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me. We moved slowly at first, then more swiftly as he whirled me into a turn series. I extended my limbs with each movement, knowing the pointed toe, the half twist of the wrist, and stretched fingers made the elongated and graceful lines that separated a so-so waltzer from a champion waltzer. Even without a flowing dress and an updo, I felt timeless, regal, like I was dancing at the court of some long-deposed or beheaded European king.
    New songs came on, but Vitaly and I held the mood. People think that competitive dancers get to prepare a routine to a specific song, like they do on Ballroom with the B-Listers , but we really dance to whatever the competition organizers cue up. Vitaly’s clasp was strong, his steps perfectly suited to mine, and we danced for at least forty-five minutes, stopping to perfect a pose or rework a turn, before I found Maurice’s problems intruding on my thoughts. Vitaly felt my mind drift and cut the music in midphrase, frowning slightly.
    “You is losing concentrations,” he said.
    “I know. I’m sorry. Let’s take a break.” I darted across the hall to the minifridge in the bathroom and returned with a bottled water for myself and a grapefruit juice for Vitaly. “You heard about Corinne Blakely?” I asked, handing him the bottle.
    “ Da .” He drank deeply and swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Is tragic losing for dance world. She was—how do you say?—‘only one of her type.’”
    “One of a kind. Did you know her well?”
    “ Comme ci, comme ça .” Vitaly waggled his hand in the international gesture for “so-so.” “We are dancing together at exhibition in France.”
    “I remember that exhibition. What was it—two, three years ago?”
    “She is having amazing control, is being very precisely,” he said, “for a—”
    He threw in a Russian word that I automatically translated as “old woman,” “grandmother,” or “ancient crone.”
    “Maurice was having lunch with her when she died. The police interrogated him.”
    Vitaly opened his eyes wide. “Is not possible!”
    I didn’t know whether he thought it was impossible that Maurice killed Corinne, or impossible that the police questioned him.
    After another long glug of grapefruit juice, he added, “Is bad for business. Peoples is not liking dancing with murderers or where murders is happened.” His eyes slid to the spot near the windows where I’d found Rafe’s body.
    “Maurice is not a murderer.”
    “You should proving.” Vitaly’s face lit up.
    “Investigate? I don’t think so.” I shook my head, making my ponytail swish across my shoulders.
    “But yes! You has found Rafe’s killer. You can finding Corinne’s.”
    “I’ve got a ballroom studio to run, students to recruit, expenses to slash, and classes to teach,” I said. “I don’t have time to play investigator. Besides, the police let Maurice go after talking to him this morning; chances are he’s not even a suspect anymore.”
    My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
    “Anastasia, you’ll have to ask Vitaly to fill in for me at tonight’s class.” Maurice’s voice was calm, but a twinge of tension, like a taut piano wire, hummed through it. “I’ve been arrested.”

Chapter 6
    A few frantic minutes and a couple of phone calls later, I had elicited a promise from Phineas Drake’s law firm that a legal minion of some sort would be dispatched to Maurice immediately, even though the great man himself was on a train returning from New York City. Hearing the desperation in my voice (or having checked Maurice’s financials and found that he could pay the firm’s exorbitant fees), the aloof assistant patched me through to Phineas Drake’s cell phone. I could hear the rhythmic clacking of the train as we spoke, and I visualized the bearded, bearlike man reclining in a seat, his size and girth discouraging anyone from sitting beside him.
    “Stacy Graysin.” Drake’s voice boomed through