The sight was unexpected and creeped me out. I jerked upright, banging the back of my head against the door frame, conscious of my mother’s admonition to always check the backseat before getting into a parked car. I backed away two steps, rubbing my head. Could there be someone-The ding of the elevator interrupted my thoughts and I turned, expecting to see another couple looking for their car postmovie or postdinner. Instead, a uniformed police officer came toward me, face stiff with suspicion, flashlight describing an arc in front of her.
“I was just about to call you,” I said, intensely relieved.
“Oh, really?” Her tone held polite disbelief and her eyes studied me, lingering on my hands as she said, “We had a report of a suspicious person casing vehicles in this garage.”
I was indignant that the couple with the other Lexus had apparently called the cops on me over a perfectly innocent mistake.
“Is this your car, ma’am?”
“Umm.” I winced inwardly, foreseeing an awkward explanation. I dove in. “Well, not exactly. It’s my ex-fiance’s, my business partner’s. He-”
The flashlight beam raked the broken window. “Mad at him, were you?”
“I didn’t do that! It was like that. He was killed last week and-”
“Step away from the car and keep your hands where I can see them.” At the word “killed” her voice went all stern and coplike and I sighed, raising my hands, palm out, and dangling the Lexus’s remote between a thumb and forefinger. The cop’s hand went to her holster and she spoke softly into the radio affixed near her shoulder, never taking her eyes off me.
I sighed, anticipating a late night. “Do you know Detective Lissy?”
It was indeed a long night. By the time backup cops arrived and someone called Detective Lissy, and I explained how I came to have Rafe’s keys and Lissy called Tav to verify my story, it was after midnight. Lissy, not surprisingly, wanted to know why I was searching Rafe’s car. I’d had plenty of time to realize the question would come up, and I told him Rafe had some files related to studio business and I thought they might be in the car since Tav had looked for them in the condo and not found them. I blinked at him with great innocence when I finished my explanation. Lissy looked like he didn’t believe me-why was I getting that response so much lately?-but said I could go.
I hesitated, then asked if he thought the murderer had broken into the car, searching for something. I didn’t suggest the “something” might be a flash drive.
“The car’s apparently been sitting here since the day Acosta died,” Lissy said. “A target of opportunity for any petty thief. The stereo system’s missing, so this is probably a random break-in, not connected to Acosta’s death. Unless you know otherwise?” The lift of his brows said he’d be happy to take down my confession.
“You might want to give Sherry Indrebo a call about the car,” I said casually, happy to supply him with a course of action that might distract him from poking around in my affairs. “She leased it for Rafe.”
Lissy sucked his lips in and eyed me wearily. “What a good idea,” he said. “I might not have thought of it on my own, what with having only twenty-seven years on the job.”
“Just trying to help,” I muttered as I moved toward the stairs, avoiding the forensics team who were now going over the Lexus with swabs and little vacuums.
“Well, stop it,” Lissy said, getting the last word for the night.
I didn’t spend too much time over the weekend dwelling on the car. Vitaly and I met to practice on both Saturday and Sunday and then spent two hours practicing Monday morning. I began to have a faint hope that we might not utterly disgrace ourselves at the Capitol Festival, which started Friday. The rest of the morning dissolved in back-to-back private sessions with two other students who were competing with me in the pro-am divisions. One was an older gentleman who had no illusions about his ability but loved to dance and had the money to pay for private lessons, coaching, and trips to competitions. The other was a thirty-something Department of Energy employee who danced, I thought privately, to inject some glamour and excitement into his cubicle-bound life. The Capitol Festival was his first competition. He’d either love it, or find the hours of waiting in a chilly ballroom interspersed by ten minutes on the dance floor a grind and give it up. Vitaly observed the sessions and offered some useful comments, managing to critique the other men without offending or embarrassing them. He was going to be an asset, I decided happily, going downstairs at noon to shower and change.
Before hopping into the shower, I made the phone call I’d been putting off: Sherry Indrebo. This time, her aide put me through immediately. “Tell me you found it,” Sherry said, again skipping the small talk. I wondered how much time we could all save on a daily basis if we eliminated the how-are-yous and have-a-nice-days from our conversations.
“It’s not there.”
“What? Of course it’s there,” she said impatiently. “You didn’t look hard enough.”
“We searched the place from top to bottom.”
“
“Rafe’s half brother. He helped me look.”
“You told someone else?” Anger and disbelief jangled her voice. “What kind of moron are you?”
The kind that didn’t appreciate being called a moron. “The police probably have it,” I said with some satisfaction. “They took his laptop, too.”
“I guess I’m going to have to handle this myself.” She banged the phone down. I debated calling her back to tell her Tav was staying in Rafe’s condo, but decided against it. It might do her good to come face-to-face with a man wielding a knife.
As I finished dressing, the doorbell rang and I jumped. The police again? Fighting off the cowardly urge to pretend I wasn’t there, I walked to the door. The fuzzed outline of a man showed through the wavy glass insets beside the door. I opened it a cautious half inch to find Leon Hall on the stoop. His thick brown hair was mussed and anger or anxiety contorted his face. Before I could guess his intention, he stiff-armed the door and it bounced back, hitting the side of my face, my chest, and my knee. With an exclamation of pain, I stumbled back and he pushed into the hallway.
“Where is she?” He looked around. “She wasn’t upstairs.”
Hall’s habit of charging in to look for people was getting wearisome. Did my place look like the local outlet of Hiding Places ‘R’ Us? My brow and knee hurt where the door had conked them and it made me cranky. “Get. Out. I’m calling the police.” I marched toward the phone in the kitchen. A choking sound halted me and I turned to see Hall standing where I’d left him, hands at his sides, blinking rapidly. Holding back tears? I hesitated.
“Are you looking for Taryn?” I finally asked, compassion getting the upper hand over good judgment.
His jaw worked. “She didn’t come home last night.” I bit my lower lip. Not good. “What makes you think she’s here?”
“She said.”
“What?”
“She called at dinnertime last night and told me she was rehearsing here, getting ready for that competition, and not to expect her until late. She never came home at all. When I went to wake her this morning, her bed hadn’t been slept in.”
His eyes shifted from side to side and I could tell he still thought Taryn might be here. Maybe he didn’t so much
“But she might have been?” He was reaching for straws, his bloodshot eyes searching mine. “With another instructor maybe?”
I had to shake my head. “Have you tried her cell phone?”
“You think I’m stupid? It goes straight to voice mail.”
