Latitude Zero

by Diana Renn

  “Here’s an idea,” I said as Dylan had me walk the bike to the start of the yellow line and glide again. “Could someone have messed with el Cóndor’s bike before the ride?”

  “Sabotaged it?” Dylan frowned. “Absolutely not. I did a post-crash inspection, and I would have caught that. Besides, that would mean someone accessed his bike before the race. And that’s impossible.”

  “Are you sure? Was there anyone unusual hanging out around your trailer?”

  “The usual rubberneckers. I didn’t pay much attention. Before a race, my total focus is my job. Getting those bikes ready, and safe, and distributed to the riders.”

  “So you were with the bikes the whole time?” I watched his face carefully, then fought to catch my balance again as the bike veered toward his feet.

  “Of course,” he said, straightening out my handlebars and front wheel. “I’m in charge of the bikes and the safety of all our pro and junior riders. I take that very seriously. My job is on the line, and I need this job. More than you know,” he added almost under his breath.

  “You don’t think someone could have gotten into the team trailer at any point?”

  “No.”

  “You never left the trailer before the event started?”

  “No. Well, once.” He frowned. “I went out to use a restroom. But I locked the trailer up. I did,” he added, as if trying to convince himself more than me. “Yes. I’m sure I did. I’m almost a hundred percent sure that I did.” His voice faltered, and he looked down.

  Again I glanced at his bike school. The door was wide-open. Mari was in there now. Security just did not seem to be top-of-mind for this guy.

  “Did Juan Carlos have any enemies?” I asked next. “Other cyclists? Someone who might have found a way into the trailer while it was locked?”

  “Not a chance. The guy worked so hard. Everyone respected that. The only rival I ever knew him to have was this kid from the junior team, who ended up getting the boot, for drugs. But that loser’s long gone. Whoa, steady there,” he added, reaching an arm out as I wobbled at the mention of Jake. “Now if you feel like you might go over, let yourself do that. It’s okay. Sometimes it’s good to know what it feels like to fall. I mean, everyone does at some point. Might as well get it over with. You dust yourself off and get back in the saddle, right?” He winked. “That’s the free spiritual advice part of the lesson. I learned that in rehab last year.”

  Rehab. This was a person looking for a new road in life. He did need this job. I couldn’t believe he’d do something willingly that would put it in jeopardy. And he obviously had huge respect for Juan Carlos.

  I faked a few false starts, then pedaled very slowly as I thought about all Dylan had said. He didn’t seem like the saboteur at all. But what about the other bike crime, the stolen spare bike?

  “I heard a rumor that Juan Carlos’s spare bike went missing for the race,” I ventured, choosing my next words carefully. “Maybe stolen. Is that true?”

  “That’s ridiculous. All the bikes are accounted for. I just went through the inventory this morning because I’m going to be packing them up for our flights to Bogotá, as soon as this lesson is over.”

  Was he being honest about the inventory being intact? Or covering up his lapse in attention? Preston Lane had a heart, but he was a businessman. He had no trouble firing people. If he thought Dylan had been careless and let two bikes be stolen and rigged, Dylan would be out of work.

  Dylan narrowed his eyes. “Where’d you hear this weird rumor anyway?”

  “Um, I—”

  “Hey, Dylan! I’m finished!” Wayne called out. He looked at me. “Hey, I know you. You’re Tessa Taylor.”

  “Should I know you, too?” Dylan asked, looking at me intently.

  “You don’t know her? She’s, like, famous,” said Wayne. “She’s the host of this show called KidVision. But the website said the show was canceled. My mom said it was because she cheated on a charity ride last weekend and she doesn’t set a good example.”

  Dylan glared. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but the joke is over. So’s the lesson. I’m not going to wind up on some TV show talking about this.”

  Amber marched up to me, a stern look on her face, and held out her hands for my helmet.

  “Here’s your thirty dollars back,” said Dylan, slapping three tens into my hand. “I don’t take money from liars. Now get the hell out of my bike school.”

  26

  BACK IN the Compass Bikes van, Mari cued up the bike frame inspection she’d filmed. Meanwhile, I was still shaking from my blown cover.

  “Good thing you found the bike so fast,” I said after I’d explained what had happened with Dylan and me.

  “I was so scared I wouldn’t,” Mari admitted. “I had to go through three rooms. It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. From Hell. The first room had a bunch of beater bikes stored for classes. The second room was a storeroom for Team Cadence-EcuaBar stuff. Lots of bike boxes for airplane shipping. And Juan Carlos’s bike was there, by the way. The spare with the white handlebars.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “The spare bike was there? But—that’s not possible!”

  “I saw it,” she insisted. “Every rider had three wall hooks for their bikes. One for their trainer, one for the main bike, one for the spare. The space for Juan Carlos’s main bike was empty, which makes sense because it’s busted from the crash. But the spare? It’s here.” She showed me a picture she’d taken. A sign on the wall said J. MACIAS. Below it hung a basic black training bike. The next set of hooks, where his green-handled bike should have been hanging, was empty. And below those hooks hung his spare—a bike with white bars—just like the one I’d seen in the woods.

  “Are you okay?” Mari asked, looking at me curiously. “This is good news, right? It means his spare bike wasn’t stolen. Dylan wasn’t lying to you.”

  “If there’s a spare, that means Darwin—” I stopped myself from saying more, suddenly remembering I hadn’t told Mari everything about that morning in the woods.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. I felt dizzy.

  So the spare bike wasn’t missing now. That meant someone had returned it to its rightful place, maybe Dylan himself. Or maybe Juan Carlos had gotten my text message in time, picked up the bike, and brought it back to the trailer, and that’s why he got a late start for the race. Problem solved!

  I couldn’t steal it and deliver it to Darwin tomorrow, but I could tell Darwin where to find that bike when he texted me again. Then he’d leave me alone.

  But something didn’t make sense: Why didn’t Darwin just come and ransack this place in the first place? Why not start with the obvious choice, the team mechanic—why go after me?

  “Are you watching?” Mari moved on to the third room she’d filmed. “This must be that woman’s workshop for those bike sculptures. It was filled with bike stuff. Parts, broken bits, frames, wheels, you name it. Juan Carlos’s broken bike frame was in there. I found it on a table. I filmed my inspection. Tessa, this totally looks like a sabotage case. There, on either side of the downtube, right behind the fork, are two weak spots. Like bruises on an apple.” Her gloved fingers, in the video, pointed out the two spots.

  “Would a crash have caused those?”

  “No. Too symmetrical. And it’s not where the crash impact was.”

  “I don’t get it. What does this prove?”

  “Within the bruised areas—I’m zooming in now—there are two small slits. See?”

  “I can see. Barely.” The slits were so small I’d never have noticed if Mari hadn’t pointed them out.

  “That’s not accident damage. Someone weakened the structure of the tube first by hitting it with something. A ball-peen hammer would do the trick. After the bruising, someone could have used a razor to
cut the carbon fiber threads inside. Those two things would compromise the integrity of the frame.”

  “English, please?”

  “If the frame was weakened in that key place, it would fall apart at even the slightest impact. I’m sure Juan Carlos wouldn’t have made it the whole hundred miles without it falling apart.”

  I felt a surge of emotion I hadn’t felt in ages. Relief. If Juan Carlos hadn’t crashed as a direct result of my paceline pullout, he could have gone down anywhere else on the route. At any time. Yes, I’d still played a role in all this by causing a crash he reacted to. But his crash also could have been triggered by a pothole, a stray rock, a rogue patch of sand. And his catastrophic bike failure was the result of the sabotage. This was concrete evidence that I was not entirely to blame.

  Then I slumped in my seat. Was Dylan lying to me when he said the bike couldn’t have been sabotaged? Had he played a role in this crime? Or was he really a flaky guy who wasn’t about to admit he might have accidentally given someone access to Juan Carlos’s bikes in the trailer?

  “There’s more,” said Mari. “Now I’m showing the rear brake. See my finger turning it? It had been loosened. Just a little, but just enough.”

  I sat forward. “Enough for what?” I asked, though I already had an idea of where she was going with this. My fingers tightened around the seat belt, as if bracing myself for a new crash.

  “If someone looking at bike damage was concentrating on the front of the bike, where the impact was, they might not even notice this. But the brake was loosened enough so that the cable would slip if the rider pulled the brake fast. That’s what Juan Carlos must have done. That probably put even more stress on the bike and flipped him over the handlebars.”

  “Oh my God,” I breathed. “Someone wanted him hurt at Chain Reaction.”

  “Or killed,” Mari added grimly.

  “But if you really want to take someone out, a gun’s more of a guarantee, right?”

  “Sabotage is a good way to kill from afar,” said Mari. “Less chance of getting caught, especially if it looks like an accidental death.”

  “So who would do something like this? Who would know how?”

  “Someone who knows about bike engineering.”

  “A mechanic.”

  Mari sighed. “God, I hate to think that. We’re in the business of making bikes safe, not turning them into lethal weapons. But maybe Dylan? He’d have the skill, and access to the bike.”

  “I thought of that. But he has no motive,” I objected. “You should have heard him raving about Juan Carlos. How about Gage Weston?”

  Mari looked horrified. “Are you kidding? Mr. Safety? Mr. Follows-All-the-Rules?”

  “Maybe he wanted to get back at team management for firing him,” I suggested.

  “He wouldn’t do it like that,” said Mari. “He understood why he got canned.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s not just an anti-carbon guy. He’s an outspoken anti-carbon guy. He’s on a bunch of cycling forums under the name CarbonHater. Preston needed to bring in Cadence as a sponsor, and Gage was too controversial. Bad for publicity. So he got the ax. But he’s not bitter. He felt ready to move on, he told me. Plus, it was his idea to speed up the container drop with the bikes, in honor of Juan Carlos. Gage totally admired the guy. There’s no way he was the saboteur.” She thought a moment, twisting a lock of hair around one finger. “What about a teammate?”

  “Dylan swore he didn’t have any enemies. Everyone respected him.”

  “A former teammate?” She gave me a long look. “Your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend anymore. And I don’t know.”

  “I heard they were rivals on the junior team.”

  “They were.” Did Jake hate Juan Carlos enough to hurt him? Or kill him? It was hard to believe I would have missed those signs. Though Jake had made threatening remarks to Juan Carlos before, and punched him in the stomach. An image flashed into my mind: that poison ivy rash on Jake’s ankle. It potentially linked him to the place where Juan Carlos’s spare bike had been hidden. Now I had to wonder if Jake could be both thief and saboteur: a bike thief for hire, working for Darwin, and a saboteur, out for revenge on his rival.

  While Mari put the camera back in the case, I turned this idea over and over in my mind. Jake had decent basic mechanic skills. He knew the team’s trailer and maybe had a key. He could have sabotaged Juan Carlos’s main bike on his way back from getting the water bottles, while Dylan had stepped away for a few minutes. Then he could have taken the spare bike and hidden it in the woods. A double crime: sabotage and theft.

  Jake had said he knew bikes got stolen all the time, and he knew so much about fences. Maybe Darwin had approached Jake before. They could have had a scheme to sell that spare bike. But then Juan Carlos could have found the spare bike there—thanks to my timely text message—and foiled Darwin’s plan to retrieve it. Juan Carlos himself could have brought his spare bike back to the trailer and never reported it missing. That would explain why he was late for the race—and why a spare bike with white handlebars was hanging in Dylan’s storeroom at this moment.

  But Jake, a saboteur? Even if all the dots connected and led to him for both crimes, the idea of Jake as a killer was too horrible to accept. Could I really have gone out with a thief and a murderer all these months, and not had the slightest idea about some sinister plan he was hatching?

  Strains of Latin music drifted from the bodega. People came in and out with shopping bags. One woman carried a box fairly bursting with ripe mangoes, and that weird thing Darwin had said in the woods came back to me in a rush.

  Mangoes are best at this time of year.

  Darwin. He’d be resurfacing soon. But now I had a solution to that problem. As soon as he texted me, I’d tell him to check out the Open Road School of Bicycling. He could be Dylan’s problem now. Besides, what did it really matter now if Darwin got his hands on that bike? Juan Carlos wouldn’t be riding it again.

  I had a more important thing to worry about now: finding the bike saboteur. If Juan Carlos died because of foul play—and not entirely from my poor decisions—the killer had to be found. And I really hoped that killer wasn’t Jake.

  Realizing Mari had been quiet for some time, I turned to look at her—and saw she was crying, quietly, her face buried in her hands. “Mari? What’s wrong?” I asked softly.

  She wiped her tears with one hand and sniffed. “It just hit me. I think it was seeing that bike. Juan Carlos was alive just three days ago, and now he’s . . . not. His family has no money. Preston Lane is arranging to ship the body back, and the thought of el Cóndor flying alone, dead, it’s just so—” Her voice broke, and tears sprang to my eyes, too. I’d gone to a lot of dark places in my imagination these past few days, but nowhere as dark as that.

  “God. I miss him so much,” said Mari. “He was my friend, you know?”

  “Were you two—going out?” I asked cautiously.

  “No. I don’t know.” She sighed. “It was complicated.”

  “Ah.” I fought off a surge of jealousy, remembering the touch of Juan Carlos’s hand on mine, the brush of his fingers on my neck as he clasped the necklace around it.

  “We had so much in common,” Mari went on. “I have family roots in Ecuador; he’s from there. We both love bikes—he raced; I fixed—I thought it was maybe meant to be. But he wasn’t in a good space for a relationship, he told me. I respected that, you know?”

  I swallowed hard. “He wanted to tell me something,” I said. “I saw him before the race. We were supposed to meet up afterward. But we never got to. Any idea what that could be about?”

  She gave me a strange look. “No idea. Sorry.”

  “He never mentioned me to you?”

  “No. Never.” Mari abruptly turned the key in the ignition, and the van started up with a
roar.

  “Okay.” I looked away as she backed out of the parking space, so she wouldn’t see my face twist into disappointment. I couldn’t tell Mari what I’d thought—or hoped—Juan Carlos might have said to me after the race. Some confession of long pent-up feelings. Was it so crazy to think that he might? He did have a way of showing up whenever Jake and I hit a rough patch, and saying just the right thing. I guess that had led me to think there might have been something between us, if we were both free to explore that.

  Like this one time, last fall. Jake and I were supposed to go to a Shady Pines school dance. With my friends. Jake had refused, last minute. He went into Old Man Mode—tired from training, saving energy for a time trial. He couldn’t waste his legs, he said.

  “Are you seventeen or seventy?” I’d asked. “Can’t you come to one thing of mine?”

  You come to so many races. I think you must be a very nice girlfriend, Juan Carlos said to me before a circuit race that weekend. Jake, he is a lucky guy.

  But if Juan Carlos had never mentioned me to his friend Mari, and if they were a borderline item, whatever he wanted to talk to me about that day probably wasn’t so personal.

  Plus, he’d asked if I had a laptop, I suddenly remembered. Why? There was nothing romantic about a computer.

  “I don’t know what he wanted to tell you,” Mari said as we drove through Jamaica Plain’s narrow streets. “But I know what he’d have wanted you to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come to Ecuador. With me.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious! Volunteer for Vuelta. Film it for your vlog. Maybe we can’t solve the mystery of his death, but we can help the cause he cared about so much. Help his dream live on.”

  I considered this. I’d always wanted to travel. With no KidVision taping season, and no boyfriend, I had time on my hands. And my mom had given me that whole speech about taking healthy risks. Maybe they could be persuaded to let me go. “How’d you sell your parents on this?” I asked Mari.