Ella Barrick - Quickstep to Murder

Tav took it from me. “What is on it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing, what with the fire and the water and all. And it doesn’t have its cap.”

Eagerness lit his eyes. “We can check.” He stood in one fluid motion and moved toward Rafe’s computer.

“Are you sure-?” I didn’t know why I was so hesitant, why I felt like Pandora about to open the fateful box.

“Why not?” He powered up the computer and tapped his fingers impatiently as the machine booted. I moved to peer over his shoulder as he slid the thumb drive into a USB port. He double-clicked on the drive’s icon. I held my breath.

An error message popped up. I let my breath ease out as Tav’s shoulders sagged slightly. He switched the flash drive to another port with the same result. “I guess it is damaged,” he said finally. Pulling the drive out of the port, he pressed it back into my palm, his fingers warm on my skin. I slid the drive into my jeans pocket.

“That’s that, then,” I said, partially relieved that we hadn’t accessed incriminating documents or photos.

“Maybe not,” Tav said thoughtfully. “Congresswoman Indrebo does not know the device is damaged. If you told her you found it…”

“I could-what? Trick her into saying something incriminating? I just can’t see her shooting Rafe. Besides, she was at a fund-raiser that night. Dozens of people saw her, Detective Lissy told me.”

“There is that,” Tav admitted. “All right, then, we will focus on Bazán.”

“We?” Did I look like Emma Peel or that cop Grace Something played by Holly Hunter? My hair hadn’t looked that ratty since I was twelve.

He gave me a serious look. “The police will stop investigating as soon as your Phineas Drake hands over Victoria. They will mark the case ‘closed’ and move on.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” I heard myself say. Now that I wasn’t a suspect…

“You do not mean that,” Tav said, his brows snapping together.

I sighed. “No, I guess I don’t. Sure, let’s go get Bazán. What did you have in mind-rappelling over the embassy walls at midnight, kidnapping him under the noses of the guards, and waterboarding him until he confesses?”

Tav grinned. “You have been watching too many spy movies. I thought we would invite him for a conversation, someplace public, and see what he has to say.”

“He won’t come.”

“He might if he thought you could tell him something about Victoria.”

“Like what? I’m not going to rat her out and tell him she’s working with the DEA.”

“No, but you could tell him about searching Rafael’s cabin, or maybe that she used your credit card in Richmond. What could that hurt?”

I gave it some thought. I didn’t see what it could hurt, but I had no faith that I had thought of all the eventualities. I told Tav that and he laughed. “Sure, you laugh,” I said, “but my dad tried to teach me chess when I was younger and I was always lousy at it… I never thought far enough ahead. ‘If I put my rook here, he’ll move his knight there, and I’ll take his pawn, and he’ll…’ Blecch !” I shuddered at the memory.

“Well, I am pretty sure Bazán is not a chess grand master, so it should go just fine,” Tav said.

I smacked him with a throw pillow.

We agreed Tav would approach Bazán and he left, saying he was close to signing papers on a new import venture. “It might require me to spend more time in Washington,” he said.

He seemed to be watching for my reaction and even though I felt a bubble of anticipation well up, I kept my voice even as I said, “You should hang on to Rafe’s condo, then.”

I met up with Maurice in late afternoon to teach a class in the basement of the Presbyterian church one of his students attended. With tables folded and stacked against the wall, the linoleum-floored space worked well enough and I left at the end of class thinking we might have picked up some new students from the congregation. That was good since my voice mail held several calls from students commiserating about the fire and saying they hadn’t intended to take more classes, anyway. I felt a momentary flutter of panic at the financial abyss gaping in front of Graysin Motion, but pushed it aside. The last message on my voice mail was from Vitaly, saying he would meet me at the studio tomorrow for a practice session. “We are needing many more practicings before Blackpool,” he reminded me. As if I needed reminding.

My phone rang as I deleted Vitaly’s message. “Bazán has agreed to meet,” Tav said. “He is on his way to the consulate in San Francisco and says he will give us ten minutes if we meet him at the airport.”

“Now?” I felt flustered, unprepared.

“Now.”

I arrived at Reagan National Airport twenty minutes later and sprinted up from the Metro to the National Hall, which was crowded with shops, restaurants, and travelers in varying stages of excitement, frustration, and bored resignation. Turning right, I found the bookstore where Tav had said we’d meet Bazán. I spotted Bazán immediately, browsing a rack of nonfiction. A dark-haired young man fidgeted at his side and I pegged him as an assistant of some kind. Tav didn’t seem to be here yet, and I didn’t want to approach Bazán alone. I was about to phone Tav when Bazán looked around and saw me, beckoning me over. He then said something to the aide or flunky and the young man scuttled off as I approached.

Bazán raised the book he’d been examining. “Have you read This Republic of Suffering , Miss Graysin? Or may I call you Stacy?”

“Sure,” I said. “And, no, I haven’t read it. I’m more of a fiction reader.” Truth to tell, I wasn’t much of an anything reader, outside of ballroom dance publications and the occasional fashion mag. A book about suffering didn’t exactly sound like the upbeat and escapist fare I preferred on the rare occasions when I bought a book.

“It’s written by the president of Harvard University,” he said. “It’s about how the unprecedented number of deaths in your Civil War changed the nation. Do you do much thinking about death, Stacy?”

Not until recently. “No.”

His dark eyes studied my face. “You should.”

Why did that sound like a threat? And where the hell was Tav? This meeting was his idea.

“Death comes to us all. And, despite the author’s contention that a massive number of deaths in a short period presents special challenges for a nation, it probably doesn’t matter much to the individual whether he-or she-dies alone and unnoticed by history or as part of a mass die-off that history notes, like the Black Death, the Holocaust, or war.” He slotted the book back onto the shelf.

“Aren’t you going to get that?”

“I’ve read it.” He faced me squarely and I felt like I was confronting a wall or some other immovable object. A boulder, perhaps. A muscle twitched at the corner of his eye, making me wonder if he was nervous or stressed. “Where is my wife?”

Mindful of Tav’s instructions, I said, “I don’t know where she is right now, but she tried to use my credit card at a hotel in Richmond last night. The credit card company called me.”

His brows drew together. “Richmond? What in the world would she be doing in Richmond?”

A Japanese man in a suit jostled me as he reached for the latest Lee Child thriller. I shrugged. “I have no idea,” I said. Not sure how else to keep the conversation going, I added, “I went out to Rafe’s cabin, where Victoria stayed, to see if I could find anything.”

“And?” Anticipation lit his dark eyes.

“Someone had searched the place. Maybe a couple of someones.”

“My men found nothing when they went out there,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “In fact, I can hardly believe Victoria stayed there, if what my men said about the place is true. She’s what you Americans call ‘high maintenance.’ Wooden cabins with no electricity are not her style.”