Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  "You sound broken up about it"

  "Coaches are for suckers. I didn't get emancipated from my own parents to end up with another, mucho loco parentis. And this one I had to pay for the abuse, to boot!"

  Bex couldn't be certain, but... "Jordan, did you just make a joke in both Spanish and Latin?" Bex was sure she'd misunderstood. Surely Jordan, who'd dropped out of school in the seventh grade, did not just pun "in loco parentis," the Latin expression for "in place of parents" used to describe a school's relationship with its pupils, by merging it with the Spanish "loco" for "crazy."

  The teen winked. "Makes you pretty sorry for all those times you underestimated me, huh?"

  Bex didn't know how exactly to reply to that. So, when in doubt, she stuck to the script she'd entered with. "Jordan, were you with Igor the morning he died?"

  "Think I killed him?" Jordan didn't seem offended, just curious.

  "Well, I am trying to figure out who did."

  "Just like with that judge at Worlds, last year. Yeah, I saw how you broke that on TV. Pretty clever stuff. Sure was more interesting than the snooze-fest exhibition."

  "Uhm... thanks."

  "So you think I offed my own coach?"

  "You've fired enough of them."

  "Not really the same. Besides, Igor and me got along okay. He didn't do any of that positive reinforcement bullshit. Like, if I was having a bad day, none of that 'Aw, sweetie, honey, precious, it's okay, you'll do better next time. And remember, not being able to land your triple/triple doesn't in any way devalue you as a person. So you run on back to Mommy-kins and tell her who the bestest coach in the world is, and how much he wuv, wuv, wuvs you. Oh, by the way, check's due. Hand it over.' If I was having a bad day with Igor, he told me, 'You're having a crappy day, Jordan, get it together or I'm not coming back tomorrow.'"

  "A lot of people wouldn't exactly consider that a positive," Bex pointed out

  "I was paying Igor to coach, not coddle me. I want to win. I know how fantastic a human being I am; I don't need to hire somebody to patronize me. You think I want to end up like Lian? Her mother and Gary spend so much time kissing up and telling her how super-duper she is, how's she supposed to get motivated to skate better? Mrs. Reilly thinks the judges prefer me to Lian because I have big eyes and white skin? Try, because I don't cheat my jumps. I work hard to make sure I don't give those judges any excuse to mark down my technique. Lian, though, she's won so many piddly junior titles with her lousy jumps, she doesn't get why no one is falling for them in seniors. Her mom won't tell her because she thinks Lian walks on water—the not frozen kind, I mean. And Gary won't tell her because Mrs. Reilly won't let him, and he needs the money."

  "Is that why you don't want Gary coaching you here? Because you think he's a bad coach, or because you think he's under Mrs. Reilly's control?"

  "I'm telling you, and I'm telling everyone, I don't need another coach! I am sick and tired of being told what to do and what to wear and how to behave. When am I going to be allowed to make my own choices and have my own opinions? What the hell do you all want from me? Enough is enough, okay?"

  For a minute, Jordan looked to be close to tears. She blinked. She looked away.

  She reached two fingers into her left eye, plucked out a contact lens, popped it in to her mouth, sucked briefly, then slid it back onto her pupil. She blinked again. Bex forcibly swallowed the sympathy that had been threatening to well up within her chest, not unlike phlegm from a bad cold.

  "Okay. So. Anyway, Jordan, the reason I came in was, I was hoping you could give me some details about what was going on here the morning Igor died. The police report is very sketchy. I don't think they actually interviewed anyone about it."

  "I know they didn't talk to me. I don't govori the russki."

  "Well, I'm interviewing you, now, so please, pay attention."

  "Yes, ma'am." Jordan offered her version of the straight leg goose-step still done by the pimpled young soldiers around Lenin's tomb. While wearing only a sweater and hot pink panties (Jordan; not the soldiers). It made for an interesting sociopolitical commentary.

  "Right. Good. So, let's start at the beginning. Did you and Igor come over to the arena together from the hotel that morning?"

  "What? You think I'm Lian and Gary? Igor and I are not joined at the hip. I can wipe my own butt, and I can find the rink all by my blond little self."

  "Good to know." Bex opened her spiral notebook and wondered if she should be writing: Jordan Ares would like it on the record that she can wipe her own butt. "So you and Igor met up at the arena? Who arrived first, you or him?"

  Jordan cocked her head to the side, seemingly actually thinking about her answer rather than blurting it out, for a change. "Him. He got here first. Because when I came in, I saw him talking to Mrs. Reilly. Which was pretty weird."

  "Igor was talking to Amanda Reilly? Why?"

  "I don't know. They both clammed up the moment I walked in."

  "Were Gary and Lian around?"

  "I don't think so. No. No, they couldn't have been. Because if Lian was already on the ice, no way would Mommy have been looking anywhere else. Lian was probably getting changed here in the locker room or something. Don't know where Gary was."

  "And then what did you do?"

  "I gave Igor my gloves."

  "What? Why?" Considering gloves were at the very center of this extravaganza, Jordan was awfully casual about bringing the topic up.

  “Take a chill pill, Bex. I said I gave him my gloves. I didn't touch his. I always give them to him at the beginning of a session. He puts them on the radiator for me, next to his. He said his coach used to tell him to do it, to warm them up for after practice, and now he's got me doing it, too."

  "So, you knew that Igor's gloves would be on the radiator?"

  "Me and the entire world knew. He's only been doing it for a million years."

  "Did anyone touch the gloves while they were on the radiator?"

  "Well, off the top of my head, I'm going to guess the person who killed him."

  "Thank you, Jordan, that's very helpful. What I mean is, did you see anyone who could have put the poison—"

  "It wasn't poison," Jordan said. "It was foxglove. It's a homeopathic treatment for people with heart conditions."

  "Yes, I know that, I read the police report…. How did you know that, Jordan?"

  "I can read, too, believe it or not. It was in that free newspaper they give us at the hotel. And it's what everybody's talking about around here, this morning. Except, as usual, the skating simpletons have got it wrong. Foxglove isn't a poison. It's how they make the heart drug digitalis. Igor just got too much of it. Probably a concentrated form, I'd bet. That's what killed him."

  "You're doing this bit for my benefit, aren't you?" Bex couldn't imagine another reason. "You're messing with me. You want me to think you killed Igor."

  "You think I'm mental?"

  "I'm not ready to discount the possibility."

  "Well, I definitely am. But not about this. I've got some butts to kick this week, I've got no time for side trips to the police station."

  "So when did you become an expert on homeopathic medicine?"

  "Duh. See above. Jordan can read. I know what foxglove is. Is that a crime? I can also spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and potato. I know that the formula for water is H-two-O and the average rainfall of Mongolia. I love knowledge. I yearn for it."

  "That's why you dropped out of school?"

  "That's exactly why I dropped out of school. If a piece of knowledge accidentally wanders into a classroom it gets stomped down before drawing a breath."

  "So what is the average rainfall in Mongolia?"

  “Two hundred sixteen millimeters a month."

  "Okay. Fine. I'm convinced. You're a self-taught savant. You know a plethora of things, including tons of details about the drug that killed your umpteenth coach, but that's just a coincidence. Yes, Jordan, I believe you, you're not messing with me at all.
"

  "Didn't say I wasn't messing with you." Jordan smiled. No. She grinned. In a rather evil manner.

  "Can we get back to the conversation, please?"

  "Weren't we talking about what evil villain might have been lurking around the radiator, looking for a chance to slip some funky homeopathy into Igor's gloves?"

  "Did you see anyone?"

  "Not a soul."

  Bex sighed.

  Jordan, perhaps sensing that her interrogator's patience was wearing thin and that all this lovely attention was at risk for being withdrawn, deigned to add, "I wasn't really looking, though. I was on the ice. Lian was on the ice. Igor and Gary were standing at the barrier. Mrs. Reilly was wandering around. TV people were running wires and some arena people were doing whatever it is they do to get ready. Everything looked normal."

  Bex was afraid of that. Just like a serial killer who stashed seventeen bodies in his basement and made puppy-dog models out of their hair always had neighbors willing to tell the press, "He was so quiet and unassuming, we never dreamed anything odd was going on," in her experience, a murder scene was always equally full of people happy to report, "Everything was normal. Until they found the body."

  "Bex!" The voice came from outside the changing room. Sasha was too polite to barge in, though his temporary association with television gave him all rights to. "Please to come out, now! I am holding to the Shura. You wished to speak to him, yes?"

  Bex did wish to speak to the arena manager, yes. She bade Jordan a quick good-bye and stepped outside the changing room door. To discover that, as advertised, Sasha was, indeed, "holding to the Shura." Bex's runner had the arena manager by the arm, one hand on his elbow, the other on his shoulder, and had backed him bodily into a corner.

  "Shura is here to speak with you." Sasha proudly pushed the sixty-something man forward. Dressed in a thick, brown, down coat buttoned up to above his chin and a black cap pulled down below his brows, Shura appeared to be all scowl, slit eyes, and a bulbous nose decorated with the relief map of every vodka he'd ever guzzled. He didn't so much speak, as gargle, cough, and expectorate. Of course, to be fair, he was gargling, coughing, and expectorating in Russian, so maybe the words were supposed to sound like that

  "Shura says he does not know anything," Sasha translated.

  "That's okay," Bex smiled her most multicultural, all-men-are-brothers smile. "I still want to ask him some questions. Maybe he'll remember something important."

  Sasha translated her words into Russian. Shura's glare in response suggested he did not believe that would be happening.

  "Could you please ask him if he saw—"

  Before Bex was finished asking her question, Shura exploded with an answer that, frankly, did not sound precisely on point. He waved his arms. He stomped his feet. He pointed at Bex. He pointed at himself and at several 24/7 crew members milling around, and at the Russian flag hanging above the doorway. And then at the toilet down the hall.

  "I see..." Bex thought to herself.

  "Shura is saying," Sasha attempted to translate while the tirade was still going on, "that he thinks all of Marchenko's murder will be blamed on Russia, because Americans always to blame everything on the Russia. Shura speaks for all the people of Russia and he says Marchenko was... what is word, please, for human excrement?"

  "Shit!" Shura shouted. Obviously, he knew some English and also knew when to use it for maximum effectiveness. "Shit! Igor Marchenko is shit! He to treats Mother Russia like shit!"

  Bex wondered if she should be writing that down. Next to Jordan's informative point about being able to wipe her own ass. Her investigation was definitely developing a theme.

  His own scatological point gotten across, Shura returned to shouting in Russian, this time speaking even faster, as if daring Sasha to keep up.

  "Shura says Marchenko show no respect for the homeland that trained him to be a great and successful athlete. He defects to America for money only and he forget to who he owed a debt. Marchenko throw the World Champion medal he won for Russia in the toilet. Shura does not think Marchenko treat his American medals with such disrespect."

  Shura stopped talking, crossed his previously flailing arms, and looked expectantly at Bex. She, in turn, looked at Sasha, waiting for him to translate the final, summary bit.

  "Marchenko is shit," Sasha concluded.

  "I see."

  "And also Shura says that he sees this: it was Gary Gold who put Marchenko's gloves on the heater, not Marchenko, himself."

  “You were just waiting to spring that last part on me, weren't you?" Bex teased Sasha as the newly released Shura stomped down the hallway. "You made me listen to all that 'shit,' just so you could deliver the Gary Gold part for maximum drama."

  "We Russians. We are dramatic people. Very passionate." Sasha smiled at Bex. And suddenly, he no longer looked fourteen years old. In fact, Bex wasn't sure how she could have ever thought he was anything but... "Sasha," Bex interrupted their regularly scheduled murder-solving to indulge her unexpected curiosity. "How old are you?"

  "Twenty-four."

  "You're my age?" Bex yelped. Here she'd been treating him like he was some kid sent to do her bidding, and he was actually her own age!

  "If you are twenty-four, that is correct."

  "I'm sorry. I thought you were—"

  "Young. Yes. Everyone to say this. Young face, they say."

  "It's just that we usually hire teenagers for these runner jobs, so that's why I—"

  "Is fine. I know. Job said student. I to lie to them. Use young face to advantage. They are asking, you attending university? I say yes. Is true. Am attending university. This job will help to pay for university."

  "Graduate school?"

  "No. I tell them truth, again. I am in first year. When I first leave my orphanage, I work as street cleaner. But I save my money for university. Ten years, I have enough."

  Bex was sure she must have misheard. The numbers didn't add up. "You had to save up ten years to go to college? Since you were fourteen?"

  "Yes. Fourteen, no more orphanage."

  "You're an orphan?"

  "I live in orphanage," Sasha repeated. Then he explained, "I am six, mother leave our home. Father not happy, begins drinking. Sometimes, he forgets to come home. Police, they bring me to orphanage. I am not orphan like in the infant fairy stories. My parents are alive. I think. But I to live in orphanage as child. You see?"

  Bex saw. Thanks to her own childhood which had been wasted with her nose permanently wedged in the "infant fairy stories," along with Dickens, Bronte, Twain, Rowling (so, fine, so she read a couple of Harry Potters when she was already halfway through college—no crime in that), Sasha's mentioning "orphan" instantly flooded Bex's mind's eye with Technicolor images of urchins begging for more gruel, dead best friends, escapes on rafts, and, well... wizards. She realized Sasha had probably experienced none of those things—was there a Russian equivalent of gruel, for instance? But, nevertheless, Bex found his background overwhelming. What was the correct response after being told someone was an orphan? "I'm sorry," didn't seem exactly adequate, especially since he'd helpfully pointed out his parents weren't even really dead. What was Bex supposed to say to him now?

  "Is Shura certain he saw Gary put Marchenko's gloves on the heater?"

  Yes. After much soul-searching, that was the sensitive response Bex had decided to go with. She wasn't proud of it, but there it was.

  "That is what he says." Sasha did not even blink at her abrupt change of subject. Bex wondered if her panicked duck-and-cover was typical of people learning the young man in front of them had been abandoned and institutionalized.

  "That could be a pretty big clue. If it's true," Bex noted as she was also juggling the knowledge that Sasha wasn't some green college kid who needed to be mentored by her experienced self, but a contemporary who had probably logged more life experience in a year than Bex had to date. So who exactly was supposed to be teaching whom, here? After all, they were in
Sasha's home country, dealing with the murder of his fellow countryman, and interrogating witnesses in a language Bex didn't even know. Maybe she should step back and let him lead for a while?

  Nope. Bex gave the notion a split second's thought. Nope, couldn't do that.

  She told Sasha, "We need to search Igor's room. He might have something in there that could help us figure out who wanted him dead."

  "Very well," Sasha replied, as unfazed as ever. Sasha, Bex was beginning to realize, was a very go-with-the-flow kind of guy. And, since that was the case...

  "Any idea how we can get in? I mean, I don't have a key or anything."

  "Is not a problem," Sasha said. "You are in Russia."

  Sasha was right. All they needed to gain access to Igor Marchenko's room was for Sasha to exchange a few words with the floor matron who sat at a desk at the end of the hall, watching the guests coming and going and glaring at them disapprovingly—just in case. Well, that and for Bex to exchange a few hundred rubles with the lovely lady, as well. As they walked down the hall, key in hand, Bex made a note in her reimbursement book, even as she wondered how she would phrase what she'd used the money for. Bribe did seem to be such an ugly word. Maybe she should call it... a tip?

  Sasha opened Marchenko's door, held it gallantly open for Bex to pass through, then whistled loudly and, with a grin, tossed their illicit key back to the floor matron, who managed to catch the sliver of metal without breaking her glare. Sasha continued smiling at her. Until finally, reluctantly, she smiled back. Sasha winked and blew her a kiss. The sour-faced woman smiled for real. Bex didn't know what to make of the exchange. All she knew was, she kind of liked it.

  "Where do we to start?" Sasha asked.

  "Well..." Bex looked around the room, furnished in generic hotel: double bed, end table, chair, threadbare bits of string sticking up from the green rug. And the bedspread. And the curtains. And the molding in the corners. It felt like the whole place needed to be mowed, or at least shaved.

  Igor's things were still where he had apparently dumped them before heading out to the arena the day before. Obviously, the local militsia did not expect to find any clues here. One suit was hanging in the closet. The rest of his things spilled out of the suitcase he'd loaded atop the rusted luggage stand. Bex spied several undershirts, three pairs of black socks tied into balls, some folded boxer shorts. That seemed indecent, somehow. Here the man was dead, and Bex was standing around, gawking at his underwear. Even worse, she was trying to get psyched enough to actually roll up her sleeves and rifle though his underwear. Though she wasn't sure what exactly she expected to find in there.