Ella Barrick - Quickstep to Murder

“You’ll let me know if you find anything?”

“I’m sure Drake will be in touch.”

Huh . I wondered if they taught that kind of hedging in PI school, along with how to pry info out of reluctant witnesses and padding expense accounts.

“Nice meeting you,” Danielle said as we got in the car and started off. Rather than make an eight-point turn in the small clearing, I drove around the cabin and headed back down the one-lane road. Mary Pearce stood in one spot and watched us, not moving until after we were out of sight.

“Do you think she was on the up-and-up?” Danielle asked.

“She must be. How else would she know my name and Victoria’s, not to mention Phineas Drake’s?”

“I guess you’re right.” Danielle settled back into her seat and occupied herself trying to pick up a radio station. “There was just something about her.”

“She was tough.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it was the gun.”

“Maybe it was her pointing it at us.”

We drove most of the rest of the way home in reflective silence. As we approached the outskirts of Alexandria, Danielle said, “I talked to Jonah.”

My gaze flitted from the road to my sister’s profile. It didn’t reveal anything. “Good for you. And…?”

“And he actually apologized.”

“Probably scared you were going to report him for sexual harassment.”

“No, he was really sorry. He said he kind of lost it when his wife left him and that he didn’t have a good excuse. He said it would never happen again.”

I wasn’t necessarily buying Jonah’s “I see the error of my ways” routine, but I only said, “As long as you feel comfortable at the office again.”

“I do,” Danielle said, fiddling with the radio tuner. Country music blared out.

“It probably wouldn’t hurt to have Coop pick you up from work one of these evenings and stage a makeout session on your desk or something.”

“Sta-ceee!” She thwapped me and I grinned.

After dropping Danielle at home in the early afternoon so she could change and go into work, having made a miraculous recovery, I sat at a stoplight and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. I should go home and see what progress the floor refinisher and the cleaners were making, but the idea had little appeal. I decided now was as good a time as any to have a heart-to-heart with Solange about her interest in the studio. Accordingly, I flipped a U-ey at the light, to the accompaniment of honking horns, and headed to Pentagon City, the upscale mall just up Route 1 from Old Town, where Solange worked part-time at a department store makeup counter. I hoped she wouldn’t be too busy to talk on a Tuesday afternoon.

I was in luck. When I got to the counter, Solange, wearing a pale pink smock and looking as disgustingly gorgeous as ever, was organizing makeup boxes in a bored way. She started when she saw me, then plastered a smile to her face. “Stacy! What are you doing here? Don’t you need to be scrubbing smoke stains off the studio’s walls or something? Such a shame!” Her sympathy was as fake as her smile.

“Cleaning service,” I said briefly. “We’ll be back in business late next week. And speaking of the business, where the hell do you get off trying to buy Rafe’s half of it from Tav?”

Solange leaned forward and indicated an older woman at a nearby cosmetics counter. “That’s my boss. I really can’t stand here and chitchat. If you want to have a conversation, it has to look like I’m selling you something. I could give you a makeover. Heaven knows you could use one. You look like you’ve been digging ditches.” She wrinkled her nose at my makeup-free face, tousled ponytail, and rumpled skirt.

“Oh, all right,” I said, hitching myself up onto the black and chrome stool she indicated.

“We’ll start with a cleansing routine,” she said a bit louder, for the benefit of her boss, I assumed. Nudging a countertop mirror out of the way with her elbow, she set out a variety of bottles, pots, compacts, and pencils.

“Let’s start with why you want to buy into the studio,” I said from the corner of my mouth as she swabbed my skin with a soaked cotton ball. The chill was refreshing.

“Since I’ve been out of action with my ankle, I need a built-in client base to get me back on track,” she said. “Graysin Motion’s got it. And it’s time I got my own place instead of playing second fiddle at someone else’s studio. This way, I feel like I’m carrying on Rafe’s legacy.”

Gag me.

“Look up.” After smoothing foundation over my face, she dotted concealer under my eyes and blended with a wedge-shaped sponge. “Quite the under-eye circles,” she commented.

“It’s been a rough week. You know Graysin Motion-”

“We’d have to change the name, of course.”

Fury shimmered through me. She must have felt it, because she took a quick half step back. “But not right away. There is some name recognition for the studio in the ballroom dance world.”

“You know Graysin Motion needs a male pro. Two women could never make a go of it.”

“I’ve never had trouble attracting men,” Solange said with a smirk, “and that includes male students.”

“You know women make up at least three-quarters of a studio’s client base and income,” I insisted.

“So we’ll hire a couple of male pros. I’ve got someone in mind.”

“Graysin Motion barely supports the current staff. We can’t both take enough salary to live off of and also pay for another male instructor on top of Maurice. My arrangement with Vitaly is stretching the studio’s finances to the limit.”

“Maybe you should get a part-time job,” Solange said, gesturing with an eye shadow brush to the expanse of cosmetics counters with a shoe display peeking up behind the Chanel counter and lingerie visible just past Lancôme’s GIFT WITH PURCHASE poster. “It’s not the end of the world.”

The idea caught me like a fist in the stomach. “I’m a ballroom dancer, not a store clerk,” I blurted.

Solange’s lips thinned and I thought hurt flickered in her eyes before she turned away to select a mascara wand.

“I’m sorry, Solange; I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that I’ve worked too hard at making a go of Graysin Motion to go back to waiting tables”-been there, done that-“or walking dogs.” Ditto.

“Close your eyes.” She slicked liquid liner at the base of my lashes and swept shadow across my lid. “I’m sorry you’re so negative about the idea of being partners. That’s going to make things much more awkward.”

I snapped my eyes open. “Awkward? How can you expect it to be anything but awkward, under the circumstances?”

“You mean me and Rafe?”

I nodded. “Are you going to use that?” The blush in her hand was a virulent shade of fuchsia.

“It goes on sheer. Trust me.” She swirled the fat brush in the compact and leaned in to dust it across my cheeks. “Don’t you think it’s time for you to get past it, Stacy? I mean, it’s the oldest story in the book: Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy moves on when girl doesn’t meet his needs. In this day and age, with people living into their eighties, for God’s sake, the whole concept of monogamy is slightly ridiculous, don’t you think?”

“No.”

She heaved a put-upon sigh. “That’s the kind of attitude that’s going to make it tough for us to run the studio together.”

“We’re not going to be running the studio together,” I said, sliding off the stool. I didn’t care if she was done with the “makeover” or not. “It’s my studio. Where are you going to get the money to buy Tav out, anyway? Didn’t you say you were broke, that you loaned your last couple thousand to Rafe?”