The Homicide Hustle (16 page)

He took it with good grace, planting a noisy kiss on my cheek, before slinging his
gym bag over his shoulder. “Am I allowed to stop practicing long enough to take you
to dinner tonight?” he asked.

“Thanks, but I’ve got plans.” I didn’t tell him that my plans were with Dani, or that
I wanted to get her take on their date before deciding whether or not I wanted to
see more of him outside the ballroom.

“Later in the week, then.” Not waiting for an answer, he smiled in a way that almost
made me rethink the shower offer, and left. Only then did I realize I’d forgotten
to ask him if Tessa habitually had a videocam with her.

Chapter 22

With twenty minutes to spare between my shower and when my first student would arrive,
I called Kevin McDill in his office, figuring I owed the reporter an update since
he’d gotten the autopsy data for me. He growled something into the phone when he answered,
and I decided to take it as a greeting.

“I’m having a lovely day, thanks,” I said. “How about you?”

“Graysin. I’m on deadline.”

“I’ll keep it brief.” I told him about surveying the spot where Tessa supposedly went
in the water, the brick and threatening note, Nigel’s reward offer, finding Mickey
Hazzard in Tessa’s apartment, and my conviction that the killer was somehow associated
with
Ballroom with the B-Listers
.

“All very interesting,” McDill said, “but I don’t smell a story. The bit with the
brick has potential, but readers don’t get wound up unless there’s blood involved.
Call me back if someone kneecaps you.” He hung up.

I stared at the phone, half annoyed and half amused, then hung up and skedaddled back
to the studio to meet my student; I’d heard him come in while I was on the phone.
Calista and Vitaly had arrived and were rehearsing in the ballroom. After forty-five
minutes with my student, a heavyset man in his mid-forties who had taken up ballroom
dance to lose weight and fallen in love with it (even though he hadn’t lost a pound),
I returned to my office to work on choreography for another pair I coached.

Calista and Vitaly were still at it three hours later when I left the office to get
ready to meet Danielle.

“You must be related to Ivan the Terrible,” Calista moaned as I walked past the ballroom.
“I should have let Phoebe keep you.”

Vitaly responded with a simple, “Again,” and I grinned to myself. I kept my fingers
crossed that the voters had retained me and Zane, Vitaly and Calista, and Phoebe and
her new partner. I guessed that the reality star obsessed with his biceps would go
first. He danced like a whirling dervish on speed and was self-absorbed and obnoxious,
to boot. Still, his show was hugely popular, so that might translate into viewer votes.
I’d seen mediocre but high-profile dancers beat out good dancers on this show in earlier
seasons. No one was safe, as Kristen delighted in telling viewers.

* * *

Danielle and I had agreed to meet at a restaurant we liked in Shirlington. I got on
the Jeff Davis Highway headed north, intending to cut over on Glebe. I was running
a little bit late since I’d spent some extra time on my hair and makeup, not because
I wanted to outshine Dani—we weren’t
competing
or anything—but just because I felt like looking my best. Really. Traffic headed
toward the city wasn’t too bad, although the southbound lanes were choked. I pushed
down on the Beetle’s accelerator until I was doing over sixty miles per hour, wanting
to make up some time, but a light turned red ahead of me and I tapped on the brake
with a muttered, “Drat.”

Nothing happened. Thinking my foot must have slid off the pedal, I pressed the brake
again, but the car didn’t slow. I stomped on it with both feet, almost subconsciously
noting my limited options with rising panic. A steady stream of traffic to my right
made it impossible for me to slide off onto the shoulder and hope the car halted before
plowing into anything. The median to my left was narrow and I was afraid that if I
aimed for it, the car would jump it and plunge into the oncoming lane. Not good. I
prayed that the light would turn green.

Without my foot on the accelerator, my speed bled off somewhat, but the car was still
doing forty as I neared the intersection. The light remained stubbornly red with an
intermittent flow of cross traffic in and out of the intersection. A hundred feet
away, I saw a teenager start across the street in front of me. Hands tucked into his
pockets, he bobbed his head in time to the music apparently blaring through his earbuds
as he slouched across the intersection with all the haste of a teenage boy who gets
a mild kick out of making cars wait for him, who knows he’s the master of the universe
and that cars will always stop for him, even when he’s crossing against the light.
Oh, God, no. I was going to hit him.

I simultaneously leaned on my horn and leaned back as far as I could against my seat,
as if the backward pressure would slow the car.
No, no, no . . .

The boy looked up, maybe because someone yelled, or maybe because he sensed impending
danger. He paused for a fatal second, and I saw his eyes get round. He sprinted. My
Beetle slid into the intersection, missing him by a hair. I hardly had time to think
a prayer of gratitude, or note the kid’s upraised middle finger, before I was in the
middle of the intersection. I was going to make it, I thought, willing the car to
slow more. I was going to—

Wham! Something slammed into the rear passenger side of the car, whipping my Beetle
around until it faced the oncoming traffic, which had stopped now that the light had
finally—
finally!
—turned. My left shoulder slammed against the door, hard, and then my head bounced
backwards, thunking against the headrest, and the airbag deployed. It was several
moments before I realized the car had stopped moving and I was alive. I coughed and
felt pains in my chest, arms and neck. The airbag wilted around me and I batted at
it, feeling claustrophobic. People appeared at the driver’s side door and were opening
it. Warm, exhaust-scented air flooded in, and I blinked at the variously concerned
and angry faces.

“Are you okay?” “What the hell were you doing?” “You almost killed me!” “Is she drunk?”

The words buzzed around me, intertwining until they made no sense.

“Give her some air,” a voice said and the crowd backed away from the door. An ambulance’s
siren split the air, drawing nearer. Honking horns almost drowned it out.

“I’m okay, I think,” I croaked, then coughed again. There was a powdery white residue
coating me and floating in the air. Rational thought returned. “The driver who hit
me! Is he all right?”

“She’s fine,” someone said. “She was driving a florist’s van and it’s barely got a
scratch.”

Sagging with relief, I didn’t even want to think what my precious Beetle looked like.
I knew it had more than a scratch. I took a deep breath and felt an ache in my chest.
Ow. Maybe I’d broken a rib. Holding on to the steering wheel, I made a stab at swinging
my left leg out of the car. With one foot resting on solid ground, I managed to get
my right leg out, too, so I was facing the crowd of onlookers. Strangers looked in
at me and one man offered me a hand just as an ambulance and a fire truck pulled up
and the EMTs came trotting over.

“My brakes didn’t work.” I know I repeated that phrase upward of fifty times as I
spoke to the EMTs (who decided I was bruised and shaken up, but not seriously injured),
the florist, the onlookers, my insurance agent (by phone), the tow truck driver, and
the police. After my breathalyzer test was negative, the cops began to take me a bit
more seriously. When the tow truck driver had my poor Beetle hooked up, one of the
officers asked him to take a look underneath it, see if he spotted an obvious mechanical
cause for the accident.

The wiry, middle-aged man reappeared in minutes, wiping greasy hands along his overalled
thighs. “Sure do,” he told the cop. “Someone doesn’t like this young lady.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the policeman asked.

The mechanic gave me a look. “The brake line’s been sliced clean through. No way it’s
an accident.”

I’d been feeling a bit better, calmer, but at his news I felt faint. The embroidered
letters spelling out “Dave” on his chest wavered and I blinked. “Someone cut my brake
line? I could’ve killed someone.” Images of the teen dashing across the street would
stay with me forever.

“Or been killed.” The cop eyed me, a hint of suspicion in his gaze again, clearly
wondering what I’d done that would make someone want to kill me.

I took several deep breaths through my nose, trying to calm myself. The air smelled
of roses and carnations. Even though the florist had long departed, the flowers that
had fallen from the back of her van still littered the street, most of them now crushed
by the traffic siphoning by as a cop directed traffic through the intersection. One
white rosebud lay at my feet, slightly bruised. I stooped to pick it up and cradled
it in my hands. Lifting my cupped hands to my nose, I sniffed. The delicate scent
made me want to cry and I blinked rapidly.

I signed some forms for the police and Dave, and took the card he offered, which told
me where my car would be. “Can I go now?”

Before the officer could answer, a voice hailed me from the far side of the street.
“Stacy!”

I looked over to see Danielle hurrying toward me, weaving her way through the slowly
moving traffic, red curls bouncing, worry on her face. I’d called her as soon as I
got my wits about me. I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. They streamed down
my face, making me snuffle. Danielle wrapped her arms around me in a way that hurt
and comforted at the same time.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I blotted my eyes and blew my nose. “No permanent damage,” I said, letting her lead
me to her car.

“I can’t believe they didn’t take you to a hospital.” She opened the passenger side
door for me and waited patiently while I maneuvered myself onto the seat with lots
of winces and groans.

“I refused to go.”

She slammed the door harder than necessary.

Chapter 23

Danielle insisted on taking me back to her apartment for the night after I told her
what happened. “I’m not leaving you alone with a homicidal maniac trying to do away
with you,” she said. “Besides, someone should check on you tonight, make sure you
don’t have a concussion or something.” She held four fingers in front of my face and
steered with one hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Twelve.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” She shot me a look. “Any idea who would want to kill you?”

We pulled into her parking lot before I could answer, and what with her helping me
into the condo, running me a hot bath, easing me out of my clothes, and gasping at
the seat belt bruise running diagonally across my chest, it was forty-five minutes
before I got around to answering.

“Same person who lobbed a brick through my window,” I said, relaxing in the steaming
bathtub, letting Danielle’s eucalyptus-and-mint-scented bath oil soak the pain out
of my abused body. She sat in the hall outside the small bathroom, wanting to be nearby
in case I needed help or passed out. She was a good sister.

“And that would be . . . ?”

“Probably whoever killed Tessa.”

There was silence for a moment from the hall. “Oh, great,” she finally said. “You’ve
managed to piss off a homicidal maniac.”

“Would you stop saying that? There’s no homicidal maniac running around.” At least,
I didn’t think there was. The body count seemed a bit low for that, although if I
ended up dead, that would double it.

Feeling somewhat looser, although still achy, I maneuvered myself out of the tub,
dried off, and wrapped myself in the fluffy robe Danielle had draped over the toilet.
Tan. I shook my head. My sister’s whole wardrobe consisted of tans, beiges, and grays,
“neutral” colors that wouldn’t offend anyone. I’d rather go nude than wear beige.

“I’m getting you a green robe for your birthday,” I announced as I tied the sash and
emerged from the bathroom. “It’ll go great with your hair.”

She looked at me with disbelief. “Someone tries to kill you and you’re critiquing
my wardrobe?”

I shrugged and my shoulder twinged. “Ow.”

She gave me a “serves you right” look. “Are you hungry?”

I realized I was. It was now almost nine o’clock and we’d never made it to the restaurant.
I sat at the kitchen counter, drinking a glass of white wine, while Dani heated some
frozen burritos in the microwave. I was almost hungry enough to eat them without mentally
counting the fat grams and calories in each one. They went surprisingly well with
the wine. When Dani got out a box of brownie mix and dumped it into a bowl, I didn’t
say a word about my diet or needing to keep my weight down so Vitaly could lift me;
I passed her the egg carton.

With the aroma of baking brownies drifting from the oven, Dani and I moved into her
living room. “The wallpaper looks good.” I noticed the photo of her and Coop that
used to sit on the bookcase next to a photo of Danielle and me was gone.

She shot me a look to see if I was being snippy. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t need to spell out for what.

“Me, too.”

We smiled mistily at each other and then looked away in embarrassment. “So,” Danielle
said briskly, “who killed Tessa and why, and why is he or she trying to kill you?”

We batted around theories for half an hour, until the timer dinged, but didn’t arrive
at any answers. By the time we’d each eaten two warm brownies with glasses of cold
milk, Danielle knew everything I did about
Blisters
’ cast, Phoebe’s and my conversation with Li’l Boni, Mickey Hazzard breaking into
Tessa’s apartment, and anything else I could think of.

“We need to figure out who Tessa drove off with,” I said, setting my plate on an end
table, “but I don’t know how to do that. Obviously, no one’s going to admit to it.
It could be any of the men from
Blisters
—Zane, Mickey, Larry, other crew members—”

“What about Nigel? From what Zane says, he seems like a real piece of work.”

I nodded. “Oh, he is, but he wasn’t at Club Nitro that night.”

“So he says.” Dani infused the words with sinister meaning.

I thought about it. “Well, no one saw him. He said he was eating dinner with a friend.”

“Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have come by the club after dinner and picked up Tessa,
either by prior arrangement or not.”

“Why would he want to kill Tessa?”

Dani shrugged. “Maybe they had a torrid affair and he didn’t like it when she dumped
him.”

“He told me they were lovers.” Of course, the same rationale might apply to Zane.
I pushed the thought away and certainly didn’t say it aloud.

My sister nodded as if that were proof. “Or, she was his partner—she probably knew
where all his bodies were buried, so to speak. Did you know he was almost indicted
for that death on
Race around the World
? Zane told me. When that contestant fell from the balloon, there were all sorts of
accusations that the producers—Nigel and some other guy—hadn’t paid enough attention
to safety, that they’d encouraged the guy to do dangerous stunts, even though he was
so not qualified for them. His wife sued them and they gave her a bunch of money to
settle out of court, Zane heard.”

I wasn’t discounting the possibility that Tessa might have known things about Nigel
he’d rather keep quiet, but since there was no evidence he was even at the club, I
wanted to concentrate on more likely suspects. Even as I tried to articulate why I
thought Kristen might have wanted to kill Tessa, I yawned. Seeing it, Danielle sprang
up. “Bedtime for you.”

I didn’t have the energy to object. Giving her a long hug in the hallway outside the
guest bedroom, I said, “Thanks, Little.”

“Anytime, Big.”

* * *

Danielle was long gone to work by the time I awoke in the morning. A glance at her
kitchen clock told me I should’ve been long gone, too. My muscles had stiffened up
overnight and shrieked as I forced my arms and legs into the clothes I’d worn yesterday.
I found some ibuprofen in Danielle’s medicine cabinet, took three of them with a big
glass of juice, and hurried outside, only then realizing I had no transportation.
I stared around the parking lot with frustration for a moment, before pulling out
my cell phone to call Maurice.

He arrived in record time, and drove me to the rental car office, exclaiming at the
bruise that had bloomed on my temple overnight from where my head had banged against
the car door. “My dear Anastasia! Will you be able to dance?”

I gave him a wry smile, not a bit offended at the question. It was what any dancer
would ask. “I think so,” I said. “No bones broken or internal organs punctured—just
bruised and stiff and achy.”

He waited until the agency assigned me a car and then said he would see me at the
studio. “Four of my students are coming in,” he said. “We’ll use the small studio
to keep out of your way.”

“Don’t worry; they’re not filming us today. I think Nigel and his posse are over at
Take the Lead, harassing Solange and Marco Ingelido and their partners. We get a break,
although Zane and I will be practicing, of course.”

As I said the words, I realized that Danielle and I had steered clear of talking about
Zane last night and I still had no idea what had happened on their date and how she
really felt about him. I drove very slowly and carefully to Graysin Motion, earning
honks from annoyed motorists. Leaving the rental car in my carport where it looked
like a usurper, I went in through the kitchen and brushed my teeth and hair and made
a pot of coffee before heading upstairs with my brimming mug.

Tav was sitting at his desk when I came into the office and he sprang up. “My God,
Stacy, where have you been?”

There were equal parts anger and concern in his voice and I gave him an uncertain
look. “I—”

Noticing the bruise on my temple, he came over and grabbed my upper arms, making me
wince and jolt coffee onto my shirt. “Ow. Now look what you’ve done.”

Tav studied my face, and then brushed aside the collar of my shirt to peer at the
livid bruise that peeked from the neckline. “What happened to you? I know you were
with Savage. If I thought he—”

“I wasn’t with Zane! What’s gotten into you?” I wrenched myself away and bit my lip
with pain. I doubled over for a moment, setting my coffee cup on the floor before
I could spill it again. When I caught my breath, I raised my head and peered at him
through the hair that was falling over my face. “I was in an accident.”

“
Por Díos
, Stacy. Sit down.”

All tenderness now, he led me to the love seat, accidentally kicking over my coffee.
“Mierda.”

I’d never heard him cuss and I started to giggle, despite the pain and my confusion
over his behavior.

“I will be right back.” He hurried out and returned with paper towels from the bathroom,
using them to sop up the coffee. When he had done that, and fetched me another cup
of coffee from downstairs, he sat beside me. “Tell me.”

I gave him the short version, finishing with, “The tow truck driver says the brake
line was cut. I expect to hear from Detective Lissy later today.”

“Cut!” Concern etched his handsome face. He smacked his fist onto his thigh. “This
is because you are asking questions about Tessa King’s death. You must stop.”

“But the studio—”

“The studio is not worth your life. If you do not promise me you will stop investigating,
I cannot continue as your partner.”

I gaped at him. “But—”

“So you would lose the studio anyway, or have to share it with someone like that Solange.”

She had tried to buy Rafe’s half of the studio after his death and only Tav’s intervention
had saved me from having to become partners with her or give up Graysin Motion entirely.
“I’m only trying to earn the reward so we can pay off the taxes.”

“Really?”

I furrowed my brow. What did he mean by that? “Yes, really. You wouldn’t—”

He looked implacable, full lips drawn into a thin line, dark eyes fixed on mine. “If
it is the only way to keep you from getting killed, then, yes, I would.”

“What about Rafe’s legacy?” I said, hoping that playing the half brother card would
change his mind.

“I did not take on this partnership because of Rafe,” he said. “I did it because of
you, because I could see how much the studio meant to you, and because—” He cut himself
off and got up and walked to his desk, standing with his back to me.

I was too angry at his tactics to appreciate his reasoning. “You’re not being fair.”

“I will not stand by and let you get killed.”

Something in his voice gave me pause. “Why did you think I was with Zane last night?”
I asked finally.

Tav turned around, crossing his arms over his chest. “I saw you kissing him yesterday.”

I winced. It had been Tav I heard. “A kiss is a long way from . . .”

“But you like him.” He made it a statement.

“I like lots of people.”

“Please. Do not be
poco sincero
—disingenuous, Stacy.”

Biting my lip, I said, “Fine. I like him, but I’m not in love with him. I hardly know
him. It’s none of your business who I date, any more than it’s Vitaly’s or Maurice’s
or . . . or Hoover’s!” I felt close to tears and I willed them back, knowing they
were the product of pain, the lingering shock of the crash, and confusion. How had
we gone from his forbidding me to investigate to an argument about my love life? “There
hasn’t been anyone since Rafe,” I whispered.

Tav came back to where I sat and his hand caressed my hair briefly. I closed my eyes.
“I will give you my brother’s share of the studio; you will own it outright. But do
not ask me to stay and watch you encourage a murderer to kill you. I cannot do it.”
The anger had left his voice, and now I heard only finality and a trace of sadness.

I wanted to cry out that I didn’t want him to give me his share of the studio, that
he couldn’t afford to do it, that I’d quit investigating, that Zane didn’t mean anything
to me. Not a word had left my lips by the time he walked out of the office, closing
the door quietly. I hunched over and sobbed.