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.
“
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.”
I returned his toothy smile, feeling confident myself. “We make a good pair,” I said.
I hadn’t thought about that. Had Rafe’s and my relationship detracted from our dancing? I always thought that it gave us a bit of extra zing, especially in the smoldering Latin dances, but maybe we’d been a bit too careful of each other’s feeling in practice, not insisting on perfection, not being ruthless enough in our critiques of each other’s performance.
“You should being gay,” Vitaly said, grinning widely and throwing back his head to laugh like a donkey braying.
“I’ll consider it,” I said, closing the door behind him.
In my office, I wrestled with entry forms and fees for the next dance competition we’d be taking students to, until the logistics of it all drove me batty. I was almost willing to accept even Solange as a partner if she’d be in charge of the business end and let me focus on the dancing and teaching. I e-mailed all the students to let them know classes would resume as normal next week and to offer a “fire sale” discount of ten percent off for the month to coax back some of the wiffle-wafflers. I couldn’t afford to do it, but I also couldn’t afford to lose any more students. I resigned myself to subsisting on homemade bean and cheese tortillas, canned tuna, and carrots for the next month. An incoming e-mail from Sherry Indrebo said “THANKS!” for finding her flash drive and let me know she’d be by later today to pick it up. Swell.
When a knock sounded on the outer door shortly after six o’clock, it was neither Tav nor Sherry Indrebo, as I expected. Instead, a man with battleship-gray hair, wearing a belted navy raincoat, stood with his back to the door, looking out across the neighborhood. At the rasp of the dead bolt, he turned and I recognized Sherry’s husband, Ruben Indrebo. The light rain misted his glasses and blurred his slight smile.
I pulled the door open. “Come in,” I said. “I hadn’t realized it was raining.”
“Just a sprinkle,” he said, stepping in and running his left hand over his damp hair. His right hand held a cane and he leaned on it slightly.
“I guess you’re here for the flash drive,” I said, leading the way to the office. “I know Sherry’s anxious to get it back.”
“Indeed.” Instead of following me into the office, Indrebo continued to the junction with the hall and looked around. “A beautiful old home. It seems quiet,” he observed.
“We’re not back to our full schedule until next week,” I said, explaining about the floor. Since he seemed interested in a tour, I stepped across the hall and opened the door to the empty ballroom. Newly applied polyurethane shone slickly and the sharp odor rose in almost visible waves. I coughed.
“I heard about the fire,” Indrebo said in his mild voice. “What a shame. Do they have any idea how it started?”
“Arson. The police arrested a guy.” I didn’t feel like going into the details; it made me uncomfortable to admit that a student I’d known well had done such a thing. Let the Indrebos read about it in the paper when Mark Downey came to trial.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Indrebo asked, surprising me with a focused stare. His eyes hovered between blue and slate and I felt some of the force I was sure had propelled him to business success.
“No, not really.”
“I’d think you’d be nervous to dance in here, what with your partner being murdered here.” He pointed with his cane to a spot eerily close to where Rafe had lain.
“I guess I’m not the nervous type,” I said lightly, closing the door. “Look, I don’t mean to seem rude, but I’ve
