by Alina Adams
Bex practically leapt in the air, except she was tired and her feet hurt and, as mentioned earlier, she really didn't enjoy the act of falling.
Instead, she simply asked herself an obvious, follow-up question: Why would someone deliberately chop off the top or bottom of a page they'd printed on?
Why, to remove all traces of a corporate logo, of course.
Bex grinned. A break! Finally, an actual break! All Bex had to do, Prince Charming and his Cinderella slipper style, was figure out which logo could have fit atop the E-mail copy, and she would be that much closer to figuring out where the original was printed.
And when.
And maybe even who sent it.
And why.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bex tried the obvious, first.
She was sprawled on the bed in her hotel room, and so she got up, shuffled over to the desk with its leather-bound folder touting the wonders of San Francisco, and laid her copy of the E-mail against the hotel stationery. Yes, it seemed way, way too easy. But, if it turned out that after turning San Francisco upside down without the benefit of an earthquake to search for a holy grail of papyrus, the offending piece was in the hotel notebook and Bex hadn't bothered to check because it was too obvious, she would feel very, very stupid.
And so she checked. And, of course, it was too easy. The hotel crest was much larger than the space allocated at the top of the E-mail. If the guilty party had tried printing the E-mail on one of those sheets and attempted to avoid the logo, the message wouldn't have fit on a single sheet.
Oh, well. She tried.
Bex looked at the clock. It wasn't even ten yet, but she felt utterly dead. Even though she knew Gil would be on the phone bright and early tomorrow morning, demanding to know what Bex had unearthed for his precious exhibition show on Sunday, Bex, nevertheless, decided to give herself permission to hit the sack and do a Scarlett O'Hara imitation. "I'll think about it tomorrow." She figured the guilty stationery wasn't going anywhere, whereas she was about to do a nosedive into the frequently vacuumed carpet.
It was time for Bex to take a break from sleuthing and maybe—how's this for a wacky thought?—maybe even eat something.
She reached for the phone, intending to call room service.
It rang while her hand was resting on the receiver. Wow, this was a good hotel. Were they also calling to tell her what she wanted to order?
"Hello," she picked up the phone, cringing in anticipation of hearing Gil on the other end.
"Bex?"
Gil was not a woman. Ergo, this caller was not Gil. After the kind of day she'd had, that deduction was really stretching the depths of Bex's cognitive powers.
"This is Bex."
"Bex, this is Patty Simpson. You said you wanted to interview Erin. Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day for us, and Sunday, well, Sunday is impossible. So, if you could come over right now and get what you need, that would be great."
Bex covered her mouth with one hand and yawned. She rubbed her eyes and looked longingly at the room service menu.
She said, "I'll be right over."
Unlike every generic hotel room she'd ever seen, Erin and Patty Simpson's temporary home away from home looked like they'd brought in a personal decorator to cozy up the place. It wasn't just the travel suitcase standing on its side in the corner, with all of Erin's skating dresses hanging from individual hangers, organized from darkest color to lightest. It wasn't just the teak dresser covered with a ruffled, pink drop cloth to hold their face powder, lipsticks, eye shadows, curling irons, hair ribbons, and body glitter. It wasn't even the portable cooler stocked with Erin necessities like fortified sports drinks, fortified vitamins, and fortified protein bars. What really went above and beyond the call of duty for personalizing a hotel room were all the pictures. They were everywhere. Photos of Erin as a young smiling skater stuck along the mirror, photos of Patty and baby Erin in frames on the nightstands, two scrapbooks chockfull of newspaper clippings on the table, and a handful of Polaroids from the medal ceremony the night before.
This wasn't narcissism as a hobby. This was narcissism as a lifestyle choice.
Not—Bex, the politically correct and terribly nice person, reminded herself—that there was anything wrong with that.
Erin and Patty greeted her when she came to their door. Erin wore blue jeans that, even though obviously petite in size, still hung loosely about her waist, and a green, belly-baring shirt with the words Erin Excitement! glue-gunned in rhinestones across the chest. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. Finally freed from its French braid and ponytail, her scalp actually seemed to be smiling with relief. Patty, for her part, was still in her coaching outfit. She'd taken off her blazer, but she was still wearing a below-the-knee skirt and white turtleneck.
"Come in, Bex," Patty said and subtly directed her to one of two chairs in the room, the one next to the desk by the bay window. The one boxed into a corner. Patty took the other chair, facing Bex. It was as obvious a power play as Bex had ever been a part of. Thanks to Gil, she knew exactly what it meant when you were shoved into a comer. Erin, though, flopped down on the bed, legs bent at the knees and raised in the air, chin propped up on two fists.
Bex said, "Actually, Patty, Erin was the one I'm really interested in interviewing, so maybe you two could switch seats and—"
quot;Erin doesn't give interviews without me."
"How come?" Bex asked innocently, as if Patty's unbelievably fanatical, loony control over Erin was news to her. As if a few weeks ago, at the national championships, Bex hadn't been in the room when Patty threw a fit about Erin being interviewed for the broadcast in front of a pair of lit candles. They'd been put there to cast a complimentary light on all the skaters. Only Erin Simpson's mother had insisted on their being removed, lest it look like Erin was into—hand to God, no kidding—devil worship.
"Because," Patty said sweetly, "Erin and I are a team. People don't realize it when they watch skating and only see a single person or a pair on the ice at a time, but figure skating is very much a team sport. No one can succeed in skating alone. I know, in my case, it was a family effort. My father worked two jobs to pay for my skating, and my mother woke up every morning at five a.m. to drive me to the rink. She sewed all my costumes and she did my hair and makeup and she traveled with me to competitions, taking care of the hotel and the luggage and my meals so I didn't have to worry and could focus exclusively on my skating. My brothers and sisters, they pitched in, too, doing my chores and helping me with schoolwork. Every medal that I won, it didn't belong just to me, it belonged to the whole team. And it's the same way with Erin. You talk to her, you talk to me. That's just how things are."
Patty delivered her last few words in a tone even sweeter than she'd started. It were as if the air had suddenly turned into honey and was determinedly clogging Bex's pores and nostrils. But there was no mistaking the threat that came with the sugar.
Bex, as she was intended to, got the message. She decided it wasn't worth fighting about. For now.
Bex opened her notebook and, unlike with Rupert Newman, actually proceeded to take notes, so she could study them later. "Okay, then, let's just start: Erin, do you have a statement to make about Silvana Potenza's death?"
"It's a great tragedy," Erin recited by rote. "Though I know there have been questions about her objectivity as a judge, she was still a member of our extended skating family, and no one wants to see anything bad happen to family."
Right.... Now, do you have anything to say you haven't memorized like a trained monkey? Bex most certainly did not ask. Instead, she kept her face neutral and followed up with, "You were at the arena the morning she died. Did you see or hear anything suspicious?"
It was a question she hadn't been prepped for, and Erin scrunched up her face, looking from Bex to her mom, and back again. "I—what do you mean? What was there to see?"
"I don't know," Bex admitted. "But, we are doing a special on her death and, quite frankly, e
veryone keeps coming back to the same question: What in the world do you think Silvana was doing in the refrigeration area?"
"What gives you the idea that Erin would know anything about that?" Patty demanded, leaning closer to Bex.
"I was just asking, Patty." Bex had to shift in her chair and peer around Patty's shoulder to continue looking at Erin. "Any thoughts, Erin?"
The teen shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know."
It was amazing how much less articulate she got when the answers hadn't been scripted in advance. Bex wondered what the posters on her "Erin Excitement!" message boards, the ones who waxed poetic about how well-spoken Erin always was, thus indicating her keen intelligence, would think about this exchange.
"Did Silvana come in to watch the exhibition practice?" Bex asked. Mark's tape had only focused on the ice, so even though she heard the periodic, scattered applause, Bex had no idea who'd actually been in the audience.
"Maybe," Erin said. “I didn't see her, but she usually comes."
"When Erin is on the ice," Patty explained, "I try to encourage her to focus and not be distracted by the other people on the ice with her or in the stands. After all, you can't control what other people do, you can only control what you do, and that's, ultimately—"
"What you get marked on," Bex finished. "Yes, Patty, I know, I read the press kit." She wasn't usually so reckless with her subjects, but she was exhausted and hungry, and she'd spent seven months already watching "The Patty and Erin Road Show." Bex was in no mood for reruns, especially when the first run hadn't exactly sparkled.
Patty's spine stiffened, and she looked miffed. Did she really think that every time she dragged out that old chestnut, it somehow became brand-new again?
Bex told Patty, "I watched the tape of the practice session. About twenty minutes into it, you left. Where'd you go?"
Patty's head cocked to the side like that of an anthropomorphic, lovable robot processing something uncomputable. She was obviously used to answering questions meant for Erin, but one aimed directly at her seemed to set off a short circuit.
"It was very cold at the arena that morning. I don't think they'd really started running the heat yet, and, well, it's usually close to impossible to warm an open area that large, anyway….It was very cold, and poor Erin's nose was running, which is the last thing we need, so I went to get a box of tissues from her bag in the dressing room."
Patty smiled, obviously pleased with her answer. She even looked Bex straight in the eye to demonstrate how open and honest and forthright she was being.
Except that...
"The dressing rooms are around the corner from the arena entrance. You were gone for almost a half hour. It takes a half hour to walk a few feet and back?"
"The tissues weren't in Erin's bag," Patty shrugged. "I had to come back to the hotel and get another box from our stash." Patty pointed to a stack of three boxes sitting on the dresser next to the overgrowth of cosmetics.
And it came to pass, from this day forward, Bex mused, the creation of what shall be known as the Great Tissue Alibi. It sounded as thin as ... well... Bex refused to make a pun so obvious, but it was also pretty irrefutable. Bex had watched the tape. She'd seen Patty come back and hand the tissue to her daughter's cold-dripping nose. She wasn't lying about that.
So now Patty and Sergei were closer to being nudged off the suspect list, each with their not exactly off the hook but close enough alibis. On the other hand... Bex turned her attention to Erin who, apparently bored by her mother's
reminiscences of practice sessions past, had turned her attention to the task of chewing her cuticles.
Even though Patty was sitting with her back to Erin, she'd somehow, mid-conversation, sensed that her daughter was engaged in aesthetically inappropriate behavior. Without turning around or pausing, she reached behind her and managed to smack Erin's hand out of her mouth without breaking stride.
"Those fingers are going on camera tomorrow, remember, honey?"
Erin guiltily pressed the aforementioned fingers into the bedspread, one palm on top of the other. "I remember. I'll just put on nail polish."
"We don't have the exact pink shade with us that matches the dress you wanted to wear for the exhibition. You know how bad two shades of the same color look next to each other."
"I could wear a different dress. I could wear the yellow."
"No, Erin, you can't."
"Why not?"
"Lian has a yellow exhibition dress. We can’t risk her wearing it, too."
Well, this was certainly fascinating, Bex thought. In the next few minutes, she'd better either accuse someone of murder or risk falling asleep where she sat. It was one thing for a sleuth to tumble over unconscious when smacked by a gun barrel against the back of the skull. It was quite another to pass out because it was night-night time.
So, accusin' they would go, before the sandman submitted his past-due notice.
Bex asked Erin, "What about you? Why did you leave the practice?"
From the looks on both Erin's and Patty's faces, Bex could guess that either this bit of news was quite a surprise for Mama Simpson, or that both were the best set of mother-daughter actresses since Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson (although their blonde coloring suggested that Patty and Erin might be more likely to appear at the movies in the form of Blythe Danner and Gwenyth Paltrow).
As soon as the words were out of Bex's mouth, the expression on Erin's face was silently screaming, Ixnay on the Eavinglay, while the one on her mother's was more of the What the hell? school.
Patty whipped around, facing Erin, her back to Bex.
"You left the practice session?" Her tone seemed more appropriate to asking. You set the house on fire? or at least You've invaded Central Asia? Again?
"Yes." Now that she knew there was no way to wriggle out of it, Erin appeared to have decided that the best defense was a blasé offense. Maybe if she pretended it was no big deal, her mother might start respirating at a regular rate, again. Either that, or Erin, the perfect child, was just being a typical bratty teen who knew the best way to get her mother's blood pressure up was to set her own reaction a few notches below snotty indifference.
If Bex were writing a graduate thesis on the varieties of family dynamics (and after some of the clans she'd met through skating, a project like that would practically write itself), she might have found this mother-daughter exchange absolutely fascinating. But Bex was looking to fish out a murderer here, and, in that case, she was a lot more interested in how the two women reacted to her questions than they did to their own.
Bex jumped in to ask, "So, anyway, Erin, why did you leave?"
"I'd like to hear the answer to that myself." Patty half-turned to tap her finger against Bex's notebook, indicating that she should write the next part down. "You have to understand, Bex, Erin never, ever leaves a practice. I find that once you plant in a skater's head the notion that they can just get off the ice any time they're tired or things aren't going well, it burrows into their subconscious, and it starts to affect their performances. Suddenly, if they take a fall in the middle of a competition and their brain is telling them that it's okay, they can get off, take a break and try again later, they lose all of their fighting spirit. They just give up. The next time you're watching a competition, check out the skaters that just deflate after a fall, the ones who stop trying and kind of skate through the rest of the event like a zombie. Odds are that their coaches allow them to get off the ice. I'd never do that to Erin. I'd never handicap her in such a way."
"Uh-huh ..." Bex said, while visions of Erin shackled to the ice with a cast-iron chain while bleeding profusely from a gushing Uzi wound to the chest, danced through her head. "That's a very interesting philosophy, Patty. I'll suggest to Gil that we do a segment on it next season. But, in any case, Erin—three strikes and I start making up my own answers—why did you get off the ice this morning?"
Erin ducked her head, cheeks pinking to match the nail polish
she apparently did not have. "I was looking for my mom."
"Why?" Bex and Patty asked in unison.
"Because," she looked close to tears. Genuine emotion or an Oscar moment? "My nose was running, okay? My nose was running and I didn't have any damn tissues and my music was about to be played and the last thing I wanted was to go into a scratch spin and have snot flying everyplace. That happened at Skate Canada practice when you wouldn't let me get off the ice, remember, Mom? It was disgusting. And Jordan Ares never let me forget it. After I finished the program, she skated up, and she was all, "Didn't know I should bring my umbrella to practice, ha ha." Lian Reilly practically peed in her pants, she laughed so hard. Her dumb mother did, too. And I looked over, and the judges, they were pretending they didn't hear her, but I could see they wanted to laugh. I was so embarrassed I wanted to die!"
"So you went to the dressing room to look for your mom and the tissues?"
"Yeah. Except she wasn't there."
Patty said, "I must have already gone back to the hotel for them."
"Whatever." Erin shrugged. "I mean, I figured that, but I didn't want to go through the hassle of taking off my skates and dragging them around with me while I went looking for you, so I just got a paper towel from the bathroom and blew my nose and got back on the ice."
Bex said, "The bathroom is right next door to the dressing room. You were gone from the arena almost as long as your mom, Erin. What took you so long to come back?"
"I—" Erin took a deep breath. "I sort of, I kind of... I had a fight."
"A fight!" Patty's tone was back to attacking Central Asia. "What in the world are you talking about? A fight? With whom?"
Erin bit her hp. "With Xenia Trubin—"
