by Alina Adams
When she found them in their room, both were wearing robes, his in dark blue, hers in dark green. Diana wore no makeup, and her hair was pulled off her cold-cream-gleaming face with a terrycloth headband. Francis hadn't shaved. Neither the hair on his chin nor the tufts that periodically sprouted from his ears and were diligently clipped back on show days had been tended to. Suddenly, the two most formidable people Bex had ever met looked terribly old.
Bex, who had been lobbing accusations back and forth like a week's worth of “People's Court” episodes, couldn't think of what to say. Or at least how to begin.
And so, she just showed Francis and Diana the E-mail.
And waited to see their reactions.
Which she got. As soon as both finished fumbling around and found their glasses.
Still, Francis needed to hold the sheet at arm's length to read it properly, while Diana squinted and pressed her face closer to the paper. Once they'd both gotten the gist of it, though, they exchanged glances.
Nervous glances, as far as Bex could read.
Diana straightened up, and Francis lowered his arm.
"Where did you get this E-mail, Bex?" Diana asked.
"It's a copy. The original was in Silvana Potenza's purse."
"Why, this is extraordinary!" Francis exclaimed. "What a find! This proves everything. The fix was in. Silvana was ordered to place Xenia first. Erin Simpson is the true winner. Bex, do you know what you've done?"
"Not exactly," Bex said, realizing she'd inadvertently answered two questions with one uncertainly. "There's a problem. This E-mail was printed out after the competition ended."
"Oh, no. No, Bex, you're wrong. Look at the time and date, right up here." Francis indicated the top of the E-mail. "It says the morning before. Sergei told Silvana how to vote the morning before."
"That just shows when the E-mail was written, not when it was read. There's a fancy computer way of finding out when something was opened, but we don't have access to that. Besides, to open an E-mail, Silvana needed access to a computer, and she didn't travel with a laptop or use the hotel's media center. I couldn't find any evidence of her ever reading any E-mail while she was here. So I had to go with the next best thing and try to figure out where and when she'd printed it. And I did. It was printed in the 24/7 production truck. The evening after the competition. By you, Francis."
After winning their second Olympic gold medal, Francis and Diana played starring roles in a big-budget Hollywood movie about a lovely Ice Capades star and the lowly chorus boy who loves her. The movie tanked, and both Howarths got nearly unanimous negative reviews.
Bex could finally see why.
They sucked at this acting thing.
Upon digesting Bex's accusation, both opened their eyes very wide and, in near unison, pressed their hands to their chests. The better to express deep surprise.
"What?"
"No!"
"We didn't—"
"How could we—"
"What makes you think—"
"I barely know how to operate the infernal machine!"
Bex said, "I know you did it. I have proof. Proof that you both are somehow connected to her death."
Francis blurted out, "Well, we certainly didn't mean to get her killed!"
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Diana whipped her head around, and Bex braced herself for a harangue extraordinaire. But before Diana even finished the gesture, she suddenly looked as tired as Bex felt. She sighed and said, "He's telling the truth. We had no idea how horribly this all would end."
Was this a confession? Bex wished she had more experience with these things. All she knew at the moment, though, was that this might have been a confession, but it was far from an explanation. Ergo, Bex was still most confused.
She said, "But what I don't understand is, why did Silvana ask you to print her the E-mail in the first place? Did she need it for evidence? Was she going to turn Sergei in to the ISU?"
"No. Because Sergei didn't write that E-mail," Francis said.
"He didn't?"
"No. In fact, it's not even an E-mail."
Oh, good, now Bex was completely lost. If it turned out the E-mail wasn't even an E-mail, then who knew what else she'd misinterpreted along the way?
"What is it then?"
"It's a... it's a ... What's the word?" Francis struggled.
"A dummy," Diana put in. For the first time since meeting them, Bex actually believed Diana was trying to help her husband out, instead of cleverly hurling an invective at him. "It's a phony. It was made to look like an E-mail, but it's not really one. It's painted, like a forgery. We didn't get it off the Internet. It was on a disc. We just put it in and printed."
"Okay," Bex said, "Here comes a dose of the obvious: Why?"
"Because. It would help prove Erin was the rightful winner."
"Was she?"
They shrugged in near unison.
"It was very close," Francis said.
"It could have gone either way," Diana agreed.
"That's not what you said on the air."
Diana said, "Erin Simpson is a lovely skater."
Francis said, "And a marvelous ambassador for our sport. Every time she appears on TV, the enrollment at local rinks just swells."
"Great. She's a Madison Avenue dream. May her endorsements be plentiful. But, was she cheated out of a gold medal here or what?"
Diana said, "She's been working so hard for so long. Patty, too."
Francis said, "This was supposed to be her year."
"Okay," Bex said. "Either start making sense, or I'm leaving here and going straight to the police. You can explain all this to them. Good-bye and good luck."
"Wait, Bex," Diana was using the same tone she usually wheedled to send her scurrying for Francis's lost shirt. Only this time, there was a trace of fear to it. "What we did, it may have been wrong, but it wasn't criminal. There's no reason to get the police involved."
"How about a corpse? Is that a good reason to get the police involved? Silvana is still dead, whether you meant for it to happen or not."
"We didn't even know Silvana would be involved. It was a random draw; no one knew how she would vote."
"You're over here," Bex raised her left arm. Then, she raised her right arm, and held them as far apart as possible. "And making sense is over here. Try harder, folks."
Diana said, "Both Francis and I thought Erin would be a lovely addition to our tour next fall. We've been needing some new blood for a long time. Some of the people currently in the cast, well, they won't be seeing thirty again. It's hard to draw a younger audience with skaters who won before most of them were born. We needed someone younger, more energetic, a bigger name with the younger generation. Erin Simpson is the brightest star to come along in a while."
"And she's been skating so well this season," Francis flipped on his announcer voice, as if that was supposed to impress Bex. "We felt certain the world title would finally be hers this year. Especially with the event being held in the States."
"We wanted very much for her to win."
"We needed her to win. It would make her a much bigger draw."
"So when she didn't—" Bex felt like a kid learning to ride her bike. It was time for dad to let go of the backseat. She was ready to soar on her own—"You two decided to stir up a little controversy, get her name in the papers. After all, getting cheated out of a medal will get you even more press than simply winning one. Am I right?"
"You," Francis sighed, "are right."
"So you made up the whole thing? About the results being wrong, I mean?"
"Well, no. Like I said, it really could have gone either way. If only Silvana—"
"So you just picked Silvana at random. You had no more evidence that she'd cheated than you had on anyone else."
"She was the only Western judge to vote for Xenia over Erin. That was ... odd."
"But certainly defensible."
"If you like that Russian arm flailing sort o
f thing," Diana conceded, "then yes."
"So you dragged this poor woman's name through the mud, not to mention Xenia and Sergei's and the integrity of the entire sport, all in the name of building up Erin Simpson's name recognition and putting a few more butts in the seats the next time your tour comes to town?"
"You must admit, Bex," Diana rationalized, "this has been a media bonanza not just for us, but for the sport as a whole. Ratings have never been higher: 24/7 must be thrilled with the numbers they've gotten for this championship."
"And that's good for everyone," Francis pointed out. "Even you, Bex. The more skating shows 24/7 chooses to put on, the more work for you. It's a win-win."
"Except that Silvana is dead."
"We had nothing to do with that!" they said in unison.
"You printed that E-mail making her and Sergei look guilty. Were you going to release it to the press? Offer it as proof? Or did you plan all along for it to be found on her body?"
"Bex!" Finally, Diana's shock looked real. "Do you honestly think we killed her?"
"Why not? Isn't that the next step? For the good of the sport, I mean? After all, Silvana alive could always blow your whole game by testifying that she never cheated and Xenia was the rightful winner, no question. How big of a damper would that burst of honesty have put on Erin and your precious tour? Enough people might have believed it eventually, and then what? All that hard work of yours down the drain. No, with Silvana dead, it would be much easier to keep up the fiction. Especially when this E-mail was found on her body!"
"Would you please stop saying that?" Diana begged. "Body, body, body ... It's so unseemly. And you're making it sound like we personally created the E-mail to frame her."
"You mean you didn't?"
"Of course not. Francis types with two fingers and I'm still working on mastering the fax machine we have at home. I'm ages away from getting on the World Wide Web and all its sundry oddities. For goodness' sake, Bex, we only printed out the blasted thing, we certainly didn't create it. It wasn't even our idea."
"So who's idea was it? Who created and gave you the E- mail to print out?"
"It was that fellow, the one who follows Erin and Patty around like a love-struck manservant. Jasper Clarke, is that his name?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
So, I Had Lunch With a Judge Killer.
As a memoir title, it had a very pithy ring. As something that actually happened to her, the memory made Bex want to vomit up said lunch and everything she'd ingested since then.
She double-checked with Francis. "Jasper Clarke asked you to print out the original of this E-mail?"
"He came up to us after the competition on Thursday night and handed us the disc. We printed it out in the production trailer and gave it back to him. That was the last we saw of it. I don't know how it ended up in Silvana's purse."
"Did you have this planned all along? I mean, from before the competition started?"
"Of course not!"
"How could we?"
"We didn't know going in it would come to this. Erin had beaten Xenia soundly all year long. We were expecting more of the same."
"How were we to know the Russian girl would finally put it all together?"
"We couldn't have planned something like this."
"We just took advantage of the opportunity handed us."
"Apparently," Bex said, "you weren't the only ones. Jasper had to have worked pretty fast to dummy up the E-mail like that. When he first gave it to you, did you know what you were printing out? Well, even if you didn't in the beginning, you must have, when you saw it."
At least the Howarths were decent enough to look sheepish. Diana said, "We knew. We thought... we thought it could only help us. Well, help Erin, and, along the way, us. I thought he would leak it to the press and even if no one could prove anything, it would still guarantee us a few more days of press. By then, hopefully, we'd have Erin signed for the tour."
"Has she, by the way?" Bex asked. "Has Erin signed? I know you made her an offer."
Had Jasper told her that? Bex wasn't sure. The only thing she was sure of was that now she really couldn't be sure of anything he'd told her.
"Not yet," Francis said. "Patty is ready, but Erin seems to be dragging her feet. She says she wants to stay eligible. A horrible idea in my opinion. Strike while the iron is hot that's my motto. She'll never be able to top this. If she does win a world championship finally, everyone will just shrug and say, well, she deserved to win last year. And, if she doesn't people will begin to believe she never deserved to this year, either."
"She didn't win this year, Francis. Remember? She didn't win, and apparently she didn't even deserve to."
"It was very close."
"It could have gone either way."
Bex would have rolled her eyes, but she figured one more time and they'd freeze that way. Instead, she pointed out, "You do realize that you're responsible for all of this."
"Us?"
"I told you, Bex, we had nothing to do with Silvana's death."
"You put the whole thing into motion! If you hadn't started the uproar over Erin's scores, Jasper would never have gotten the idea to do what he did. Or, even if he had the idea, he certainly wouldn't have had the opportunity. He had you two print out that E-mail so that he could kill Silvana and plant it on her body."
"We didn't know."
"We really didn't."
"Bex," Diana asked with genuine trepidation, "what are you going to do now?"
What she wanted to do was confront Jasper immediately.
What she did not want to do was end up on the tail end of a sentence that began, "Jasper Clarke, cold-blooded killer of international figure skating judge Silvana Potenza and others..."
Considering the risk she'd taken by confronting Sergei alone in his hotel room (though now, of course, she knew there'd been no risk greater than death by stale bagel), Bex figured she'd exhausted her death-defying luck for the week. This time, she should probably chat up her latest suspect in a public place. The problem was, whenever Jasper showed up in a public place, he was inevitably attached to Patty and/or Erin. And Bex wasn't quite ready to take on all three of them as an athletic, blond, six-legged set.
Bex needed a clever idea for separating the Siamese triplets.
A clever idea.
Yeah. That's what she needed.
Where were they selling those, these days? The Gap?
Momentarily stymied, Bex decided to set clever on the back burner and become one with the obvious. Even though she currently had a pretty good idea of who'd turned Silvana Potenza's lights off, Bex still hated being lied to. And even if it had nothing to do with the murder at hand, somebody, either Igor Marchenko or Gary Gold, was still lying to her.
Bex picked up the phone, and called the Olympic Training Center. She asked if there were any plans for Sergei Alemazov to begin teaching there. After being asked to repeat his name twice, spell it once, and spending five long minutes on hold, Bex was informed, "Not to my knowledge, ma'am. You have a nice day now."
Bex said, "Hmmm."
And went to find Marchenko.
Igor said, "This is all Gary Gold's fault."
"Your lying to me is Gary Gold's fault?"
"I did not lie."
"I asked what you and Sergei were talking about the morning Erin Simpson saw you outside the refrigeration room. You said you were telling him he had a job at the training center. Gary said there was no job, and the center confirmed. I know English isn't your first language, but I don't think this was a translation problem. Do yes and no sound that alike in Russian?"
Igor told Bex, "You are a very rude, young woman."
"I am very tired, very cranky, and I know I'm right. Now, let's try it again: What were you and Sergei talking about that morning?"
"A job. For him. At the training center."
"So Gary Gold is the one who's lying?"
"Gary Gold is a bastard."
"Fascinating," Bex said. "Irre
levant. But fascinating, nonetheless."
"Gary is the killer."
"Excuse me?"
"I had it all arranged for Sergei, and then Gary... he must have voted against it."
"Probably. He told me he didn't want Russians coming to the center and taking money away from American coaches."
"American coaches who are called Gary Gold! Gary is jealous, you understand. He knows Russian coaches are one hundred percent better than he. The only students he gets now are girls I have no time for. You go to Mrs. Reilly. You ask her how much she would pay and how many thank-yous she would cry for me to coach Lian. Gary knows this. He knows he is number two, and if Sergei comes, Gary then is number three. He says he loves America? Gary loves Gary, no one else. He still talks how I take his place as number one American skater when I defected. He is still angry, still bitter. He uses Sergei to punish me. This is Gary. This is skating life."
"This is skating life." Igor's phrase danced circles in Bex's brain like a ladybug trying to get off the ground. This was skating life. Where people held grudges for twenty years. Where increasing the gate for your show was worth destroying an innocent's reputation. Where murder was a small price to pay for gold.
Bex really needed to talk to Jasper.
And, after spending an hour trying to come up with some clever way to get him alone, a chance glance at the day's practice schedule allowed Bex to formulate something obvious.
She headed across the parking lot to the arena. Erin was practicing. Which meant that Patty was coaching, rink-side, with the lucky troll dolls and assorted other accoutrements. And Jasper, Bex bet, was watching from the sidelines. Close enough to see everything, but far away enough not to be heard.
He was, in fact, sitting in the stands, about six rows above Patty's head. Perfect.
