by Alina Adams
"Are you out of your mind?!" Not only had Erin apparently attacked Central Asia, but, judging by the fit Patty was throwing, she'd also lost the battle. "Did anyone see you? Was there press there? What were you thinking, Erin? Didn't I explain to you how carefully we had to play this? One word that sounds like sour grapes from you, and we lose all—all, do you understand?—of our sympathy factor. What in the world prompted you to—"
"She started it!" Erin defended.
Bex tried to think back to the practice tape she'd watched. Xenia arrived at the practice after both Patty and Erin had left it But, just because she wasn't on the ice first thing in the morning didn't mean she wasn't at the arena. Taking care of other matters.
Bex asked, "What did Xenia say to you?"
"All sorts of trash-talking stuff!" Seeing that there wouldn't be much sympathy from her mother, Erin turned her attention to Bex as a sort of go-between. "She called me names, said I was a cheater and a liar. She said I was a lousy skater, I had no technique, and that the only times I ever beat her it was because the judges were cheating then, not now. She said if anyone fixed this competition it was you, Mom, you and Jasper with all his money, and she said you've been buying me medals since I was a kid, that everyone couldn't stop talking about how Jordan should have won nationals this year, not me, and that—"
"The little bitch!" Patty seethed. "I swear to God, if she mentions a word of that rumor to the press, I will have her up on charges so fast—"
The sarcastic part of Bex's sleep-deprived brain was this close to suggesting Patty ask Sergei for the name of his libel lawyer. The part that needed some vital information to present to Gil the next morning or else he would yell at her more than usual, however, asked Erin, "Where was Xenia when you ran into her?"
"She was right outside the dressing room" With deliberate casualness, knowing that this was painfully important and thus desperate not to taint the evidence in any way, Bex asked, "You mean, where that pay phone is?"
She didn't add, The pay phone from which Silvana got her last phone call, most likely luring her to the refrigeration room and subsequent death?
"Yeah," Erin said. "They were all standing right around it, whispering."
"They?" Again Bex and Patty queried in unison.
Great, just what Bex always wanted, to end up on the same frequency as Patty Simpson.
"Who's they?" Bex managed to beat Patty to the question punch, reassuring herself that they hadn't been totally fused at the cerebral cortex just yet.
"Xenia," Erin counted out on her fingers. "And Sergei Alemazov, and also Jordan's coach, Igor Marchenko."
Bex needed a moment to absorb the information. Patty, apparently, didn't.
"I knew it!" Patty cried triumphantly. "I knew it! Oh, Erin, honey, this is wonderful. I wish you'd told me this before. Erin, Bex, this explains everything!"
CHAPTER NINE
Bex raised her hand, waving it in the air like a kid desperately trying to get her teacher's attention for a hall pass. "Hello? Patty? Over here? Focus. Good. Now. What the heck are you talking about? What explains everything?"
Because, all things being equal, Bex now felt more confused than ever. After everything she'd gone through to check out his alibi, including ducking the homicidal soccer ball, now Erin was claiming that Sergei Alemazov had been at the arena, after all? (To be fair, Xenia had told her the same thing, so now it was two against one.) And he'd been hanging out around the pay phone? With Xenia? And Marchenko? Was this some sort of Murder on the Orient Express ritual killing thing? A skating, satanic cult Bex had yet to be aware of?
Patty said, "Igor Marchenko is the key."
More confusion. Igor Marchenko? He was Jordan's coach. He wasn't involved in the Xenia/Erin debacle. Why would he want to murder Silvana?
"Igor Marchenko," Patty explained, "was the go-between for the Russians and Silvana."
"And you know this how, Patty?"
"It's obvious. Marchenko is a Russian. It doesn't matter that he coaches an American girl. He's still a Russian, deep down."
"He defected," Bex said. "He hates the Russians. He won't even go there when one of his kids is competing."
"It's an act," Patty dismissed. "A cover."
"You're telling me that young Igor Marchenko defecting thirty years ago, abandoning his family and his life and his career, was just the first step in a plot to deprive Erin of a gold medal? Wow, talk about a deep, deep sleeper agent."
Erin actually giggled. Patty didn't seem to get the joke. Instead, she pressed on, "If Erin saw him talking to Xenia and Sergei, obviously he's in cahoots with them."
"Or he could just have been asking the time." Bex was convinced Patty was barking up the wrong coach. The key here was Sergei, not Marchenko.
"Sergei couldn't afford to be seen plotting with Silvana," Patty insisted. "It would have been too obvious when Erin didn't win that something fishy was up. So they used a go-between. And who better than Marchenko? Marchenko got to Silvana!"
"And what was in it for him?"
"Jordan, of course."
"Jordan?"
"Her bronze medal here. She didn't deserve it. Jordan is a mediocre skater at best, a sloppy one at worst. Everyone talks about her long limbs like that's a bonus. Honestly, she looks like an orangutan, all dangling arms and legs. When
she turns in the air it's like she's moving in slow motion. Marchenko tries to hide her defects with that silly, flowing choreography. But he knows he's got nothing there to really work with."
"So ... Marchenko got Silvana to give Jordan a bronze medal in exchange for Xenia getting first?"
"Not exactly. Jordan being third was Marchenko's reward for being the go-between. The initial deal was still between Sergei and Silvana."
"Okay. So Sergei told Silvana to put Xenia first, and she just... did? Why? I mean, what would motivate her to do that? What did Sergei give her in return?"
Patty guessed, "Money?"
Bex doubted it. A man who smuggled food out of the competitors' dining room and packed it in plastic bags for maximum freshness was not someone rolling in cash advances.
"Or maybe it was a two-part trade. Like, maybe Silvana put Xenia first in exchange for a Russian judge putting ... putting ... oh, I know! The Italian dance team! They were fifteenth last year and fifth this year! No one jumps that high in ice dancing. It just isn't done. Obviously, that's where the fix was. God, I'm so stupid. I should have seen it sooner."
Bex said, "The Italian dance team was fifteenth last year because the girl was skating on a sprained ankle. They fell in the original and the free dance. This year, she's fully recovered, and they didn't fall. They skated great. I think they have a new coach, too."
"And they had a judge in their pocket."
Okay. This conversation had reached its—if not logical, then at least annoying—conclusion. Bex'd had enough, and she doubted Patty could be swerved off her course at this late point. Besides, Bex'd gotten what she'd come for. Patty
and Erin's on-the-record explanations about why they'd both left the practice arena. Plus Erin's fascinating tidbit about Xenia, Sergei, Marchenko, and the phone. A tidbit Bex found particularly interesting in light of the fact that Erin had no way of knowing about the phone's significance. And thus no reason to lie about it. Since she didn't know that proximity to the phone could be considered incriminating, she had no reason to deliberately point that finger in the Russians' direction.
Unless, of course, Erin was the killer.
And she knew exactly what that phone had been used for.
Now that she was one herself, Bex decided that amateur detectives in books had an unfair advantage over the real-life variety. In real life, the last line uttered or written before a paragraph break was always fraught with significance. Even if the amateur sleuth didn't know it at the time, later, as the facts began to accumulate, he or she could always look back and exclaim, "Aha! The last thing the suspect said before the scene change was, 'Of course, I never sa
w the leprechaun.' But, now that I have found this swatch of green cloth, the truth has become oh, so clear."
Bex couldn't do that. Unlike in books, her conversations, by necessity, had beginnings, middles, and terribly mundane ends. The last thing Erin said to Bex before she left the Simpson hotel room, was, "Bye. See you around." The last thing Patty said was, "Good-bye, Bex. We'll let Gil know when Erin is available for her on-air interview."
The latter was a deliberate attempt to remind Bex of just where she fell on the 24/7 food chain and what a great favor the Simpsons had done by deigning to speak to lowly, little her; but it was hardly the stuff puzzle-solving revelations were made of.
Bex returned to her room and fell into bed, still dressed, the makeup she'd put on that morning forming little clumps in the corners of her eyes, and desperately hoping for one of those movie-style revelatory dreams where everything meant something and, hopefully, a backward-speaking, dancing midget handed her a previously overlooked clue.
Before turning out the light, Bex looked at the bedside digital clock and noted that she had five hours of sleep available before needing to wake up at six a.m. for Gil's production meeting. She closed her eyes and begged for a coma.
Fifteen minutes later, just as Bex was rolling over to find a comfortable curl-up spot, her phone rang.
"This is your wake-up call, Miss Levy."
She peeled open her eyes and peered at the clock again. In the past fifteen minutes, someone had set it forward five hours.
Damn, but she hated when that happened.
Bex got up and prepared to face her day.
And, if the definition of facing her day could be semantically expanded to include sitting with eyes open/brain in sleeper mode for the first half-hour of Gil's seven a.m. production meeting, then, for a while there, Bex was doing a wonderful job of just that. Honestly, her mental state hardly mattered for that first half-hour. The problem with Gil's meetings (well, there were many problems, this just happened to be the currently relevant one) was that he insisted on every single staff member attending. Producers, directors, researchers, technicians, talent, production assistants, all were required to find a seat and sit in it until they were dutifully dismissed. Gil liked to say these meetings were like a football huddle prior to play. It made them all feel like a cohesive team willing to go the distance for each other. In reality, the only thing it made them feel was always tired and periodically bored. Because, on a production this big, there were a million different jobs that needed to be done by various experts. The cameramen and the director had to block out their shots for every routine. The feature producers needed to screen their pieces so that the line producer could plug those times into his rundown. The talent and researchers had to come up with a story line for the broadcast and hammer out their copy. The audio men needed to test their mikes. The executive producer needed to tell the production assistants which tapes from days past he wanted in the truck with him, and how to organize and code them.
But (and this was a big, big but), the talent didn't need to hear about the director's camera positions, the audio guys didn't need to know the story line, the production assistants had no input or interest in the rundown, and the cameramen, to a man, could care less about which features would be rolled in when. Alas, thanks to Gil and his delusions of football, they were all obligated to sit there and listen.
Right now, for instance, it was the technical people's turn to talk. That meant that Bex could safely tune out, stare at the wall, and pretend there were little toothpicks keeping her heavy eyelids upright. Across the conference table, Francis and Diana were amusing themselves by playing a game of tic-tac-toe on the hotel notepad. Each game took about thirty seconds, and it was easy to see who won what round based on which Howarth angrily ripped the page off its pad and crumpled it into a pointy ball. Plus, the winner inevitably stuck his tongue out at the loser. That was a good clue, too.
Finally, the technical portion of the meeting was over, and Gil turned his attention to the narrative of his show. On the one hand, Bex was happy, because finally here was something that concerned her. On the other hand, Bex was sad, because it meant she would finally have to listen, and that usually meant waking up. (On the third hand, she received another indicator of just how exhausted she was by the fact that, when it came to describing her emotions, the best Bex came up with was happy and sad. If they'd been dead, her college professors, especially those who once chastised Bex's excessive use of pretentious words like supercilious and sanctimonious rather than simply saying, pain in the ass, would be spinning in their graves.)
Gil beckoned a PA and handed him a stack of papers to pass out to everyone around the table. The sheets were copies of his two-page rundown, breaking the show down into timed segments, i.e., thirty seconds for the graphic opening titles, then a minute and a half for Francis and Diana's on-camera welcome to the folks at home, followed by a replay of Erin's long program from the previous night (five minutes, with marks and reactions), then back to Francis and Diana for another minute on the controversy, then go to the first exhibition, then ...
Gil went on and on, reading them the rundown as if no one in the room had ever seen one before. He pointed out where they'd have their interview with Erin, where they'd stop to marvel about the scenic beauty of downtown San Francisco, and, finally...
"Right here, this is where we'll do our feature on the Silvana Potenza murder. Bex." Gil looked right at her. An IV of Brazilian coffee directly into her veins couldn't have woken Bex up any faster. "I haven't seen your write-up, yet. How's that coming?"
"Uhm..."
"Tick-tock, Bex. Time's running out. I'm not planning to cut to a black hole, here. When I say, 'Roll the Potenza feature,' there better be a Potenza feature to roll. We need our story. I already promised the network we'd have one. You doing the capice thing, here?"
"Yes, Gil," Bex said, ducking her head so she didn't have to see the expectant way everyone around the table was watching her. "I am one with the capice thing."
In fact, Bex was capiceing all over the place. She knew what she needed to do. She knew why she needed to do it. She even knew where and by when. It was that pesky how (that odd H among the five Ws), that was slowing what otherwise would have been warp-time progress.
She had to find out where Silvana's E-mail was printed, and her time for kidding around was running out. To that end, Bex left the production meeting and headed straight for the ISU room to check out their stationery.
She checked out their stationery. Like Cinderella's slipper on her stepsisters' feet (and OJ's bloody glove), it didn't fit.
Okay.
Now what?
Bex looked up from her failure. Through the doorway of the ISU room, she saw Igor Marchenko walking toward the front door.
Good enough.
"Igor!" Bex ran out of the ISU room calling the coach's name and waving her arms like a madwoman to get his attention. She caught him just as he got to the revolving glass hotel door and practically threw herself between it and him.
Igor, a man who presumably had seen quite a lot in his life, what with being a political refugee and all, did not look particularly disturbed by this madwoman/researcher/stalker person. Bex took this as practically an engraved invitation to debrief him.
"Hello!" She said.
"Hello." His Russian accent wasn't as noticeable as Xenia's, but there was no hiding his roots. And, Bex couldn't help wondering: Possible affiliation?
"I need to ask you a few questions. For research. Research questions."
"Yes?" Igor crossed his arms and surveyed Bex over both pointed elbows. Russian may have been his mother tongue but, at the moment, the only language radiating from the man was of the nonverbal, body variety. And it was very clearly saying, "Get on with it, young lady, and this had better be worth my while, or else I'm running over you like Soviet tanks over Prague."
She felt like he'd started a stopwatch. Unfortunately, Bex didn't know how much time she had before w
hat passed for this man's good humor melted like an ice chip.
"Okay," Bex fired the start gun in her mind and prepared herself for a sweaty, verbal sprint. "Okay, right. Igor. I— yesterday, I interviewed Patty Simpson and Erin. About the whole Xenia winning the gold medal business. I—" Bex felt herself interrupting herself to digress, but she also couldn't help it. "By the way, what did you think of the results?"
Igor shrugged. "Skaters skate, judges judge. If we accept the results when we win, we must to accept them when we lose."
"So you think Xenia deserved to win?"
"Xenia did win."
Right. Like that was a fact Bex would ever be allowed to forget. She changed the subject. "What about Jordan? Were you happy with her results?"
"A bronze medal is very good start."
"Do you think she should have been higher? Like maybe ahead of Erin?" Bex really pressed now, figuring it might be her last chance to beat the clock. "I heard there were some people who thought Jordan should have beaten Erin at nationals."
Igor smiled. It seemed to both be covering his suppressed anger and also commenting ironically on the fact that Igor knew that Bex knew that he knew that he was suppressing. "Our sport, it is notoriously subjective. There are always different opinions. Jordan and Erin skate very, very differently. Different people like different skating."
Bex knew that Russians didn't have middle names. However, if Igor ever decided to go all-American and add one, Bex had the perfect moniker: cool. This guy was cool. Which was delightful for him, not so delightful for Bex. She'd never get anything useful out of Igor while he remained so unruffled and infuriatingly in control. Her only chance was to stab in the dark and try to ruffle him. Fast. He'd already taken one imperceptible step toward the glass doors. If he decided to beat it, Bex could hardly throw herself around his ankles.
And so she went ahead and stabbed. She told him, "Patty Simpson thinks you were the go-between for Xenia Trubin, Sergei Alemazov, and Silvana Potenza. She says Silvana arranged for Jordan to win the bronze here in exchange for your help in getting Xenia the gold."
