“First, Mort, may I ask what led you to bring him in for questioning?”
“We got a call from one of the security guards at the ice arena. The kid was hanging around the door to the ladies’ room, trying to catch a peek inside, I guess. Apparently they’d caught him at it before, and this time they were willing to press charges. One of my deputies headed over there and brought him in.”
“What has he told you?” I asked.
“Not much. He’s like a little boy. Just sits there and pouts, won’t answer any questions. The name on his California driver’s license is Hunter, says he’s twenty-one, but I doubt it. The license looks like a forgery. We’re checking with Motor Vehicles out there. But you said his real name is something else.”
“That’s right. His real name is Thomas Mulvaney. He’s been working as a waiter at Mara’s as Tommy Hunter.”
“I knew I’d seen him somewhere around town. How long has he been at Mara’s?”
“Not very long. He told me he’s originally from the ‘flatlands of southern Nevada,’ but there are no flatlands in southern Nevada. He’s from San Francisco. He was accused out there of stalking Christine Allen, the young woman who was Alexei Olshansky’s skating partner.”
“How did you find that out?”
“I have a friend out there who used to be with the PD.” I didn’t want to reveal John Molito’s name; I didn’t want him accused of breaking department rules. Mort was wise to my fudging. He didn’t ask for a name.
“So this Tommy’s a real foul ball,” Mort said.
“He told Mara his parents were killed in a car wreck, but I’m not sure we can trust anything he says. He’s troubled, that’s for certain. I think he’s the one who wrote those nasty notes to Alexei Olshansky, the one found in Alexei’s room, and the other that was with flowers outside the rink.”
Mort’s eyes widened. “Then that means there’s a pretty good chance that he killed Olshansky.”
“It certainly doesn’t rule him out as a suspect,” I said, hoping Mort wouldn’t jump to premature conclusions.
“It’ll take a lot more to make a solid case against him,” he said.
“You say he won’t answer any questions,” I said.
“That’s right, Mrs. F. Clammed right up like a losing tout at the track. Refuses to say a word.”
“I wonder if he’d speak with me. I was introduced to him at Mara’s and he seemed friendly enough.”
“If he won’t talk to me, an officer of the law, I doubt if he’ll talk to you.”
“Well, sometimes someone who is less threatening might be able to get through.”
“I didn’t threaten him,” Mort said, looking offended.
“Of course you didn’t, but as you pointed out, you’re in uniform. That alone can be intimidating, especially to a young boy. Why not let me take a shot at him?”
Mort rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay,” he said, getting up and coming around the desk. “Come on, I’ll take you back to the squawk-and-talk.”
Tommy was led into a relatively comfortable interview room, at least when compared to most police interrogation rooms I’ve seen. His face expressed surprise to see me. I greeted him with a big smile and extended my hand, which he tentatively took. Fear was etched into his eyes, and I felt sorry for him. No one, of course, including me, would dismiss his activities as a stalker, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t respond to his vulnerability. He sat on one side of the table; I took a chair opposite him. Mort leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.
“Sheriff Metzger thought you might be more at ease talking with someone other than a member of the police,” I said.
“Are you a lawyer?” Tommy asked.
“No. If you remember back to when we were first introduced, you found out that I write murder mysteries. I know you said you didn’t read much, but maybe I can get you interested in books. I’ll be happy to give you one of mine.”
“Would you sign it to me?”
“If you like.”
He started to say something but held back, his eyes darting to Mort and then to the floor.
“Would you prefer that Sheriff Metzger leave us alone, Tommy?”
He nodded and managed to say, “I think so.”
I looked to Mort, who shrugged and left the room, but not without saying, “We’ll be keeping an eye on you, Mrs. F.”
I enjoyed a distinct advantage over Mort because I knew more about the young man’s stalking history. I decided to try to catch him off guard with that knowledge and began by saying, “I know that you’re a fan of Christine Allen’s.”
His eyes took on life that hadn’t been there before.
“She’s my girlfriend. We’ve been best friends for years.”
“You have?”
“Yeah, but her father doesn’t want us to be together.” He caught himself. “Hey! How do you know about ... about me and Chris?”
“I have some friends in San Francisco, Tommy. They told me about the trouble you had there.”
“See? It was her father. She wants to be with me,” he said. “I know she does. He told the cops I was planning to hurt her, but I would never hurt her. She knows that. We’re going to run away. We’re going to pretend that I abducted her. Like a princess, you know, in the storybooks.”
My mind flashed back to first time I’d seen Tommy. It was at Charles Department Store, the night Irina Bednikova had come in. He’d been buying duct tape and white rope used for hanging laundry. It was possible his abduction fantasy about Chris included tying her up. I shivered at the thought.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t want to hurt her,” I said to him, “but you can understand why she would be upset having someone pay too much attention to her.”
“I just want her to know who I am,” he said. He slumped back in his chair and seemed more relaxed.
“We’ll talk more about Christine at another time,” I said, “but—”
“We’re going to get married,” he said, absently. “And I’ll be the only one she skates with.”
I decided to change direction and become more specific in my questions. I had no idea how long Mort would allow me to be in there with him and didn’t want to be removed before I had a chance to ask what I considered to be the most important ones.
“Tommy, did you write notes to Alexei Oshansky, the Russian skater who was killed?”
His relaxed demeanor changed. He sat up straight and looked around the room as though seeking a means of escape.
“Did you?” I repeated.
“He doesn’t deserve to have her,” he said.
“But he didn’t deserve to die, either.”
He’d referred to Olshansky in the present tense, as though he were still alive.
“I didn’t hurt him.”
“I didn’t say you did, Tommy. I just asked whether you had written notes to him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We have those notes, Tommy, written on Mara’s order pads and with the same grease pencils you use at the luncheonette. Comparing your handwriting to the writing on the notes won’t take very much.” I didn’t say that Mort wasn’t prepared to pay for such a service just yet. But the thought alone might convince Tommy he was caught in the net. “I would like to help you, Tommy, but I can’t if you aren’t honest with me. Sheriff Metzger naturally wonders whether you had anything to do with Alexei’s death.”
I waited for a response.
“Did you have anything to do with it, Tommy?”
“He didn’t deserve to have her,” he said again.
“You aren’t doing much to help yourself,” I said.
“Chris and I saw him,” he said.
“Alexei?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When did you see him?”
“That night.”
“The night he died?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Chris was at the rink with you.”
He nodded. “I saw him
go in where they keep those big machines.”
“The Zambonis?”
“The big machines.”
“Did you go in with him?”
He shook his head.
“Did you see someone else go in with him?”
He nodded.
Before I could follow up, he jumped to his feet, wrapped his arms around himself, and trembled. “I don’t want to talk anymore,” he said.
He went to the door and pounded on it. Mort immediately opened it and said, “I think we’d better end this, Mrs. F.”
He was right, of course. I’d had no idea how troubled Tommy was. It was shocking to witness the change in him from when I’d first met him at Mara’s. There he’d been friendly and open. Now he’d closed himself off from the world, wrapped up in his fantasy and totally unaware of the trouble he was in.
“You almost had him going there, Mrs. F.,” Mort said as we settled back into his office.
“You heard him say that Chris was at the rink the night Alexei died. She had denied that.”
“Yeah, but who knows if she was there for real or only in his imagination.”
“He said he saw Alexei go into the Zamboni garage the night he was killed,” I said, “and that he saw someone go in with him.”
“Shame he clammed up after he said that. Maybe he actually saw the murderer.”
“Or, in his mixed-up mind, was referring to himself in the third person.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for getting the info about his being a stalker back in Frisco.”
“I have more information for you, Mort.”
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s about Brian Devlin and the man Eve Simpson says is interested in buying the ice arena. I went by Devlin’s house before coming here and—”
Chapter Twenty-four
I went directly home from Mort’s office, started a fire in the fireplace, made myself a cup of soup, and settled in for some serious thinking. I left the lights off and enjoyed the peace the darkened room and roaring fire created, the flames tossing flickering shafts of orange light onto the ceiling and walls.
That day had been an eye-opener for me. While I’d not ruled out anyone as a suspect in Alexei Olshanky’s murder, I hadn’t focused on specific people. But Tommy Hunter’s emergence on the scene as not only Christine Allen’s San Francisco stalker, but also a troubled young man with anger festering inside of him, cast a deserved spotlight on him as the potential killer. It certainly could be said that he had a motive—get rid of the man who, in his befuddled mind, was a rival suitor for Christine.
But there was Alexei and Christine’s coach, Brian Devlin, who turned out to have had more in his background than figure skating and coaching. Not only had he been a gambler in Las Vegas—and not a very successful one, according to Peter Valery—but he’d also been implicated in at least one dubious business deal that entailed purposely sabotaging the value of a piece of property in order to buy it at a fire-sale price. Never mind that the plan also involved bribing politicians and presumably anyone else who could help the scheme along. Peter Valery’s father had paid dearly for choosing the wrong business partner. That Harvey Gemell had been the one to introduce Devlin and Valery, coupled with my having seen Gemell leave Devlin’s house that afternoon, sent me on an entirely new train of thought.
Was Devlin working with Gemell to devalue the Cabot Cove Ice Arena and to push Eldridge Coddington into selling it to Gemell at less than its worth? Could Devlin have been behind the incidents that had beset the arena? If that imagined scenario proved true, how far would he go to taint the arena’s reputation and compromise its value? Was murder an option?
But surely, I reasoned, killing someone in order to create a negative image of the arena was beyond the pale. Only someone demented, and desperate, would resort to such a heinous act. Brian Devlin might be desperate, but he wasn’t demented.
Could Devlin have had another motive for killing Alexei? The Russian skater’s comment to Devlin that hinted at something shadowy in the coach’s background had stuck with me. Alexei had been in Colorado Springs; his extended Russian-American family there had known Paul Valery. Might he have learned about the financial problems and legal action that had caused Valery to take his own life?
There had to be some connection between the skater and his time spent in Colorado, and Devlin’s role in Valery’s shady Las Vegas business deal.
It was hard to imagine that Christine Allen would have killed her pairs partner. From what I’d observed at the rink, they got along nicely, both on the ice and off. Of course, that didn’t mean that there was an absence of tension between them. Alexei had a reputation for being cruel to certain people. Marisa Brown had been the object of his nastiness on occasion and was vocal about it. Jeremy Hapgood was equally open in his dislike of the Russian skater and had been on the receiving end of many of Alexei’s verbal barbs. But, according to Marisa, Jeremy had a much more powerful motive to get rid of Alexei. He wanted to be Christine’s pairs partner. Would he have killed Olshansky in order to achieve that opportunity? People have been killed for lesser reasons, for a pair of sneakers or an imagined insult.
Although I had no idea how it might fit into the scheme of things, having learned that afternoon that Devlin and his assistant coach, Lyla Fasolino, were evidently more than professional colleagues added another dimension to the scenario. I had no reason to believe that Lyla had anything but a cordial working relationship with Alexei, nor was there a hint of any romantic interest between them. But then again, I hadn’t been aware of her relationship with Devlin. If Lyla was two-timing Brian with Alexei, it could change the whole picture. Jealousy ranks right up there with greed as a motive for murder. But lacking any knowledge of an affair between Alexei and Lyla, I put aside that notion of a love triangle as having a possible bearing upon the murder.
Despite the assorted conjectures that rose in my active mind, the dark room and crackling fire conspired to make me sleepy. A good night’s rest had eluded me since finding Alexei’s body in the pit, and I decided that there was nothing more to be accomplished by staying up and continuing to analyze motives and suspects. After banking the fire, I went upstairs, undressed, put on my pajamas, and curled up in a recliner, my favorite spot for reading. I had a new novel but had to struggle to stay awake, no fault of the author. Finally I surrendered to the inevitable, closed the book, turned out the floor lamp, and was padding toward the bathroom when the phone rang. I glanced at my digital alarm clock: 10:20.
“Hope I’m not calling too late, Mrs. F.”
“Another few minutes and you would have been,” I said.
“Glad I didn’t wake you. Thought you’d want to know since you sat in today on my questioning of Tommy Hunter that I’m holding him as a suspect in the murder of Alexei Olshansky.”
“You feel you have enough evidence to do that, Mort?”
“I can’t hold him any longer without charging him, Mrs. F. Legal Aid has assigned him a lawyer. The way I see it, he had motive and means, and he admits he saw the victim go into the Zamboni garage the day he was killed. Like you said, maybe he was talking about himself when he says he saw somebody follow Olshansky into the garage. That means he was there. And I have the threatening notes he wrote to the victim. Seems like a pretty strong case to me. Of course, I’m pretty sure he’ll file an insanity plea.”
“Have you run it past the district attorney?” I asked.
“First thing in the morning. Just figured now that the murder is solved, you can put it out of your mind and enjoy a good night’s sleep.”
“That was thoughtful of you, Mort,” I said, deciding not to question him further. “Good night.”
His call had abolished any sleepiness I’d been experiencing. I returned to the chair, turned on the light, and tried to get back into the novel. A half hour later, my eyelids drooping, I decided once again to call it a night. No sooner had I climbed beneath the covers when the phone rang. I debated letting m
y answering machine pick up but succumbed to the need to know who was calling at that hour.
“Mrs. Fletcher?” a male voice asked in almost a whisper.
My first thought was that it was a crank call, and I waited for the heavy breathing. But the caller dissuaded me of that possibility.
“Mrs. Fletcher? It’s Jeremy Hapgood at the ice arena.”
“Jeremy?” I said.
“I know it’s late, but I have to talk with you.”
“Can’t it wait until morning?”
“No, ma’am. Marisa told me that she spoke with you about what’s going on here at the rink.”
“Yes, she did. Is this about that?”
“It’s about Alexei Olshansky’s murder. I told her she got it all wrong.”
I was now fully awake. I sat up against my headboard and blinked away any vestiges of fatigue that remained.
“You have my attention, Jeremy,” I said, concealing a yawn.
“Can you come to the rink?” he said.
“Now? Isn’t it closed?”
“Yes, but it’s better that no one else be here.”
“You can come to my house if you’d like,” I offered.
“No, it has to be here. I want to show you how Alexei died. Marisa said that you can be trusted.” He paused. “Look, if you’re not interested, I’ll just—”
“Don’t you think this is something you should share with Sheriff Metzger?”
“I’m sorry I called,” he said.
“No, wait,” I said. “I’ll come and meet with you. You say we’ll be alone. What about security guards?”
“They go off duty once the rink is closed.”
I remembered Coddington saying the same thing at the press conference.
“The back door, at the rear of the parking lot, will be open.”
When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Are you coming?”
“Yes, Jeremy. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He hung up.
I got out of bed, splashed cold water on my face, got back into my clothes, and went downstairs. It was a few minutes after eleven. I looked outside through my front window. It had started snowing again, but only feathery flakes, the deceptive prelude to a heavier snowfall.
Skating on Thin Ice Page 20
