Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  Bex stated the obvious. "Those aren't your skates."

  Brittany looked down at the golden skates she was cradling in first position. The blades of each skate were digging into her elbows. Eight metal hooks at the ankles had already snagged a few loose cherry threads. She wrinkled her brow, either suffering from temporary amnesia or painfully trying to summon up a good reason to contradict Bex. "Yes, they are."

  Then Brittany conceded, "No, they're not."

  Bex stated the obvious. "They're Galina's."

  This time, Brittany didn't even stop to think. "Yes. They are."

  "Are you taking them for a walk?" Bex inquired politely. "Is that a Russian team tradition? Sort of like a wacky initiation?"

  While Bex was being sarcastic, she noticed Amanda Reilly trying to casually and unobtrusively sneak away. She was inching against the outer refrigeration wall, looking at neither Bex nor Brittany. If she wasn't presumably afraid of drawing more attention to herself, Bex suspected Amanda would have begun to whistle nonchalantly.

  Bex thought about turning around to inform Amanda that she hadn't developed amnesia either, that she could still see her, and that she was choosing to let Amanda slink away. But she reconsidered. Let Amanda think Bex was done with her. It would lull her into a false sense of security and might prompt her into making a case-solving error. Or so the theory went. Bex had yet to actually witness it in action.

  In any case, she had more immediate chicken Kiev to fry.

  "Well, Brittany," Bex asked. "What's going on?"

  "Nothing."

  "Why do you have Galina's skates?"

  "I... uhm... I..."

  Bex sighed. Why was it, in books, sleuths always had brilliant—sociopathic, but brilliant—nemesis to match wits with. While Bex was up against folks too stupid to even try making up an on-the-ball excuse. Just standing here, Bex could think of several credible lies for Brittany to wriggle with. How about: "She left them behind in the locker room and I'm returning them to her."

  Or, "She asked me to take them to the skate sharpener's."

  Or, "The Russian Skating Federation is so poor now, the skaters have been told we're going to be sharing boots."

  Bex considered sharing any of the above with Brittany. Surely, even a scripted answer would be better than the current, all-vowel stuttering. Especially when the real answer was obvious to anyone with eyes. And a suspicious worldview.

  Luckily, Bex fit both bills.

  She allowed Brittany's silence to flop about like a newborn's limbs for a few more seconds. Then she got bored. And she accused, "You were going to dump Galina's skates in the refrigeration room.

  Brittany stopped trying to talk. And just shrugged. She looked down at the floor. But, for a moment, Bex thought she caught the teen peeking defiantly up at Bex, as though simultaneously embarrassed and proud of her actions.

  "Not very sportsmanlike behavior, Britt."

  "Who the hell cares?" Even the kittens quivered with indignation. "What about the way she treats me? What about the way they all treat me?"

  Bex really did see her point. And, being only a few years older than Brittany, she had no interest in going all "listen to your elders" on her with a lecture about why it was wrong to cheat and steal. To be honest, Bex was less interested in the right and wrong on display here, and more about getting the whole story in case she decided to pitch it as a 24/7 feature for Gil.

  "How long has this been going on?" she asked Brittany. "The Russian team dissing you like they did after practice today?"

  "Oh, from the start, totally." Brittany's arms dropped to their sides, weighed down by the hardships she'd faced. Or just from carrying the two-pounds-each skates. "My first Russian Nationals, I tried my best to fit in. I brought this Russian phrasebook and I even underlined some words to say to them. But everybody just laughed at me the whole time. Galina, she kept pointing at me, and saying, 'You no here. You no here!' and 'You go home!"'

  Obviously, Galina Semenova had also underlined some handy Russian-English phrases to help Brittany fit in.

  "Usually, when a Russian skater gets on the ice to compete, all the other team members—and I mean everyone, not just the singles, but the pairs and the dancers, too—they sit in the stands and they clap and they cheer and they stomp their feet. It's so, you know, you're not alone out there, you've got teammates supporting you, so you feel, you know, supported. But, every time I get on the ice, every single, single time, they wait until my name is called and I assume my opening position, and then they all get up, the whole group of them, that's a lot of people, more than a dozen, and they walk out. Just to make sure I see them do it, they always sit where they know I'll be facing, they sit behind the judges. And they make a lot of noise, talking Russian as they go, so everybody hears them, too. They want everybody to know that they're leaving. And I'm just supposed to stand there like an idiot, big smile on my face, because judges need to see that big smile, and I watch them go. Do you know how hard it is to skate after that?"

  Bex presumed the answer would be, "Very hard." She was about to comment, but Brittany was on a roll.

  "Also, you know what else they do? You know what else? At all of the banquets after competition, they never sit with me at the Russian table."

  "I've been to those banquets," Bex pointed out. "And you're always sitting with the American team."

  "Well, I—yes. But that's only because they're my friends and I've known them all since we were kids. I would sit with the Russian team. If they were nicer to me."

  "Why do you think they're so hostile to you?" Bex asked, all the while feeling confident she knew the answer perfectly well, but willing to let Brittany surprise her.

  "It's because I'm American and they think I'm taking a space on the World Team that should have gone to a Russian girl."

  Well, there goes any possibility of surprise.

  "But it doesn't make any logical sense," Brittany insisted. "I mean, I'm making their team better, stronger."

  "How do you figure?"

  "Look, think about it. I had to qualify to earn my spot on the World Team. That means even their own Russian National judges decided I was better—a lot better—than their other Russian girls, right? And Russia wants to send the best team it can to Worlds, right? If I win a medal here or at Worlds or whatever, I win the medal for Russia, not for America, so what difference does it make where I'm from, right?"

  "Right," Bex finally responded to her frantic prompt.

  "Right. And also, look at it this way, by having me on the team, it encourages the other Russian girls to skate better if they want to beat me, right? I'm like, setting the bar higher for them to reach. And that's only going to make the Russian team stronger in the long run, right?"

  "That makes sense in theory," Bex agreed, then subtly flipped the conversation to what she had been wanting to discuss all along. "But, I know that when Igor Marchenko came to the U.S.—"

  "Right! This is exactly like Igor Marchenko! Look at him: he won an Olympic Gold, for Pete's sake. And he did it for America. No way would Gary have been able to do that. Was the USFSA supposed to name a worse skater to the team and give up their gold medal to make Gary happy?"

  Considering that Bex often thought of Gary Gold as the Man With One Facial Expression, and that she had as tough of a time imagining him happy as she did unhappy, Bex skipped right over Brittany's hypothetical question to pose a more practical one of her own. "How unhappy was Gary do you think? Was he as unhappy as your Russian teammates? Was he as unhappy as you are now?" Bex indicated the stolen pair of skates Brittany had been planning to do God-knows-what to in the refrigeration room.

  "Oh, he was pissed. Everybody still talks about it. I mean, ever since I decided to skate for Russia, all I've been hearing is Gary stories. It's like everybody's got one. My old coach back home, he told me that at the first U.S. Nationals where Gary had to skate against Igor, Gary didn't show up for the medal ceremony. And at the press conferences, he wouldn't look at Igor.
My coach said it was like Gary decided to pretend Igor didn't exist, and no one was going to change his mind."

  "What about later, when they were coaching at the same rink? Did Gary keep pretending Igor didn't exist?"

  "I dunno." Brittany shrugged. "That was like, a million years ago."

  A million years ago. Or B.B.B. Before the Birth of Brittany. And how could anything that happened B.B.B. possibly be of any importance?

  "I'm talking about today." Bex tried to hook Brittany's attention by pretending to return to her favorite subject. "You've seen Marchenko and Gary together at a bunch of competitions. What's their relationship like now?"

  "I dunno," Brittany repeated, her eyes beginning to twitch with boredom. She looked to the right. She looked to the left. She sighed. She did everything but tap her foot impatiently. "Why don't you, like, ask him yourself?"

  In a single move, Brittany managed to jut her chin in the direction of the side door, where Gary Gold was currently standing, and swing both arms behind her back, so that the purloined skates might be hidden from view.

  His hand on the knob, Gary was dressed in knee-high fur-lined boots, a gray, woolen hat, brown leather gloves, and a black, artic-quality parka with attached hood. Bex's superior research skills suggested the gentleman was on his way outside.

  And now she had a choice. Either drop the skater in the hand to pursue a coach in the bush, or let Gary go and continue cross-examining Brittany.

  Bex decided that pumping a bored Brittany for details about the Marchenko/Gary relationship couldn't possibly be as helpful as asking Gary himself. And so, with a stern glare in Brittany's direction that Bex hoped conveyed the message, "You'd better return those skates to Galina, ASAP, and never let me catch you engaging in such foolishness, again, young lady," Bex let Brittany off the hook.

  "Gary!" she yelled, even as the object of her yelp had already opened the door and taken a pioneering step outside.

  He paused, half in-half out the door, and gazed at Bex expectantly. Though, to be honest, Gary was always gazing at people expectantly; this was nothing personal. The man possessed a perpetual air of waiting for someone—anyone!— to articulate something interesting. And then of being bitterly disappointed.

  While other coaches taught their students with jokes and a buddy-buddy air, Gary Gold preferred to expound from up high. He gave the impression of looking down at his students, even when they were, in fact, taller than him.

  With Bex, though, this wasn't an issue. She barely reached up to his breastbone. Gary's competitive bio may have listed him as five foot, nine inches tall. But, he stood so darn straight, Bex could have sworn the man was an even six feet if he was an inch.

  He looked down at Bex now, noting the muddy footprints her frantic scurrying left on the concrete floor, and radiated disapproval.

  "May I help you, Miss Levy?"

  Miss. It was always Miss with him. Bex bet he even called the Gloria Steinem magazine that.

  "I wanted to talk to you." She was at the door. The wind blowing in slapped her upside the head and didn't stop to apologize.

  "I am on my way out, Miss Levy."

  "In this weather?" The morning frost had turned into noontime snowflakes. In Moscow, the snowflakes didn't gently waft from the sky like Currier & Ives angel kisses. They vomited straight down, like heat-seeking missiles determined to eradicate any suggestion of warmth.

  Gary smiled. He performed the act so rarely, Bex didn't recognize it at first. But no, that seemed to be genuine amusement in his eyes.

  "The street seems full of natives." He indicated the bundled up Russian swarm swerving to avoid the still-open door and shooting him the evil eye for being forced to do so. "I hardly think we're in any danger from the elements."

  "Where are you going?" Bex asked stupidly, temporarily stumped for anything more clever she could say to keep him talking to her.

  "For a constitutional."

  "You mean a walk?"

  Ah, and there was that world-famous expression of disappointment, right on schedule. "Yes, Miss Levy. I am going for a walk."

  "Can I come with you?"

  "In this weather?" he asked, deadpan. But Bex had to believe there was mocking—of her, of course—involved.

  "Sure." Bex stepped over the threshold, closing the arena door behind them, both to avoid any more angry swerving and cursing Russians, and to keep Gary from escaping. "I don't think we're in any danger from the elements."

  Although, maybe she was wrong about that. For, while Gary could boast about taking a constitutional in a military-strength snowstorm while wearing snow boots, thick gloves and a hooded parka, Bex was dressed only in the down-jacket and sneakers she'd donned for braving the rink. And she hadn't exactly been overheating in them as it was.

  Bex reached into her right pocket, happy to find the gloves she'd packed in earlier still there, and hurriedly slipped them on. The non-fur-lined, more-fall-than-winter pair helped a bit. But she was still hatless. The kamikaze snowflakes pricked her ears, then saw her open neck and pounced, en mass. Bex stuffed her ponytail down the back of her jacket, and pretended that was enough.

  "So?" If her teeth were already chattering, it couldn't possibly portend comfort to come. They hadn't even stepped out from the shelter of the arena, yet. Oh, the things she did for... Bex was too cold to recall at the moment. "Where are we going?"

  'To experience Moscow!" Gary proclaimed with a great deal more enthusiasm than she'd ever heard him give to anything, including a student winning Nationals. "It truly flabbergasts me how many skaters travel the world, stopping at some of the most beautiful and storied places on the globe— Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Istanbul—and never take the time to so much as poke their noses outdoors. When else will they get the chance to immerse themselves in another culture, another language, an utterly different way of life? It's shocking. Shocking! Don't you think, Miss Levy?"

  So far, on this trip, Bex had seen her hotel room, the arena, the police station, and the gray road from the hotel to the police station to the arena.

  "Shocking," Bex agreed.

  They crossed the street, ducking a fleet of snub-nosed cars that looked as if a giant hand were squishing them from above. On either side of them tromped a hoard of snow-covered, fur-clad Muscovites, each wrapped up so thoroughly in the former pelts of gray rabbits, or russet foxes, or even sleek, black minks it was impossible to tell the men from the women, except that the women sometimes wore colorful headscarves underneath their hats, and the men made do with earflaps that tied beneath their chins. Bex supposed she could have also made her gender guesses based on footwear, but with two inches of snow already skidding on the ground and more retching each minute, it looked like everybody was wearing slippers made of chilled whipped cream.

  "You know," Bex ventured as she spat a snowflake from her tongue. "We're not going to see too much of Moscow with this kind of zero-visibility."

  She'd been hoping Gary would reply with, "Of course, Bex! You are absolutely right. I will save my sight-seeing for another time and promptly return to the arena—no, better, the hotel bar, where we shall both warm up while I regale you in detail with how I single-handedly murdered one Igor Marchenko. And why. No, I don't mind if you bring your tape recorder. Bring an entire camera crew if you'd like!"

  But, of course, what he really said was, "You think so, do you?"

  "Uhm... yeah. I can hardly see anything. I mean, I know Moscow's supposed to have this fantastic architecture and everything, but—"

  "There is more to a city, to a culture, than architecture."

  "Well, yes, I know that, but it's not like you and I are going to be chatting with the local citizenry, either. Everyone's running like crazy to get in out of the snow."

  Hint. Hint, hint, hint.

  "Everyone?" Gary asked. He looked at Bex in that way teachers have when they know you have the wrong answer, you know you have the wrong answer, and you both know neither one of you is budging from the spot until you come up
with the right one.

  "Almost everybody," Bex insisted. "Well, except for those people ..."

  She indicated the building directly across from the arena. Because of an awning, the sidewalk in front of what seemed to be a multi-story apartment residence boasted about two feet free of the most direct snow. Slush had been kicked into the vicinity and passing buses periodically sloshed up a crackling puddle, but no new snow was falling directly on the half-dozen or so people huddling beneath the first floor windows. They appeared to be street-vendors of some sort. Each had a tablecloth, kerchief, or at least a sack spread out in front of them. One woman was hawking wooden, hand-illustrated stacking dolls, ranging from rosy-cheeked Russian maidens to deposed Soviet premiers and American presidents. Another man displayed bottles of colorful potions in a hand-carved wooden case, while a third featured stacks of silver forks, spoons, serving platters and authentic samovars. On the very edge, pointedly separate from the others, a dark-skinned couple, possibly Gypsies judging by the several golden hoops in each ear, waved wooden, pencil-length sticks with bright red sugar candy in the shape of roosters, horses and bears perched on top. Several of the roosters, horses, and bears' tails and ears were already crumbling.

  Gary looked at Bex expectantly. "Rather makes the whole chatting with the locals process seem extraneous, does it not, Miss Levy? Most people's stories are right there for everyone to see. No language barrier. No political spin."

  "This is what you do?" Bex asked. "You walk around and look at people?"

  "Do you know of a better way to acquaint yourself with a civilization? Just look at them. Why do you suppose that they, unlike everyone else, are not hurrying to get in out of the snow?"

  "They're selling things." Bex stated the obvious, knowing that she was stating the obvious, and knowing that Gary knew she was stating the obvious, but also knowing that he wanted her to say it, anyway. "They're poor. They can't leave."