Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  Jasper said, "Patty has been calling me all afternoon. She's ready to chew my head off, and I don't blame her. She trusts me. Well, she used to anyway. This has been a huge, huge betrayal for her. She doesn't trust people very easily, and once you've blown it with her, you don't get a second chance. I'll be lucky if she ever lets me watch Erin on television again, much less have anything to do with them."

  "All the more reason to clear the air, then. Tell Patty what you told me, that you only confessed about the E-mail because you were trying to protect her. I bet she'll understand. And she'll certainly be impressed by how you went to the mat to protect Erin. I can testify to that."

  "Oh, yes, I'm sure Patty will be thrilled to hear from you again."

  "We need that disk, Jasper. It's the only thing capable of proving you didn't act alone in Silvana's murder."

  "Good Lord, Bex, how many times do I have to tell you? I had nothing to do with that, and neither did Patty or Erin."

  "I believe you. I do. But, seeing as how you were ready to commit fraud and all with the phony E-mail, I suspect the police might like a little more evidence that you are capable of telling the truth on occasion."

  "Oh, so what, now you want me to believe that you are doing all this to help me?"

  "No," Bex said honestly. "I am doing it to get a great story to give to Gil so I won't lose my job and/or look like an idiot. However, I would very much prefer it if the great story I gave him were accurate and complete. Right now, I have the E-mail and Francis and Diana's testimony that you told them to print it out. You claim Patty was in on it, too? Fine, let's prove it."

  Jasper hesitated. "She really denied everything?"

  "Everything."

  "Not just killing Silvana? She denied everything, everything?"

  "She claimed she didn't know what you were talking about. She said you were a liar, and you couldn't be trusted."

  "I didn't expect that," Jasper confessed.

  "Then help me get the disk and find the original forgery. Once we confront her with it, I bet Patty will break down and tell us how the E-mail got into Silvana's purse, and you'll both be cleared of the murder charges."

  Personally, Bex doubted it. In her scenario, their undeleting the original E-mail template and confronting her with it would lead to a confession of murder on either Patty or Jasper's part. Bex honestly didn't care which one broke first at this point, as long as she had something to show Gil, and, oh, yes, the police, too.

  "I can't do it," Jasper said. "Patty is still too angry, I bet. If I confront her now, she'll just blow up; she won't listen to me. I'll lose all the rapport I've worked so hard to build up with her these past few years. I can't. It isn't the right time now. Maybe tomorrow morning. She'll be calmer tomorrow morning. You understand, don't you, Bex?"

  Bex understood that Jasper didn't want to talk to Patty. She also understood that she needed Jasper to talk to Patty, as a confrontation with him was the only scenario Bex could imagine capable of separating Patty from her child/Siamese twin. Ergo, Bex needed to make Jasper talk to Patty. And not tomorrow morning. Tonight.

  She moved her lurking down to the lobby. It was less suspicious to sit there, on one of the comfy couches, and watch, eagle-eyed, everyone coming and going. For two weeks, gaggles of fans had been doing just that. They were there now, segregated into groups based on whom they were stalking, and glaring at the opposing camps as they flipped through their stacks of pictures and scrapbooks, wondering which one they'd be asking their heroes to autograph this time around. How, Bex mused, had Jasper Clarke managed to jump the fence from just a gawker in the lobby (after all, running a skater Website was no big deal; at least a third of those assembled maintained cyber shrines to their favorites) to an official member of Team Simpson? What had he offered Patty that no one else could match? After all, she'd told Bex how badly she needed help. She would have presumably accepted it from anyone. So why Jasper?

  A collective gasp from the ponytailed group of girls dressed in "Erin Excitement!' T-shirts clued Bex in that their national champion had appeared. The girls sprang up in unison, rushing past Bex toward the elevator banks, enveloping Erin in a chattering, pen-wielding swarm of what Bex might have called Mini-Mes, except that Erin was the tiniest figure in the bunch.

  She greeted them all graciously, even calling a few of the girls by name, sweetly smiling for photos and signing anything thrust at her with apparent good cheer. She answered questions like, "How often do you practice a day?" and "Will you be touring this summer?" and the newest, "Isn't it horrible about what the judges did to you?" as if this were the first time she'd heard them. Bex had to hand it to Patty: she'd done an excellent job preparing her daughter for the role of star.

  Of course, Patty's fine parenting wasn't what Bex wanted to talk to her about as she took advantage of her telling Erin, "I'll just check if the restaurant has a table available," and walking away for a moment to make like the uber-fans, and pounce.

  Bex sidled up to Patty as she was waiting by the hostess's desk. When Patty saw her, she deliberately turned away, as if Bex weren't there. That was okay, though. Bex could walk around the other way.

  "What do you want?" Patty demanded. "More stupid accusations?"

  "Actually, yes. I talked to Jasper again. He's changed his story."

  "You mean he's decided to tell the truth? How novel."

  "Now he's saying you told him you were going to kill Silvana and plant the E-mail on her for the police to find and expose."

  At that, Patty jumped high enough to complete a quadruple jump. Well, not ready, her head merely jerked like someone had smacked her on the chin. But it felt quadruple high to Bex. She did love getting a reaction.

  Patty grabbed Bex's arm and pulled her into a corner where they were less likely to be overheard by the dining public.

  "Are you out of your mind?"

  "I'm just telling you what Jasper said. He said you told him you were going to kill Silvana, but he didn't take you seriously. Now he isn't so sure."

  "That goddamn son of a bitch!" Patty looked frantically around her, as if expecting Jasper to materialize through the sheer force of her bile. Bex didn't doubt that, if he did somehow materialize, Patty would happily pierce his carotid artery with the little gold skate pin clipped to her scarf. This was actually good. It was exactly what Bex had planned on.

  Seizing the moment to direct all that wonderful anger, Bex told Patty, "Yes, he told me that a couple of minutes ago, up in his room. It's such a major accusation, I figured you'd want to respond, so I came right down and found—"

  "Jasper is in his room?"

  "Yes. But I think he wants to be alone. While I was there, his phone rang a couple of times, but he didn't want to answer it."

  Bex figured if that little detail didn't confirm the veracity of her story, nothing would.

  She'd barely gotten the last word out before Patty pivoted on her heel, displaying lovely grace indicative of the world-class athlete she'd once been, and stormed out of the restaurant, Bex hot on her heels.

  She passed by Erin and her adoring throng and, in a surprisingly calm voice, indicative of the practice she'd had suppressing her anger in public places, told her daughter, "Erin, honey, I just remembered, I completely forgot to discuss with Jasper about how we're going to cover the ceremony tomorrow for the site. We really need to get the details ironed out so we can handle the press. I'm going to pop up to his room and go over the game plan. When you're finished here, why don't you go back up to the room and order room service?"

  "Do you want me to order you something too, Mom?"

  "No," Patty smoothed down a lock of Erin's hair that, as far Bex could tell, wasn't standing up. "I may be a while."

  And she left Erin inside the safe bosom of her fans.

  Bex counted to ten. And then she told the fans to scram.

  And then she asked, "Hey, Erin, you want to have dinner with me?"

  "Uhm." Erin shrugged. This making a decision on your own
for the first time like, ever, was obviously a stumper. "Okay. Sure."

  "Great." Bex seized Erin's shoulder, guiding her in a manner she hoped was reminiscent of Patty's firm, maternal hand. "Let's order room service up in my room. It'll really give us a chance to talk."

  Once ensconced upstairs, neither Bex nor Erin needed to look at the room service menu before calling down and placing their orders. Both had made the "feed me" call enough times to know exactly what serving they wanted. Besides, to keep her size negative number figure, Erin probably only nibbled spinach leaves and bread crumbs. If the latter didn't have too many carbs.

  "So," Bex plopped down on her bed next to a lotus-sitting and somewhat bored-looking Erin. "Are you excited about the ceremony tomorrow?"

  "It'll be great to get a gold medal. I always said, if I ever win a gold medal at worlds, I'll give it to my grandma."

  "Your grandma?" Bex had been so sure Erin was going to go with the cliché and say "Mom," that she had to hit rewind in her brain just to make sure she'd heard right. "Is she here with you, too?"

  "Oh, no, she doesn't travel with us. She never comes to my competitions, even when they're local."

  "Is she sick?" Bex asked.

  "No. She just doesn't like it. She did it all with my mom. She's the one who got my mom into skating. They didn't know anything when they started. My mom was just this little girl who really, really liked to skate on this pond their town had in the winter. Grandma didn't think much about it; she figured all kids were as good as my mom. But then this coach saw her, and she told my grandma Mom could be a champion. Grandma had to learn everything about skating from scratch, like how the testing worked, and the competitions. When they started, she didn't even know what region they'd be competing out of! Grandma totally dedicated herself to Mom, Mom says. Then, when Mom didn't become world champion, Grandma just... it made her very sad. It was her dream, she worked as hard as Mom did, harder even, I guess, and Mom couldn't do it for her. That's why I'll give her my medal. I think it will make her happy. Maybe she'll even come and watch me skate. Now that it's, you know, all okay, again."

  Bex asked, "Are the other medallists going to be there? Are they doing the whole thing again, with anthems and everything, or is it just a ceremony for you?"

  "Well, they invited Xenia, but she refused to come. And Jordan is nuts. Nobody knows what Jordan will do till she does it, not even Mr. Marchenko. So, I think it will be just me.

  "You sound kind of sad about it."

  "I'm not sad. I'm getting a gold medal. A gold medal is great." She said it with the same conviction she'd used only a few days ago to wax poetic about her silver lining.

  Their food came. Erin had a chicken breast salad. Bex had the salmon. As always.

  "Erin," Bex said, "I have a question for you. You know when you said you saw Xenia and Sergei and Igor hanging out by the phone outside the arena the morning Silvana died?"

  "Uh-huh," Erin moved her chicken breast and a few walnuts to the side, then chewed some greens. So much for protein.

  "Well, I asked Xenia about it."

  "Did she say I lied?"

  "Why would she say that?"

  "Oh, I don't know. She's pretty mad at me right now. She's probably saying all sorts of mean things about me to people. She thinks this is all my fault."

  "Actually, she said she did see you."

  "Oh." Erin stabbed a spinach leaf, rubbed it against a piece of chicken breast then ate it. All the yumminess of meat without the pesky calories, Bex guessed.

  "But she claims she didn't yell at you, like you said."

  "Well, maybe she didn't yell at me exactly. She more like, you know, glared."

  "You told your mom and me Xenia yelled at you."

  "It was an analogy." Erin's head suddenly popped up, and she explained, "You know how, on the SATs, they have this section called analogy? This is to this as this is to that. I love those, they're like a crossword puzzle mixed with a jigsaw. I wish the whole test was analogies, instead of those logic problems: If Bob is taller than Bill, and Bill is taller than Fred, and Fred has blue eyes, which one of them is the professional basketball player? It's so stupid. Like you ever need to do stuff like that in real life."

  Frankly, Bex agreed with her, but she asked, "You're taking the SAT?"

  "I already did. Last summer, when I had some time off from the tour."

  "So you can go to college?"

  "Maybe. I don't know. Someday. I mean, you're supposed to, right? It's just something you're supposed to do, like brush your teeth and look both ways before you cross the street."

  "Your mother doesn't seem to think much of it. She gave me quite a lecture about higher education and how nobody needs it."

  "Oh. Yeah. Mom kind of goes back and forth. I mean, she went to college because she wanted to have a normal life after skating. When skating didn't work out for her the way she thought it would, she figured she'd just go to school and be normal and be happy. It was hard for her, though. She was so much older than the other freshmen, she was like, twenty-four. And going to class after being tutored all her life, I guess that was hard, too. But it couldn't have been all bad. I mean, she met my dad and everything. It was really tough for her before, being on the road all the time, never really meeting anyone. In school, she got to have a real boyfriend. That was cool. You know, having someone who cares about you not because you're a skater or you're on TV, but because you're just you."

  Something about the wistful tone in Erin's voice prompted Bex to suspect that they had jumped off the Patty train and were making a stop in Erinville.

  Bex asked, "Sounds like that's something you'd really like to have."

  Erin shrugged. "Maybe. Someday."

  She'd finished segregating her meal into food groups and now poked at the chicken breast with her fork, eyes downcast, hair falling down on either side of her face so that Bex couldn't see her eyes. Her hunched shoulders and generally slumped body language radiated defeat and vulnerability. So, naturally, Bex took advantage of it.

  And she also took a guess. Bex asked Erin, "Is that what you were doing on the phone when Xenia saw you? Talking to a boyfriend?"

  Erin's head popped up. "What phone?"

  "Xenia said she saw you on the phone, the one right outside the refrigeration room, the morning Silvana was killed. Is that why you got off the ice? To make that call?"

  "I... Are you going to tell my mom?"

  "So you were on the phone?"

  "Yeah, okay, I was. But, please don't tell my mom. She doesn't like anything to disturb my skating, and if she knew I was ... Please, Bex."

  "I guess you and your boyfriend don't get a lot of chances to talk."

  "Try like practically never. The other day, when my mom went to get my tissues, and then she was gone for a while, I figured she went back to the hotel to get them, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and... but I did tell you the truth about Xenia and Sergei and Mr. Marchenko. They were standing around, whispering Russian and stuff."

  "I know. They all confirmed it."

  "Oh. So did they kill Silvana, then?"

  "I'm not sure. The only one who could have done it was Sergei. Both Xenia and Igor were on the ice by the time she died. And Sergei has an alibi. He was on the phone back in his hotel room. I don't think he would have had enough time to make it back to make that call, if he really had killed Silvana."

  "He could have had someone in his room make the call for him."

  "I thought of that. I just can't prove it." Bex grinned. "You're pretty good at this. Want my job?"

  "Oh, no," Erin shook her head. "Oh, no, no. I couldn't spend my whole life in skating."

  The irony was getting a little too thick for Bex's taste. Besides, she couldn't bet on Patty chewing Jasper's head off forever. The woman would eventually be free to roam the hotel halls again, and that was the last thing Bex wanted. There was a part two to this master plan of hers, and Bex knew she'd better get to it. Especially now that Erin had given her
such a convenient in.

  Bex said, "You know what? I have an idea. Since you and your boyfriend hardly get a chance to talk, why don't you call him from here? Your mother will never know, then."

  Erin hesitated. "Uhm, no offense, Bex, but, I kind of don't want to talk to him with, you know, someone else around. The stuff we say, it's sort of personal."

  Oh, God, this was going to be even easier than Bex had thought. It's like the kid was working off a script and feeding Bex every line she needed to hear.

  "That's okay. I won't hang around, I'll give you guys your privacy. I know what that's like." Bex practically leapt off the bed to show her sincerity.

  And, at the same time, she managed to accidentally-on-purpose knock off the bed Erin's jacket, which was lying on top of the plastic credential she wore around her neck on a string. The credential was marked C for competitor, and ensured that Erin had access to all the backstage areas of the arena. It was also a very handy place to keep her hotel pass card. All the skaters did it. Since they never left their rooms without their credentials, it also ensured that they never left their rooms without their keys.

  Bex showed Erin the phone and told her to take as much time as she wanted. And, when her back was turned to dial, Bex slipped the pass card out of Erin's credential. She waved bye-bye and closed her own hotel room door behind her, heading for Patty's, in search of the undeleted E-mail.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Prior to commencing with the breaking and entering, Bex first pressed her ear against Jasper's door, all the while sincerely hoping Joseph from Security was nowhere around. She heard angry, raised voices on the other side. Not just Patty's, but Jasper's, as well. Good, at least Jasper was giving as good as he got and maybe, just maybe, they'd work this whole mess out by themselves, without Bex having to do any more work.