Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  "We're getting quite a workout, aren't we?" Bex huffed as she and Sasha puffed up the stairs. "Both mind and body. I mean, these stair marathons are a pain, but I think my brain actually hurts more from trying to figure out who's lying and who's telling the truth, and who's only telling a half-lie, and who's—"

  "The truth." Sasha stopped suddenly, turning around so that he and Bex only had a step between them. In the dim light, his question sounded even more sinister than he'd probably meant it. Probably. "Why does the truth matter?"

  Well, that certainly stopped Bex in her proverbial tracks. "What do you mean? Why do you think we're doing all this? We're trying to figure out who killed Igor."

  "Yes. I understand this. But why does the truth matter?"

  What had Winston Churchill said about America and England being two countries divided by a common language? Bex was definitely feeling very Great Britain-y right now. She stammered, "How are we going to know the truth, if we don't get the truth?"

  "But, Russian people," Sasha spoke hesitantly, also apparently struggling with something lost in translation, "they do not know the truth."

  "You mean, like, if they tripped over it?"

  Sasha stared at her blankly. Bex made a stern mental note: Keep the American idioms to a minimum. The guy was having a tough enough time as it was.

  Sasha said, "It is hard to explain."

  "I'm listening," Bex prompted. And she was, too. Note the utter lack of sarcasm that had been going on for seconds now. She really did want to try and understand what he was attempting to explain to her.

  "Before," Sasha said, "with the Communists, the truth, it changed all the time. One day, America is Russia's ally in World War II, the next day, it is the enemy and all contact is forbidden. My father, he tells me this anecdote about his father. His father was teacher of geology. One day, he shows to his class, look what a colleague from the city of Sydney, Australia, send me. It is a piece of old rock... I do not know the English word for this." Sasha apologized, then went on, "My grandfather says to his class: let us study this old rock and explore how it is different from old Russian rock. The next day, my grandfather is arrested for contact with the West. He dies in prison. Because he did not know rules changed about what is good and what is bad."

  “That's awful," Bex said, hearing how glib she sounded, but eager to skip over the unpleasantness to her question. "But what does that have to do with finding out the truth? Your grandfather told the truth. He just got punished for it."

  "Yes. And because many people like my grandfather suffered because they said what is truthfully on their mind, Russian people, they learn that what is on your mind, it should have no relation to what you say. To save yourself, you must always, always say what the person who is asking question wants to hear. What the truth is, this is not important. It is not—what is the word?—relevant. Yes, it is not relevant."

  "So you're saying that everyone in Russia just lies about everything all the time?" It seemed a rather odd basis on which to rest a culture.

  "No, no, no. Not lying. They say what needs to be said, to be safe."

  "Have you been doing that all this time, with me?" Bex had no idea where that question came from. It had nothing to do with what they were talking about and, frankly, she couldn't even think of anything Sasha had told her where it would matter that it was a lie. Except that she really needed to know. Had he been putting on an act with her?

  "Of course," Sasha said. No guilt, not even a hesitation.

  "Oh."

  "I am your assistant. My job is to do the things you need your assistant to do. I do what you ask, all the time."

  "You mean, whether you want to or not?"

  "It does not matter what I want," Sasha continued to explain patiently. "I do what I need to do, to get what I need to get."

  "So, you mean you haven't wanted to help me?"

  "It is my job," Sasha said. "I want to help you because it is my job."

  "So you don't really want to help me?"

  She'd lost him. Even in the dim lighting, Bex could tell by the perplexed frown on Sasha's face that she'd lost him. Which was fair enough, since Bex didn't completely understand what he was trying to tell her, either.

  She was ready to call the whole thing off, except for one thing. Bex really wanted to know, "So, do you mean you've only been pretending to like me?"

  It wasn't a fair question, she got that much. For one thing, Bex had never asked him if he liked her, so there was nothing there for him to lie about. For another thing, liking her was hardly a condition of his employment. (God forbid, if that standard was ever applied to Bex and Gil Cahill.) And for a third thing, why was she asking for an honest answer from a person who'd just told her that, in his culture, there was no such thing? Wasn't she just asking him to lie about lying?

  Sasha said, "I do to like you, Bex."

  And then he turned around and continued trudging up the stairs.

  She wanted to run after him.

  In fact, she did just that.

  She kind of had to. The last thing Bex needed was to get trapped alone inside this finalist for Smelliest Stairs Ever.

  She also wanted to ask him about a million questions about what he had just said. About liking her, that is. All that other profound cultural stuff, that could wait.

  But she never got the chance. They were at Alexandr Troika's door before Bex had managed to formulate the exact, perfect query. So what if that formulation happened to have taken her three floors. You couldn't rush perfection.

  Sasha took the liberty of knocking. She was grateful for that. Her knocks on the doors of total strangers tended to sound like timid taps, more questions than demands. Sasha knocked as if he expected to be answered, and he expected to be answered now.

  So, naturally, he was.

  A woman cracked open the door, its ringed, metal chain still cautiously in place. She was in her middle or late forties, Bex guessed based on the one-third of her she could see through the slit. Her hair had recently been dyed, presumably in an attempt to go blond. The attempt had failed. She was more green, with a silver tinge. It matched the two capped teeth on either side of her top incisors.

  Sasha said something in Russian. Bex could only make out the words Alexandr and Troika.

  In response, the woman laughed harshly. It might have been a cough.

  She said something long and detailed, to which Sasha replied with another stream of the incomprehensible, out of which Bex plucked the names Valeri Konstantin and Igor Marchenko. Sasha pointed to Bex. She smiled and tried to look worthy.

  Her smiles seemed to upset the woman further. Her cough turned into a bark.

  A bark and then a slam of the door in Sasha's face.

  Had that gone well? Bex couldn't tell.

  Sasha said, "She is Alexandr Troika's wife. She says Alexandr is not here. She says he moved away two years ago. She does not know where he is now."

  "Did you ask her about what Luba and Svetlana said? About the way Alexandr and Konstantin treated them?"

  "Yes. She said those two women—she uses very bad words; I will not say them in English to you—she said they deserve everything bad in the past and in the future, too. Her husband always say that Igor ruin his life. Everything bad that happens to him, it is because Igor is traitor to his country and to his coach. Alexandr tell his wife, if he has chance ever, he will to kill Igor."

  CHAPTER TEN

  “So, we have our killer." Bex made a big show of rubbing her palms one against the other, indicating visual completion. "Good. Let's go home."

  Sasha smiled. Then he stopped. And kind of frowned. Good. Let him wonder if she was telling the truth, for a change.

  Bex marveled at her ability to be so bitter over something that had happened so recently. Still, it did give her helpful insight into her multitude of suspects. If Bex could be so cranky over Sasha—what? confusing her just a few minutes ago—she could only imagine how cranky Alexandr Troika, Gary Gold, Valeri Konstantin
, Luba, and Svetlana Marchenko felt over Igor's virtually destroying their lives thirty years ago.

  Sasha said, "You are joking, yes?"

  "I don't know." Bex did her petulant child act, disheartened because only she knew exactly how much of an act it was not. "Maybe I'm just not telling the truth."

  Sasha smiled.

  It was not the response Bex had been hoping for. He was supposed to be crushed and demoralized. Not amused.

  Bex waited for him to ask a follow-up question, or at least to challenge her earlier declaration. Bex hoped his questioning her meaning would allow her to casually but with a purpose, reopen their earlier discussion on the stairway. Because she really did want to reopen their earlier discussion on the stairway. Albeit without him knowing just how much she wanted to reopen said discussion.

  Bex figured she could lead Sasha where she needed without her being too obvious about it. After all, wasn't this what she did all the time with her interview subjects?

  But Sasha wasn't her typical interview subject. He was either much smarter than them or much dumber. Because, despite Bex's best attempts, he either pretended not to understand what she was talking about, or he really didn't understand.

  In any case, while she waited for him to step into her carefully baited trap, Sasha turned around, walked to the curb, and hailed a taxi.

  They didn't talk much on the way back to the arena. Bex felt like pouting, and Sasha felt like letting her. Or maybe he didn't even know that she was pouting. Ever since his confession (or was it all part of a scheme to "get what I want"?) about the flexibility of honesty in Russia, Bex found herself questioning every word he uttered for double, triple, and quadruple meaning. Which was why his simple query of "What would you like to do next?" managed to keep her busy for the duration of the ride.

  It was only when they piled out of the taxi and started walking towards the arena doors that Bex realized she still owed him an answer. There were three days of work left on this show, and she couldn't exactly ignore him the entire time. Especially when, for the life of her, Bex couldn't even put her finger on why she wanted to.

  "You know what I need you to do?" Bex asked Sasha, and he sprung to attention like a jack-in-the-box. Only yesterday, Bex had found his enthusiasm endearing. Now she wondered if it was all part of a complex plot to make her believe... something. Probably something insidious. "Could you take a walk around the arena and see if you can track down the holistic-medicine guy? He's got to come back to his spot, sometime.”

  "I can do that," Sasha bobbed his head and took off.

  Bex tried to pry satisfaction from knowing that she'd sent him to wander around in the cold Moscow winter, while she stayed inside the arena, safe and warm. It was a strangely unfulfilling victory.

  Especially when Bex looked around and realized that, even with the victory, she was still inside a dank gray sports arena, with nothing better to do than continue asking surly, uncooperative people to answer, for the second time, questions they hadn't been so thrilled with on the first go-around.

  She figured she might as well start the pointless exercise with Jordan Ares since, at least in her case, Bex did have a few new queries to throw into the mix. No more just, "Where were you the morning your coach was killed?" Bex now had Amanda Reilly's check to ask about, as well as Lian's doting Mommy's claim that the money was for Jordan to take a dive at Nationals. Bex figured it was time to find out what Jordan had to say about the arrangement.

  She first looked for Jordan at the practice rink, but found only "Russian" girls on the ice. Both of them were skating cautiously, each nursing their respective injuries. And grudges. It made their performances less than exciting to watch. Brittany winced in pain every time she pulled in her arms to spin, prompting her to stop abruptly and flop, dejected, out of it, as if someone had unexpectedly yanked the rip cord. As for Galina, she had been visibly rattled by Brittany's threats to damage her skates. The redheaded whirling dervish didn't trust the stability of her blades, causing her to hesitate just enough on her take-offs and landings to completely eviscerate the timing of her jumps. The girl who won her first major title by executing quadruple rotations, could barely complete a double-jump now without buckling. And, every time she stumbled, Galina would glare at Brittany. Every time Brittany winced, she glared at Galina. Although Bex noticed that, despite the revulsion, both doggedly stuck to their own sides of the practice ice, and that neither one made so much as a move towards approaching, much less engaging the other.

  They'd either learned their joint lessons about tussling this close to a televised competition, or something more important: the fear of Valeri Konstantin, which had been drummed into them by none other than the great man, himself

  Unlike the other day, when the president of the federation had been content to sit in the stands and watch his skaters from above, he now stood—not even sat—rink-side, arms folded across his chest, eyes tracking the girls' every move. He did not look like a happy federation president. And he most certainly did not look like a man eager to chat with Bex about his past as a taunter of innocent women, and his present as a threatener of same. That Bex decided, was a discussion that could wait until he looked less ready to commit murder. Possibly for the second time that week.

  She called Jordan at her hotel and, upon getting no answer, checked with the production office to see if Jordan was out anywhere with a video crew. She wasn't.

  But when Bex asked if anyone knew where she might find Jordan, the same cameraman who'd earlier played along with her scamming Lian and Amanda, now smirked and told Bex cryptically, "Just track the fumes."

  Bex didn't know what he meant. Until, following the helpful stretch of the cameraman's finger, she walked a few feet down the arena hall, and saw the smoke wafting from underneath the closed door to one of the ballet rooms. It smelled like a menthol cigarette convention. Bex guessed she'd found her girl.

  She tried the knob. It was locked. She knocked.

  "Yeah, hold on a second!"

  A few minutes of frantic rustling, and then Jordan appeared in the doorway. All signs of cigarettes gone. Except for the smoke that continued wafting out of the garbage can by the open window. An open window. In the middle of winter, in Moscow. Sure. Nothing suspicious about that.

  Bex said, "I can still smell them, you know."

  "It's none of your business, you know."

  "Did Igor let you smoke?"

  "None of his business either. Not anymore, for sure."

  "Doesn't smoking hurt your skating?"

  "Do you want something?"

  "Actually, yes." Bex stepped inside the murky room and, with a cough, closed the door behind them. "Let's have some privacy."

  "You coming on to me?"

  "Amanda Reilly has made a very interesting accusation against you."

  "Oh, what now? That I've got a Lian voodoo doll I stick with pins every time darling Lian skates; that's why she can't land her triple-triple?"

  "Amanda said she was paying you to deliberately lose next Nationals and default the title to Lian."

  A beat. No reaction. No denial, no affirmation, no flip remark. And then Jordan said, "I don't know what Mrs. Reilly's been smoking, but where can I get my hands on some of that good stuff?"

  Well, at least Bex had gotten her flip remark, so she knew Jordan was paying attention.

  "You're saying it's not true?"

  "She got proof, or she just shooting her mouth off, like usual?"

  "A check," Bex said. "Igor had a check in his hotel room made out to him from Amanda Reilly. When I asked her what it was for, she told me they'd made a deal to get Lian the National title."

  "Let's see it," Jordan said. "The check. Let's see if you're telling the truth."

  Unused to being challenged—most people tended to accept her assertions at face value, whether they were true or not—Bex felt a touch offended as she dug around in her research file to produce the rectangular piece of paper.

  Jordan stared at the c
heck in Bex's hand. She seemed to be reading each letter and numeral, vetting them for authenticity. And then, in a flash, she snatched it out of Bex's hand, slipping it into the pocket of her jeans before Bex even had the chance to react. (Not that she was sure what she'd have done given the chance to react. Bex didn't relish the idea of wrestling a word-class athlete. Unlike the evenly matched Galina and Brittany knockdown, this would not come even close to being a fair fight.)

  "Okay, you caught me," Jordan said. "It's all true."

  "What?" Bex had been so busy imagining the literal whiplash she would get from trying to tackle Jordan for the check that she wasn't prepared for the mental episode Jordan's out-of-the-blue confession inspired. "What did you say?"

  "I said, you're right. You win. You're the best gosh-dam researcher ever, yadda, yadda, yadda; nothing gets by you."

  "And in English?"

  "Amanda told you the truth. We had a deal. The three of us. Her cash for my skating like crap at Nationals and letting Lian win."

  Bex said, "That doesn't sound like you. I've watched you all season. You don't give away a fraction of a point if you can help it. You're a hard-core competitor."

  "I'm also a realist." Apparently, when Jordan got excited, she forgot to speak like white trash and actually grew articulate. "Skating costs an insane amount of money. I don't have enough. I never have enough. Amanda Reilly, her price was right. And it was only for one competition. Just Nationals. Hell, if her precious Lian wants to win so badly... The U.S. can send three girls to Worlds this year, so even if I don't take it all at Nationals, I can still make the World Team. She didn't say I couldn't make the World Team. And a World Title is more important than Nationals in the long run anyway. And it was just for one competition."

  "Igor agreed to this?"

  "Amanda said he did, didn't she?"