Chapter 10
Music poured out of the small studio and I peeked in to see Vitaly rehearsing with one of the competitive students. I gave him a thumbs-up, which he returned behind his partner’s back, along with a slight grimace I took to be a comment on her waltzing. Maurice was instructing his senior group in the ballroom and I smiled to see two new elderly gentlemen circling the floor with Mildred and Edwina. Hoover, watching from his spot under the window, scratched an ear vigorously with his hind paw. It felt almost normal today, the most normal it had felt since Rafe’s death. I hummed a snatch of tango music and walked into my office to see Solange rifling my drawers.
I stared at her a moment, anger building, before she noticed me. “Can I help you find something?” I asked icily.
She started and looked up, eyes widening. In a split second, though, she had recovered. “Oh, there you are!” She said it as if she’d been looking for me for hours.
Like she expected to find me in my desk drawer?
She came around the desk toward me, moving fluidly in blue leggings, a matching workout bra that bared her tight midriff, and a whiff of sheer skirt. Her hair was caught up in a casual knot and skewered with a couple of combs. “I was just… There was a man here looking for his daughter. I was going to write you a note about him. It’s the scariest thing,” she added, scanning my face to see how I was reacting.
“Getting caught searching someone’s desk?”
Annoyance flashed across her face and her voice was indignant as she said, “No! Having your sixteen-year-old daughter go missing. It’s got to be every parent’s nightmare.”
I had to agree with her on that.
“I mean, think of all the dreadful things that could happen. Abduction, rape, murder, sold into white slavery…” She shuddered.
I couldn’t tell if she was acting or genuinely worried about Taryn. “Well, I saw her go off with her dance partner Friday noonish, so I don’t think she’s in that kind of trouble.” She might well be in more trouble when her father caught up with her.
“Really? Thank goodness for that.” Solange edged toward the door. “Well, I guess I don’t need to worry about that note anymore. Gotta get into the ballroom-Maurice asked me to help with his class.”
“Solange.”
Stopping on the threshold, she looked a question at me. Something like defiance or malice lurked in her eyes.
“Where were you Monday night?”
Her expression soured. “I’ve already gone over that with the police and I don’t see that it’s any of your business, Stacy.”
“Maybe not. But I don’t know why you’re ashamed to tell me.”
“I’m not ashamed! If you must know, I was at a friend’s birthday party. At Technophile. Dozens of people saw me. I didn’t get home until after two.” She whisked out the door before I could question her further.
I drifted over to my desk and sat, thinking. Technophile was only three blocks from here. It was the current “hot” place in Alexandria, packed to the rafters every night of the week, including Sunday. I was pretty sure Solange could have slipped out at some point, walked to the studio, shot Rafe, and made it back to the party without being missed. Just because she could have, though, didn’t mean she had. And what had she been looking for in my desk? Opening the drawer she’d been poking through, I stared into it, using my index finger to move aside some pencils, sticky note pads, a pair of scissors, and a couple of unlabeled CDs that were probably backup files. Nothing exciting.
A thought crossed my mind: Could Sherry Indrebo have hired or coerced Solange into searching the office to find her missing thumb drive? Maybe she suspected I’d found it and was keeping it for my own purposes. If that were so, why was Solange rifling through my desk and not Rafe’s? I stared at his desk. Maybe she’d looked in Rafe’s first. I shut my drawer more forcefully than necessary and the photo of me and my first ballroom partner hoisting a trophy slapped face downward. I righted it, taking a moment to smile at my gap-toothed grin and the self-conscious expression on Bobby’s tenyear-old face. Last I heard, he sold hot tubs outside Newport News.
Opening the folder with all the paperwork related to this weekend’s competition, I went over everything from the hotel and meal arrangements to the heat times, sending my clients reminder e-mail about what to bring and what time their events took place. I was convinced scheduling and logistics at a ballroom dance competition made D-Day planning look like a walk in the park. Vitaly came in after half an hour and I went over it all with him, too. “You’ll meet Sherry this evening,” I told him, sliding him a page with Sherry’s heats highlighted.
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.