Quickstep to Murder (5 page)

I was trying to decide whether to call Uncle Nico now, so I could have a solid offer for Rafe, or wait until after I’d heard what Rafe had to say, when a thump overhead brought my gaze to the ceiling. Someone was in the studio. My watch read 8:45. The last class had let out at eight—Maurice taught it—and those students were long gone. A car backfired out front and then another noise, like something heavy landing on the floor, thudded through the centuries-old boards. What the—?

I ran to the stairs and pounded up them in my bare feet, impulse taking over once again. Pushing open the door that led into the upstairs hall, I expected lights, but it was almost totally dark. Slivers of moonlight, stippled by passing clouds, provided faint illumination. The studio that was like an extension of my home, a cocoon that gave me comfort, suddenly seemed eerie and alien. I hesitated before stepping into the hall. I held my breath and listened. Nothing. I took a deep breath. This was silly. I didn’t need to slink around my own studio. I slid my hand along the wall to the light switch and flicked it. The sconces in the hall lit up, casting a warm glow on the wooden floors. The hall was empty.

“Hello?” I called. “Anybody here?” I was pleased my voice didn’t tremble. “Hello?” I said again, louder. Nothing.

The rooms opening off the hall still lay in semidarkness, with the small studio, the powder room, and my office to my left and the ballroom running the length of the house on my right. Standing in the hall, I reached my right hand around the jamb of the small studio door and felt for the light switch. The overhead fixture sprang to life, illuminating the emptiness of the wood-floored room with its windows that looked on to my courtyard. Gaining confidence, I marched down the hall to the powder room and turned on the light. Small mosaic tiles in white and blue, white ceramic sink and toilet—that needed cleaning, I noted—framed dancing prints on the wall, humming fridge. Nothing out of place.

As I approached my office, a thin whistling raised gooseflesh on my arms. I slowed my pace and peered around the corner of the short hall that led to the stairs. The door to the outside stairs gapped slightly and a breath of wind soughed through. With shaking hands, I pushed it closed and turned the dead bolt. Could Maurice have forgotten to lock up? I leaned back against the door for a moment, then pushed away to continue my search. I was confident by now that there was no one here . . . no intruder waiting to jump out at me. It just didn’t
feel
like there was anyone here.

I scanned the office: desks, chairs, computers, Oriental rug I’d bought in Turkey—all untouched. The brightness of the lights I’d left on as I progressed toward the front of the house infused me with courage and I entered the ballroom without a qualm. What is it in our DNA that seeks light, feels safer in the glare of sunlight than hidden in dark crannies? Maybe because we relied on our vision and had lost our senses of smell and hearing, relatively speaking. Our ancestors could see the saber-toothed cat stalking them but couldn’t smell or hear it. Although if the tiger house at the National Zoo was anything to go by, any Neanderthal downwind should have smelled the big kitty coming. I shook my head at the goofy direction in which my thoughts had drifted.

The glow from headlights and streetlights out front illuminated the northern end of the room and a trickle of moonlight from the back windows cast shadows along the south side. A broad stripe of light fell into the room from the hall. My eyes went to the stereo system; if someone were going to rob Graysin Motion, it was about the only thing worth stealing. Present and accounted for. About to return to my office to wait for Rafe, I sniffed. Something didn’t smell right. I gazed around the room more deliberately, scanning each section in turn.

Nothing by the front windows. The curtains were too sheer for anyone to hide behind. Nothing in the center of the floor. The odor grew stronger as I stood there and my legs started to tremble. Beneath the southern windows, one of the shadows was strangely static, not shifting as clouds and tree limbs skipped through the moonlight. I groped for the switch on the wall, my eyes never leaving the immobile shadow.

Light drenched the room and I slid down the wall until I squatted on my haunches, unable to approach Rafe where he lay under the window. I felt like I’d just plummeted into a death drop, but Rafe was not there to catch me. The beach ball–sized pool of blood congealing like a macabre halo around his shattered head told me it was too late for bandages or CPR. Too late for kissing and making up. Too late for . . . Forcing myself to move, I crabbed sideways on my hands and feet until I reached the door. Pulling myself up by the doorknob, I staggered into the bathroom and threw up.

The police arrived within minutes of my 911 call, in a swirl of strobing lights, staticky radio transmissions, and general confusion. A quick inspection of Rafe’s body and the first two officers on the scene called for detectives and crime scene investigators. One of the patrol officers escorted me downstairs and waited with me in my living room while the other looped yellow crime scene tape around the house and kept gawkers away. I watched the goings-on from the front window, my hands laced around a mug of hot tea liberally dosed with honey and a shot of bourbon from a bottle Rafe had left behind. An unmarked car parked illegally out front, and two men I assumed were the detectives strode toward the stairs. My ears tracked their progress as they clomped up the stairs and walked heavily into the studio where Rafe’s body lay, just above my head. When I realized the cop—Officer Suarez, I read from his name tag—and I were staring at the ceiling, I wrenched my gaze away.

At least an hour passed before the thumpings and noises overhead slowed. I’d drunk two more mugs of tea, skipping the bourbon but going heavy on the honey.

I’d read somewhere that sugar was good for shock. Officer Suarez resisted my attempts at conversation and I moved from feeling sick and shaky to feeling sad and worried. Sad about Rafe’s fate, worried about my own. It hadn’t taken much thought to realize I would be suspect numero uno. Maybe numero only. I might not have any legal training, but I’d watched enough
Law & Order
episodes to know the spouse or significant other was always a suspect. Especially if he or she had recently caught the deceased cheating, had broken their engagement, and had fought—sometimes loudly—about business disagreements. Double especially if he or she had something to gain from the death: Unless Rafe had changed his will after we broke up (I hadn’t yet changed mine), I’d inherit his share of Graysin Motion.

A knock on the door broke into my thoughts. Officer Suarez answered it and returned a second later to usher in two men before rejoining his partner outside. The one in the lead looked like a fifty-year-old geek with an attitude. His head seemed too heavy for his scrawny neck and was capped by thinning, dishwater-colored hair. He had stretchy, too-red lips and gray eyes behind blackrimmed glasses Clark Kent might have worn in the 1950s. An incongruous cluster of freckles spattered the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, and even his earlobes. He wore a navy suit with a spotless white shirt and precisely knotted navy-and-green-striped tie.

“I’m Detective Lissy,” he said, shaking my hand briefly. “This is Detective Troy.” He nodded at the other man, a stocky bodybuilder type in his midthirties.

Detective Troy also shook my hand, his palm callused, his brown eyes taking in the details of my appearance. I didn’t want to think what I looked like, clad in a vomitflecked blue T-shirt and stretchy exercise pants—Officer Suarez had refused to let me change—with my hair straggling out of its ponytail and my feet bare. I gestured for them to be seated on the lavender velvet-covered settee my great-aunt Laurinda had placed by the marble fireplace. When she’d left me the house and its contents in her will three years ago, I’d planned to replace most of the fusty furniture, but I hadn’t had the time or money to do it yet, so sitting in the living room felt like emigrating to the 1930s. I returned to the wing chair by the window and sat, curling my feet up under me. Cold, I rubbed my hands together, but then thought it might make me look nervous and forced them to be still in my lap.

Detective Troy plopped onto the settee, releasing a puff of dust from the fabric, and pulled out a notebook. Detective Lissy remained standing, his back to the fireplace.

“Tell us about your relationship with Mr. Acosta,” he said, his voice neutral, his gaze roaming the room, lingering on the faded drapes, the tarnished silver-plated bowl on the end table, the portrait of Great-aunt Laurinda done when she was a seventeen-year-old debutante in 1923. He crossed to the painting and tapped it with his forefinger to straighten it.

When he returned to his post by the fireplace, I said, “We were partners.”

“In the business sense or the romantic sense?”

“Business,” I said firmly. Maybe too firmly.

The line between his brows deepened slightly.

“We used to be engaged,” I admitted in reluctant response to that semifrown, “but we broke it off a while ago.”

“When?” he asked, his gaze returning to the tarnished bowl.

I half expected him to whip out some silver polish and have a go at it. “Four months ago.” My eyes slid to Detective Troy, but he didn’t look up from his note-taking.

“Tell us what happened tonight,” Lissy said. His gaze fixed with unnerving intensity on my face and I realized his eyes weren’t gray as I’d originally thought, but the palest blue.

I told him about Rafe and me planning to meet, about hearing the noises upstairs, about running up to investigate.

“You thought there was an intruder upstairs and you went up on your own?” No skepticism sounded in his voice, but those speaking brows rose a fraction.

“I wasn’t sure it was an intruder—I thought it might be Maurice”—I explained who Maurice was—“or Rafe showing up without calling.” Really, I didn’t think about it. As usual. I just charged up the stairs.

Lissy pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and swiped it across the face of the clock ticking behind him on the mantel. “Go on.”

I teared up when I came to the part about finding Rafe’s body and didn’t mention throwing up.

“Did you touch the body?” Lissy asked, apparently unmoved by my emotion.

“No.” I sniffed and groped for a tissue.

“Do you own a gun?” Lissy asked.

I stopped, tissue halfway to my nose. He didn’t seem to be watching me; he was staring into the fireplace as if wishing he had a dustpan and broom to sweep up ash traces. His question posed a problem. I owned a gun—a graduation gift from Uncle Nico—but it wasn’t registered. Uncle Nico had advised against it, warning that when the Democrats came to power, which he predicted they would, they’d confiscate registered guns. “You don’t want the crooks to be the only ones with firepower, Stasia,” he’d said. “Keep this loaded and keep it where you can get to it. If you ever need to use it, you call me afterward and I’ll help with the cleanup.”

I’d consciously avoided thinking about what the cleanup might entail, reluctantly accepted the gun, shot it at a range a couple of times under Uncle Nico’s supervision, and tucked it into the bottom drawer of my bedside table. What were the penalties for having an unregistered gun? Did Virginia law require registration? I didn’t know, but I bet that getting caught lying to the police had worse consequences.

“Yes, I own a gun.” I knew I’d taken too long to answer by the way both detectives stared at me. I bit my lower lip. “It’s just a little one. A .22. My uncle gave it to me. Years ago. For self-protection. He thought the Democrats—” Shut up, I told myself as the line between Lissy’s brows deepened again.

“When did you last fire it?” Detective Troy asked.

“I don’t know . . . Seven, eight years ago?”

“You wouldn’t mind letting us have a look at it?” Lissy said in a tone that said it didn’t matter if I minded or not.

“Sure.” I unfolded my legs and pushed out of the wing chair, relieved to be able to move, to escape the room and the inscrutable detectives. The rug felt good under my bare feet. “It’ll just take a—”

“We’ll come with you.” Lissy gestured me toward the door as Troy rose to his feet.

“It’s in my bedroom.” I hadn’t made my bed this morning and I was pretty sure yesterday’s clothes, including bra and panties, were still in a heap on the floor. How come Mother never told me to keep the house spotless in case homicide detectives might go prowling through it one day?

“Best place for it,” Detective Troy agreed, either not getting the hint that I didn’t want strange men in my bedroom or deliberately ignoring my embarrassment. “That’s where my sister keeps hers.”

I padded down the hall to my room, both detectives trailing behind. Troy whispered something to Lissy, but I didn’t catch it. Pushing the door wide, I marched straight to my bedside table, a three-foot-high walnut chest of drawers that used to hold Great-aunt Laurinda’s embroidered hankies and purses carefully wrapped in tissue paper. My knees sank into the carpet’s deep pile as I knelt and yanked open the bottom drawer. I used it for the lingerie items I needed once in a blue moon: the slip that went with a skirt I wore only to funerals, the cami I used under a blouse that never made it back from the cleaners after the last time I wore it, the mint-green hose I’d had to wear as a bridesmaid once. I patted the slippery fabrics, feeling for the hard, alien shape of the gun. When I didn’t feel it, I started tossing the filmy underthings onto the floor, uncaring now about the detectives’ scrutiny. Without looking, I could sense them standing just inside the door, watching, breathing.

My hand panned fruitlessly against the wooden bottom of the drawer. I flushed with heat; then the blood receded and I shivered. Reaching for my slippers beside the bed, I drew them on. Maybe I’d put the gun in the other drawer. I knew I hadn’t. But I opened it, digging through notebooks, condom packets—probably expired—hand lotions, a sewing kit, and other miscellany. No gun. I tried to remember when I’d last seen it, but couldn’t. I rocked back on my heels and looked over my shoulder. Was it my imagination, or had the detectives inched farther into the room? Their faces were impassive as they stared at me in my nest of lingerie.