Chapter 8
Tav Acosta was sitting in my office when I returned from Taryn’s house. I stopped on the threshold and stared at him where he sat on the love seat, tapping away on a laptop. “What are you doing here?”
He looked up, an expression of mild surprise on his face. “Waiting for you.” He closed the laptop and rose. “Mr. Goldberg told me I could wait here.”
Music sounded from the ballroom and I heard the faint shufflings that indicated a dance class was taking place. “Oh. Well-”
“Perhaps I could buy you lunch to make up for running out on our breakfast earlier?” he said with a smile.
I suddenly realized I was famished. What with meeting Vitaly, getting hauled off to the police station, and tracking down Taryn, I hadn’t eaten anything today since the yogurt and English muffin I’d had for breakfast. “Lunch would be good,” I said. “Give me just a moment.” I crossed the hall to tell Maurice I’d be out for a while, but that we needed to talk about the Capitol Festival when I got back. He nodded his understanding in time with the music, never taking his eyes off the couples circling the floor. “Absolutely, Anastasia,” he said. “I trust you sorted things out with the police?”
“For the moment,” I said, hoping it was true. Ducking into the powder room, I washed my hands, ran a brush through my hair, and rubbed some sunblock on my arms. Rejoining Tav, I led him down the stairs and east toward the Potomac River. “Have you seen much of this area?” I asked him.
“I have only traveled in the United States a couple of times,” he said. “Most of my business is in South America and Europe, although, as I told Rafael, I am thinking about expanding to the United States. He invited me for a visit, but I was involved in delicate negotiations and couldn’t get away.” Regret sounded in his voice and when I shot a sideways glance at him his face was shuttered.
“So you talked recently?”
He looked down at me assessingly. “Ten days ago. Prior to that we had not spoken in over a year. He called to tell me he was making me the beneficiary in his will and invited me to come to D.C. on vacation.”
“So you knew about the will.” I said it neutrally, but my heartbeat had quickened.
“Yes.” His eyes told me he knew exactly what I was thinking. “But you did not know he had changed it, correct? You were still under the impression you would inherit his share of the business.”
“I didn’t kill Rafe,” I said hotly, responding to the unspoken accusation and causing a suited woman walking a Westie to cross the street abruptly, nearly upending the dog, who was busy marking a tree.
“The police questioned you this morning.”
We had reached the Torpedo Factory by this time, a three-story building that housed artist studios and shops. I pulled the door open without answering his question and cut through the ground level to the back door, which opened onto a plaza fronting the Potomac River. The glare from the sun-silvered water sliced into my vision and I blinked rapidly. The familiar scent of the river, a mix of fresh water, diesel fuel, and warm mud with a whiff of decay, anchored me as my eyes adjusted to the brightness. Tav’s warmth crowded me from behind and I stepped forward, dodging a seagull intent on carrying off a large french fry.
“It is beautiful,” Tav said, quiet appreciation in his voice.
A handful of boats glided past, sails bellied by the wind. Tourists milled about with cameras and melting ice- cream treats, reddened shoulders and noses testifying to a morning spent at Mount Vernon or wandering the streets of Old Town. Two mallards swam near the pier, hoping for handouts. Being near the river always lifted my spirits and I smiled as I headed for a food cart, letting the past days’ sadness and anxiety drop away for a moment. Sandwiches and bottled waters in hand, Tav and I wandered a hundred yards up the river and settled on a river- facing bench to eat.
“Look,” Tav said, crumpling the sandwich wrapping and shoving it into his pocket. “I don’t think you killed Rafe.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said around a mouthful of turkey sandwich. Despite my sarcastic response, I was a teensy bit pleased by his words.
“The police said your gun was the murder weapon, though, so how do you explain that?”
“I don’t. I can’t. Someone stole it.”
“Who knew you had a gun?”
I’d already been thinking about that. “Dozens of people,” I said gloomily.
He looked startled. “Really? How is that?”
“Six or eight weeks ago, at one of our social dances-that’s where we invite students from all the classes, and people from the community, too, to come on a Friday night and dance for fun-one of the women mentioned how unsafe she feels going out at night. She was nervous just walking the two blocks from the parking garage to Graysin Motion. Someone said she should get a gun and carry it in her purse. Rafe went downstairs and got my gun to show her, even demonstrating how easily it would fit in her purse. So,” I said gloomily, “lots of people knew I had a gun.”
“But they wouldn’t know where you kept it,” Tav objected.
I gave him a look. “If you had to search a woman’s place for her gun, where would you look first?”
“Bedside table.”
“Bingo.”
“Point taken.” His brows drew together as he thought. “So if someone went to the trouble of stealing your gun, then Rafael’s death was premeditated, not a crime of passion. Although… something was bothering Rafael.”
“I got that feeling, too,” I said, staring at him. “He didn’t used to worry about money, but recently he was obsessed by it, trying to cut costs at Graysin Motion, trying to talk me into having kids’ hip-hop and tap classes and an annual recital. What did he say when he called you?”
“Nothing specific.”
I eyed him, wondering if he was telling the truth. He had stretched his long legs out and let his head rest against the bench’s back so I couldn’t read his expression in profile. “So he just called up, told you he was making out his will in your favor, and hung up? And you said-what? ‘Have a nice day’?”
“Pretty much,” Tav said, turning his head slightly to face me, a slight smile quirking his lips as he took in my frustration.
“Liar.”
“I am wounded.” He put a hand to his heart, but his expression told me he was only making fun of me. “Actually,” he said as I jumped to my feet with an impatient exclamation, “I tried to get him to talk, but he said he had to go and hung up.”
“And you left it at that.”
“I did.” His expression grew somber, his sensuous lips folded into a thin line. “Now I wish I had pushed him harder, called him back.”
I could understand that. I didn’t feel I knew him well enough to offer any words of comfort or absolution, though, so I stayed silent. After a moment, he rose and said, “We should be getting back. I’ve got a meeting later to prepare for.”
“What do you do?” I asked, stuffing my lunch debris into a trash can. We headed back toward my house and I caught him examining the ornate doorways and cornices and wrought-iron fences on the row houses we passed.
“I’m in the import-export business.”
“Oh.” Part of me had hoped he’d say “I’m an internationally acclaimed ballroom dancer.” I knew that wasn’t even a possibility, though, because if he were that good I’d’ve heard of him.
“Do you dance?” I asked.
He looked down at me, a rueful smile curving his lips. “Not a step. Football is my game-what you call soccer.”
“Oh.”
“I am a huge disappointment to you, right?” He didn’t sound like it bothered him.
“No,” I said. “It’s not that. But if you’re not a dancer, inheriting Rafe’s share of Graysin Motion has got to be more of an inconvenience than anything, doesn’t it?” Which pretty much put him out of the running as the murderer,
