“I’m going to see Dara Peterson. I tried to call her, but she’s not answering her phone. I can drop you by the office.”
“No!” Her head whipped around. “I mean, I’d like to go with you. I could help.”
I hesitated, not wanting to be saddled with a disaffected adolescent.
“Please?”
* * *
I had time to regret my moment of weakness on the ride to Dara Peterson’s house. To hear Kendall talk, Dara was a conniving bitch whose last name should be Machiavelli and who couldn’t skate as well as a pug. Given Dara and Dmitri’s international achievements, I discounted most of what she told me, wondering if she was jealous of a girl only five years older who had accomplished so much more. How sad, I thought, to feel that you were a has-been, or worse, a never-was, before your Sweet Sixteen was even on the horizon.
Dara lived with her parents in a house across from Ute Valley Park. It was a medium-sized two-story home, virtually indistinguishable from hundreds of others in the neighborhood. A woman wearing a brown wool suit opened the door when I rang. She had wiry strands of gray in her brown hair and looked harassed.
“Yes?” Her voice was not welcoming. Yips sounded from behind her, and a golden retriever puppy skidded into the hall. “No, Honey,” she said, restraining the pup, who was eager to greet us.
I introduced myself and explained I was looking for Dara. Kendall dropped to her knees to fondle the puppy and let it lick her face. It was all paws and tongue.
“Dara spent the night at LeAnn’s,” her mother said with an exasperated sigh. “They were going straight to the rink this morning.”
I didn’t tell Mrs. Peterson that it was unlikely Dara had gotten anywhere near the rink. She clearly hadn’t heard about the attack on Bobrova. “What’s LeAnn’s last name?” I asked.
“Merculies.” She supplied a phone number. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work. I came home over lunch to let Honey out. Why did we get a puppy?”
She didn’t seem to expect an answer, scooping the wriggling ball of yellow fuzz into her arms. Yelps and whines issued from what I guessed was the kitchen as Mrs. Peterson crated the puppy. She reappeared, trying to pick long yellow hairs off her suit. “If she’s not at LeAnn’s, you might try Maggie Moo’s,” she offered, joining us on the porch and locking the door. “When you catch up to her, tell her I expect her to walk Honey before dinner.”
“Will do.” It occurred to me that the Petersons probably knew Dmitri pretty well since he’d been their daughter’s partner for seven years or so. Despite the woman’s obvious haste, I stopped her with a question. “Did Dara tell you that Dmitri Fane is missing, Mrs. Peterson?”
She gave me a measuring look out of clear hazel eyes. Faint crow’s feet branched from the corners, and I guessed she was in her midforties. “Sometimes I rue the day we met that man,” she said.
I raised my brows. “Why?”
She hesitated, glancing at Kendall, who was kicking pebbles from the rock border and watching them roll down the driveway. “Don’t I know you?” she asked. “From the Ice Hall. Kelsey, isn’t it?”
“Kendall Goldman,” the girl said, looking surprised and pleased at being recognized.
“You did pretty well at Junior Nationals last year, didn’t you?” Mrs. Peterson asked. “Look, I forgot to give Honey her treat, would you mind?” She unlocked the door again. “They’re in a box on the pantry floor. Just one or two.”
Having disposed of Kendall in an efficient way I admired, Mrs. Peterson turned back to me. “Dmitri Fane is a fabulous skater, very athletic, but very lyrical, too, and he takes good care of Dara on the ice. She’s a household name with endorsement opportunities—”
She sounded like her daughter was Tiger Woods.
“—largely because of Dmitri. Off the ice, he’s irresponsible. He gave her her first drink when she was fifteen. Fifteen! She was so hungover the next day I had to keep her home from school. Then he talked her into a tattoo last year—even paid for it. He lives in the fast lane. He drinks more than is good for him, and he hangs with a rough crowd.”
“Other skaters?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where he knows them from. They don’t usually come around the Ice Hall, but one of them was there last week. They had an argument. I was there to pick up Dara—her car was in the shop—and I bumped into them in the hall. Dmitri’s friend was yelling and so red in the face I thought he was going to have a stroke. He was saying something about cards, but he shut up fast when he saw me.”
Cards … maybe Dmitri gambled. It seemed in keeping with Mrs. Peterson’s description of his lifestyle.
A car whooshed past, and her eyes followed it as it disappeared around a corner. I shivered as a gust of wind goosed a plastic bag into a shrub.
“Who was he?”
She shrugged. “We didn’t do introductions.”
“What did he look like?”
“Older … my age, at least. Kind of tough. Dark hair and eyes, medium height, carrying a bit of weight around his middle. He had a splint on his nose like it’d been broken. Why?”
“I’m trying to track down Dmitri’s friends, see if anyone’s heard from him or knows where he might be. Dara seems really worried about him.”
Mrs. Peterson’s lips curved in a small smile. “She’s my daughter and I love her, but she does have drama queen tendencies. He’ll turn up. He might be a bit of a flake, but he’s passionate about skating. Look, I’ve really got to get back to work,” she said as Kendall appeared at the door. Jingling her keys, she trotted down the sidewalk to the brown LeSabre parked at the curb.
“I wish we had a dog,” Kendall said, back in pout mode.
“You do,” I reminded her. “Nolan?” Nolan was Gigi’s shih tzu, a fierce little mop of a dog not best suited for surveillance work. He’d been instrumental in landing Gigi in the ER with a broken arm a few months back.
“I mean a real dog, like a golden retriever or a Lab,” Kendall said.
I sympathized with her but didn’t want to say so. “You’ve got dog hair on your sweatshirt,” I pointed out instead.
I called LeAnn Merculies from the Petersons’ front porch as Kendall picked long yellow hairs off her clothes, only to be told Dara had not spent the night at her apartment and hadn’t been expected. “Did you hear about Coach Bobrova?” LeAnn asked after suggesting I look for Dara at Maggie Moo’s. “Isn’t it the awfullest?”
“The awfullest,” I agreed before dialing the ice cream shop.
Kendall looked a question at me when I hung up. “She’s not there,” I said, “and her boss is pissed off that she didn’t show for her shift.”
Kendall wrinkled her brow. “Do you mean our client is missing?”
I overlooked the “our.” “Apparently so.”
12
Since I didn’t know where Mrs. Peterson worked and I didn’t have her cell phone number, I wrote a note asking her to call and tucked it between the storm door and the jamb. I didn’t want to worry Dara’s parents, but bad things were happening to people close to Dmitri, and I thought they should get the police involved sooner rather than later if Dara hadn’t turned up by the end of the day.
“What do we do now?” Kendall asked, tugging at the waistband of jeans cut lower than J.Lo’s necklines. “Or is the case over because we don’t have a client to pay us anymore?”
She had the business instincts of an ambulance-chasing lawyer or a land-raping developer. Those genes must’ve come from her dad. “Dara’s retainer covers a couple more days of work, so I’ll keep plugging.” I wasn’t sure what I’d do after that if Dara was still missing. Maybe her folks would want to hire Swift Investigations.
“So, what’s the next step? I think we should search Dmitri’s apartment.”
“Why?” My tone was damping.
“For clues,” she said with her “duh” voice.
No way was I letting the hormonal teenager anywhere near Dmitri’s belongings. “W
e talk to more people who knew Dmitri well,” I said. “Skaters. Somebody has to know something.” I hoped. “We also find the cabin near Estes Park that may or may not have belonged to Dmitri or Bobrova.”
We got in the car, and I backed down the drive. As we merged onto I-25, I dialed Gigi at the office and told her what I knew about the cabin, suggesting she check property records in the names Fane and Bobrova. I listened as she told me about her interviews at Dellert House and the tattoo parlor. “Sure, a stakeout, um-hm, whatever,” I told her, distracted by Kendall huffing hot breath onto the car’s window and drawing Hello Kitty faces in the condensation. “Stop that! No, not you,” I said to Gigi as Kendall sulkily erased the window with her sleeve. “Give me a call when you get something.”
I cut the connection and asked Kendall where we were likely to find Dmitri’s skating friends, given that the rink was closed. “Angel and Trevor have costume fittings today,” she said after a moment’s thought. “They’re doing a new long program, to the Firebird Suite—they’ve put in side-by-side triple axels and another lift—and Estelle is doing their costumes.”
She breathed the word “Estelle” with equal parts envy and awe. Who knew costumes needed designing and weren’t bought off the rack in a special section at Target? “Where’s her store?”
“She doesn’t have a store in Colorado Springs,” Kendall said. “She’s from Paris. You must have heard of Estelle? She did the wedding dress for Sienna Miller’s friend, the one who married Paris Hilton’s ex-boyfriend?”
I shook my head, and she rolled her eyes at my ignorance. “Tell me where we can find this Angel and Trevor,” I said.
Kendall pulled out a slim pink cell phone and conducted a brief and cryptic conversation with a friend on the other end. “At Estelle’s room at the Broadmoor,” she said, flipping the phone closed with an air of satisfaction. “Four oh two.”
“Does Estelle design your costumes?” I asked.
“I wish.” She relapsed into sulkiness. “My mom’s too cheap.”
“You could use the money you’ve made working for us over Christmas break,” I suggested.
“Oh, please. That hardly pays for my cell phone.”
I was plenty tired of her gimme-gimme-gimme attitude, and I’d have dropped her back at the office except I thought her knowing Angel and Trevor might come in handy.
* * *
The Broadmoor is a gracious five-star resort on the southwest side of Colorado Springs. It features golf courses that become points of controversy whenever our semidesert city adopts water rationing because its green lushness sucks up water the way an alcoholic swills martinis. It also has a couple of four- or five-star restaurants and a spa that (Gigi says) is as relaxing as the Garden of Eden. I assume she’s talking pre serpent and apple stealing. The Broadmoor and its amenities don’t figure into my budget, and cases don’t usually bring me this way, so I looked around at the marble and antiques and solicitous staff with covert curiosity tinged with awe. Kendall sailed through the lobby as if it were no more special than a Holiday Inn Express. Considering that the Goldmans had probably wined and dined at the Broadmoor’s Charles Court or Penrose Room several times a month before Les left, the hotel probably wasn’t worth a second look to her.
She led us directly to the elevators and punched a button before I got on. The doors closed with barely a hiss of sound, and we glided upward. “Let me ask the questions,” I cautioned Kendall as we trod down the carpeted hallway to Estelle’s room. A young man with the cowed mien of an assistant’s assistant or indentured servant appeared in the doorway as we approached 402. His arms full of spandex, chiffon, and sequins in a rainbow of colors, he didn’t close the door as he scurried to the next room. Through the gaping door we heard a gravelly voice with a French accent say, “You have put on weight.” I couldn’t tell whether the speaker was male or female, but the tone was accusatory. “At least two pounds.”
“Poor Angel,” Kendall whispered. Her expression belied her sympathy; her delight in hearing the other skater chewed out was apparent.
It was a male voice, though, insouciant and confident, that answered. “Muscle, baby, all muscle. I’ve been doing some extra weight training. You think it’s easy to hold a hundred and five pounds—”
“A hundred and one!” a girl’s voice chimed in.
“—over my head with one arm?”
I knocked lightly and went in when there was no response. An open door is an invitation, right? A small foyer opened into a large sitting area with a closed door—the bedroom, I presumed—to the right. A small round platform was set up in the middle of the room, and a young man stood on it, posing like a bodybuilder in a flame-red costume so tight it displayed his muscles in sufficient detail for a drawing in an anatomy text. A girl in a matching costume with a sequined bodice and a short skirt trimmed with feathers glared at the young man, while another assistant—this one female but wearing the same scared-rabbit expression as the young man who’d left the room—pinned up her hem. Trevor and Angel, I presumed.
“What’s a costume like that cost?” I whispered to Kendall, finding myself fascinated by the details of this new world.
“Two thou,” she whispered back.
Good God. As far as I could tell, that came out to about a buck a sequin. I was pretty sure my entire wardrobe wasn’t worth two thousand dollars.
A woman tall enough to play for the Nuggets stood with her arms crossed over a turquoise angora sweater that hung to below her butt. Heavy black hair cropped in bangs straight across her forehead and falling to just above her shoulders framed a bony face devoid of makeup except for eyes fringed by fake lashes. “You call this muscle?” She leaned forward as she spoke and pinched Trevor’s waist between her thumb and forefinger.
“Solid muscle, baby.” He grinned, apparently not minding the pinch or the accusation. “Read it and weep.”
“Pah!” The woman turned away and spotted Kendall and me. “Who are you?” Her tone was brusque but not hostile.
“Charlotte Swift.” I pulled out a card and handed it over. “I’m looking for—”
“Kendall! What are you doing here?” The girl in red focused on Kendall, a pucker between her brows. “Don’t tell me Estelle’s doing your costume?”
“Hi, Angel,” Kendall said, twisting her ponytail. “Hi, Trevor.”
“Yo, Kenny, ’sup? Whaddaya think of my Firebird threads?” He did a 360 and finished with his biceps flexed at shoulder height. He looked like he belonged on a surfboard, not an ice rink, with streaky blond hair, toothpaste-ad teeth, and dimples.
“You’re done, Trevor,” Estelle said in a tone that made me wonder if she’d been a middle school teacher before taking up design. She accented Trevor’s name on the last syllable—Trev-OR—giving it a Gallic lilt. “Change.”
He gave her a mock salute, stepped off the dais, and disappeared into the bedroom.
“You were saying?” Estelle turned back to me. Full on, she looked older than she had in profile, maybe in her early fifties, with almost colorless lips and pale eyes framed by those absurd lashes.
“I was really hoping to talk to Angel and Trevor,” I said. “About Dmitri Fane. He’s missing, and I’ve been hired to find him.”
“Good riddance, if you ask me.” Trevor stood in the doorway, his smile gone, clad now in jeans and a striped rugby shirt. I could see the red costume on the bedroom floor behind him.
“Don’t start with that again!” Angel said, putting her fists on her hips. “I can’t stand to hear about how he stole Dara away from you one more time. You’d think he’d done a Tonya Harding on your legs, or something, but, no, all he did was pair up with Dara Peterson. So what if they’ve won a medal or two? This is our year, Trev—don’t lose your focus.”
Trevor scowled at her. “That championship should’ve been mine. If Dmitri hadn’t—”
“When did you last see him?” I interrupted. “What kind of mood was he in?”
“Why should I help you
find him?” Trevor asked, all trace of surfer boy vanished behind slitted eyes. “I hope the bastard stays gone.” Slinging a gym bag over his shoulder, he stalked out of the room.
“Trevor, wait!” Kendall scooted out the door after him before I could stop her. I hoped she had a plan for getting home, because I wasn’t going to traipse around the multi-acre hotel looking for her.
I exchanged a speaking glance with Estelle.
“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Angel said in a soft voice. The fire seemed to have drained out of her with Trevor’s departure, and her shoulders slumped.
“I’ll finish this.” Estelle dismissed the assistant with a curt nod and knelt to put pins in the skirt. “Turn.”
Angel pivoted obediently.
“Have you talked to Dmitri lately?” I asked, speaking to the girl’s back.
“Friday. At practice. I thought he seemed worried.”
I had to strain to hear her words. “Really? About what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know him that well. I mean, it’s not like Trev and I pal around with him and Dara.” She sounded wistful but resigned. “Just he talks to me sometimes. I think he’s lonely.”
That was a new insight. No one had described Dmitri as lonely. Now that I thought of it, though, no one had given me the name of a best friend, either, or even the names of people he hung out with. Fiona, at the catering company, seemed like the closest thing he had to a friend; at least, she had described him as her best friend. It didn’t necessarily go both ways, though.
“If you had to guess, what was he worried about? Something to do with skating? His catering job? Family? A legal or financial problem?”
“It wouldn’t be skating,” Angel said, her voice wry. “Dmitri doesn’t worry about skating. He assumes he’ll win.” In response to Estelle’s pressure on her leg, she turned again until she faced me. “And he doesn’t have much family, just his mom. She was out here for a visit a couple of months ago, and she seemed fine then. You know his dad died last November?”
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