Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  "Judging by the screaming I heard when I called, I suspect Patty isn't utterly convinced of your benevolence."

  "She'll come around. Once we get this whole thing settled and we know who killed Silvana, Patty will see that I was protecting her." Jasper leaned back over the computer. Bex leaned in over his shoulder, watching intently.

  He clicked a few more buttons. The machine buzzed, hummed, then went silent. Jasper nodded his head approvingly. The screen went blank.

  "What the heck—"

  But Bex never got the chance to finish her thought.

  Because there, on the screen in front of her, it was.

  The E-mail. In all of its manufactured glory.

  "This is fantastic!" Bex shouted.

  Jasper didn't look convinced. Bex wondered if he was experiencing the computer equivalent of buyer's remorse.

  "You were telling the truth, Jasper. Patty really was in on this."

  "You didn't believe me the first time?"

  "Well, you did have a motive for taking the heat off you."

  "This is hardly taking the heat off me, Bex. I basically just gave you proof that the E-mail was, in fact, faked. Up to this point, it was your word against mine."

  "And Francis and Diana's."

  "Oh, please, all I had to do in a court of law was call as witnesses anyone who'd ever heard them commentate on air. Those two change their minds in the middle of sentence. Their credibility is less than stellar."

  "Are you having second thoughts about helping me, Jasper?"

  He sighed. "I just hope Patty understands...."

  Bex hoped that Patty understood, too. Bex hoped that Patty understood Bex was about to nail her for fraud and, if she was lucky, murder as well.

  Naturally, she declined to share her sentiments with Jasper.

  Instead, she took back the floppy. Jasper may have made a lovely speech about truth, justice, and the Erinphillic way, but that didn't mean he couldn't change his mind at any time and click the delete key again; and, this time, Bex felt pretty certain the incriminating document would not be retrievable. She bid Jasper good-bye, promised him she wouldn't do anything rash, and then went down the hall to confront Patty.

  Rash, Bex figured, was in derma of the beholder.

  Erin opened the door. She saw Bex. She panicked.

  "Bex ..." she tried to hiss under her breath, apparently convinced that the 24/7 researcher was here to blow her cover and announce her intention to create an up-close-and-personal feature on Erin Simpson's secret love life in time for the exhibition.

  "Erin ..." Bex hissed back, hoping to convey that actually no, she wasn't; she was here for a totally different reason, and if she wasn't careful, Erin would end up giving her own self away.

  "Bex?" Erin uncertainly double-checked the telepathic message.

  "Erin." Bex answered definitively.

  The teen visibly relaxed.

  Bex was glad they had this talk. Maybe next time, they could use verbs.

  "Erin?" Patty's voice sailed out from the comer. She approached the door. Her face soured. "Bex."

  Yup, a verb was definitely called for now.

  "Hello, Patty," Bex said cheerfully. "Could you spare a couple of minutes to talk to me? It's really important."

  The shadow of a dozen obscenities flicked in the creases of Patty's frown. Alas, she could utter none of them in front of Erin. As a matter of fact, even using pleasant words, Patty couldn't really reveal why she didn't want to talk to Bex in front of Erin.

  And so she took the easiest path out. Patty told Erin, "It's time to go to bed, sweetie pie, you've got a huge day tomorrow. I'll just step out and chat with Bex in the hall."

  Erin shot Bex a look. "Bex."

  "Erin." Bex stared at her forcefully to convey that no, this wasn't about the boyfriend, chill out, kid.

  "Okay," Erin said. "Good night, Mom. Good night, Bex."

  Bex and Patty stepped out into the hall. Bex said, "I don't think you want to talk about this in public. Let's go to my room."

  "Fine," Patty snapped. "But make it quick. I really don't have anything to say to you."

  Bex took the disk out of her pocket and showed it to Patty.

  Patty didn't say another word until they were safely behind the door of Bex's room.

  Only then did she make a lunge for the disk. "That's my property. How the hell did you get your hands on it?"

  "Jasper gave it to me," Bex lied with no qualms.

  "What for? There's nothing on it. You checked it yourself earlier."

  "That's what I thought," Bex agreed. "But then, I talked to Jasper and—did you know that deleting a document doesn't really mean deleting it totally?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  Bex explained.

  Patty stayed silent.

  Bex said, "I saw the forged E-mail. Jasper retrieved it and I saw it. It's not an accusation anymore, Patty. It's fact. And I know you were involved."

  "How?" Instead of crumbling, crying, and confessing as was indicated in the script Bex had written in her head, Patty seemed even more defiant and energized than before. Back when she was competing, Patty Simpson was known for going out and giving the best performance of her life when it seemed like there was no way she could still win. And, after missing a jump, it was inevitable that her next one would be better than ever. Too late, Bex remembered that this was not a woman who crumbled easily. Or ever.

  "How do you know I was involved?" Patty asked.

  "Well, Jasper said—"

  "His word against mine."

  "Francis and Diana—"

  "Never saw me. You told me they said Jasper gave them the disk."

  "But the disk is yours."

  "Jasper is my Web master. He has access to my computer, my disks, everything. In fact, I often give him Erin's weekly diary entry on that exact disk. Obviously he dummied up the E-mail, approached Francis and Diana, set everything up, then, when he was caught, he planted it on a disk I'd given him and returned it to me to cover his own ass."

  It was an excellent theory. Bex wondered why she hadn't come up with it herself. After all, hadn't Jasper seemed a little too eager to help her out? He'd practically handed her Patty on a silver platter. All the while swearing he was doing it to protect her.

  "You think Jasper set you up?"

  "I know he did."

  "Why?"

  "I told you, to protect himself."

  "Yes... but..." Bex was doing that thinking thing she was so famous for, again. And, no matter how reasonable Patty's theory had sounded mere moments ago, she was starting to see a few glitches. "Here's the problem. If he really acted alone in dummying up the phony E-mail, why give me the disk it's on? I mean, without it, I've really got no proof except his word against Francis and Diana's. And they've got their own, excellent reasons for denying that anything ever happened. If I went ahead and made the E-mail public, without any proof that it's phony, it would have just been evidence that Erin truly deserved the gold. Which is supposedly why Jasper did all this in the first place. Why would he go through all this trouble to frame you for the fraud, when it would have been better and simpler for him to just deny everything?"

  "Because he's a selfish son-of-a-bitch who doesn't give a damn about anyone's feelings but his own. You're right, if he'd just shut up, he could have helped Erin. Instead, he's trying to get me out of the way, so he can have her all to himself."

  Bex asked, "You mean, Jasper has some sort of obsession with Erin? Like, you think he's deranged or something?"

  "Obsession with Erin." Patty shook her head. "Yeah, I'd say Jasper has an obsession with Erin. Now, he does, anyway. Now, when it's all medals and championships. But, where the hell was he when she was a baby? When I had to bring her to the rink and leave her in a playpen in the snack bar and beg one of the skate moms to keep an eye on her because I was trying to teach and raise a kid at the same time? Where the hell was Jasper's obsession with her then?"

  Bex didn't know what
to say. No, wait, yes, she did. It was so obvious, she was amazed she hadn't seen it before.

  Bex asked, "Jasper is Erin's father, isn't he, Patty?"

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Well, of course, he is," Patty snapped. "She looks just like him. The blonde hair, the blue eyes, the practically white lashes and eyebrows. I used to look at the two of them together, and I used to think, it's obvious, she's his mirror image, how could people not see it?"

  Probably, Bex wanted to say, because she is also the spitting image of you. But, then again, Bex supposed people only saw what they wanted to see. And when Patty looked at Erin, she only saw her father.

  Bex asked, "Did you and Jasper meet at Stanford?"

  Another connection she'd completely missed until now. Patty nodded.

  "And he walked out on you when you got pregnant with Erin?"

  Bex couldn't help it. She could feel the sympathy welling up inside her. She could see the TV movie now: Patty was probably so shattered from her perceived failure at the Olympics that she was easy prey for a sexy, smooth talker eager to add the campus celebrity to the multiple notches on his bedpost. Naturally, said sexy, smooth talker had no interest in Erin. It was a classic seduced-and-abandoned tale.

  Patty said, "Are you kidding? As soon as the drugstore stick turned blue, I gave Jasper his walking papers. I didn't need him anymore."

  Bex said, "Huh?"

  "Did you know Jasper was an athlete? Yeah, hard to believe now, he's got that computer nerd thing down. But, Jasper was a jock in college. Swimming, skiing, cross-country... couple of other things. Who remembers now? As soon as I saw him, I knew any kid of his would get fabulous sports genes. He was exactly what I needed."

  Bex blinked. It was the only part of her body not currently frozen with confusion. She said, "So, uhm, you— you... bred, Erin? Like—" Bex was about to make a reference to Adolph Hider's Lebensborn program, but then remembered that this was a skater she was talking to and went with something simpler, "Like a show dog?"

  "I wanted my daughter to have the best," Patty said simply. "I knew I could give her the training she needed to become a champion, but good genes are the most important thing. Don't believe what people say about hard work and desire being all you need to succeed. Hard work and desire are vital—but only as long as you've got the right body. I mean, you, Bex, you could want to be a basketball player more than anything in the world. You could practice every day and do drills until your hands bleed. You're never going to be a basketball player, Bex."

  "Thanks for the tip... So Jasper had nothing to do with raising Erin?"

  "I wouldn't let him. He would have only gotten in the way. Jasper would have never understood how important skating is to Erin. I realized that from the first. Jasper was a natural athlete; I don't think there was a sport he ever tried that he didn't excel at. He could have been a champion, but, get this—he only wanted to do it for fun. Fun! Have you ever heard of anyone going to medical school for fun? Or law school? He didn't get that skating was as serious as any of those things. More serious, actually, because you have to start so young."

  "But you let him be your Web master? If you didn't want him around Erin..."

  "He popped up again two years ago. We didn't hear a word from him for seventeen years, and then suddenly there he was, on the phone, telling me he saw Erin on television and he wanted to be involved. How could he help? I told him he could do her Web site."

  "But he couldn't tell her he was her father."

  "Erin," Patty said pointedly, "doesn't have a father. And she doesn't need one. She did, however, need a good Web master and Jasper was ready, eager, willing, and I thought he had her best interests at heart. After this, though, after this, I know I was right the first time. He doesn't understand. And he's a threat to Erin's career. That's why he made up this whole thing with the E-mail. He wants me out of the way so he can have Erin."

  "Erin is hardly six years old. This isn't “Kramer vs. Kramer,” here."

  "He wants Erin. That's why he's saying all those things about me."

  "So you deny everything? The phony E-mail, the scheming with Francis and Diana, the E-mail ending up in Silvana's purse ..."

  "Yes," Patty said confidently, about as far from the breaking down and crying that Bex expected as she, Rebecca Elizabeth Levy, was now from solving this crime. "I deny everything."

  “You know," Bex said, "At some point during your 'I saw Erin Simpson on TV and decided to change my life' story, you might have mentioned that you were also Erin's father."

  Jasper asked, "Patty told you?"

  "I guessed. And then she told me."

  "How did you know?"

  "What do you mean?" Bex echoed Patty sarcastically. "The girl looks just like you."

  "Patty told me she didn't want anyone to know."

  "Does Erin know?"

  "Of course not. Patty won't allow it."

  "Patty claims you made up the story about Silvana and the phony E-mail because you want Patty locked up and out of the way, and Erin all to yourself."

  At this point, Jasper's eyes did not actually pop out of his head cartoon-style, squawk a funny noise, and pop back in with a snap. Bex made that part up. But he did stare at Bex as if she'd just told him his company stock had dropped forty points. He slowly sat down on his bed, shaking his head.

  "How could she say that? She knows I would never do anything to hurt her and Erin. How could she say such a thing?"

  "Honestly…" Bex plopped down on the bed next to him. "I wouldn't blame you." Bex wondered if it was possible to play good cop/bad cop when there was only one of you. And you weren't exactly a cop. "I mean, after everything she did to you, practically using you as an anonymous sperm donor, then cutting you out of your daughter's life, I wouldn't blame you for wanting to get back at her."

  Bex figured, if she couldn't get Patty to break down and confess, Jasper would do just as well. At this point, she was willing to pin the blame on herself, as long as it gave her something to write in Gil's report. The one she was supposed to give him yesterday and had yet to start.

  Jasper said, "Oh. I see. She fed you that story."

  "Story?"

  "The, 'I was an independent woman who knew what I wanted out of life. I used Jasper and then dumped him so I could raise Erin to be skating's new great blonde hope.' That story."

  "It's not true?"

  Jasper said, "When I met Patty, she was a twenty-four-year-old college freshman who'd never spent a night away from her mommy. She'd never eaten alone in a restaurant, never paid a bill, never been kissed. Are you getting the picture?"

  Bex nodded, not sure if she wanted to hear more. If this went where she expected it to, it was definitely going to get too sad.

  "I would have called her a challenge, if only because she had no idea what she was doing, but virgins are never really a challenge, not when you know what you're doing. The other guys on campus saw her as this untouchable celebrity goddess. She wasn't. She was just lonely and scared, utterly inexperienced, and totally not a challenge. When she got pregnant, I told her she was stupid and careless. It wasn't until later that I realized she probably was really just clueless. I mean, her mother probably only talked to her about death spirals, not diaphragms. I walked out on Patty, not the other way around. When I heard she dropped out of school, I thought it was for the best; she couldn't hack the course work any better than she could handle the social life. I was a bastard, I admit it, but I was all about my career back then. I was going to be a millionaire, and Patty plus child most certainly didn't fit into my plans."

  Bex said, "Well, you did become a millionaire."

  "I did. And everything that I told you happened afterward is true. I did buy stuff and travel and do the whole new-money scene. And, one night, I really did turn on the TV, and there was Erin. I'd never given her any thought. I'd never even wondered if Patty had a boy or a girl. I guess I assumed she did the sensible thing and got an abortion. Do you know what it's like to se
e your child for the first time on television? I was paralyzed. I couldn't move. There she was. And you're right. She does look just like me."

  Uh... right, Bex thought. But she figured now was neither the time nor place to quibble.

  "So you contacted Patty?"

  "I did. And I got her to agree to at least let me do Erin's Web site. I couldn't tell her I was her father, but I could at least get to know her. Hang out a little bit. We're friends, now, Erin and I. We're friends. That's really great."

  "Why would Patty lie to me? I mean, your version makes her more sympathetic. In her version, she comes off as a total bitch. Why would someone go to the trouble to make up a story to make herself look worse?"

  "Because Patty thinks it makes her look better. She's been telling it for years. It's part of Erin's official lore, just like the cock-and-bull story about how her first word was 'ice.' Think about it, Bex; for a woman like Patty, what would be worse, having other people think she's a bitch or pathetic?"

  Bex saw his point. And she said, "Sounds like Patty is quite the accomplished liar. And—joining our story already in progress—it looks like she's not about to confess to anything. That means you're my only witness."

  Jasper sighed. "She won't confirm anything?"

  "She says she didn't even know the phony E-mail was on her disk, much less that she was the one who initiated it in the first place."

  "I don't understand ..."

  "What's not to understand? Patty killed Silvana."

  "No. No, I don't believe you."

  "Okay. Then you killed Silvana."