Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  "The couple who sells their candy next to you?"

  "It is poison," Fedya said.

  "Really?"

  She must not have been able to hide the shock on her face, because Fedya quickly explained, "Not arsenic, not hemlock, not the true poison, no. But what they paint candy with to make it the red color, it is chemical. It will not kill child who eats it dead. But, it is not good for the health."

  "Oh," Bex said. And added one more iffy item to the list of foods she didn't feel like indulging in, in Russia. "But, anyway, the couple, they said that you told them about Igor Marchenko even before he was killed."

  "Yes. This is true."

  "How did you know about him? I mean, I guess his life story was probably in the Soviet papers when he first defected—"

  "No. This is not true. Because, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, we learned from our teachers when we are growing up, is Socialist paradise where every person is happy all of the time. There can never be reason to leave Socialist Paradise, so no one ever wishes this. And if no one ever wishes this, then no one ever does this. And if no one ever does this, why would news and television to talk about this? When Igor wins the Olympics and they show us his skating on television, they tell us he is mentally deficient and that is why Americans are able to kidnap him and force him to skate for them. He is crazy. He is ill."

  "Is that the story you told the Gypsy couple?" Bex asked, wondering if she were actually chasing a non-event here. When she heard that Fedya had told them about Igor, she'd jumped to the conclusion that he was telling them Igor's true story, and she wondered how he knew it before the newspapers had started rehashing it following his death. But if he was just telling the Gypsies something that he'd heard years ago on television, well, then there was nothing to investigate here at all. And Bex had spent one hundred rubles on nothing.

  She wondered how she should phrase that for her expense report.

  "No," Fedya said. "That is not the story I told them. They would not believe it, in any case. Now we know everything we hear on television then was lies." He paused, considering his words. "We knew it then, as well. We knew it was lies. But we did not have the imagination to guess what the truth was."

  Sasha returned to their table, fresh tea in hand, just in time to catch Fedya's last words. He handed him the cup and glanced at Bex to check how she was absorbing her latest lecture on Russia's honesty problems. Bex deliberately did not meet his gaze.

  "So how did you know the real truth about Igor's defection?"

  "Because," Fedya took another sip of scalding tea. Wafting steam burned the tip of his nose, turning it pink above the mustache. "I was there."

  "You were?" Bex blurted out the first thing that popped into to her mind. "Were you working for the KGB?"

  Now, he definitely chuckled. It wasn't just a lip-slit here and a shoulder-buckle there. This time, the corners of his mouth actually turned up in amusement. He even set down his cup so that Bex might see his merriment.

  Okay, she saw it. She just didn't get it. In her mind, Bex was too busy imagining Fedya as an ex-Communist spy, jobless and homeless since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. The Spy Who Was Forced Into the Cold.

  "No. I was a medical student. A medical student who believed I was minding of my own business and sitting low, so no one noticed my existence. I thought I was safe."

  "Fedor!" Sasha was interrupting her cross-examination, again. But considering how helpful he'd been the last time, Bex decided to let him finish out his thought "Sveta Marchenko's husband, his name, she says it was Fedor!"

  "And he was a medical student!" Once given a big, ol' clue, Bex had no trouble fitting the rest of the pieces together. Could a person be both bright and delayed at the same time? Because that was her: Eventually Ingenious.

  Fedya stretched out his arms and dipped his bushy head modestly, as if taking a bow of acknowledgement.

  "That's how you knew Igor's real story!" Now that she'd been pointed in the right direction, Bex was all about stating the obvious.

  "Yes."

  She remembered, "Svetlana said you left her over what happened with Igor."

  Fedya's hand, in what Bex could only hope was a subconscious, nervous tick, traveled to his pocket. He patted the knife, as if soothing it. "Yes."

  "She said you both were thrown out of the university. That you lost your home, that your friends refused to be seen with you."

  His hand paused, squeezing the knife's hilt. "Yes. Yes, this happened."

  Bex recalled what Konstantin said about Luba having the power to stop Igor's defection if she'd wanted to, and asked Fedya, "Did you blame Svetlana for what happened to you?"

  "I blamed Sveta and Luba for raising such a spoiled boy, that he does not think of how his selfish actions will affect others. They treat him like he is a prince. A king. Igor is athlete, Igor is special. Igor is allowed to do what he wants. He hears this all his life, so of course Igor does not stop to think before he defects. Igor wishes to go to America, the rest of us can die, thank you."

  "So you blamed Igor."

  "Igor is to blame."

  Bex spoke slowly, the sentence forming after the words were already said. Which probably wasn't the best way to go about asking a loaded question, especially considering what Bex heard herself proposing. "So, you blamed Igor for your not being able to finish medical school. And now you make homeopathic medicine. And Igor was killed with a homeopathic version of digitalis. And you knew he was at the arena."

  That did it. This time, Fedya went whole-hog and laughed out loud.

  He laughed so loudly, even the indifferent waitress raised her chin long enough to shush him angrily. Fedya glared back at her and made a vague threatening gesture with the sweep of one, massive arm. She got the message and went back to indifference.

  "You think that I poisoned Igor?"

  "You had means. You had opportunity. You had motive."

  "I also have a mind that has not, thank you, gone senile. Igor Marchenko already destroyed me once. Why do you think I would allow him to do so again?"

  Bex had no reason to believe him. Except that she also had no non-circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

  "Alright" she said, putting his denial on the back burner for now. "Then maybe you can answer this for me." To stress her point Bex reached into her pocket and gave him the remaining fifty rubles. Igor's one-time brother-in-law stuffed the cash into his other pocket. The non-lethal one. Bex asked, "How long have you been selling holistic medicine outside the arena?"

  Fedya shrugged. "Several years. Maybe five, six. It is a good location. People who work around come to me regularly, every month, every week. I make very excellent medicine. Working medicine, strong. But it is also good location because so many new people come to arena often. For competitions and shows and important meetings. I have many new customers all the time."

  Bex asked, "Did you have any new customers the last few days? I mean, since the skating competition started?"

  "Yes. Some. The little girl with the auburn, curly hair, she came to me. She had pains. A fight she said. She bought ointment I make. Very good for pains."

  "Did anyone come to you asking for digitalis?"

  "No." Fedya shook his head definitely.

  Well. There went that whole line of questioning. If Fedya was telling the truth, Bex had just hit a brick wall. Unless he himself was the murderer, she would get nothing she could use to solve the mystery here.

  "The girl who bought it she was not asking for digitalis."

  Wait. Rewind.

  "The girl who bought what?" Bex quizzed.

  "It is a powder I make, for muscle illness. It is helpful when muscles are hard or they are frozen, cramping."

  "What does this have to do with digitalis?"

  "The muscle medicine, it is very, very expensive to make. To recoup my money, I need to sell muscle medicine along with other medicine. Cheap to make medicine. So they balance out. The girl, she asks me only for the muscle medic
ine, but she buys set of three, because I will not sell to her otherwise. She buys muscle medicine one, belladonna for digestion two, and three, digitalis."

  Bex prayed. She prayed very hard. And then she asked. "Do you remember who the girl was? Did she tell you her name?"

  "No. No, she did not tell me her name." Fedya attempted a joke. "I do not take credit cards on the street, so I do not ask for—what is the word?—proper identification. But I know it is the American skater. With the golden hair. The one who is Igor's student, so I know her name. Like the Arab country. It is Jordan."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bex thanked Fedya. Bex thanked him profusely. That too seemed to amuse him, but Bex no longer cared if he had a laugh at her expense. Heck, he could have an entire fit of hysteria for all she cared. Because if Fedya was telling the truth...

  She thanked him again. She bought him another cup of tea. And then, before he left, she got up the courage to ask, "Fedya, excuse me, but why do you carry a knife?"

  "Bandits," he said simply, and as if it were the most logical answer in the world. "I sell on the street for anyone to see, and I only accept money in cash. There are many who would like to rob me. I need protection. This is a very dangerous city. A dangerous country. This is difficult for you to understand. We are a difficult people to understand."

  He tipped his hat to Bex. He nodded briskly to Sasha, and then he was gone. Bex watched him trudge down the snowy street. And she remembered his idea of an alibi for Igor's murder. "I also have a mind that has not, thank you, gone senile." It was awfully reminiscent of Valeri Konstantin's, "I am not stupid." Why did everyone think she was insulting their intelligence? She was just doing her job, after all.

  And, in the interest of being thorough, Bex asked Sasha, "Did you believe him?"

  She recognized the irony of her query. Here she'd spent half the day pouting because Sasha had intimated he might not always be honest with her—or, rather, that he wouldn't hesitate to be dishonest should the need come up, which was somewhat different, she supposed—and now she was asking him to judge Fedya's veracity.

  "Did you?" Sasha politically popped the ball right back into her court. This boy would go far in show business.

  "I don't know. I mean, yeah, he acted like my suggesting he'd poisoned Igor was the most ridiculous thing in the world. But he didn't seem that surprised when I brought it up. Also, I bet because he's been around the neighborhood for so long, nobody would have noticed if he popped into the arena. Maybe he even does it all the time, he says he has regular customers there. And who better than the guy who makes the drug to know exactly how much to administer to make sure the dose is lethal? And he has a big reason to hate Igor. On paper, he's the most logical suspect. And there's one more thing. I've been thinking about this since Valeri Konstantin claimed he didn't make those telephone calls threatening Luba and Sveta. Maybe someone else made them, and just said they were Konstantin. So if that's the case, why would somebody do that? I figure they did it to keep Luba and Sveta from coming down to the arena. Like, maybe Fedya was the one who did it, because he didn't want them to recognize him. He said he likes to fly under the radar in general. And you'd definitely want that if you were going to kill somebody. You wouldn't want anyone around who could draw unnecessary attention to you."

  "His story about Jordan buying digitalis, you think this is a lie?"

  "Only one way to find out," Bex said. And hailed a cab for the official hotel.

  Jordan opened her door dressed only in an oversized T- shirt with the words, "U.S. Figure Skating Team" written on it in red, white, and blue. It may have been more than the bra and panties she'd donned for her and Bex's first conversation two days earlier, but it was still revealing enough to show off the tautness of her stomach and the leanness of her thighs and arms.

  Bex was happy that she'd prompted Sasha to stay down the hall and chat up the floor matron again, instead of accompanying her to Jordan's room. He didn't need to see how attractive she was. It would distract him.

  Yeah. That was it. Distract him.

  Bex asked, "Can we chat for a couple of minutes, Jordan?"

  "Uhm... I was kind of getting ready for bed."

  The clock read seven p.m. which, for a normal skater, actually was bedtime. Frankly, it was somewhat past, considering most normal skaters got up at four a.m. to hit the rink before everyone else got there. But Jordan was hardly a normal skater. She was a renowned, self-proclaimed party animal. Most parties, in Bex's, granted, limited experience, tended to start after seven p.m., didn't they?

  "This won't take long." She invited herself inside.

  Jordan's hotel room looked just like Bex's identical room a few floors below. One bed, one nightstand, a lamp, an old- fashioned rotary phone, and a TV hidden in the wardrobe. The color scheme was a muted brown, making the borrowed clothing rack in the corner, from which hung Jordan's sequined, neon pink, green and canary yellow skating dresses the inescapable focal point. Which was the only reason Bex even noticed the damp-cloth-covered ironing board next to the dresses, and the steaming iron, recently unplugged for safety and standing on its side. Somehow, the image of Jordan diligently ironing her performance costumes the night before competition struck Bex as incongruous with the rest of her persona.

  Reluctant to jump right in with, "So, Jordan, isn't it interesting that you happened to buy a poison that, a day later, happened to kill your coach?" Bex decided to ease into the harder questions by opening with, "So, Jordan, any luck cashing Igor's check?"

  Jordan shrugged and plopped down on the bed, Indian- style. "I'm doing okay."

  Bex realized it was the first time she'd ever seen Jordan without makeup. At the major international events it was unofficially compulsory that the girls, and sometimes the boys, too, wear make-up even to practice sessions. And Bex only ever saw Jordan in practice or in competition. She had no idea there was actual skin under the layers of foundation, powder, tint, blush, lipstick, mascara, eye shadow and sparkle-dust. Rather young skin, at that. Sitting Indian-style on the bed, dressed only in a T-shirt, her face bare, Jordan looked more like a teen at a slumber party than an international athlete, a Madison Avenue spokesperson, and a possible cold-blooded killer.

  But, one thing at a time, Bex.

  She kept up the casual chatter. "You been okay, practicing without a coach?"

  "Sure. I mean, what's he going to tell me twenty-four hours before a competition that he shouldn't have told me a million times beforehand?"

  "Well, there's also the emotional support."

  "I'm a big girl. I don't need anybody holding my hand."

  "So I guess his death didn't affect you much?"

  "Yeah, you know, whatever. Easy come, easy go." Jordan's head bobbed up and down, causing the bedsprings to creak.

  Bex asked, "Jordan, what do you know about holistic medicine?"

  The bedsprings stopped creaking. Jordan's head stopped mid-bob. She glared at Bex. She said, "How'd you figure it out?"

  Was that a confession? Bex had been expecting obfuscation, denial, feigned confusion. She hadn't been expecting... was that a confession?

  Bex stammered, "I—I did some research. That's my job, you know. And—"

  "It's none of your business. It's private."

  "Actually, Jordan, I think anybody's business would extend to—"

  "And it's not against the rules! I checked!"

  Bex shut her mouth. She opened it again to slowly ask, "Jordan, do you think the rules in Russia against murder are that different from U.S. law?"

  "Murder? What are you talking about, murder?"

  "Igor Marchenko—"

  "Who's talking about Igor? I'm talking about earlier today, when you saw me with the cigar and the arnica."

  "What's arnica?"

  "It's just an ointment for sore muscles and bruises, that's it. It doesn't have any banned substance in it. I checked. It's totally legal. And the cigar, it's not even tobacco; so it's definitely not pot or any bad stuff like
that. I just light it and apply the heat to my pressure points, on my knees, mostly. It's therapeutic."

  "You think I'm here to bust you over some stuff you use on your knees?"

  "Well, the stupid ISU has their bunch of stupid rules about what you can and can't use when you're competing. Remember that Chinese chick that got her medal taken away because of cough medicine, for Pete's sake? I didn't want to risk it."

  "So, then, why use the... what did you call it? Arnica?"

  "Because it works. It works better than the prescription crap that they charge you an arm and a leg and a couple of hips for. And I'm not exactly swimming in money. I've got to work with what I've got."

  Bex said, "Jordan, I'm not here to talk about muscle cream."

  "Then what's with the homeopathic questions?"

  "Jordan," Bex took a deep breath. "There is a man. He sits outside the arena. He sells homeopathic medicine."

  "Yeah, so?”

  "He told me he sold you some of his medicine the other day. He told me he sold you digitalis. The same drug that killed Igor."

  "He's a liar!" Jordan attempted to leap off the bed, but she tripped, and ended up more hopping forward, still on her knees.

  "You didn't buy anything from him?"

  "I didn't buy digitalis!"

  "You didn't?"

  "I mean, I did... damn it!" Jordan yanked a pillow out from under the bedspread and hugged it her chest, like body armor. It was white with dark blue stripes. Prison-style. Bex tried not to get lost in the symbolism. "I only bought the digitalis because the bastard wouldn't sell me what I really needed without it. Wait, look, I'll show you." She successfully made it off the bed, stomped to her closet, dug around under a pile of mashed sweaters and pants which, in contrast to the neatly ironed skating dresses, just lay in a heap on the floor, and pulled out a wooden case. The black and white checkered squares suggested it had once been a chess set, but had been re-purposed. Jordan brought the case to the bed, laying it down extra-carefully with both hands, like a wobbly-headed baby. She snapped open the gold-plated locks and turned the holder to face Bex, so that she could see for herself the twelve five-ounce bottles lined up six by six, one on top of the other. Four of the clear glass bottles were filled with blue liquid, four with green, and four with brown.