by Alina Adams
Yes. That's very, very likely Bex. At least it didn't sound like said argument was going to wind down any time soon.
She headed toward Patty's room. She slid in the pass card. It worked like a charm. Frankly, Bex had an easier time opening this door than she usually did her own. After a year of traveling the globe, Bex could say with great certainly that hotel cards, as a rule, hated her, and, more often than not, showed her the little blinking red light instead of the little blinking green light when it came time to opening her own door. Especially late at night. And when she really needed to go to the bathroom.
Bex opened Patty's door with great caution, just in case the woman currently screaming at Jasper was actually not Ms. Simpson, but yet another female he'd pissed off. Heck, for all Bex knew, Jasper designated one day a week exclusively for arguments, and then just had them all in a row, first Bex, then Patty, then the mystery woman behind door number 921.
Hey, it could happen.
Although, in this particular case, it didn't.
Patty's room was apparently empty. Bex stepped inside. She headed straight for the dresser, opened the top drawer and pulled out the laptop. She slid open the compartment full of floppy disks and spread all six of them out in front of her. At this point, she stopped.
Six disks.
Six disks of every color. Patty must have bought the rainbow set.
There was a problem, though. Bex didn't know which stripe of said rainbow might be hiding her pot of gold.
She supposed she could take all six and scan through them at leisure back in her room. But, Patty was no fool. She might not notice one disk missing, but she would certainly miss them all being gone. Bex needed to know what color disk she was looking for, and she needed to know before she left Patty's room—because who could guess when she'd ever be back.
Of course, as far as Bex knew, only three people could possibly point her in the right direction: Patty, Erin ... and Jasper.
Bex decided that the devil she did know, at this point, was safer than the devil who would probably rip her hair out by the roots. And so she did something that, in retrospect, might very possibly prove to be her biggest misstep.
She dialed Jasper Clarke's room.
She heard his phone ringing in stereo, both on the other end of her receiver and down the hall. It rang three times. Four times. Five.
Bex was about to hang up when she got an angry, "What?"
Bex could hear, in the background, Patty screaming at him to "Hang up the fucking phone. I'm talking to you!"
Bex talked fast. "Jasper, it's me, Bex."
"What the—"
"Listen, I'm in Patty's room, trying to get the disk. I had to send her to you; it was the only way I could get her away from Erin. Uhm, yeah, sorry about that."
He didn't say anything. This was good. The last thing Bex needed was for him to blow her cover. She talked even faster. "I know you can't really talk with Patty there, but I need to know what color the disk was."
"Oh. Yeah. I... it was—"
"No, no, don't tell me the color out loud. She might get suspicious. Just let me run this by you, and when I hit the right one, you can say, yes, okay?"
"Okay ..." He sounded exhausted. Bex knew how talking to Patty could do that. "Okay. So, is it the yellow one?"
No answer. Bex realized she hadn't told him to say no to the wrong one, just yes to the right one. Some spy she'd be.
"Is it the red one? The green one? The blue—"
"Yes."
"Yes? Yes, it's the blue one?"
"Yes. And, uhm, listen, I have someone here right now, but I have a feeling she'll be leaving soon." Jasper did his best to sound casual, even as he stressed the last two words.
"Got it," Bex said, "I'd be out of here in a second."
"Yes," he repeated. "Bye."
"Bye." Bex hung up the phone and grabbed the blue disk, sliding it into the pocket of her binder. She was in the process of putting the rest of the disks away in the laptop bag, when Bex heard the unmistakable sound of a key card being slipped into the lock.
At the moment, Bex was holding onto Erin's key card.
Ergo, it was not Erin at the door.
Now, granted, it could have been the maid. Because everyone knew that maids often just came in without knocking and introducing themselves. And they were famous for trying to clean in the evenings, when most people were probably in their rooms.
Double ergo, it was most likely not the maid.
Bex continued the process of putting the rest of the disks away in the laptop bag. Or, rather, she swept them all in with one hand, and, figuring there wasn't enough time to slip the laptop back into the dresser all the way across the room, grabbed its bag by the black leather handle, and jumped into the bathroom, hiding behind the double shower curtain.
From her damp hiding place (someone had showered recently and condensation from the ceiling happily dripped down on Bex's head like a private monsoon), Bex heard the hotel room door open. She heard Patty call, "Erin?"
She tried to recall if she'd remembered to turn off the light during her mad dash to the bathroom. She assumed that, with her luck and general ineptitude, she most likely had not.
"Erin?" Patty knocked on the bathroom door.
Bex held her breath. And tried to remember if, in “Psycho,” the shower curtain was only see-through one-way, or both?
But, getting no answer, Patty didn't even bother going into the bathroom.
Now all Bex needed was for her not to bother with deciding to hop onto the ol' laptop for some surfing the Web before bedtime, and she was all set.
Well, and, while she was making wishes, Bex figured she should probably also add that she didn't want Patty to get naked and decide to take a shower. Somehow, she suspected that scenario wouldn't end well for anyone. What with the screaming and the nakedness ...
Luckily, Patty was neither in a showering nor a surfing mood. She called Erin's name one more time and, getting no answer, huffed rather loudly and walked out the door.
Or, at least, Bex heard the door open and close.
Which didn't necessarily mean that Patty went out. She could, for all Bex knew, be standing in the doorway, opening and closing the door to her heart's content. It would be a pretty stupid thing to do, but Bex had done quite enough leaping to conclusions lately.
Still, she needed to leave the shower at some point, if for no other reason than because the water was now sliding down her hair to the back of her neck, and it felt icky.
And so she pulled aside the curtain. So far so good.
She peeked out the bathroom door. No Patty.
She returned the laptop to its drawer. She looked out through the peephole. Still no Patty.
She counted to ten slowly, waited until she'd heard the elevator go ding, suggesting that Patty would have time to get off the floor, and, at long last, opened the hotel room door. Bex stuck her head out. She looked left. She looked right. She exhaled.
Nobody. And then she scurried up the back stairs to her own room.
Erin was off the phone when Bex returned. She was sitting on one of the chairs by the window, leafing through the spare research binder Bex always brought along to give to Francis when he inevitably lost the one she'd previously given him.
Bex gulped and winced simultaneously. This was not good.
The research binders were intended solely for the eyes of 24/7's cast and crew. As a result, Bex tended to get a little... creative... with some of her notes. They amused the talent and tech people. Heck, even Gil was known to chuckle once or twice at her witticism.
For instance, in summarizing the defending world bronze medalists' free dance, Bex had written, "The middle part is a tribute to all who've died due to religious persecution through the ages, hence the lift where Gregor picks up Anna and displays her crotch to the free world."
About a skater from Taiwan, she wrote, "Wei-Lee often leaves the ice with his eyes downcast, as if searching for something minuscule. Ma
ny have suggested it just might be his artistic mark." And so on. It wasn't an opus Bex really wanted Erin to read.
But, to Bex's relief, Erin simply closed the binder and said, "Wow, you really do a lot of work, don't you? Getting everyone's programs and stats like that."
Finally! Validation!
"It's not so bad," Bex said and/or lied.
"Did you go to school to learn how to do this?"
"Not really."
"Oh. So, what did you go to school to learn, then?"
A question often asked by Bex's parents ...
She said, "I'm weird. I went to school because I like learning, not so much because I wanted to learn anything in particular. Does that make any sense?"
"Totally," Erin said, sounding utterly unconvinced.
"Yeah," Bex said, thinking how much Erin sounded like Bex's parents. Supportive, yet very, very confused.
"How did your call go?" Bex deliberately pointed to the phone, gambling that Erin would instinctively turn her head to look in that direction. At the same time, Bex slipped a hand into her pocket to finger the room card she'd stolen from the girl earlier.
Like a good little Pavlovian skater, Erin did as Bex expected and briefly turned her head in the direction of the phone.
"It was great, thanks so much, Bex."
"No problem," Bex said. And pulled the keycard out of her pocket, dropping it subtly and smoothly on the floor next to her bed. "Oh!" Bex exclaimed like an actor who should only be heard in silent movies. "Look. Is this your key card, Erin? 'Cause I've got mine."
Erin walked around the bed. "I dunno." She checked her credential, lying next to her jacket. "Yeah, I guess so. I guess I dropped it. How weird."
"Weird," Bex agreed.
"Well," Erin said. "Thanks."
Bex said, "I think I saw your mom looking for you. You know, when I was outside. I saw her walking around. So I guessed. I didn't talk to her or anything."
The last thing she needed was the following exchange: Erin: "Hi, Mom, Bex Levy said you were looking for me." Patty: "I didn't tell Bex Levy I was looking for you. How did she know? She must have been hiding in our hotel bathroom."
Okay, so it was a stretch, but Bex still didn't need to risk it.
Erin said, "I better go. Thanks again, Bex."
"Double no prob." Bex walked Erin to the door. And, as soon as she'd closed it behind her, she hightailed it to the phone, hitting Redial.
Erin may have been cute and blonde and in possession of one of those "Who, me, would I lie?" faces, but Bex still liked to check every story out for herself.
She hit Redial and listened to the droning ring of Erin Simpson's boyfriend's phone. She heard a click after the fourth ring. A mechanized voice came on.
"This is a recording. If you are calling from a rotary phone, please stay on the line and someone will be with your shortly. Otherwise, enter you ID code and begin ..."
Well, well, well. How interesting. Erin Simpson was having a long-distance love affair with a recording…Bex continued to listen. When directed, she pushed the appropriate buttons. And, by the time she'd hung up, Bex had a much better grasp of the entire situation.
What, Bex wondered, was the world coming to, when you couldn't even trust a perky blonde to tell you the truth? And why, she continued to wonder in that overeducated way that she had, was nothing about this story even remotely straightforward? Would it kill at least one person not to be playing games with her?
Then again, the late Silvana Potenza was allegedly a straight shooter. And look where that got her.
Bex knocked on Jasper's door. Before he opened it, she expected him to look like a lightweight boxer who'd accidentally wandered into the ring with a heavyweight—or a runaway gaggle of circus bears. With rabies. And in a bad mood. Bex was thinking scratches on his face, hair turned gray, maybe a rip along his sleeve, like Captain Kirk after a wrestling match. Reality proved most disappointing.
Jasper looked as together as he ever had. About the only suggestion that he and Patty had been hurling invectives at each other was his unnaturally flushed cheeks. But he could have also gotten those from twenty minutes on the treadmill.
He was, however, rattled enough from his evening encounter to snap, "You know, a warning might have been nice, Bex."
"I was having a spontaneous moment."
"Don't do that anymore."
He grabbed her arm and yanked Bex inside the room. "Did you get the disk?"
"What did Patty say to you?"
"What do you think she said to me? I've blown her whole scheme. She was livid. She thought she could trust me, and I let her down. Patty does not respond well to being let down, FYI. Oh, and, by the way, thank you so much for claiming I told you Patty stated her intention to kill Silvana. That was very helpful in my trying to calm her down."
"I needed to get her out of her room and away from Erin. By the way, hello? It worked. I have the disk, right here."
"She told me not to bother coming to the exhibition tomorrow. She told me if she so much as saw me in the audience, she'd call Security. And she's pulling her endorsement of the Web site. 'Erin Excitement' won't be official anymore."
"Well, can't you have, I don't know, some unofficial excitement?"
"Oh, please. You want me to be just another fan with his little on-line shrine? That's for serious losers."
As opposed, Bex thought, to grown men who followed a teenager around the world for the privilege of getting to host her on-line journal, full of musings like, "It's not the size of the dreamer, it's the size of the dream," and "To me, skating is like flying, only without the wings."
"Patty will never let me speak to Erin, again," Jasper said. "How the hell could you do this to me, Bex?"
"Hey, you're the one so eager to turn the spotlight on Patty to protect yourself. Really noble behavior there, Jas."
"All I wanted was to straighten this whole thing out. I certainly never told you I heard Patty threaten to kill Silvana. If anything, I told you Patty would never do such a thing."
"To protect Erin's image."
"Well, and she's not a killer."
"But she is a perpetrator of fraud?"
Jasper reminded, "Erin deserved to win."
"Right. I think you've mentioned that already."
"Let me see the disk." Jasper stuck out his arm. Bex handed it over. And, for a split second, she had an image of him throwing it to the floor, smashing it with his heel and chortling, "Ha-ha-ha," or whatever passed for an evil laugh in Silicon Valley.
But, the fact was, Bex only knew about the disk because Jasper told her. Wouldn't it have been easier just to keep his mouth shut, rather than to manipulate Bex into stealing it so he could destroy it?
In any case, there were no "Ha-ha-has" to be heard. Jasper simply took the disk, sat down at his laptop, and popped it in. Afterward, he proceeded to tap several keys, some of them more than once, while squinting.
Bex stood over his shoulder and hovered.
He seemed to hate it. At least, the muscles at the back of his neck started pumping like overly frisky worms, and twice he looked over his shoulder, glaring at Bex as if sheer heat could push her back a few feet.
Bex refused to budge. Not that she had any clue what he was doing, but if Jasper was working to sabotage her, she at least wanted to be able to say she'd watched his every move.
Bex asked, "Did Patty say anything, you know, interesting?"
"You mean, incriminating?"
"I mean anything we can use to get to the bottom of this and see that you three are left alone and the right person is punished and put away."
"I.e., incriminating."
"Oh, for God's sake, what did she say?"
Jasper tapped another key and got a very long directory made up mostly of consonants. It was either a bunch of computerese or a listing of the Yugoslavian team members.
"She said I'd ruined everything. Once word gets out about the forged E-mail, Rupert will probably change his mind about a
warding Erin the second gold medal."
"Well, yes. I'd expect that would be the least of it."
"She also wanted me to tell you that I made it all up, about the E-mail, that is."
"Really? And did she tell you what your reason would have been for doing so?"
"Patty thought I should tell you that I made up the story about Patty and the forged E-mail because I was covering for Francis and Diana really being the ones who did it. She thought that if I pointed out how the truth would hurt 24/7, you would back off."
"Not a bad plan," Bex conceded. "Frankly, if you and Patty stuck to that story, and even if I didn't believe it, even if I wrote everything up and handed it in to Gil, he'd probably have sat on the news anyway, for the same reasons."
"Right. That was Patty's backup plan."
And this was a woman who hadn't been able to handle the coursework at Stanford? Bex was impressed. Maybe Ms. Simpson was right. Maybe life experience counted for a heck of a lot more than book learning.
On the other hand, book learning, i.e., logic, was all Bex had to fall back on. She asked Jasper, "So that leaves me with only one question, then: Why aren't you saying that you lied and dumping the blame on Francis and Diana?"
Jasper hesitated. He sat back in his chair, hands in his lap, and stared up the ceiling. He said, "I thought about it. I really did. Frankly, Bex, I want to get to the bottom of this. I know that E-mail was faked, and I know that I gave it to Patty. What I don't know is how it ended up on Silvana's dead body. Sure, Patty's way, by lying or blaming Francis and Diana, we could sweep everything under the rug. But I don't want to do that."
"Because you think Patty killed Silvana?"
"No! Absolutely not. I keep telling you, Patty couldn't have done it. She loves Erin too much. And so do I. I care about that kid. And I am not going to let her spend the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion. Because here's a fact I'm pretty certain of: That E-mail isn't going to stay buried forever, even if you or Gil decide not to do anything about it. The original is still at the police station, right? So they'll eventually send it to Silvana's family. And they'll see it, and maybe they'll believe that she was a cheater and they'll try to sweep it under the rug. Or maybe they won't. Or maybe her husband won't know what it means, but one of her skating friends will. And they'll decide to sweep it under the rug. Or they won't. There are too many variables, here, Bex, and neither Patty nor I can spend the next twenty years running around trying to guess who has the E-mail and how we can explain it to them. No, it's better to face this head-on. We get to the bottom of this now, and we don't have to worry about it coming up to bite Erin when she least expects it. I'm doing this for Erin. And for Patty, too."