Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  Why the euphoria? Oh, well, many reasons. Where to begin?

  For one thing, she was still alive. Considering that Bex had entered Sergei's hotel room not one hundred percent certain of that result, this in and of itself was rather euphoria-inducing. Wasn't that how guys got hooked on the thrill of war or something? Wasn't that what happened to Christopher Walken in “The Deer Hunter,” when he couldn't stop playing Russian roulette? Bex couldn't be sure. She'd seen it once late at night on some obscure cable channel that kept cutting to a commercial every time the footage got too gory. But, in between the ads for Top 40 CD sets and some kind of superglue that fixed anything it touched but wouldn't get stuck to your hands, that hooked-on-the-adrenaline-rush-of- surviving had seemed to be the point.

  So, yeah, Bex was definitely having some of that.

  However, the really big giddiness was, in fact, coming from another source. It stemmed from the fact that, for the first time since she'd begun this psuedo-investigation, Bex knew exactly what she needed to do next. The time for flying by the seat of her pants was over. The time for making like Columbo was now.

  Sure, she had the number of Sergei's person/friend burning a hole in her hot little hand, and she fully intended to dial those digits shortly. But she also had something even better: knowledge gleaned from an entire skating season spent living out of a suitcase in hotels all over the world. Thanks to her experience haggling with snarling desk clerks at checkout time, Bex knew something even more important than the number of the person Sergei was allegedly talking to when Silvana Potenza was killed. She knew that hotels kept track of all outgoing calls, time and duration, so they could then charge you seven dollars a minute for them.

  This was a majorly wonderful thing.

  It meant that, just like the cops in the first half of Law & Order, plus all its ubiquitous spin-offs, Bex could find out exactly what number Sergei called, when he called it, and how long their person-to-person chat lasted. And she didn't have to get a court order or anything. All she had to do was charm the same snarling desk clerks who made leaving to catch a plane so difficult each and every time into showing her their records. How hard could that be?

  Well, anyway, it was very empowering to have a plan.

  And Bex couldn't wait to get started. Except that the elevator she was on seemed to be taking the scenic route, stopping on every floor to let in another throng of skating fans. The first group directly in front of her appeared to be a grandmother, mother, and teenage granddaughter—at least, that was Bex's guess due to their Before, After, and Much-After looks. All three wore T-shirts silk-screened with a different action photograph of the reigning men's champion, and were deep in conversation about whether he would be wearing his green or his turquoise leather pants for his exhibition routine on Sunday. Grandma laughed and said, "Oh, if only I were a few years younger!"

  Mom followed up with, "You and me both!"

  The teen daughter quipped, "But he's just the right age for me!"

  Bex wondered if they knew about their heartthrob's tendency toward feather boas and who he used them to lasso. Judging by the infatuated sighs, that would have to be a no.

  On the third floor, a group of Erin Simpson's fans got on. These days, they were easily identified by the martyrlike righteous indignation on their faces and the religious fervor glowing in their eyes. That and the fact that they were wearing buttons that said, "Erin Excitement!”

  Figuring it was part of her job, Bex tapped a ponytailed one on her shoulder, introduced herself, and asked, "How's the petition coming?"

  "Great!" All four of them turned around in unison, looking like the possessed children from “Village of the Damned.”

  "I talked to Jasper this morning," the apparent leader— she had the perkiest ponytail—chirped. "And he said the signature count is now up to almost ten thousand!"

  "Who's Jasper?" Bex asked.

  "He's Erin's Web master. He's been doing her site for a couple of years now. He's like some computer expert or something."

  "He's a grown man?"

  "Oh, yeah. He's like old enough to be my dad."

  It didn't matter how long Bex worked in skating, she suspected she would never get over the creep factor of grown men obsessing over little girls. This Jasper guy was hardly the only one she'd heard about who built electronic shrines, posted on fan message boards, and even traveled to competitions to see their favorites in person. Most of them seemed nice enough. They were respectful to the skaters and generally polite when you met them, and she'd never ever picked up whispers of any inappropriate behavior. So maybe it was just a harmless hobby, and she was being a prude.

  But it was creepy nonetheless.

  "What are you all going to do with the petition when you're done?" Bex asked.

  "We're sending it over to the ISU, of course. Now that we know for sure that Silvana Potenza's vote was fixed—"

  "Whoa! Wait a sec. Back up." Bex wondered if she'd stepped into a black hole and come out the other side a week later. "What do you mean now that you know for sure? How do you know?"

  "It's obvious." The ponytails shrugged in unison, and although only one of them spoke, the sentiment seemed to be coming from all four of them. "It's why she committed suicide."

  "Silvana committed suicide?"

  "Sure. Why else would a judge go into the refrigeration room?"

  It was the question of the hour. But Bex had never thought to look at it like that. She felt her euphoria slowly slipping away. The current title of her autobiography: You're Okay, I'm... Starting to Wonder.

  "You think she killed herself because—"

  "Because she couldn't live with herself for what she'd done to Erin."

  "I see."

  "Also, it's a crime, you know. My dad is a lawyer, and I asked him, and he said Erin could have sued her, the judge, a civil suit, because of the, you know, endorsements and money and stuff she lost coming in second instead of first."

  "Except," the brunette ponytail interrupted the blonde, "Erin would never do that."

  "That's right," towheaded ponytail agreed. "She's too nice."

  "She doesn't care about the money; she skates because she loves it."

  "Right, otherwise, she wouldn't do it. She's not like Xenia, who's always talking about the prize money and how she bought herself this fancy apartment back in Russia."

  "Erin would skate even if there was no money involved. That's how you know she's the true champion. She does it because she loves it."

  Bex asked, "Do you guys actually know Erin?"

  "We're in her fan club." This time the voices answered in unison.

  "I got my picture taken with her."

  "I write her a letter every week, and she answers me sometimes."

  "I always throw her a teddy bear when she's done skating, and now she knows me, and she waves to me when she goes over to pick it up."

  "She came to my rink once to practice, and I sat and talked to her mom while Erin was getting changed, and she was super, super nice."

  Okey-dokey. Survey says... that would be a negative on the "Do you guys actually know Erin?" query.

  But, just like with the boa, Bex decided to keep the summation to herself.

  Instead, she asked, "Do you think your petition will do any good? Do you really think the ISU will change their results?"

  "Totally. Jasper sent an E-mail to the ISU right after he got the first 5000 names on the petition, and they wrote back—I saw it, he forwarded it to me—saying they were going to have a hearing. At first, I was really scared that awful judge would just go in and lie her head off. But now that she's dead, it's like she practically confessed and she won't be able to say anything about it. Now the ISU will have to give Erin the gold she should have won in the first place because everyone knows the whole thing was fixed now. I mean, we're the fans, we're the ones who buy the tickets and give the money to keep the ISU going, and we all know Erin won."

  "So, you're saying the ISU should award the gold
medal to whomever the fans want, or you'll stop buying tickets and coming to the competitions and shows?"

  Eight Erin-loving eyes stared at Bex blankly. Even the family with the silk-screen T-shirts was looking at her funny. For a moment, Bex entertained the thought of all seven of them leaping upon her, rabid-dog-style, and beating her to death with their souvenir programs. If it were hockey, her headstone could read: Sudden Death. She'd have to think harder to come up with something equally pithy for figure skating.

  Skate Crime?

  Death Spiral?

  Death Drop?

  For a sport all dressed up in pretty sequins and international brotherhood, death did seem to come up quite a bit with them.

  Fortunately, Bex was spared the trouble of composing her own skating-induced epitaph when the elevator doors opened on the third floor and revealed that most hated of all figures: two Xenia Trubin fans. These days, like the Erin Simpson fans, they were rather easy to spot. They were the ones with their fists clenched tightly by their sides, ready to leap in and defend their chosen girl on a moment's notice, eyes darting anxiously, ears perked up to the extreme, and perennially on alert for the latest attack, wherever it may come from.

  The Erin fans saw the Xenia fans.

  The Xenia fans saw the Erin fans.

  They locked eyes.

  The boa-wearing champion's fans took a step farther back into the elevator, practically doing a duck and cover. Somewhere, Bex felt certain, the musical theme from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly “was playing.

  Six pairs of nostrils flared.

  Bex, at that moment, would have traded anything for a piece of tumbleweed she could roll out between them.

  Finally, the first Xenia fan tossed her hair over one shoulder and haughtily informed her friend, "Let's wait for the next elevator. Something stinks in there."

  It would have been an excellent closing line, had the elevator doors dramatically closed right then and there.

  They didn't. So, for a moment, the standoff remained in limbo.

  "Oh, yeah?" an Erin fan finally found her bearings to retort with questionable wit. But, by then, the doors had closed.

  "Can you believe her?" Blond ponytail asked no one in particular.

  Two of her minions nodded. One shook her head. All three clearly meant the same thing, though.

  The elevator finally reached the lobby. Bex allowed everyone else to exit before her. Because, while her new friends had been loudly discussing the lack of class exhibited by certain skating fans but, really, what could you expect considering the skater they followed, and honestly didn't what goes around come around and breeding will tell and it takes one to know one, amen to that, Bex had finally done something she maybe should have done back in Sergei's room.

  She looked at the phone number he'd given her.

  Like she'd suspected, Sergei had scribbled the phone number on the back of a receipt. Bex absently unfolded it, noting that it was a yellow credit card copy from the hotel boutique and that it listed several purchases. A roll of hard candy (lemon-flavored), a packet of tissues (travel-sized), aspirin (extra-strength), and ibuprofen (ditto). And that the signature at the bottom of the charge read: Silvana Potenza.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  So. Time to review. Sergei Alemazov, coach of Xenia Trubin, the disputed winner of the ladies' world championship title, who claimed only a passing acquaintance with Silvana Potenza, (dead as Francisco Franco), just happened to be walking around with a telephone number he'd scribbled down on a credit card receipt belonging to—What do you know?—the same, still-dead judge. A telephone number he claimed provided him with an alibi for the judge's time of death. Question: How often did Bex get to make two “Saturday Night Live” references in one thought? Answer: Lucky her, here came another one: "How conveniiiiient."

  This was getting confusing. Bex didn't much like confusion. That's why she became a researcher in the first place. Find a fact, write it down. Writing the fact down made it true. No muss, no fuss, moving on to the next fact.

  At least, it had worked that way in school.

  But, then again, school wasn't real life.

  And real life was, most certainly, not figure skating.

  Naturally, upon spying Silvana Potenza's signature, Bex's first impulse was to turn right around, take the elevator back up to Sergei's hotel room, and demand an explanation for why he just happened to be in possession of a receipt belonging to a woman he claimed he barely knew. But, then, Bex remembered how even Sergei's eyelids seemed to be rippling with muscles. And then she remembered her initial concern about getting out of his room alive after accusing him of being at best a killer, at worst a fixer of results. And then she remembered her giddy euphoria at actually managing to do just that. And then she decided to hold on to that happy and alive feeling for a while longer.

  Besides, as long as Bex had the receipt, the evidence was in no danger of disappearing. And, as long as she was already in the lobby, she might as well follow her original plan and check up on Sergei's phone records. Frankly, at this point, Bex was willing to do anything to stay out of the elevator and avoid another discussion of leather pants.

  Bex approached the front desk clerk wearing her brightest smile and wielding her biggest bucket of chutzpah. Still smiling, she asked if she could see Sergei Alemazov's phone log.

  "No," the clerk said, without even looking up.

  Darn. A perfectly good smile gone to waste.

  Undaunted, Bex moved on to the chutzpah. She said, "Look, here's the situation: I'm with the organizing committee, and we've committed to picking up the tab for all the skaters and their coaches' phone calls. Unfortunately, we've been informed that certain people have been abusing the privilege, and we'd just like to check it out before we make any accusations."

  "Guests phone records are confidential, ma'am."

  Bex sighed. She dug in her pocket for her 24/7 ID. She asked the clerk, "Would you like to be on television?"

  The woman looked up. Now, it was her turn to flash the dazzling smile. "What can I do for you, ma'am?"

  Ten minutes later, Bex had a full printout of Sergei's bill to date. He'd made very few calls, obviously saving money since, despite Bex's lie, the local organizing committee was most certainly not picking up anyone's bill. Bex had no trouble matching the number he'd written on Silvana's receipt against a call Sergei had indeed made that morning. A call he made fifteen minutes after Silvana's established time of death.

  Bex did the math. The skating arena was a five-minute walk from the official hotel. Even with another five minutes in the elevator, Sergei could have made it back from his killing spree in plenty of time to make the call and deliberately establish an alibi.

  Furthermore, Silvana's cause of death, electrocution, indicated that the killer didn't even need to be on the premises at the exact moment when she died. After all, if Bex's theory was correct and the killer lured Silvana to the refrigeration room by calling her on her cell from the pay phone directly across the way, he or she presumably had plenty of time to pour the water underneath the rigged lightbulb and be at least a mile away by the time Silvana got there to pull the cord. Which meant that, in the end, Sergei's alibi didn't stack up to a hill of ice shavings.

  Add to that the fact that just because the call came from Sergei's room didn't mean that Sergei was the one on the line—if he was smart enough to kill someone and set up a phony alibi, he was certainly smart enough to ask someone else to make the call for him to substantiate the alibi—and Bex didn't feel exactly flooded with confidence. She used a pay phone in the hotel lobby to dial the number he'd given her.

  The line rang three times before a woman's voice came on the line.

  "Stern, Morgan, and Chao, how may I direct your call?"

  Bex opened her mouth, then closed it. Sergei describing his chatting companion as a friend had preconditioned Bex to expect a private individual, not a place of business.

  "Uhm, hello," Bex stammered. "Please, I—where
am I calling, please?"

  "Stern, Morgan, and Chao," the woman repeated, less gracious this time. Bex could hear other lines ringing in the background and presumed the tone was supposed to imply that they were very, very busy here, and really didn't have time to talk to people who didn't even know where they were calling.

  "Are you—is this—what kind of business are you?"

  With a name like Stern, Morgan, and Chao, Bex was thinking delicatessen, bank, and fine antiques. And then she remembered her earlier internal chastisement of Gil's political incorrectness. And then she promised to give herself a stern talking to, followed by a changing of her ways. Just as soon as she got this murder thing settled.

  "Stern, Morgan, and Chao is a law firm. How may I direct your call?"

  A law firm? Fifteen minutes after the death of a woman who had the potential to destroy Sergei's entire career, he'd made a call to a law firm? Interesting. Bex was sure this new clue meant something. Unless, of course, it didn't.

  But she currently had a bigger problem. She had no idea how she, in fact, wanted her call directed. Sergei had given her the reception desk number and no name to go with it.

  "Actually, I—I'm—a friend, this person I know, he called the office earlier today, at about 8:47 a.m. actually, and I was wondering if you knew who he asked for—"

  "I'm sorry, ma'am, I only come into the office at nine. Prior to that, your friend would have reached an electronic directory."

  "Is there any way to check—"

  "No, ma'am, I suggest you ask your friend. Have a lovely day." Click.

  Darn. Why couldn't Silvana have been killed an hour later? Some murderers just had no consideration for Bex's needs.

  Well, that was that. Bex figured she had no choice now but to get back on that elevator, duck both the Erin and Xenia fans, and head back on up to Sergei's room to ask him about the receipt. She wondered if bringing a can of mace with her would do any good.