Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  "From what you told me, sounds more like that was his mother's dream, not his."

  "Well, he seemed pretty into the idea — in front of the judge, at least. But you're right: Tess thought it would be great PR. Not to mention, I'm guessing, an awesome beard. Nobody's going to accuse a teen dad of being gay, too. And that's what Tess is most afraid of. The public finding out."

  "But if she knew he couldn't be the dad — "

  "The way I figure it, Tess had Coop date Allie for a cover. Clearly, he wasn't everything Allie was dreaming of — she's no Lian. Maybe Coop couldn't buy her off with some purity ring, so Allie cheated on him with Idan. Tess must have gambled that Idan wouldn't risk his marriage to Miss Cash of the Pan by stepping forward to claim Omri. It must have looked like a slam dunk to Tess, especially since everyone 'knew' Allie and Coop were an item."

  "So Tess killed Allie? To protect her son's reputation?"

  "I don't know," Bex admitted. "It does make sense, though, doesn't it? Tess would do anything for Coop and his 'golden' future."

  Craig's eyes twinkled. "So how are you going to break this case, Ms. Holmes?"

  "God knows."

  He took one look at her despondent face and burst out laughing. "Oh, cheer up, Bex. No one's really expecting you to do the police's job for them, are they?"

  "Only Gil. And, you know, the police." Bex filled him in on Officer Ho and his request of a few days earlier.

  "Wow. Your reputation really preceded you."

  "Yeah. Lucky me."

  "Okay," Craig said. "We can't deny the obvious any longer. Jeremy's not in the arena, and he's not immediately outside of the arena."

  "What do you want to do next?"

  "Outside of throttle the boy?"

  "We have to find him first."

  "You're the detective." Craig took a stab, "You want to drive around with me for a few blocks? See if maybe he, I don't know, took a walk to ponder all my failings as a parent?"

  "Sure."

  Inside Craig's rental car, Bex pointed out the desolate stretch of highway in either direction, with a red and yellow McDonald's sign to mark one exit and a large billboard boasting "Outlet Shopping" along the other. "There really isn't much to do around here."

  "Nope."

  "Nope," Bex agreed.

  And now they'd officially run out of things to say. How could that be possible? Bex never ran out of things to say. Even when to do so would be most prudent

  She looked out one window while Craig started the engine, pulled out of the lot and silently did the same through the other. Neither saw anything. But for some reason, even that no longer seemed worth noting. He tapped his thumbs on the wheel. She shifted awkwardly in her seat. Something weird was happening. Somehow, without either of them budging an inch, Craig suddenly was sitting much closer to her. Or, at least it seemed that way. In the silence, she could hear every breath he took. She could hear the slight scrape of his back along the vinyl seat. It should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn't. It was merely... unusual. She wondered if something similar was happening to him. And then she wondered why she was wondering. And finally she wondered what she wanted the answer to be. She didn't have to wonder long.

  After a fruitless fifteen minutes spent cruising by both the McDonald's and the outlet mall on the off chance that Jeremy had gotten hungry and/or desperate for a new yet slightly irregular sweater, they returned to the arena. In the parking lot Craig cut the engine, turned to face Bex, and said, "This is ridiculous."

  "What is?"

  "How old are you?"

  She knew exactly what he was asking, and why. She swallowed hard. She said, 'Twenty-four."

  "Damn."

  "I know."

  "You don't act twenty-four."

  "My mother says I was born going on forty."

  "Yeah, well, that doesn't really count, does it?"

  "Sorry."

  "Oh, the hell with it," Craig said. And then, in a move that would have been utterly unexpected, except for the fact that Bex had been expecting it for several days already, he kissed her.

  She kissed him back because she knew that she would, all along.

  And she would have kept on kissing him — the experience was a rather pleasant one — if Craig hadn't pulled away, looked at her sadly, and sighed.

  Bex could only guess that he hadn't found their experience equally pleasant. She wondered if she should apologize. What was the protocol for situations like this?

  But as it turned out, Craig was worried about a protocol of a different sort. He said, "My wife's been dead for only a few months."

  Oh. Now Bex understood. And she instantly felt guilty for her instinctive thrill at the realization that his reluctance was due to that guilt, and not any unpleasant sensations she may have engendered.

  "I loved Rachel," Craig said.

  "I know. She was lovely. I met her."

  "And then — "

  "What?"

  "You're twenty-four."

  "That'll change," Bex pointed out. "Before you know it, I'll be twenty-five. Then thirty. Then forty. I'm looking forward to catching up with myself."

  Craig smiled. "Do you realize that there are almost the same number of years between you and me, as there are between you and my kid? And, you know, I wouldn't want you dating Jeremy."

  "No offense, Craig, but I wouldn't want to be dating Jeremy, either."

  The fun-and-games portion of their afternoon was now over. Bex was deadly serious, and she needed Craig to understand that.

  "I like you," she said simply. "I like you a lot."

  "Yeah..." Craig mused. "Now what the heck are we going to do about that?"

  "There he is!" Bex sprang up in her seat and pointed.

  Dating dilemmas aside, she knew what her priorities were.

  At the other end of the lot, Jeremy was climbing out of a stranger's silver Lexus. Stepping out from the driver's side was Sebi Vama.

  Craig was out of his own car and blocking his son's path before the boy even knew what hit him. Bex naturally followed.

  "Where the hell have you been?" Craig demanded.

  "None of your business," Jeremy shot back.

  "We went for a drive." Sebi indicated the direction they'd come from. "A young man can get stir-crazy cooped up inside his hotel room all day."

  "Who are you?" Craig wanted to know.

  "Sebastian Vama. If you please."

  "I would please," Craig seethed, "if you refrained from taking my thirteen-year-old son on any more spontaneous drives without my expressed permission."

  "I'm not some dumb kid," Jeremy said. "I can do what I want."

  "That's true," Sebi said. "You can't keep them pinned to your skirts forever, Mr. Hunt. What are you going to do when Jeremy's Olympic champion? Climb onto the podium with him?"

  "At the rate you're going," Craig ignored Sebi to focus on Jeremy, "your getting to skate here at Nationals is a big question mark. I wouldn't be counting my Olympic Golds quite yet."

  "Oh, screw you," Jeremy said.

  Which was when Bex decided to exit. This seemed like the sort of conversation a father and son would want to have in private. Though, as Bex headed back toward the arena, neither one appeared to notice that she was gone.

  Senior competition finally started that night, opening with the Dance event. Bex was glad for the distraction. After all the father/son battles she'd been privy to over the past few days, the thought of just Francis and Diana to berate her, and then on subjects not concerning paternity, rebellion, romance, or murder, were actually things Bex was looking forward to.

  She climbed into the booth with them, ready to call the two compulsory dances, despite knowing that the odds of their commentary ever making air for more than just the first-place finisher was slim. Francis and Diana took advantage of this fact by drifting off on an assortment of tangents, confident that since this was just Ice Dance, after all, Gil wouldn't even bother to reprimand them.

  By random draw, the first
compulsory of the night was the Killian. Bex actually liked that particular dance, since it was at a march tempo, usually skated to peppy, non-sleep-inducing music and in military — thus not too outlandish — costumes. Plus, at 116 beats per minute, 6 patterns took only 50 seconds to complete. It may have driven the skaters to exhaustion-induced asthma attacks and possible backstage vomiting, but Bex found it one of the least offensive options.

  As Francis and Diana argued over which couple was conveying the proper march attitude — "How can she be smiling like that? They're supposed to be marching off to war!" "Maybe they're coming home from the war, you silly, old goat!" — Bex allowed herself to just be lulled by the pretty music and shiny lights. She felt no need to say anything or do anything.

  Pretty, pretty music...

  "I don't think anyone smiled like that after storming the beach at Normandy!"

  "Maybe they're support staff who never left Fort Dix."

  "Damn National Guardsmen," Francis huffed.

  Pretty, pretty music...

  By the time the seventh couple took the ice, both Howarths had run out of wars to deconstruct, Ice Dance style, and had moved on to such nitpicking minutiae that even Gil felt moved to offer, "I think you two are overdoing it just a tad, guys."

  Francis said, "The rule book clearly states: 'Start and succeeding steps may be located anywhere around the circle, but once established, no shift of pattern is acceptable on subsequent sequences.' I saw a shift, I know I did. First they went right, then they went left."

  "That's because the couple going left was before the couple going right," Diana purred. "You really must stop nodding off between teams, Franny."

  "Rule book says: 'The man's left hand should clasp the lady's left hand so that her left arm is firmly extended across his body.' I see no firm extensions. I see spaghetti arms. No, wait: It's more of a fettuccine!"

  "Maybe you should eat before you come to the announcer's booth, too."

  "And what is with the distance between them? You could drive the entire Pony Express between those hips! Whatever happened to: 'The man's right hand should clasp the lady's right hand and keep it firmly pressed on her right hip to avoid separation'?"

  Bex was about to say, "All right, Francis, we get it. You have the rule book open in front of you, and you possess the ability to read from it. Congratulations. Now give it a rest."

  But instead, what Bex realized was that thanks to Francis and his rule book, she now thought she knew who'd killed Allison Adler.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "You killed Allie," Bex accused.

  "What makes you say that?" Following the conclusion of the Senior Compulsory Dance event, Sebi Vama was standing by his car — the same one he'd earlier been driving with Jeremy, which is how Bex had been able to stake it out. He held a key ring in his hand, sharp points out, right arm already stretched to slip the key in the lock. The sole light came from a lamppost half a lot away. Sebi's was the only vehicle left in the area. Bex and Sebi were the only two people still there. Which, in retrospect, might not be the best circumstances under which to accuse a man twice her size of murder.

  Sebi gazed down at Bex, his expression unreadable, his tone suggesting genuine curiosity. "What makes you say that, Bex?"

  "The position of the handprints on her body. Under her left armpit and her right hip. The police found traces of the same red fluff that was embedded in her neck in those two places. They assumed the fluff came from the killer wearing the official, Team USA gloves. That the killer lifted Allie up to hang her in the noose and make it look like she killed herself. But under the left armpit and on the right hip... that's a pretty unusual way to lift somebody. Unless you've spent years skating with her in that position, and it just came naturally."

  Sebi didn't say anything. He merely finished the act of sticking his key in the lock, and whistled what Bex could only guess was a happy tune.

  "The Killian position," Bex pressed. "You use it for a bunch of Ice Dances, don't you? You use it for footwork. You use it for lifts."

  Sebi opened the door. He said, "If that's the only evidence you've got, Bex, I don't believe I shall start picking out my black-and-white-striped wardrobe quite yet."

  "But it's true, isn't it?" Bex couldn't believe what a rational conversation they were having about this most irrational of subjects.

  "What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: Life always spills over the rim of every cup. Boris Pasternak — the Russian novelist."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "You're the researcher," he said. "Do some research."

  "Why?" Bex demanded. "Why would you kill her?"

  "Because," Sebi said, "even the best of spread eagles eventually come home to roost."

  "Pasternak, again?"

  Sebi smirked. "Pandora Westby Ben-Golan."

  "What does she..." Bex began. But the truth was obvious.

  "Perhaps Mrs. Ben-Golan was not quite as sanguine about her man's affair with a little trollop as her performance in court suggested?"

  "Pandora hired you to — "

  "Mrs. Ben-Golan sponsored me for a great many years. I owe her a debt."

  "And Allie was your friend. She was more than your friend, she was your partner. Didn't you owe her anything? How could you cold-bloodedly — "

  "Don't believe me, Bex?"

  Well, to be honest, he hadn't exactly confessed to anything for her to believe or disbelieve. Their entire conversation had been built on assumptions, conclusions, and literary allusions.

  Sebi shrugged. "Ask your pint-sized pal, Jeremy Hunt. The little brat saw Miss Cash in the Pan giving me the money."

  “I talked to Sebi!" Bex had to yell the words over Craig's shoulder and toward Jeremy at the far side of the hotel room. When she'd first knocked on the door, Craig had been loath to let her in, and when she asked to please, it was really important, speak to Jeremy, the boy had hollered back, "Well, I don't want to speak to you!"

  But at her charge about Sebi, Jeremy's head practically did a 180. At the same time, he took a step back, visibly scared. Craig noticed it, too, and dropped the arm that was keeping Bex from stepping inside.

  "Jer? What is it?" Craig sounded almost as terrified as his son looked. "What's going on? What happened?"

  He allowed Bex to approach Jeremy. The boy sat down on the edge of the bed, looking out the window like he wished he could leap out of it and just fly away. He tapped his lips together in a futile, manic popping, and hugged himself with both arms, shivering. Bex crouched on the floor so that she could look up at him. She dropped her binder and rested one hand, very tentatively, on Jeremy's knee.

  She said, "I talked to Sebi. He said you saw Pandora Westby giving him some money. Is that true?"

  Jeremy swung his legs. The toe of his right foot connected with Bex's knee, but hardly hard enough to hurt. Bex didn't react. Instead, she merely followed up, "Is it?"

  The slightest of a nod. But he did definitely nod.

  "What's this all about, Jer?" Craig sat down next to his son.

  Jeremy looked at Bex as he answered, "I was looking for Coop. After the Men's Short practice. Coop said we could hang out, you know, talk skating. I went looking for him at the arena, but I got lost. So many hallways and elevators, and the levels all have letters instead of numbers, it's confusing."

  "Yes, it is," Bex agreed. Anything to keep him talking.

  "So I got lost and I ended up totally the opposite of where I should have been. And I saw Sebi. I thought maybe he could help me get back. But when I got closer, I saw that he was with Mrs. Ben-Golan. She was giving him a bunch of money, just tied up with a rubber band. It was flapping like some stupid fan or something. I didn't think it was a big deal. I didn't know what was going on. But Sebi got real, real mad."

  "What did he do?" Craig demanded.

  "He told Mrs. Ben-Golan that he would take care of it. After she went away, he told me if I kept my mouth shut, there could be a
lot of money in this for me. He said Mrs. Ben-Golan was rich. Filthy rich. And that she sponsored promising young skaters who didn't have a lot of money, all the time. He said it wouldn't look weird at all if she all of a sudden said she wanted to sponsor me. Nobody would get suspicious, and I'd make out like a bandit."

  "So that's why she called us," Craig said in understanding.

  "Yeah. And then Sebi, earlier today, in the car, he said we had to go for a little drive so he could remind me of the terms. I keep quiet and Mrs. Ben-Golan pays all my skating expenses from now until forever. Everything's cool. But... but... if I don't..."

  "What?" Craig and Bex asked in unison.

  "If I don't — he said — Sebi said — he said that he would kill my dad."

  Neither Bex nor Craig responded, both too shocked to speak. At the unexpected silence, Jeremy raised his head and looked from one to the other. He stammered, "I — I wanted to go home right away then, I wanted to just get out of here. But I thought if I told you and Toni I was quitting, you'd want to know why, and since I couldn't tell you why, I thought maybe, if I acted like a real brat..."

  "Oh, Jeremy, oh, God, Jer..."

  "I did a good job of that, didn't I, Dad? Being a brat?" he asked with the hint of a smile. And then promptly burst into tears.

  Bex felt as if she might cry, too, and Craig wasn't looking so dry himself. He said, "Jeremy, dude, guy, come on, some bastard makes an empty threat and... what made you think something like that could actually happen?"

  "It happened to Mom," Jeremy said.

  And now Bex really did think Craig was going to cry. But he pulled himself together and instead grabbed his son into a bear hug, rocking him back and forth and swearing, "It's not your job to protect me, Jer, you got that? It's not the child's job to protect the parent. It's the parent's job to protect the child. I am so sorry, man. So, so sorry. I should have tried harder to figure out what was going on. I should have known you'd never — I should have known there was a reason. Never, ever do that again, you hear me? Always come to me. Always, always. I'm your dad. I'll take care of you."

  They separated and looked at each other for a long moment. Trying to quench the tears, Craig offered Jeremy a smile. The boy smiled back, wiped his eyes, then smiled again, this time more convincingly. Only then did he turn around to Bex and ask, "So why was Sebi so mad? What was that money for, anyway? Sebi didn't tell me."