Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  "Did he ever talk to you about Felicia? Or Rachel?"

  "Yes. He felt awful about what he'd done to Felicia. He wanted to apologize to her. He did love her, you know. Maybe you can't believe it, but I do. He really did love her. He just had no idea how to behave. I tried, several times, to call her on his behalf. But she wouldn't see him. I couldn't very well force her to, so, eventually, Robby had to let it go."

  "And what about Rachel? Did he want to apologize to Rachel?"

  "He wanted to talk to her. He never told me why or what for. I tried to find her for him, but I could only get her phone number, at first. I think Robby tried to reach her when he got out of prison, but she didn't want to see him. By the time I did have her address, Robby seemed to have gotten over it. I saw no point in stirring all of that unpleasantness up again. Robby was on parole. He had a job, he was trying to rebuild his life. I didn't see what good his reconnecting with Rachel would do. So, I kept quiet. Until you came along, that is."

  "Me?" It wasn't so much of a question as a yelp on Bex's part. She'd kind of been hoping to avoid this chapter. And yet, she knew that she couldn't. "It was me?"

  "After you interviewed Robby, it stirred up all of his old memories. He came to me, again, and asked if I knew where he could find Rachel. This time, I gave him her address."

  "And a few days later, she was dead."

  "Yes," Toni looked like she might cry. "Yes. She was."

  "Did Robby kill Rachel?"

  "He didn't mean to. He told me he honestly didn't mean to. He told me he just went up there to talk to her. And then he saw her with Jeremy."

  Bex groaned. "Jeremy was with Rachel because I'd scared him and Craig away from the rink. He would have never been there, Robby would have never seen him, if it wasn't for me."

  Toni patted Bex's leg reassuringly. "None of us knew. How could we know?"

  "Robby knew Jeremy was his son the moment he saw him, didn't he?"

  "The resemblance is striking." Toni indicated the still silent house. "I was looking at the two of them last night and wondering how in the world I could have missed it. They don't only look the same, they even skate the same, they move the same. I always knew Jeremy reminded me of Robby, but I never, even for a moment, made the connection."

  "Robby did, though."

  "Yes, Robby did. He called Rachel later and asked her to meet him in the park. All he wanted was for her to admit that Jeremy was his son. That's all he wanted."

  "But she wouldn't."

  "No."

  "So he beat her to death."

  Now, Toni really was crying. The tears rolled silently out of her eyes, down her cheeks, and dripped down her chin. She didn't even bother wiping them away.

  "He told you this?"

  "Yes," Toni whispered.

  "And he told you how Felicia fit in?"

  "Yes. He told me she called him later, told him that Jeremy was his son. But that he was also hers, not Rachel's. He believed her when she said she wanted them to be a family. It was like a dream come true for him. Finally! A chance for a normal life! A wife, a son. You don't know how badly he wanted that."

  "Then why did he run from the airport?"

  "Because he saw you, Bex. He was afraid you would turn them in."

  "And so he ran to you."

  "He has nowhere else to go."

  Bex said, "You know we have to turn him in, Toni. Even if he didn't confess to you about killing Rachel, Jeremy belongs with his real father. He belongs with Craig, you know that."

  "Robby didn't mean to kill her."

  "But he did."

  "He's not a bad person, Bex. He has problems. He needs help."

  "Then get it for him. Help him plead temporary insanity or whatever you think will get him what he needs. I'll even testify to my part in riling him up or setting him off or whatever you and his lawyer want to call it. But help Jeremy, too. Send him back to his father."

  Toni asked, "Are you going to call the police?"

  "I have to."

  "Okay," Toni said. She looked at her house, eyes settling on the still silent guest-room window. "Okay, Bex...."

  The police arrived within fifteen minutes. They had the APB on file and they took Robby into custody. He looked stunned. Walking from Toni's front door to the squad car, he looked exactly as shell-shocked as he had in his post-Olympic press conference photo years earlier. Like he didn't know how he'd gotten there, or what any of it meant. Toni held Robby's hand up until the moment they put the cuffs on. He didn't seem to notice.

  At one point, Robby looked across the police car at Bex. He was a killer and a wife-beater and a kidnapper. And still, Bex wanted to apologize to him.

  Jeremy came out at almost the same time as Robby did, walking silently a few feet behind his newfound father, staring at the ground and kicking imaginary pebbles out of his way. In the hustle and bustle of the arrest, he, the victim, was practically forgotten. He looked smaller than Bex remembered him. Smaller, and also older. He stood on the sidewalk, still dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing at the airport, and watched Robby get loaded into the squad car. The strobe lights from its roof turned his face first red, then white, then red again. Jeremy watched Toni talking to Robby through the half-open window. And then he saw Bex across the street.

  She walked over, taking the long way, making sure to stay out of the police's way. Jeremy looked as if nothing in the world could ever surprise him again. Of course, the 24/7 researcher he'd met just a few days earlier was there.

  Why shouldn't she be? In an insane universe, this made as much sense as anything else he'd just been through.

  Jeremy didn't even ask Bex, he just guessed. "You're the one who found me."

  "Yeah. I guess. I mean..."

  "Is my dad really worried?"

  "Yeah."

  Jeremy found another pebble to kick. He swore, "Aunt Felicia said he knew. She said I didn't have to leave a note, because my dad knew all about it and said it was okay. I'd have left a note, otherwise. I know how he gets worried."

  "He doesn't blame you."

  "Is he really mad at Aunt Felicia?"

  "Yeah."

  Jeremy raised his eyes enough to look at the police car, then looked away again. As if the lights—or something— was hurting his eyes. "Robby told me a lot of stuff. About him and her and my mom. Rachel, I mean. My mom, Rachel."

  "Did you understand it?"

  "Pretty much. You know my dad, Craig? My dad, Craig, he's adopted, too."

  "I know. I've met Jenny and Michael."

  "They're great, aren't they? And they love my dad a whole lot. They don't even care that he's not really their kid."

  "No. I don't think they care at all."

  Jeremy asked, "Are you going to take me home, now?"

  "That's a great idea," Bex said.

  Bex knew she should have called Craig the minute she had Jeremy safely in her car and headed for home. But she couldn't help it. She wanted to see Craig's face the first time he set eyes on Jeremy, standing safe and sound on his front stoop.

  And, in the end, it was everything she could have hoped for.

  Craig's face, still covered with the scars he'd incurred practically ripping his own flesh off with worry, seemed to crack in two the moment he set eyes on Jeremy. For an instant, he looked as if he didn't believe his own eyes. And then he screamed.

  No, he howled, really.

  It was a sound so primal, it was beyond emotion. It was beyond expression. It was simply raw, unchecked, practically animalistic joy. He swept Jeremy up off the ground, hugging him so tightly, Bex was surprised he didn't break a rib or two along the way. He may have been laughing, he may have been crying.

  It would be up to the 24/7 audience to sort it all out.

  Because, this time, Bex had the entire joyous moment on tape.

  And exclusive.

  THE END

  Axel of Evil

  OTHER ALINA ADAMS TITLES

  PROLOGUE

  CHAP
TER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AXEL OF EVIL

  PRINTING HISTORY Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / 2006

  Copyright © 2012 by Alina Adams Media.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  * * *

  AXEL OF EVIL

  PROLOGUE

  2005

  Figure skating champion Igor Marchenko twice made the front page of the New York Times.

  The first time, in 1977, he was fourteen years old, a green stalk of a boy wearing an oversized down jacket and ill-fitting boots stained with gray Moscow slush, nervously running his hands through fine ash blond hair that looked like it had been chopped by the same blind barber who used to hack at Prince Valiant. His freshly bruised eyes looked as though he were afraid to take in the full consequences of what he'd just done. But, at the same time, his lips were set in the firm determination of a man twice his age, ready to take responsibility for his actions.

  At the height of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cold War, the all-capital letter headline above his slightly out of focus, black and white Associated Press wire photo triumphantly taunted: "DEFECTING!"

  No one could blame them for the big type. It was a superb story, thoroughly worthy of braggadocio coverage,

  even by a newspaper as traditionally averse to headline-blaring yellow journalism as the Times. For, even as Moscow played host to the 1977 World Figure Skating Championships, the Russian Men's Bronze Medallist had ducked his KGB guards and snuck out of the athletes' hotel, braving subzero temperatures to cross several blizzard-ravaged miles on foot in the middle of the night. He arrived at the American embassy hours before it opened and buried himself in the snow beneath a pair of bushes by the front gates to avoid being seen by passersby. He huddled there, shivering to near convulsions, until sunup, when he was finally able to stumble inside the embassy, and, teeth chattering beneath frozen black and blue lips, a Russian accent fighting for authority over a cracking, adolescent tenor, he blurted out, "I defect."

  The Soviet Skating Federation, naturally, put up an invasion-force-sized clamor, claiming that the boy had been coerced, bribed, kidnapped, and any other relevant term they could coax out of their handy Russian/English dictionaries. But, Igor, with a poise and calm utterly unexpected of a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound ninth-grader, remained firm in his convictions. The only time he came even close to wavering was when the president of the skating federation dragged Igor's mother, older sister, and brother-in-law to the sidewalk outside the U.S. embassy, where Igor could clearly see them from the window. The federation head handed the American ambassador a note to pass on to the boy. It read, "You will never, ever see them again."

  Igor came to the window, and he stared at his family. His mother was crying. His sister was crying. Igor was crying. But, after a tense, hour-long standoff, he simply turned around and walked away.

  Eventually, the Soviets gave up. They had to. Young Igor certainly showed no signs of doing so. And, after nearly a month of high-pressure tactics, they allowed their top male skater to be taken to the United States.

  There, he received the hero's welcome traditionally reserved for World Series champions, astronauts, and Girl Scouts who have sold the most cookies. He met with the president. He chatted with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. (Well, technically, Johnny chatted with Ed McMahon about how wild and wacky it was that male skaters wore all those sequins on their costumes and they did those jumps where they spun round and round—how did they keep from feeling dizzy or getting a sequin in their eye?—while Igor sort of nodded politely, smiled, waved at the camera, and looked desperate to defect again, this time from Burbank.)

  Donations poured in from well-wishers eager to help the young hero continue his skating career in the U.S.A. The United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) gave him free room and board at their Olympic training center in Hartford, Connecticut, and pressured their congressman to rush through Igor's citizenship papers so that he could represent the U.S. at the 1982 Olympics. Actually, they were really hoping that he could represent them in 1978, but that, the congressman told the USFSA, was really pushing things. U.S. citizenship usually took seven years to finalize. The right word to the right people might be able to speed up some paperwork and make it five years, but a single year was out of the question. As a result, even though Igor won the 1978 U.S. National Championships (with so many 6.0's one newspaper compared him to Damian, the boy with the 666 tattooed into his skull from the then-hit movie, The Omen), it was the runner-up and 1977 champion, one Gary Gold, who went to the 1978 Olympics and finished in seventh place, very respectable for a seventeen year old at his first Games. But, not nearly as respectable as the silver medal Igor won at the World Championships a month later. (He would have won Gold, USFSA officials insisted publicly, if those crooked Russian judges hadn't all ganged up with the Polish, Czech, and East Germans against him. How typical.)

  Four years later, Igor did win Gold, not just at the Worlds, but at the Olympics, as well. This time, however, his exploits weren't earth-shattering enough to merit the front page of the Times. Sure, it was a gold medal won for the U.S., their single one of those entire Games, but, it was only in figure skating, after all. Not in a real sport, like, oh, say, golf.

  And so, Igor had to wait over a quarter of a century to get his second front-page news story.

  In the meantime, he retired from amateur competition, skated professionally for a few years, then became a coach at the same Olympic training center that had once taken him in.

  “To pay back a debt," he explained.

  "Aw ..." everyone thought.

  And, in the end, it was his coaching success that, in December of 2005, brought a now forty-two-year-old Igor Marchenko back to Russia for the first time since his chilly desertion.

  Igor's top student, 2005 U.S. Ladies' Silver Medallist, Jordan Ares, had been invited, along with her teammate, 2005 U.S. Ladies' Bronze Medallist Lian Reilly—Gary Gold's top student—to skate in a "U.S. vs. Russia" made- for-TV event in Moscow.

  At first, Igor refused to attend. Exactly the same way he'd refused to attend any other competition held on Soviet soil while he was an amateur, and on formerly Soviet soil once he was a coach. It wasn't until the Russian Figure Skating Federation's president personally issued an invitation, a sort of "Come home, all is forgiven; Love & Kisses, Russia— PS: We'll even let you see your family again, isn't that terribly nice of us?" missive, that Igor agreed to the trip.

  This news made the 24/7 Sports Television Network very, very happy. Sure, it was in their contract to cover the event anyway, but now, on top of the up-close-and-personal profiles they were planning to tell all along—Lian vs. Jordan, their final head-to-head before the 2006 Nationals, where, due to the retirement of Erin Simpson, the 2005 champion, the U.S. ladies crown was at stake, and during an Olympic year to boot—now, they actually had a naturally (as opposed to a manufactured) dramatic story to tell: "Igor Marchenko Comes Home for the First Time."

  Oh, this was going to be a tearjerker, they could just feel it. The producers were already debating whether to use the Beatles's "Back in the U.S.S.R." or John Denver's 'Take Me Home" for the primary background music. (Although everyone agreed that Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" should definitely be played when they recapped the part about his dramatic escape. That one was a gimme.)

  Fortunately for the gag reflex of the
viewing public, neither ditty came to be. On the day of the first practice in Russia for the American girls and their coaches, Igor Marchenko collapsed in Natzionalnaya Arena. He was dead before the ambulance got there—three and a half hours after it was called.

  "Of course, Americans would get the most prompt service," the arena manager, whom everyone seemed to simply call Shura, groused in Russian. "Special privileges only for Americans."

  Lying facedown and inert barely three feet away from the ice surface upon which his star-making competitive career first began, Igor Marchenko finally earned his second New York Times story.

  This time, the headline read: "MURDERED!"

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Well, Bex, looks like you did it, again," Gil Cahill, executive producer of the 24/7 network's broadcast of "U.S. vs. Russia: A Figure Skating Challenge," announced during their first production meeting at seven a.m. sharp in the hotel's conference room the next morning. "You've gone and gotten us another skater killed."

  Bex winced and thought Gil was really stretching it. Was it her fault it just so happened that, at last year's World Championships, the Italian judge who everyone felt unfairly handed the ladies' title to Russia's dour Xenia Trubin instead of America's pert Erin Simpson, had found herself unfortunately electrocuted and that Bex ended up solving the crime? And was it her fault that, a few months later, a teenage skater Bex had urged 24/7 to profile for the upcoming U.S. Championship ended up kidnapped, with murder and mayhem to follow, and Bex had been forced to solve that case, too? (Well, actually, the latter kidnapping/murder, etc., had sort of been her fault to begin with; but that was too long a story to dissect in detail at this juncture.) The fact was this time she hadn't been in the country at the time the murder occurred, so she'd had nothing, even peripherally, to do with Igor Marchenko's death. And Gil had no right teasing her like he had.