticked past and still I heard nothing. I found myself leaning forward, trying to get a bead on the intruder. He-or she-was so quiet, I wondered if he suspected I was here. Had he snuck into the bathroom? If I pulled the shower curtain back, would he be there, ready to pounce?

The thought tickled the flesh on my arms and I rubbed them, stopping when the friction made a slight sound. Waiting another ten minutes by my watch, I realized I desperately had to pee. This was getting ridiculous. I hadn’t heard a thing since the door opened and closed. Very cautiously, I straightened and stepped out of the tub, wincing as I brushed the shower curtain, and the metal rings clinked against the rod. I froze, listening again-still nothing. I crept into the bedroom. No one lurked there, ready to jump me. I headed down the hall, moving a bit more freely as I became convinced that whoever had come in had already gone. I ducked into the kitchen, a tiny, galleylike affair with no place for an intruder to hide, unless they were blender-sized and could fit into a cabinet.

Stepping into the living room, I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. No one. Whoever had come in hadn’t needed to search for what they wanted. What had I missed? What was here in plain sight that someone needed? My gaze drifted slowly around the room, lighting on a remote with enough buttons to operate the Enterprise, a camera lens on the wide windowsill-Rafe was an avid photographer and liked photographing birds-a paper bag full of old clothes he might’ve been taking to Goodwill, and the laptop. Could there be something on the laptop that an intruder would want? If so, why not steal the whole computer? I approached it, and stared down at the monitor, which had gone black again. It told me nothing.

I reached toward it, unsure if I wanted to invade Rafe’s privacy by cruising through his e-mail and files, and my hand brushed the mug, jolting drops of old coffee onto my wrist. I jerked back as if it had come alive and licked me. The liquid was still warm. My gaze darted to the entryway. The coat closet door was an inch ajar, not closed as when I’d come in. Understanding crashed down on me like an avalanche, leaving me cold and gasping for a breath. No one had come in while I’d been in the bedroom. Someone had left.