Ella Barrick - Quickstep to Murder

He lounged on the love seat, sipping bottled grapefruit juice. “For the regularities,” he said, noting my glance at the bottle. “Is this Sherry dancing better than that one?” He nodded his head toward the small studio and, presumably, the partner he’d just been practicing with.

I nodded reluctantly. “Sherry’s pretty good,” I said. “You can see she’s competing in the gold divisions.”

“ Da . Good. She is having money?” He looked up from under the blond hair flopping across his brow.

“Lots,” I assured him.

“Good,” he said again. “Vitaly is liking this studio with the many rich womens. Perhaps Vitaly is buying.” He beamed at me.

“What?”

“Rafe is no longer. Pfft .” He flicked the fingers of both hands open like little starbursts. “Vitaly is hearing that Rafe’s share is for selling.”

“Where did you hear that?” I stalled, not sure how I felt about the possibility of Vitaly buying Rafe’s half of the studio. I couldn’t do much better for a dance partner, but I didn’t know a thing about him as a businessman.

Vitaly shrugged and rose. Vowing once again to talk to Tav today about his plans for the business, I wrote his name and number on a purple sticky and passed it to Vitaly. “That’s Rafe’s half brother,” I said. “He’s the one you need to talk to.”

Vitaly left with a flash of his new teeth and I ran downstairs to get ready for my early-afternoon workout with Danielle. We tried to meet twice a week at the health club on King Street, about half a mile from here. Nondancers don’t realize how demanding a sport ballroom dancing is; I trained as many hours as a Redskins lineman did, I’d bet. In addition to the time I spent teaching or practicing, I took a weekly ballet class and a biweekly jazz class, weight-trained at least four times a week to give my arms and legs some definition, and did Pilates for my core, which was critical for balance and posture.

Jogging to the gym because it was quicker than finding a parking space, I pushed through the glass doors just as Danielle emerged from the locker room. “Back and chest today,” she announced. We went into the weight room, a huge space crammed with Nautilus and Cybex machines, weight benches, racks of dumbbells, stacks of mats, and exercise balls. Mirrors lined two walls and windows looked out to the parking lot from the wall opposite the door where we stood. Early-afternoon exercisers crowded the room and the sounds of conversation and groans of straining weight lifters drowned out the TVs.

While we bench-pressed, Danielle told me her boss’s wife had been in the office that day and she had hopes that they were getting back together. “She keeps him in line,” Danielle said.

“You still need to talk to him and let him know that hounding you for a date is way out of line.” I racked the bar.

“I hate those kinds of confrontations,” Danielle confessed, taking my place on the bench. “It’s much easier to tangle with an out-of-line boss on someone else’s behalf.”

“Man up, sister-mine,” I said.

“Hmph.” She cut off any more elder-sister advice I might have been planning to offer by asking if Phineas Drake and Uncle Nico had framed anyone yet. I’d called her when I’d gotten home from the police station and she’d been fascinated to hear about Phineas Drake swooping in to liberate me.

“Not as far as I know,” I said, using ten-pound weights to do biceps curls. My goal was lean and defined, so I used light weights and did lots of reps. “But Taryn Hall is missing.”

“You don’t think maybe she’s gone off for an abortion or something, do you?” Danielle suggested when I told her about my meeting with the girl and Leon Hall’s invasion earlier this afternoon.

I hadn’t thought of that. “I hope not,” I said. I had no idea where one would even go to get an abortion. But I suspected a resourceful-and desperate-woman could find out easily enough. “I’m sure the police will take action if she hasn’t shown up by tonight.”

“Hey,” Danielle said, glancing up at the TV mounted over the water fountain. “Isn’t that your congresswoman?”

“My congresswoman?” I followed her gaze to see Sherry Indrebo being interviewed on the Capitol steps. Wearing a charcoal-gray suit with a maroon blouse and a serious expression, she faced a wall of microphones and reporters. Still clutching my dumbbells, I moved closer so I could read the closed captioning.

“Allegations of fund-raising improprieties and of inserting an undercover spy into her opponent’s staff have surfaced in regard to Congresswoman Sherry Indrebo’s reelection campaign.”

“I guess the thumb drive turned up,” Danielle observed, reading the text alongside me.

“The congresswoman denies any wrongdoing and says she has no intention of resigning. She says she will continue to serve her constituents and is staying focused on the upcoming vote in the House Armed Services Committee, which could decide the army’s helicopter acquisition strategy for years to-” A commercial broke in before the scrolling type could catch up with what had happened in the interview, replacing Sherry with a mother applying a stain treatment to grass-stained jeans. I didn’t figure any product made would get the stain out of Sherry’s reputation if the allegations proved true.

A livid Sherry Indrebo burst into the ballroom at six o’clock, vibrating with anger in stretchy pants and a workout top showing sinewy arms and prominent collarbones.

“I will ruin you, Stacy Graysin,” she said between gritted teeth, stalking toward me like a barn cat focused on a mouse. Her face was gaunt, her lips drawn into a thin line. She didn’t give Vitaly, standing behind me by the stereo, a glance. “You found my flash drive and sold it to the Washington Post . I hope they paid you a lot because-”

“Hey! I had nothing to do with it,” I said. “I didn’t find it.” I tightened my grip on the CD cases I held, ready to fling them at her if she pounced. “And if I had, I’d have given it to you.” Probably after I checked it for anything incriminating about Rafe bribing judges. At any rate, I wouldn’t have sold it to a reporter. I didn’t even know any reporters.

She bit out a laugh. “Ha! Then how did the Post come up with the documents that were on that drive?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t me.”

“Politicians is having many enemies,” Vitaly put in, moving forward. “In Russia, peoples is shooting politicians.” Reaching for Sherry’s hand, he lifted it to his lips. “But our politicians is not so beautiful as American politicians.”

I stared at him in astonishment as his lips brushed the back of Sherry’s hand. I thought I caught the barest hint of a wink as he released her hand. “I am Vitaly Voloshin,” he proclaimed, “and we must practicing so we are winning the competition this weekend, yes?”

“Yes,” Sherry said, anger melting from her in the face of Vitaly’s charm and flattery. She stood straighter and cast me a sidelong look. “Don’t think this is over, because it’s not,” she said, moving toward the middle of the floor with Vitaly.

Under the pretense of putting a CD into the stereo, he glided back to me and whispered, “You are not leaving Vitaly alone with this-” He used a Russian word that I didn’t attempt to translate. The way he snapped his white teeth together made it clear what he thought of her.

By the time the session ended, with Vitaly announcing loftily, “You are not totally disgracing Vitaly this weekend,” we were all drained. I escaped into my office as Sherry, lacquered hair drooping, trudged to the door. I had to be grateful to Vitaly for exhausting her to the point where she couldn’t harangue me anymore. As soon as she had gone and I had turned off all the lights and locked up, I nipped downstairs to the convenience store on the corner, paid for a Washington Post , and brought it back to the house with me. The story about Sherry Indrebo was on the second page and I zeroed in on the name of the reporter: Kevin McDill. It had occurred to me that perhaps McDill had gotten the flash drive not from someone who found it after Rafe died, but from Rafe himself. I wanted to talk to the man and find out. If he’d met with Rafe, maybe he could tell me something that might point to why Rafe was murdered.