Danielle’s blue eyes opened wide. “You think he meant your gun?”
I nodded. “Yup. I think Rafe took my gun, planning to give it to Danielle. The jerk. I’d have loaned it to him, if he’d asked. Anyway, I think it’s possible that he had it with him the night he was killed.”
“So the murderer got the gun away from Rafe and used it on him? Cold.”
“Uh-huh. But the important thing is that it means whoever killed him didn’t have to know I had a gun, and didn’t have to sneak into my place to steal it.”
“That must make you feel better,” Danielle said.
“Marginally. But it also means that anyone could’ve killed Rafe, even people I assumed couldn’t have because they wouldn’t have known about the gun. Like Leon Hall.”
“So the killer really could have been a thief that Rafe walked in on,” Danielle said, “and not someone he knew at all.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” I said slowly. She’d hit on the one possibility I hadn’t thought of last night. “But it doesn’t seem likely. What thief would want to rob a dance studio? There’s nothing worth stealing. He’d be better off knocking over a convenience store or even a fast-food joint. No, I still think it was someone Rafe knew, someone he planned to meet, or someone who knew he’d turn up at the studio eventually.”
“You need to tell that Detective Lissy about Rafe having the gun,” Danielle urged. She pushed aside her empty plate and drew her coffee cup closer. “Maybe then he’ll stop considering you Public Enemy Number One.”
“Good idea,” I said. “As soon as-”
“Hey, Stacy, are you ready to rumba?” Alert and smiling, Mark Downey approached with a cup of coffee, seating himself at our table without asking. His form-fitting Latin costume had lime green accents to match my dress and his sandy hair flopped rakishly across his forehead. “Hi, Danielle,” he added. “Good to see you again.”
“Hi, Mark. Good luck today.”
“Thanks. I’m thinking this may be my last competition as an amateur.”
I smiled at him. Amateurs who won out in the gold division frequently made the jump to professional status, assuming they wanted a career of teaching and competing. “Let’s do it,” I said, giving Danielle a look that said we’d continue our conversation later. She accompanied us to the ballroom and took a seat at the studio table, chatting with a tense-looking Sherry Indrebo. She was husbandless this morning. She and Vitaly would be competing against Mark and me, and I knew that regardless of who won, we’d have a very unhappy loser on our hands.
I found myself looking at the older woman with her wiry muscles and tight body, clad now in an orange costume, wondering if she had it in her to shoot Rafe. She’d told me politics was her life; if she knew Rafe had sold her out to her opponent in the House race, just how mad would she have been? Livid, I imagined. If she and Rafe had met that night and Rafe had told her what he’d done, she could have snapped. Before I could work out the scenario any further, the announcer called us onto the floor and Sherry rose with a flutter of feathers and took Vitaly’s arm with a practiced smile. Mark offered his arm to me and the competition got under way.
Mark and I won. Which is to say, we won the “Overall” title for the Pro/Am Scholarship-International Latin-Gold Division. The uninitiated would need the Rosetta stone or a code-breaking book to read ballroom dancing score sheets; suffice it to say that Mark and I were ranked number one in three of the five dances and no lower than third in any of them. Sherry and Vitaly took a second and a third and landed as low as fifth in the cha-cha. That really wasn’t surprising considering they’d had only a couple of practices while Mark and I and several of the other pro-am couples had danced together for years. At any rate, Mark was ecstatic and I was pleased; our success might (hopefully!) attract more students to Graysin Motion.
Mark grabbed me around the waist and twirled me around, pressing a fast kiss onto my lips. “We did it!” He set me down and accepted congratulations from various other dancers, including Sherry, who looked like her cheeks ached from the effort of maintaining her smile. She disappeared immediately after congratulating Mark, not staying for the celebratory bottle of champagne Vitaly graciously purchased.
After a few minutes, Mark bounded over to where I sat at the studio’s table, watching the Pro/Am Scholarship Open Nite-Club competition in which Graysin Motion had no entries. As couples demonstrated their West Coast Swing, Mark leaned close. “I won out in gold,” he exulted.
“I guess you’ll be competing against me next year,” I said, smiling.
The excitement drained slowly from his face. “Against you?”
“Why, yes. Didn’t you say you were going to compete as a pro if you won out? I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding a partner… You’re really good, Mark. It must have been because you had such a good teacher.” I smiled again, although Mark’s reaction didn’t feel right.
“I thought that you… that you and I-I figured that when I was good enough, we would team up, be partners.” His expression mixed disbelief and pleading.
Ouch. I should have forced myself to have that talk about boundaries earlier. I silently apologized to Danielle for getting on her about not confronting her boss when I hadn’t even had the gumption to have a similar talk with a student. Vitaly, sensing something was wrong, discreetly led the others at the table away under the pretext of watching the dancers from another angle. I was liking him more every minute. Even though his English was iffy, he could read gestures and expressions in a way that let him understand more than some people who’d been speaking English since the cradle. Mark for instance. He reclaimed my attention by grabbing my wrist where it lay on the table.
“Stacy! I knew that while you and Rafe were dancing together there was no hope for me. You’d built a professional reputation together-I understood that. But with Rafe out of the picture-”
“He’s dead!” I said, pulling my wrist away.
“I know. I didn’t mean to disrespect your grief or imply that his murder wasn’t a terrible thing. I’m not doing this well.” He looked miserable.
“Mark, I don’t want to take anything away from your achievement today, but you need to look for someone at your level to partner with.”
“You’re too good for me, is that it?” Anger was replacing his hangdog look.
“I’ve got several years’ experience as a professional,” I said as diplomatically as possible. “I’m at a different place in my career. I own a studio. I’ve got to dance with someone who can bring students into the studio, who I can win important competitions with to boost the studio’s reputation. That’s Vitaly.”
“But you just started with him! It’s not like you’ve had years, or even months, of training together. He’d understand if you wanted to give me a tryout-”
“No.” I spoke the word forcefully.
Mark scraped his chair back, rocking the table as he jumped up. I grabbed for the champagne bottle before it could fall. People at the tables on either side watched us with open curiosity and the nearest judge turned around to glare at us. With an obvious effort, Mark controlled his temper. “I could work at Graysin Motion, then, and we could see how it goes. Maybe in a couple months-”
“No.” I tried to soften the harsh word. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Mark. Look, this is your big day. Let’s get back to celebrating-”
“Screw you, Stacy,” he spat, turning on his heel and hurrying out of the ballroom.
I let out a long breath. Mark’s anger, his lack of control, the way he said Rafe was out of the picture… I wondered if Mark could’ve had a hand in Rafe’s death. Was his obsession with me, his fantasy that we would be professional partners, strong enough to lead to murder? If Mark had come to the studio that night, maybe looking for me, and run into Rafe and they’d had words… I almost jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Vitaly, tracking Mark as he banged out the door. “He is one gigantic prickle,” Vitaly announced, squeezing my shoulder.