Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  Next, up went: "Quick Draw McGraw."

  Then, "Draw Binky and get accepted to art school!"

  It probably was only funny to the sleep-deprived and skating-overloaded. So naturally, the staff of 24/7, Gil included, found it absolutely hilarious.

  Usually, upon returning to the truck, Bex always made a point of stopping to check out the latest witticism. But not this time. This time, she had a date with a 24/7 printer, and an entire contingent of People magazine's fifty most eligible bachelors couldn't have intercepted her.

  During Bex's dash across the parking lot, she'd tried to make some sense of the fact that Silvana's E-mail had been printed in the trailer. It wasn't so much that they never got visitors. As the host broadcaster (meaning they'd paid the most money for rights, and so got the best camera and announce positions, plus actual control of the event), 24/7 had visitors coming and going all the time. Everyone from desperate skaters (at Skate Canada, the Latvian ladies champion had come running in hysterical, begging for a strip of powerful gaffer's tape to seal up a nasty tear in her dress) to desperate fellow broadcasters (some foreign broadcaster inevitably forgot that American paper wasn't standardized to European and Asian versions and had to come asking to use their three-hole puncher) usually made an appearance by the time the show was over. So a judge wandering in asking for one favor or another wouldn't have been so odd.

  Except that the 24/7 printer wasn't just standing there waiting for anyone to use it. The printer was attached to a single computer, one that required a password to print. Everyone on staff had their own password, so it wasn't difficult to access. But a judge coming in from the outside would have needed to depend on the kindness of strangers. Which meant someone at 24/7 had, if not read the E-mail in detail, at least seen it, and might be able to offer Bex a few key details as to Silvana's state of mind and general reaction to the missive.

  You didn't have to be a snoopy British spinster with dozens of cozy best-sellers to her name, to know that was serious clue material.

  Bex sat down at the computer and flipped it on, looking for the archive directory. She scanned the log of documents printed, noting that, during the competition, only two single-page items had been printed. That wasn't unusual. Most of the things that got printed were detailed results or complicated rundowns. Except for her own updated skater bios and jump sheets, Bex couldn't really think of who else might have a reason to print just one page at a time.

  She checked the dates. One of the potential Silvana E- mails was printed the morning of the ladies' long program. Perfect time to influence Silvana. Perfect evidence that she had, in fact, been swayed.

  Bex looked up who'd printed it.

  Gilbert Cahill, Executive Producer.

  Oh, how very, very wonderful.

  Bex looked over her shoulder. Gil was sitting in his corner office, typing something on his laptop and cursing his chair. Bex steeled her nerve. She walked over to him.

  She lost her nerve, and pretended to be fascinated reading the fire escape instructions on the wall. She gave herself a pep talk. It faded. She forced herself to yell his name. "Gil!"

  So now it was too late to back out. Bex often needed to play mind games with her own good sense to force it into doing stuff. It probably wasn't good for her health. But then neither was unemployment and its subsequent follow-up, starvation.

  "What is it, Bex?"

  "I... I was about to print my Silvana Potenza report for you, but then this notice came up, saying that the print queue still had a document you'd tried to print out Thursday morning. I was wondering, did you ever get that document, or is it stuck in the memory somewhere?"

  Bex also wondered if the word bullshit was writing itself in bloody beads of sweat on her forehead. To anyone actually paying attention, her story was really, really unlikely. But then again, Gil had a really, really weak grasp of how computers worked, as evidenced by his yelling and calling it stupid every time he accidentally deleted something he actually needed.

  "What document?"

  "I don't know," Bex said very honestly and very hopefully. "But you tried printing it on Thursday morning and it says it was one page long, and—"

  "Oh, that. Right, I remember. My wife flew in Thursday night to spend the weekend in the city. I printed her flight info. I got it, don't need it anymore. You can go ahead and delete or whatever you have to do to print your thing. I need that report, Bex, and I need it soon."

  "Got it, Gil," Bex said, believing him. For one thing, she'd seen the lovely Mrs. Cahill around recently, and for another, Gil was too bombastic to lie. The man said the first thing that came to his mind the first time he thought it. Subtle, he wasn't. Or sly.

  Which left the only other single-page E-mail in the log. The one printed Thursday night, the night after the ladies' long program. Which meant that, if Silvana was swayed to vote a certain way, it was unlikely this E-mail was responsible.

  Still, Silvana had printed it out for a reason. Maybe she needed it for evidence against Sergei. And someone at 24/7 had helped her do it.

  Bex punched a series of keys, waited patiently, and finally got the name of the person who'd printed the E-mail. Francis Howarth, Announcer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was time to review.

  Ahem: The copy of the E-mail found in Silvana Potenza's purse was an exact match for a piece of 24/7 letterhead, its logo cleverly sliced off to obscure its origin. The 24/7 letterhead was loaded exclusively into a single 24/7 printer. The single 24/7 printer was located exclusively in the 24/7 production truck. It wasn't portable. It weighed nearly a hundred pounds. It was highly unlikely someone decided to spontaneously take it for a walk, dragging the cord like a makeshift leash. In the instance of that actually happening, someone would have noticed. And definitely mentioned it. Ergo, one had to assume that Silvana Potenza's original E-mail was printed in the 24/7 production truck. And since Silvana couldn't access the printer alone, she obviously had help. From, it appeared, Francis Howarth (or, oh yeah, someone who knew his password).

  Bex listed the facts in a little column in her head. Then she reviewed them again, top to bottom. She rearranged them in a circle, to show how one fact flowed smoothly into the other. And she reviewed them a second time. And one more time, just for the heck of it. She figured the gods who send lighting bolts down upon the heads of the conceited had to forgive her this once. It was the first time in days she'd had any facts at all, much less potentially relevant ones. Of course, their usefulness was yet to be determined. And for the determining, Bex needed to talk to Francis Howarth. Soon.

  But first, there was one more fact she needed to confirm.

  After all, Bex was on a roll.

  “Gary!” Bex found Lian Reilley's coach at the arena. He was coaching his top male skater, who'd won a silver medal earlier in the week and was also scheduled to perform in the exhibition. Bex came up to lean by Gary at the barrier. Suddenly, standing so close to him, Bex changed her exclamation point to a question mark, and added a layer of formality. "Mr. Gold?"

  Because, even though Gary was about the same age as Igor Marchenko, whom Bex had called by his first name, and actually younger than Rupert Newman, to whom Bex had so boldly done the same, the fact was, U.S. coach Gary Gold was by far the most formal man in skating.

  He was always impeccably groomed. If Bex didn't know better, she'd think he kept a damp comb in his pocket and continuously whipped it out to keep every follicle of his hair and mustache in perfect order. And, while other coaches wore suits and ties to the rink, especially for major competition, Gary's were the only ones looking tailored and perennially freshly pressed (his colleagues made do with hanging their clothes in the shower to steam out any wrinkles incurred by a fortnight of cramped travel). And God only knew what calamity might strike the human race if Gary ever appeared without a matching pocket handkerchief.

  But it wasn't just his wardrobe that defined Gary Gold's otherworldly air. Or his exact, precise, I have a degree in Englis
h Literature from Princeton and don't you dare forget it diction. (Gary not only never used contractions and always pronounced every necessary vowel in every word; Bex also sometimes thought he pronounced a few that weren't originally there in the first place.) There was also that pesky and disturbing lack of facial expression.

  The man didn't have one. Perhaps forty years on ice had frozen it. This was no colorful exaggeration, but video-documented fact. The man's face truly never moved. Bex could say this with impunity because one night, after spending exactly thirteen hours straight in the edit room, and high on MSG from the dozen open, half-eaten cartons of Chinese food perfuming the air, Bex and the feature producer had popped a tape of Gary standing by the barrier during one of Lian's performances up on their biggest monitor and watched it in super slow motion.

  There he was, whispering to Lian minutes before her name was called: no expression.

  Lian landing her opening jump: no expression.

  Lian missing her combination: no expression.

  Lian pulling it together to skate an overall great program and win her first medal on the senior level: no expression.

  Well, maybe he blinked once and/or his chin jerked just a little toward the heavens. But it may also have just been the tape skipping a frame.

  Although, to be truly descriptive, one had to admit that the man didn't really have no expression. After all, he'd have to be Claude Raines in “The Invisible Man” for that. The fact is, what Gary Gold had was, in fact, a single expression. One that could best be described by the phrase: Ewww, what stinks?

  Or, in Garyese: Goodness gracious, what is that vile odor defiling my nostrils?

  It was exactly the look that Gary gave Bex when she sidled up to him at the barrier. But she decided not to take it personally. She presumed he'd react exactly the same way to Ed McMahon delivering a Publisher's Clearinghouse check to his doorstep. And he'd probably correct his grammar, too.

  "Hello, Mr. Gold," Bex said. "Do you have a minute to answer a few questions for me?"

  "Unfortunately," Gary indicated his student, "I am in the middle of something."

  "I'll be quick."

  "Young lady, my student’s parents are paying me a fair amount of money to instruct their son. I hardly think it ethical to charge them for a period during which I was not focusing my whole attention on his progress."

  "I just want to know about Sergei Alemazov coming to teach at the OTC with you."

  Gary Gold's expression may not have changed, but he did unethically tear his eyes away from the aforementioned student to look at Bex. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Igor Marchenko said he'd arranged for Sergei to join the staff. He said it was all set."

  "I assure you, my dear, you are mistaken. No new instructor may join the staff without approval from the Olympic Training Center's board, of which I am a member. No such proposal has been put before us. And, if it were, I would have voted it down immediately."

  "Why? "

  "Because. It was insidious enough when Soviet skaters were subsidized by their own government. While my parents worked two jobs each to pay for my skating, my competitors were receiving it all for free from their government without sacrificing so much as an ounce of their Olympic-eligible status. That fortunately all ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But now it seems that American taxpayers wish to step in where the Soviets left off. Our OTC is subsidized with federal money, and yet these ex-Soviet athletes are being let in by the planeload. We give them free ice, free room and board, we even allow their coaches to offer lessons to our pupils. We take earnings out of American coaches' pockets and hand them over to the Russians. Frankly, Miss Levy, as long as there is even a single American instructor toiling seven-day weeks to make ends meet for his family, or even one young American skater struggling to pay the bills, I am never, ever going to agree to let Russians into our training center. If Igor's precious Sergei Alemazov wants in on the American charity pie, he shall have to look for it elsewhere."

  It was the longest speech Bex had ever heard Gary deliver. And damn if he didn't do it without changing his expression.

  Which was okay, because Bex's face had enough expression for both of them. It said, "Well, what do you know, Igor was lying about the topic of his early morning chat with Sergei. I wonder what else he's lying about?"

  Of all the people Bex worked with at 24/7, she supposed, if pressed, she would have to say she knew Francis and Diana Howarth the best. Not that they were friends or anything. Bex couldn't imagine Francis and Diana, who lived on New

  York's Upper East Side in a duplex over Central Park, and talked about sitting on committees to support the symphony/ballet/museums and eradicate diseases from ALS to Zoster (which was actually a fancy word for chicken pox; Bex looked it up because she was weird that way) could ever consider someone like her a friend. After all, most of the time, the Howarths weren't even sure Bex wasn't their personal assistant. Why else would they send her for coffee, and to make photocopies, and to, "Do me a favor, Bex, Francis forgot his tuxedo shirt back at the hotel. Would you be a dear, scurry over and fetch it?"

  "But... uh ... Diana, the broadcast is about to start."

  "You'd best hurry then, hadn't you?"

  However, friends or not, Francis, Diana, and Bex did spend a lot of time together. As soon as America's sweethearts arrived at their latest location (usually days after the grunt crew, Bex included, decamped), they called her up, expressing dismay that she should already sound so tired when the competition hadn't even begun yet, and then off all three of them would go to the rink to watch the practices. Because it wasn't only judges who came to the practices to get an idea of who was doing what with which consistency, and how they might mark them accordingly. Announcers came, too: to stock up on their pithy, extemporaneous comments.

  For three to five days, depending on the length and importance of the competition, Bex, Francis, and Diana sat shivering in the stands, Bex huddled in her 24/7 (one size fits all as long as you're a pro football player) down jacket, Diana elegantly sipping hot toddies from a thermos color-coordinated daily to her outfit, and Francis wearing a furry, mink Russian hat with earflaps he'd purchased from a street vendor in Moscow back when entrepreneur was still a Soviet dirty word. They sat, and they watched practice group after practice group, skater after skater, ranging from jumping beans to artists to technicians to people who obviously won their country's national championship by virtue of being the only citizens to own ice skates. They watched athletic talent so breathtaking it made you doubt you even belonged to the same species as them, and they watched the painful results of paying for your partner and your lessons and your costumes and, thus, your spot in a world championship.

  As every skater stepped onto center ice to perform a run-through of their program with music, Bex would pull out her bio and jump sheet, urging Francis and Diana to do the same, and they would click through each element as it was done, note whether or not it was completed (so that, during the broadcast, in case of a fall, Diana could exclaim, "I don't know what happened! He/She/They were nailing them in practice all week!"). At the end, they'd have a brief meeting about what they wanted to say about this particular skater when they got on air, how to introduce them, which element to tell viewers at home to look out for, and which aspect of their personal story to highlight. If any of them made a particularly pithy comment, Diana would diligently write it down and, later, she and Francis would divvy up the cleverness.

  Of course, based on how both behaved the night of the ladies' long program, most of the time Bex felt like she was just talking to herself. The only time Francis or Diana ever actually followed the narrative course she'd charted for them was when the other seemed determined to do the opposite. Still all three of them diligently went through the charade of preparation.

  And, in the middle of the charade, while the ice was being cleaned, or while the skaters were warming up, or while one boy whom Francis called "as exciting as watching paint dry," was on
the ice, the Howarths and Bex just chatted. One day Francis and Diana might regale her with tales from their amateur days, when everyone competed outside, and a stiff wind could be either your biggest friend or greatest enemy. They talked about being the first Westerners to travel to some Iron Curtain towns and of getting a private tour of India's Taj Mahal. On other days, they might decide to talk about their first tour, and how they put it together on a wing and a prayer, not realizing how much work and extra expense was involved in physically transporting not only the other teams they’d hired to perform with them (which they budgeted for), but also multiple costumes and sets (which they hadn't) and how as a result, despite playing to packed houses all over the world, their debut season was a huge financial failure. The next year, Francis and Diana pared down the costumes (pretty much limiting themselves to one set of outfits accessorized with dime-store masks) and got rid of the sets entirely, deciding to let the skating, variations on a formal court-dance, speak for itself.

  Romantic Harmony on Ice - View The Video

  And sometimes, Francis and Diana merely kicked back and gossiped about everyone they knew. Who was sleeping with whom, who was cheating on whom, who was about to dump their coach, and whose partner was secretly trying out with others. They were witty, they were knowledgeable, and, in their own way, they were quite charming.

  Which was why Bex was having a hard time picturing the Howarths as killers.

  But the fact remained; they'd been somehow involved with Silvana. They'd printed the E-mail urging her to cheat. And now she was dead. Someone knew something. And, seeing as Bex still knew nothing, the Howarths were a logical place to turn.

  She went to their hotel room, hoping that privacy might compel them to reveal secrets not conducive to a public space. She found that, unlike the Simpsons' attempt to personalize everything in sight, the Howarths, having been on the road for over forty years, had long ago given up on such touches. They'd unpacked their garment bags, hung up the outfits likely to wrinkle, put toothbrushes in the bathroom, and called it a day. They didn't even go sightseeing anymore. Bex doubted there was a sight on earth they hadn't seen yet.