Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  "What the hell did Craig need you for? Why didn't he just call the police and report Jeremy missing, like I expected him to?"

  "Because when Jeremy called and said he was with you, Craig had no idea what was going on. And he was afraid of getting you into trouble before you'd had the chance to explain yourself."

  For a moment, Felicia looked like she was going to cry. She whipped her eyes away to avoid Bex's gaze, swallowed hard, looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. "Damn Rachel."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  Felicia smiled ruefully. "Damn her for getting the last nice guy on the planet."

  "Why did you kidnap Jeremy, Felicia?" Bex figured they'd gone around in circles long enough. And there was also just so much time Felicia could spend in the bathroom before Robby became suspicious.

  "Because Robby killed Rachel. And I had to make him pay."

  "He confessed to you?"

  "He didn't have to. As soon as I heard what happened— who else could it have been? She was beaten to death, Bex. Beaten to death!"

  "Did you tell the police?"

  "What for? I had no evidence. Neither did they. I knew they wouldn't be able to arrest him for Rachel's murder. But, they could arrest him for Jeremy's kidnapping." Felicia smiled, more to herself than for Bex's benefit, and Bex recognized that glint of pride in one's own plan. She'd certainly seen it enough times on her own face. "So, I called Robby. I called him, just out of the blue, and I told him the truth about Jeremy."

  "I don't understand."

  "I had to convince him. I had to convince him that what I was telling him was the truth."

  "That what was the truth?"

  "Oh, that I was still in love with him. That I wanted the three of us to run away together. I told him now that Rachel was dead, I didn't want Craig raising our son. That we could do it, be a real family. I made a really convincing case, Bex, you should have heard me. For a minute there, I almost believed it myself. But, then again, Robby was always good at that. Playing with my mind. Even when he didn't know he was doing it."

  "What were you trying to accomplish, though? Were you trying to get him to confess to killing Rachel?"

  "Oh, that would have been nice. But, I wasn't shooting for that. No, what I wanted was for Craig to call the police as soon as he came home and realized Jeremy was missing. I left clues all over the place about where we were going. As we were heading out of town, I stopped at that gas station right on the Interstate and had Robby get out to ask for directions to the Highpoint Airport. I made sure the attendant saw Jeremy, too. I figure that would be one of the first places the police would come looking for us. And then I insisted we pull over at the mall—it's right on the other side of the state line, and we'd taken a minor across it, so the felony charge was guaranteed. We stayed there for almost two hours; I kept hoping that would give the police enough time to catch up to us. And then, of course, the reason I picked Highpoint instead of one of the New York City major airports was so that, in case the cops didn't make it in time, we'd be easily remembered. I even had Robby buy the tickets under our rightful names. I thought I had it planned so perfectly. A trail of breadcrumbs that practically glowed in the dark. But, who knew Craig wouldn't go to the police? Who knew he'd turn to some researcher for help?"

  And an idiot researcher at that, Bex thought. Here she'd believed herself so clever—calling Vlad, then the car rental agency, not to mention her patented *69 trick. And, all along, Felicia had been throwing clues right and left!

  "Your plan was to tell the police that Robby kidnapped you and Jeremy both," Bex guessed. "He's still on parole, isn't he? This would have gotten him thrown right back in jail."

  "Where he belongs," Felicia snapped. "For what he did to Rachel. Not to mention all the other havoc he managed to wreak along the way."

  "You're certain Robby killed Rachel? It couldn't have been someone else?"

  "Like whom?"

  Well, you, for instance, Bex didn't say out loud. Instead, she went with the slightly less inflammatory, "Craig?"

  "Don't be absurd."

  "Felicia," Bex tread as delicately as she could, under the circumstances. "The morning before you took him, Jeremy called me at work. He told me he wanted to talk about his dad's role in his mom's death."

  "Is that what he said?"

  "Well, maybe not exactly..." Bex conceded. So much had happened since that initial phone call that she'd forgotten the exact wording. She reached for her cell phone, meaning to call in and double-check her saved messages, when Felicia interrupted.

  "Because Jeremy told me that he overheard you accusing Craig of killing Rachel, and he called you to let you know that could never, ever happen."

  Oh. Now that Felicia mentioned it, Jeremy's exact words came back to Bex like an audio flashback. "Ms. Levy," he'd said, "This is Jeremy Hunt. I really need to talk to you. It's about my dad killing my mom." Bex supposed "about my dad killing my mom" could have meant, "I want to tell you that he didn't do it."

  "Bex, please," Felicia put her hand on Bex's arm. The awkwardness and hesitation of the gesture suggested that Felicia Tufts was not particularly used to reaching out to people, much less asking them for help. She was stiff as a board and utterly devoid of warmth. And yet her sincerity was unmistakable. "Please, don't ruin this for me. Let me finish what I started. Let the three of us get on a plane, and then you contact Craig and tell him to call the police, ASAP. They should still be able to follow the clues I left them. We're going to California. With any luck, the cops will have it all figured out and a squad car standing by to arrest Robby even before we land. I'm doing this for Rachel, to avenge her, yes. But I'm also trying to protect Jeremy. He isn't safe as long as Robby is out walking the streets. Do you think Robby will ever let him go now that he knows that Jeremy is his son? He'll make Jeremy's life miserable. And God only knows what he might do to Craig. I am trying to protect them all. Please, please, Bex. Please don't interfere."

  Bex hesitated. Felicia took it as consent.

  Before Bex even had the chance to utter a definitive "yay" or "nay," Felicia whispered, "Thank you," and turned to hurry out of the bathroom.

  Bex waited a moment. Unsure of whether she'd just done the right thing, or even if she'd done anything at all.

  Was she really willing to let Felicia and Robby get on a plane to California? How in the world would Craig ever find them, then? And how did she know for sure that Felicia was telling the truth? What if Bex's initial instinct was right and Felicia had killed Rachel to get back her son—and his father? What if Jeremy really was being kidnapped by his natural parents (who may or may not also be murderers) and Bex was the only one with a chance to stop them?

  She couldn't take that chance. She owed it to Jeremy, if to no one else, to get to the absolute bottom of things before she allowed them to go any farther.

  Her mind made up, Bex boldly exited the bathroom.

  Only to be greeted by a suddenly hysterical Felicia who, pointing to the now empty bench where Robby and Jeremy and their luggage had sat only a moment before, moaned, "They're gone. Robby took Jeremy. I can't find them anywhere. They're gone!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was a terribly petty thought, especially under the circumstances, but Bex had to admit that it was nice, for a change, to not be the woman Craig Hunt looked like he wanted to strangle.

  After scouring the airport for Robby and Jeremy and only eventually being told by someone at the reservations desk that they'd gotten on the shuttle bus heading into town, Bex drove a nearly catatonic Felicia to the shuttle's drop-off point where, of course, neither Robby nor Jeremy were to be found, and the driver could only recall that the blonde man and boy had walked off, "somewhere in that direction. Or maybe it was that one." With no more leads to follow (Bex did drop in on the local bus station, but no one there remembered the pair), Bex insisted that she and Felicia return to the Poconos and tell Craig what had happened. Bex figured it was about time he was let back into the loop—
though she didn't look forward to the scene. Neither, obviously, did Felicia, as she spent the bulk of their drive staring out the window and taking deep calming breaths that, nine times out of ten, turned into barely suppressed sobs. Bex tried to engage her in conversation, but when that proved futile, decided to utilize her time more wisely and spent the remainder of the drive calling local car rental places on her cell phone to see if Robby might have rented a car there. Naturally, nobody had a record of any such thing. The man had, to all intents and purposes, fallen off the face of the earth. And taken Craig Hunt's son with him.

  Which brought them back to her not being the woman Craig currently wanted to strangle.

  Well, at least not the number one woman, anyway....

  He did take time, in the middle of his tirade against Felicia, to remind Bex, "You promised you would call me the minute you found Jeremy. The very minute that you found him. If you'd only kept your word, maybe we could have avoided all of this?"

  What could Bex say? He had a valid point.

  "What were you thinking, Felicia?" Oh, good. He was back to Felicia now. Bex exhaled and, just in case, took a step back so as to be even further outside his field of vision.

  "I'm sorry, Craig. You don't know how sorry I am. I just wanted to help you and Jeremy."

  "Did Robby give you any idea where he might go? Did he mention friends? Does he have family in the area? Think, Felicia, please! You were married to the man. You convinced him to run away with you, for Pete's sake. You must know something about how his mind works!"

  "I—Robby doesn't have any family. Not anyone he's spoken to in—I don't know—over thirty years, anyway. And friends... he was never exactly the friend-making type."

  "There's a surprise," Craig snapped.

  "Craig," Bex chimed in, her entire body poised in case she had to spring back suddenly.

  "What?" He spun around, glaring at her either for simply being there, or for his forgetting that she was there and now having to be reminded of her co-starring role in this whole adventure.

  "I think," she chose her words with care. "I think it's time to call the police now."

  It took a bit of cajoling and a lot of apologizing on both Bex and Craig's parts before they managed to convince Gretchen and Travis to return to the house, ASAP. In Bex's case, it also took listening to Gretchen's version of "The Little Researcher Who Cried Wolf." But, in the end, they did manage to convince the Poconos' finest that the story they were telling now was, in fact, the actual story. Not to be confused with the actual story they swore they were telling them earlier. And the time before that. And all the other stories Bex had just kind of postulated along the way.

  Within fifteen minutes of becoming convinced that Jeremy really was missing (this time), and that he was with a man who, while they had no proof was also Rachel's killer, was definitely not the custodial (even if he was the biological) parent, and a convicted felon, to boot, the police put out an All Points Bulletin on Robby and Jeremy, as well as an Amber Alert for missing kids. They assured Craig that they were watching airports and bus stations and car rental places. They told him Robby wouldn't be able to take Jeremy out of state. Though they didn't appreciate Bex butting in to ask how they even knew what state Robby was in. Last they'd tracked, Robby was in New York. But he was also just a few miles away from the New Jersey and Pennsylvania borders. Robby could have taken Jeremy in any direction and just kept going straight. Heck, they could be in Connecticut, or Washington D.C., or Vermont by now!

  "You know what, Bex?" Gretchen said, "I think it's time for you to let the professionals do their job. I realize how, for bright and talented women like us, it can be awfully hard to let go of a project once we've committed to it. We're such professionals, aren't we? But really, sweetheart, you simply must believe me: It is very important to learn to relax, to confront those control issues, to go with the flow. Are you hearing me? It isn't healthy to obsess. That sort of thing is horrible for your natural body rhythms, and you certainly don't want to be messing with those, especially at this time in your life when you're coming up on choices and—"

  Craig cut to the chase. He turned around from where he'd been standing next to Travis, shuffling through a handful of recent Jeremy photos to decide which ones to put out over the wire.

  "Go home, Bex. Thanks for your help, but I think you've done quite enough here for now."

  Which is how Bex ended up on the sidewalk outside of Rachel and Craig Hunt's house, still as carless as she'd been a few hours (and a lifetime) earlier, when Gretchen and Travis had peeled off and left her stranded. Her own car, Bex realized too late to beg for a ride, was still at the police station. So here she was, at nearly midnight, chilled, marooned, and definitely unappreciated. And after all she'd done for those people! They wouldn't even know that Jeremy was with Robby if it wasn't for her. Of course, Robby probably wouldn't have taken off with the boy, either. And then there was that whole, she-started-all-this-drama-in-the-first-place thing.

  Bex sighed, using the warm, expelled air from her mouth to defrost her rapidly stiffening fingers. And she considered the possibility that it might be time to hang up her researcher shingle and go home. She'd made a spectacular mess, that much was clear to anyone with rods and cones in their eyeballs, and even to a few blind people with excellent hearing. At best, she'd disrupted the life and career of—what had Toni called him back when all this began?—the best young skater in the United States. At worst, she'd gotten an innocent woman killed and left a defenseless boy at the mercy of a murderer. Maybe Craig was right. Maybe she really had done enough here for now.

  Bex reached for her cell phone, fully expecting, the way her last few days had been going, to find the battery drained. Much to her surprise, it was merely low. She had enough juice to either call a cab to take her to her car at the police station, or to call New York and check her messages. Even though it may have seemed like Jeremy Hunt was her only story of the moment, she actually had a couple of other pressing things on her plate. There were bios to be finished and several last-minute interviews to set up. Bex had calls in to skaters in both Lithuania and China, and, because of the time difference, if any of them had called, she needed to respond within the next few hours, or miss another twenty-four hours of accessibility.

  It was a simple decision to make, really. What with the motto at 24/7 being: "If you don't come into work on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday," Bex didn't even hesitate before deciding to use her one remaining phone call to check her office messages.

  There was nothing from either Lithuania or China. But Bex did have a message from Gil. She knew it was him even before he began talking because of the fun habit her executive producer had of prefacing any message with a vigorous throat clearing.

  "Bex!" He exclaimed upon conquering his latest influenza attack. "Where the hell are you? Did I give you a vacation? I don't remember giving you any vacation! You better not be goofing around on the company dime. And where's that feature you promised? Some disappeared skater chick from the eighteenth century or whatever. I need that footage yesterday if you're planning to make it in the Nationals show. We've got a hole waiting for it and it's either your piece or the network going coast-to-coast black with a little Chyron sign reading, 'Bex Levy screwed up, that's why we don't have a piece.' I'm waiting, Bex. I'm waiting."

  He didn't mean it, of course. Gil would never put the entire 24/7 network in black for five minutes just to teach Bex a lesson. He would have to be a total lunatic to do that.

  Oh. Right.

  Well, at least she had one thing to be grateful to Gil for. All those pesky thoughts she was having just a moment earlier about cutting her losses and going home? Not an option anymore!

  It didn't matter how many more bodies piled up in her wake. Bex had to see this through to the bitter end. And preferably with captivating video footage, too. Which, to be honest, she'd been quite lax about up to this point. At the moment, she only had the earlier interviews with Robby and Fel
icia, neither of which was relevant anymore. A good researcher would have documented every moment of Craig's near breakdown, not to mention her and Felicia's exclusive Encounter in the Bathroom. She should, at the very least, have snuck a hidden camera into Rachel Rose's autopsy. And gotten some shots of the bloody tree she'd been smashed against. Bex figured now the only way she could get her proverbial ass out of the literal sling Gil was so gleefully stringing for her, was to... what?... Let's see... single-handedly rescue Jeremy, capture Robby, and get him to confess to Rachel's murder? On camera?

  Piece of cake.

  Oh, and she also had to keep the police and other media from getting to Robby first. Gil was very particular about his exclusives. If every local TV station in the country had the same footage, it was useless to him.

  Which was still a piece of cake. No problem. It was just more like the kind that you had to actually bake yourself and measure ingredients for and stuff, instead of the one you tossed in your shopping cart and ate straight out of the box.

  Bex tried to think. In the cold and dark, it was kind of hard. She needed warmth and she needed a working cell phone and, most importantly, she needed a computer. Bex didn't know what for yet, but considering how limited her repertoire of research tricks was, she strongly suspected she would need one sooner or later. And she was not going to find any of those things standing in the street.

  Her phone was officially dead now, so there went her cab option.

  Good thing Bex still had Craig's car keys in her pocket, huh?

  For the record, Bex hadn't deliberately not returned them to him. She just hadn't found the time in the middle of his yelling and accusing and looking like he wanted to strangle someone—anyone. Clearly, it was too late to return them now. Craig had made it very unambiguous that she wasn't wanted in his home, and any attempt to engage Travis and Gretchen could very well lead to another lecture about Bex's lifestyle choices. Nobody wanted that.