Solitary Dancer by John Lawrence Reynolds

be a good idea,” Gregory Weiner said. “Heather told me a man might be trying to kill her. Somebody well-known and powerful. The gentleman apparently frightened her because he could get out of control. She had seen him that way.”
    â€œI’ll be over,” Tim Fox said.
    When he hung up he thought about telling Donovan, then wondered what the younger detective could really offer. “Probably nothing,” Fox muttered. “I’ll tell him later.”
    It was there on his tray next to the powdered eggs, a small white envelope not much bigger than a postage stamp. The trustee slid his breakfast through the opening of the bars while McGuire watched from the corner of the cell where he lay on the floor, his stomach about to heave from the aroma of food, the pain in his head like a deep cleft through his skull.
    He turned away and covered his face with his hand, a barrier against the smell of hot grease. His hand trembled like a captured bird and he remained motionless for several minutes before rising unsteadily and walking to the bars, planning to fling the tray out into the corridor until he saw the envelope.
    He palmed it quickly and returned to the corner of the cell. Inside were four tiny white pills and he swallowed two before replacing the remainder in the envelope and settling back on the floor, his eyes closed, his brow less furrowed.
    When the trustee returned for the tray, McGuire rose, walked to the bars, reached through to touch the man’s arm. “Who gave you that?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
    â€œGave me what?” The guy, skinny and gray-haired, his skin the colour of old newspapers, avoided McGuire’s eyes.
    â€œThe stuff on my tray, in the envelope,” McGuire hissed.
    â€œDon’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” the trustee muttered.
    A different trustee brought him lunch and he never saw the pasty-faced man again.
    Stana Tomasevich sat nervously at her kitchen table, a cup of tea growing cold in front of her. There had not been a man of any kind in her apartment since her husband, Frank, departed with two plastic bags of clothing nearly ten years earlier, never to return.
    And now there were three men here, the young red-haired one with blue eyes and a nose like a hawk’s beak, smiling at her from across the kitchen table, and two policemen in uniform in the other room, searching through her belongings. She could hear the officers talking among themselves, quietly. She pictured them inspecting her room, touching, lifting, moving her possessions. She would have to clean everything when they finally left, wipe it all down.
    The red-haired man was writing on the pad of paper he carried with him. “You ever meet anybody in her apartment?” he asked.
    â€œWho?” Stana said. “Who would I meet there? Men? You think I meet men there?”
    The red-haired man, Donovan, laughed aloud. “No, I meant friends of Miss Lorenzo. Anybody.”
    Stana shook her head. “Sometimes men are there, for business. I don’t talk, I don’t see. I scrub floors, I do dishes, I wash windows, then I go.”
    â€œSo you wouldn’t recognize anybody you met there if you saw them again.”
    Another shake of the head.
    â€œAny men stay overnight with Miss Lorenzo?”
    Stana blushed and lowered her head. “Sometimes.”
    â€œRecently?”
    A nod. “Two, three weeks ago, Miss Lorenzo does not come downstairs when I finish kitchen, so I go upstairs, knock on door, say I am here. She comes, unlocks door. She is wearing blanket, no, sheet from bed around her body and she is laughing. She says, ‘Don’t do bedroom today,’ and she runs back in room, closes door. And all time I am cleaning, I hear her in there with man.”
    â€œWhat were they doing?” Donovan sat back watching her, a wide smile on his face, tapping his teeth with a pencil.
    She turned away again. “They laugh.