Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1

by Alina Adams

  She watched him walk away. She wasn't the only one. When Bex looked up, she noticed that Sabrina was standing across the rink, staring daggers at both of them through the glass partition that separated ice from snack bar.

  Never one to back down from a challenge, Bex stared back.

  After a moment, Sabrina looked away.

  Bex felt very pleased about that.

  Boy, she was young, wasn't she?

  Attempting to regain her dignity and act like the professional on assignment she supposedly was, Bex mentally apologized to Sabrina for her lapse, stood, picked up her laptop, and moved out of the snack bar, rounding the corner towards the coaches' lounge.

  She was moving relatively quietly, which is probably why the two figures standing intertwined at the very back of the lounge, by the window, didn't hear her come in. With the light streaming through right behind their backs, it took a moment for Bex to identify the shadows as Chris Kelly and Gabrielle Cassidy.

  It took her less time, however, to identify what they were doing.

  Bex wasn't that young, after all.

  Chris had his arms around Gabrielle, fingers linked at the base of her spine, palms lightly massaging her back. Her own hands were braced on his chest, and she was looking up at him, their lips barely touching. Yet it was obvious they had been. And very recently.

  Well, Bex thought, this is certainly interesting. Even if she wasn't sure exactly why. After all, no one had told her for a fact that Chris and Gabrielle weren't romantically involved. She had no reason to be so surprised. Even if Gabrielle was technically Chris's boss, this was the twenty-first century, stuff happened. Still, nothing about their body language or the way they'd interacted earlier, either at Lucian's house or at the rink, suggested an intimate relationship. Plus, there was the whole separate-hotel-rooms thing. If they were a couple, why the separate rooms? Who were they trying to fool and for what purposes?

  Of course, to be fair, Bex and Craig were technically romantically involved as well (nebulous current relationship status be damned). And, while here, neither had given any indication of it, either through body language or verbal interaction. And they were staying in separate rooms, too. So who was Bex to judge?

  Except that Bex was here for work and Craig was here with his son and the whole thing had come up suddenly. That wasn't the case with Chris and Gabrielle.

  Bex had a million questions to ask. And no idea how to frame a single one. So, in a show of newfound maturity that both startled and impressed even her, rather than simply babbling unrehearsed nonsense off the top of her head, she quietly withdrew, still unseen, deciding to table her queries for another time.

  Bex was heading away from the coaches' lounge, towards the snack bar, passing Lucian's office, when the lights went out.

  At first, her brain didn't register what was happening and her feet automatically kept walking. She didn't freeze in place until she was overwhelmed by the cacophony of screams coming from the ice surface as speeding skaters crashed into each other and the walls in what Bex could only presume was a tangle of freshly bruised, possibly bleeding arms and legs. The audible panic reminded her of the possible dangers inherent to overwhelming blackness combined with sharp objects strapped to people's feet.

  Because the blackness was total. The rink itself, unlike the offices in the back, was entirely without windows, so not even a sliver of light peeked in to break the dark. It was worse than being outside at night, where at least streetlamps softened the gloom. This was infinite nothingness. Bex could feel her limbs and she could move them, yet she couldn't see them. It was rather nerve-racking. But her situation, she presumed, wasn't nearly as chilling — no pun intended — as that of those trapped on the ice when the lights went out.

  The bulk of the shrieks were coming from their direction, and it took a few moments before Toni's voice was able to rise above the general din to command, "Calm down, now. Calm down, everyone. Just stay where you are. Freeze."

  The scrape of a dozen skates indicated her order had been obeyed. Toni's orders were always obeyed.

  "Good. Now. Who knows where the circuit breaker is here?"

  A silence. And then a woman's voice — Bex tried to place it; Gina? — piped up. "I do."

  "Excellent. Would you be so kind as to turn it on for us? Everybody else, freeze where you are and don't move. The last thing we need is a panic or a stampede."

  Bex agreed wholeheartedly. Which was why, as per Toni, she remained precisely where she was, despite the curious, darkness-induced sensation of free-falling into some vast, bottomless pit.

  The person directly behind Bex, however, must not have gotten the message. He/she barreled straight ahead, presumably towards the exit, knocking Bex down in the process.

  She fell forward, another unpleasant sensation. With the lights off, Bex couldn't see the floor, and so thrust her arms out in a random panic, having no idea of actual distance. She locked her elbows and felt both creak in protest as her palms scraped the wet, padded floor sooner than expected. Bex's left wrist buckled from her weight and her hand slipped out from under her. Her chin and her chest hit the ground as, at the same instant, she felt a sharp, flaring pain in her side. It was like falling on something sharp. Or being kicked — deliberately — with a skate blade.

  She groaned and instinctively rolled away from the blow, smacking into the opposite wall and laying there, curled up in a fetal position, trying to catch her breath and ward off any other whack that might be in the offering.

  No other blow came. But neither did the person who'd knocked Bex down follow the trajectory she'd anticipated.

  Bex assumed her assailant, panicked by the darkness, was making a mad dash for the exit despite Toni's warning to stay still. Bex craned her neck towards where she recalled the door being. She figured she'd at least get to see who it was that had so rudely blindsided her as soon as the figure made it to the light of the outside. But instead of heading forward, Bex's attacker seemed to have withdrawn back in the direction of Lucian's office. Either out of guilt for the hit-and-run, or some other reason.

  Bex whimpered and awkwardly attempted to roll over onto all fours, hoping there wouldn't be a rerun encounter with the sharp object that had grazed her side. She was feeling her sweater, noting that the kick had actually been hard enough to rip through the knitted material, when the lights came back on.

  Everyone cheered just as Bex was able to confirm that the wetness coating her fingers wasn't merely leftover melted sludge, but actual blood drawn from the encounter.

  And she noted something else, too.

  From her vantage point on the floor, Bex was able to lift her head and notice that the doorknob to Lucian's office now sported a key... a key that had most definitely not been there before.

  "Bex!”

  She was still down on all fours, shaking her head slowly from side to side to make sure the key wasn't a weird hallucination caused by her full body check, when Craig came running up at full speed, slipping both hands under her arms and helping her to rise. "My God, what happened?”

  "I — I got knocked down...." She spoke slowly, as if trying to chew paste.

  "Are you all right?”

  "I think so...." The paste was now in her throat. She coughed to clear it.

  "You're bleeding!"

  "Oh." She looked down at her side. "Yeah... I'm not sure... I hit something maybe when I fell?”

  Craig looked around. "What? I don't see anything."

  "I don't know...."

  "Come with me." Supporting her weight, Craig helped Bex take the few steps necessary to enter Lucian's office.

  As he turned the knob, she shrieked, "No!"

  "What?” He turned to her, panicked. "What's wrong? Did I hurt you?”

  "The knob. The key. Fingerprints."

  "What?"

  She sighed. Craig's palm was gripping it securely. Any evidence that may have been left had already been wiped away. "Nothing. Sorry. I'm okay."

  Cra
ig nudged the door open the rest of the way with his foot, settling Bex into the nearest chair and proceeding to search for a first-aid kit, easily locating it behind Lucian's desk. "Let's get that disinfected. When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

  "What?"

  'Tetanus shot. Who knows what you cut yourself on. It could be dangerous."

  "No, really, it's — the skin is barely broken."

  "Can't be too cautious."

  "Craig?"

  "Yeah?” He was kneeling by her side, pouring some hydrogen peroxide onto a sterile piece of gauze. Outside, people were milling about, a few peeking curiously into the office window to see what was happening, then moving on. One of the curiosity seekers, Bex noted, was Sabrina. She paused, taking in the sight of Craig by Bex's side, then pursed her lips and kept walking.

  "Craig, didn't you tell me that one of Sabrina's plots for knocking off her dad was to turn off the rink lights and trip him?”

  "Yeah, so what, she..." Craig trailed off and looked up. "You're not serious?”

  "Well... the lights went off. And somebody tripped me."

  "For one thing, this is an ice rink. It uses a ton of juice. The circuit breaker trips all the time; even I know that. For another, Lucian is already dead. Why would Sabrina want to hurt you?”

  "Your date the other night..."

  "I told you it wasn't a date."

  "She thought it was."

  "Don't be silly."

  "Okay, fine. This has nothing to do with you and her. Maybe Sabrina is trying to keep me from figuring out that she was involved in Lucian's death. She could have easily messed with his skates."

  "You have no evidence of that. Besides, even if Sabrina did do it, you're no threat to her."

  "Somebody tripped me, Craig."

  "It was dark. Accidents happen in the dark."

  "I didn't just fall down." If she hadn't been certain of it before, she was now. "I was kicked, too. By a sharp object. Like a skate."

  "Well then, it couldn't have been Sabrina," Craig pointed out reasonably. "Sabrina doesn't skate."

  He had her there.

  Trying to regain ground she'd lost, Bex indicated the office door. "Key," she said.

  "I see it."

  "It wasn't here before."

  "What?”

  "Lucian's office was locked. The morning that he died, I definitely know it was locked, because I tried to get in to call 911. And it was locked this morning, too, because I looked, out of habit when I came in. There was no key in the door before the blackout and afterwards, there was."

  "Okay. So?”

  "I don't know. But it's got to mean something."

  "Couldn't the key have been inserted between this morning and the blackout and you just didn't notice?”

  "Maybe. But who would leave a key in the door?”

  "Someone who wanted to come back and open it later?”

  "Would you stop being so reasonable?"

  "Bex," Craig said as he ripped a strip of tape to affix the gauze into place, "you're in shock. You're not thinking straight. Let me take you back to your hotel. You can rest — "

  "I can't rest. Lucian's killer is here, right now. I'm certain of it."

  "You're getting a little hysterical about this. What did Freud say? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar? What if, in this particular case, an accident is just an accident?"

  "Et tu, Hunt?"

  "I just feel like you're grasping at straws. This has been a very stressful week for you. Your first time field producing and all... If I had known this was coming, I wouldn't have put the extra pressure on — "

  "How did this become all about you?"

  "Me?"

  "Yes, you. You think that just because you proposed to me I've lost the ability to think straight and now I'm hallucinating imaginary murders just to keep my mind off what my answer is going to be? Boy, you've got some ego!"

  "Bex." Craig stood up. He closed the first-aid kit and returned it to its place. He said, "I am now going to slowly back up out of the room. I am going to go to the snack bar and I am going to sit there until it's time to pick up Jeremy and take him home. I will make no sudden moves, noises, or accusations. I will let you get on with your work and I will silently cheer you on — from the other side of the rink. Yay, Bex, go Bex, et cetera."

  He was being patronizing and condescending, and by every right she should have been furious. But Bex couldn't help it. He was also being damn cute. She laughed.

  "How the heck do you put up with me?"

  "I'm a peach of a guy." For a moment he looked like he was going to bend down and kiss her. She wished that he would, no matter who might see.

  Professional, shoshmessional. Sometimes, a girl just needed to be kissed.

  But Craig thought better of it. He winked instead, mouthed, "I love you," and took off as promised, moving slowly out of the room, no sudden moves.

  Bex didn't deserve him. That much would have been obvious to a blind man. The question remained: Would she take him in spite of that? And, if she didn't, then what?

  Bex waited until the throbbing in her side had subsided to a guitar pluck rather than the drone of a massive base before venturing out of Lucian's office. She ended up back in the coaches' lounge, where this time, Gabrielle was sitting alone. Massaging her calves and pulling off her skates.

  Skates. When Bex saw Gabrielle and Chris together earlier, had they both been on skates? The coaches' lounge was only a few steps away from the office. Either one of them could easily have run from one to the other to slip the key in the knob, knocking over Bex and kicking her in the process.

  Of course, in that case, the question was, how would either Gabrielle Cassidy or Christian Kelly have gotten their hands on a spare key to Lucian's office? Why would they have been so desperate to return it? And most important, how could either have snuck into his office the night before Lucian's death to sabotage his skates when both hadn't arrived in town until the following day?

  Gabrielle looked up, saw Bex, and, indicating her skates now sprawled on the ground, sighed "You forget how painful it is. I rarely get out on the ice anymore." She noticed the tear in Bex's sweater and gasped, "What happened to you?"

  "During the blackout, I was standing outside Lucian's office. Somebody bumped into me, knocked me down, and kicked me."

  Bex watched Gabrielle closely for a reaction. There didn't seem to be one beyond, "Ouch, are you okay?"

  "I'll live." And then she said, "It must have freaked you and Chris out, being in here all alone when the lights went out."

  This time, there was a reaction.

  Gabrielle blushed. And developed a sudden interest in loosening a knot in her boot that, as anyone could see, had already come loose a few minutes ago. "Chris and me — how did you know we were — I didn't realize anyone had — "

  "I walked in a few minutes before the blackout. Saw you."

  "We didn't hear..."

  "I didn't want to interrupt."

  "We..."

  "It's no big deal."

  "But, it is. I mean, it isn't. Chris and I — we're not — "

  "I'm not going to tell anybody if you don't want me to."

  "There's nothing to tell."

  "That's fine."

  "I mean, not anymore. We're not... anymore. A couple of months ago, it was already over. We just didn't want Lucian to know...."

  "Why would Lucian have cared?"

  "About us? No, he probably wouldn't have cared about us. I mean, he wouldn't have thought I was good enough for Chris — nobody was good enough for Chris as far as Lucian was concerned, not Gina, not Lauren. But that wasn't our worry. Well, it wasn't mine. If Lucian knew we'd ever been involved, though, he might have figured out that... Never mind. He's dead. It doesn't matter now."

  Bex took a gamble. She said, "Why was it so important for Chris to return the key to Lucian's office while the lights were out?"

  Gabrielle gasped. She tried to hide it, but it was too late. And they
both knew it.

  "How did you..."

  "You guys were the closest ones to the office. The lights weren't out that long. Means, opportunity, motive..."

  "It wasn't my idea," Gabrielle swore. "I didn't know Chris was going to do it. I'd never ask anyone to break the law to help me. He only told me afterwards. You've got to believe me, Bex."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - GABRIELLE

  Initially, Gabrielle assumed that the hardest part of opening her Alternative Ice Skating Training Center would be raising the money, building the facility, and attracting customers, preferably paying ones. And none of those things was easy, by any means. But what really surprised her was that the most, most difficult part of the entire endeavor proved to be hiring coaches, and especially a head coach.

  Initially, when she put out feelers, Gabrielle was inundated with responses. Ice rinks were expensive propositions; it wasn't as if new ones, especially elite ones, were established every day, and everyone was interested in at least hearing more about a brand-new facility. They came enthusiastically to meet Gabrielle and get a tour of the grounds. And then they heard what she was trying to do: Create champions without the stress and trauma mandatory in other centers.

  And then they laughed.

  Vaguely evil laughs.

  "It's impossible," everyone said. "It can't work."

  "You need pressure to make a diamond."

  "No pain, no gain."

  "If you can't stand the cold, stay out of the ice rink."

  If there was a cliché Gabrielle missed during the process, it wasn't due to lack of trying. In the end, she assembled a smaller staff than she wanted, but at least all of them were publicly committed to coaching with her ideals in mind (Gabrielle didn't want to know what they said about them in private). But she knew she still needed a head coach, one with international name recognition preferably, if she really wanted her program to blink on the skating world's radar.