Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  He also, it seemed to Bex, had no right to follow up his jolly accusation with the following: "So, I figure that means you owe us another brilliant solution."

  Okay. Now she felt certain he wasn't just teasing, but mocking her.

  Despite having one full year of 24/7 service under her belt, Bex was, nevertheless, the newest full-time staff member in the room, as well as the youngest, a fact not looked too kindly upon by those veterans who'd done the math and were distraught to calculate that they were old enough to be her parents.

  "Are you paying attention to me, Bex Levy?" Gil picked up his research binder, the one weighing three pounds, seven ounces. Bex knew the exact weight because she was the one who'd photocopied every single page, punched the holes, and slipped them into Gil's binder after he insisted he couldn't be bothered with such administrative work. Gil picked up his three-pound-plus research binder, and after raising it over his head, dropped it down on the desk. The clatter it made was inversely proportional to how early it was, and how little sleep everybody had gotten the night before (two hours and forty-seven minutes, assuming they fell unconscious the minute their heads hit their pillows and that they weren't bothered by the housecoat-clad old woman floor-matron walking up and down the hall, berating the bellboy at the top of her lungs for not being quiet enough).

  Ergo, the clatter of binder hitting table was very, very loud.

  Everyone in the production meeting jumped to attention. They were all shocked. But not surprised. Gil did his binder trick at least three times a meeting. He thought it kept his people sharp and inspired them to concentrate. Personally, Bex thought it made them all wound-up and incapable of thoroughly focusing on any one thing since a part of their frazzled psyches was on perpetual binder alert, but what did she know? This was only her second season as a researcher, whereas Gil had been an executive producer at 24/7 since cavemen had used bones for skate blades.

  On the other hand, for the sake of accuracy—as a researcher Bex was nothing if not a slave to accuracy—she did feel obligated to point out, at least to herself, that there was another reason besides jet lag and a seven a.m. sharp command performance time for why so many were so often so inattentive at a Gil Cahill meeting: they were boring.

  Not that Gil wasn't an interesting speaker. Well, he actually wasn't, but he'd begun his broadcasting career as an announcer, so even when he had nothing germane to say, he said it in a pleasant and melodious manner. (Besides, a man who could at any time send a binder flying at the desk, or worse, at your head, deserved to be described by a plethora of words, of which "interesting" would definitely have to be included.) The boredom came from the fact that Gil insisted on having his below-the-line meeting at the same time as his above-the-line. He insisted that the tech people, like the cameramen, the soundmen, the assistant directors (ADs), and the videotape operators, who were primarily concerned with how the show looked and sounded from a technical point of view, be in the same room for the same meeting as the story-driven people—the writer, the feature producer, and the researcher, who were primarily concerned with what skaters were to be featured during the broadcast, and how they would go about spinning their tales from a narrative point of view. This meant that, in any Gil Cahill meeting, at least fifty percent of the people in attendance were hearing a discussion of issues that were utterly irrelevant to their jobs. Under such circumstances, the mind did have a nasty tendency to wander.

  "I am paying attention to you, Gil," Bex tiredly insisted.

  What did the man expect? The entire crew had just flown in the night before from New York. A ten-hour airplane flight, followed by the delight that was Russian customs. (Were those people banished to Siberia for answering a question directly, and did they get their food rations based on how many hours they kept foreigners waiting in line, trying to juggle their luggage in one hand, their passports in another?) Of course, for Bex, that particular period of joy was followed by a tête-à-tête with the Russian police department, because Gil insisted he absolutely needed to have Bex's write-up of all the known information on the Marchenko murder prior to her going to bed. So, instead of squeezing in an extra hour of sleep alongside her lucky-bastard colleagues who got to go straight to the hotel, Bex spent a precious sixty minutes at a Russian police station, playing charades in her attempt to wheedle out what they knew about Igor Marchenko's death.

  To be fair, fifty-six minutes of that time had gone to finding out who the correct person to bribe for the information was. Once she learned that, the rest was a snap.

  Her bribee was so generous, he even kindly offered to translate the Russian police report and transcribe it into English for her—for a small extra fee, naturally. The last minutes of her excursion were spent listening to him explain how it was doubtful the case would ever be solved. Russia these days bred crime, both the organized and disorganized kind, he explained, faster than it did alcoholics. They were very understaffed. Some of the officers hadn't been paid in weeks. No one was exactly motivated to investigate the death of a lucky Russian son-of-a-bitch who'd been ingenious enough to get out in time and make his fortune in America, because, to be truthful—how you say this in English?—nobody gave a damn.

  Yet, to Gil Cahill, it didn't matter what kind of night Bex or the rest of the crew had already endured. Production meetings were always, always, always held at seven a.m. local time. Gil said it gave them a head start on their day.

  So here they were, twenty-four tired people seated around an oval table in a Moscow conference room with no windows, and a map on the wall so old (or in denial) that it still showed the Soviet Union as controlling its wayward republics. And Poland. And Alaska.

  At the center of the table stood a platinum pitcher of brown liquid that tasted like leftover water someone had rinsed a handful of old coffee beans in. Their catered continental breakfast consisted of smoked halibut, fried pork chops, and sour cherries in a sugary, watery paste. At seven a.m., Bex was having trouble deciding which delicacy she found least offensive.

  Since this was their first meeting of the event, along with the below-the-line and above-the-line troops, the Talent had also been commanded to make an appearance. The Talent, or, to put it more accurately, the on-air announcers for "U.S. vs. Russia" were Francis and Diana Howarth. The American husband-and-wife team were Olympic Pair Champions in 1962 and 1966. As far as Bex could tell, their final Split-Twist-Lift was the last time they'd agreed on anything. Fortunately for their three children, Francis Jr., Diana Jr., and Frances Dyana, their parents considerately saved up all of their at-home arguments so that they might have them live on the air during skating broadcasts. Right now, however, even they were too tired to do more than quibble about their introductory copy—should it be, "Hello, I'm Francis Howarth, live from Moscow with my lovely wife, Diana." or, "Hello, I'm Diana Howarth, live from Moscow with my husband, Francis, the jackass."?—before glazing over and dozing off.

  This early in the day, the only non-jet-lagged people in the room were the four "runners," kids hired locally to serve as gophers and translators for the production. They didn't get to sit around the table. They stood with their backs against the wall, looking simultaneously eager to please and extraordinarily confused. Bex's assigned runner was a young man who resembled an eager fourteen-year-old starting his first day of big-boy school. His brown corduroy pants were rolled up at the ankles, showing a pair of black socks. His sports jacket, while technically still qualifying for inclusion in the brown family, nevertheless missed matching the pants by a mile. He wore a yellow tie on top of a collarless shirt. The entire ensemble looked as if it had been handed down by an older, much more broad-shouldered cousin. And yet, despite the assortment of fashion faux pas, Bex's assistant for the next week, Alexander "Sasha" Serota, had greeted Bex with a firm, confident handshake and, in admirably competent English, informed her, "I would like to learn much everything about the television production, so that I may soon become Ted Turner of Russia."

  To Sasha's credit, h
is dazzling self-confidence did not flag an iota even as Gil began his precision binder-hurling exhibition. Whenever Bex turned around to look at him, Sasha flashed her a brilliant smile that seemed to say, "Americans are insane, especially that one throwing binders around, but I am sure you are not like them in the least and will straighten everything out for me shortly."

  Well, at least one person had confidence in Bex. Although, based on Gil's earlier challenge, she guessed she ought to amend that to two people. In either case, she hadn't the slightest idea why.

  "Gil." Bex forced her sleep-deprived brain to form a thought: noun, verb, noun, verb, suppressed expletive. "Did you just say you expect me to solve Igor Marchenko's murder?"

  "You have to," Gil spoke in his patented, Al-Gore-to-slow-school-children tone. "We've already promoted it on the air. See, Bex, last night, as soon as I read your report saying that the police had determined that Marchenko was murdered with some sort of heart-attack-inducing drug—"

  "It was a homeopathic version of digitalis. The killer poured it into Marchenko's gloves and left them on the radiator to dry. A few minutes after Marchenko put them on, he was poisoned by the topical contact of such a large dose."

  "Right, whatever. Anyway, as soon as I read it was murder and not just a boring heart attack, I got on the phone to New York and told them to start heavily promoting that we would be solving the murder, live, on the air, during the ladies' long program. They were nuts about the idea. We got some terrific buzz when we solved that Silvana Potenza thing on the air last year."

  "We did?" Bex wanted to ask, but didn't. "We solved the case, did we?”

  "Problem was, last year, we couldn't promote the big reveal in advance. You really dropped the ball on that one, by the way, Bex."

  "Gil, if that hadn't worked out according to plan, we would have looked like the biggest idiots—"

  "Still, I'm willing to overlook it. Fresh season, fresh slate and all that, right? But, I am also not going to make the same mistake twice; that would be stupid. So this time, we are going to promote the hell out of this thing. I'm having them satellite us the promo spots as soon as they're done so we can take a look. This is going to be huge. We're all counting on you. Don't let us down."

  "Gil, are you mental?" is what Bex should have asked. If she weren't a gutless weenie who really, really couldn't afford to lose this job.

  The root of the problem was that Bex grew up a latchkey kid. Which meant she watched an inordinate amount of television. Which meant she had programmed her brain to receive massive amounts of information at an abnormally high speed. Which meant that, by the time she was in her teens, she'd become an information junkie. The Internet becoming big around that time didn't exactly help. By the time she'd started college, Bex had no one particular interest She was simply obsessed with learning everything about everything. Which was why she couldn't settle on a major, and ended up going to Sarah Lawrence where they were above such things. Which was why she had no applicable job skills. Except for gathering, absorbing, documenting, and disseminating information. And so, here she was, the proud possessor of one of those rare research jobs that hundreds of other college-graduate generalists were probably dying to step over her corpse to get.

  Which was why, instead of proposing the obvious, "Are you mental?" question, Bex instead pointed out, "But, this isn't like Silvana, Gil. I was at least around when the Silvana murder happened. I knew the people involved. I knew who had a grudge against her, and why. I knew where everyone was at the time of the murder because I was there, too. I don't know anything about what went on at the arena yesterday. I wasn't even in the country then."

  "Not a problem." Gil never thought anything was a problem, as long as he could delegate the work necessary to confirm his point. "They're having a press conference at the arena first thing this morning for all the media. They'll catch you up. It's supposed to be starting any minute. In fact, Bex, I'm surprised. Why aren't you over there already, getting us the best seat in the house?"

  Somehow, contrary to the laws of physics as understood by average humans in the twenty-first century, Gil always expected Bex to be in several places simultaneously. At a competition, if the men were practicing in one arena, and the women at another, Gil never seemed able to understand why, at the end of the day, Bex could only turn in one practice report. He would look at her carefully typed sheet, genuinely puzzled each and every time at receiving only half the expected write-up. Then he would sigh deeply to express his immense disappointment with the shoddy job she was doing. After the sigh, he would always advise Bex to work harder.

  Heck, who knew, maybe Gil was right? Maybe if Bex just put in a little more effort on top of the eighteen-hour days she usually put in, she just might very well unearth the secret to time travel. Anything was possible, after all.

  As for why she wasn't already over at the arena, getting 24/7 the best seat in the house, well… "Maybe it's because I'm over here, Gil, getting binders flung at me," Bex didn't say as surely as she hadn't offered her host of other rejoinders earlier.

  Instead, overwhelmed by the sheer denseness of the man, all Bex could say was, "So, I just need to go to a quick press conference and I should be able to solve this murder, too? Any suggestions on how exactly I'm supposed to do that?"

  "Figure it out" Gil shrugged, seemingly unconcerned either by her assignment, or by the pressing, looming imminence of her four-days-from-now-ladies'-long-program deadline. "You're the researcher."

  "Researchers? They solve crime? This is what the researchers do?' Bex had to hand it to Sasha. The young man had actually waited politely for the meeting with Gil to end. He had waited for Bex to come up to him, make small talk, and for the two of them to walk out of the hotel and hop into the rickety cab heading for the Natzionalnaya Arena, where the competition was scheduled to take place over the next four days, before Sasha, politely but with unabashed curiosity, posed his question.

  If Bex were in his shoes, she suspected she'd have pounced with a query before the meeting was even over. But, then again, Sasha was presumably a well-brought-up young man, whereas Bex was an "I-got-to-know-it" fiend.

  "No." She chose her words with great precision, allowing most of the fury she was currently feeling towards Gil to spill out and drench Sasha. And the cab. And the streets of this dingy city.

  This was Bex's first visit to Russia. A lifetime of reading everything from Dr. Zhivago to Stolichnaya Vodka ads had prepped her to expect a glistening, snow-covered winter wonderland. A cross between Swan Lake and a festively painted Faberge egg. In actuality, winter in Moscow meant gray, unwashed sidewalks beneath gray, unwashed buildings, and cold, angry people rushing about with grim, gray expressions, dressed in gray, washed-out clothes, oppressed on either side by a gray, perpetually cloud-filled sky. Instead of Swan Lake, Bex felt like she had fallen into used dishwater.

  "No," she told Sasha with a weary sigh that encompassed both her disappointment with the city and over ever having been born. "Researchers do not, as a rule, run around solving crimes. We leave that to professionals. Like ex-sitcom stars turned MD's. And little old ladies living in Maine. And bored rich people."

  Sasha's blank expression quickly told Bex that the unfortunate young man had never seen so much as a single episode of Diagnosis: Murder; Murder, She Wrote, or Hart to Hart. Which was a pity, really. Because, right now, that meant Bex was the only one with crime-solving experience. Which, despite her earlier success with the Silvana Potenza murder and the Jeremy Hunt kidnapping, still consisted primarily of watching all of the above.

  "I see." Sasha nodded in all seriousness. "Then please to tell me, what is it that the researchers do?"

  "Well, you know that binder Gil smacked on the table earlier?"

  "I—Yes ..." Sasha's voice trailed off uncertainly, as if he feared Bex doing a reenactment of that maneuver with the identical binder that she now balanced on her lap.

  "That's the research binder for this competition." Bex moved to open it. S
asha flinched.

  'It's alright," Bex reassured. "It's not loaded."

  Again, Sasha stared at her blankly.

  "Right, never mind." Bex made a mental note to herself. She had to remember she wasn't really as funny as she thought she was. She should just stick to facts. There was less trouble to be gotten into that way.

  "This binder is where we keep all our research material for any one particular show. I put it together and I made copies for everyone so that we're all on the same page once we get here."

  Bex figured that eager-eyed, enthusiastic, as-yet-unjaded Ted Turner-wannabe Sasha didn't need to know that it felt like more than three-quarters of Bex's day was spent in front of a copy machine in the most remote room of 24/7's New York headquarters, feeding thick reams of paper through the photocopier and praying for it not to jam. The remaining one-fourth of her day was spent un-jamming the copier, trying to figure out which pages in the cycle had actually gotten done and which ones hadn't, reorganizing the remaining pages, prying staples out with her teeth, restapling and, finally, washing the black ink off her clothes. Television was very glamorous work.

  "You see, right here." Bex indicated the first four pages up front, under the heading, history. "This is background on Moscow, on Russia, on all the competitions that have been held in this arena."

  "This will be on show?"

  "Maybe." Bex sighed, loathe to admit the other reality that drove her crazy about her job. Which was that, of the roughly two hundred pages of research she generated for each event, odds were that only point one of one percent of it would be used. The fact of the matter was that the scintillating information detailing how Moscow wasn't always Russia's capital (it was actually moved several times under the Czars and the Communists) did not bear much relevance on how many triple jumps Jordan Ares or Lian Reilly landed in their Long Programs, or whether either girl cheated on her Lutz jump by changing her blade's edge at the last minute and turning it into a Flip, or, more colloquially, a Flutz. But the fact remained that sometimes the historical information did come in handy. For instance, Bex could only imagine the havoc it would engender if, in the middle of a broadcast, Francis Howarth got it into his head to announce that the height of one of the competitors was exactly equal to the region's annual rainfall. And woe be it to Bex if, at that moment, she was unable to produce a document confirming that obscure fact, on the fly.