Well, I wasn’t really a decoder since we still didn’t know what the cipher said. Although I was taking whatever compliments Dad had for me. Besides, I knew he was changing the subject. It was pretty obvious that was what he was doing.
I forced a smile since I didn’t want him to know how much it upset me. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
“When you showed me that first—what’s it called again?”
“Cipher.”
Dad smiled as he shook his head. “You sound like someone on TV. Cipher. Decryption. Codes.”
Yeah, it was cool. I decided to focus on the positive. This case was bigger than anything we had ever worked on. There were so many people who could be the culprit. We were working for an Olympic gold medalist (yeah, besides researching army posts, I also looked up Tatiana and Sergi—they were the real deal . . . when they were together). At least something in my life was moving forward.
As much as Tatiana didn’t want any more ciphers, I did. I wanted to see if we could crack it. Shelby didn’t get anywhere at lunch today. She didn’t need to tell me that. It was clear when she stood up in the middle of lunch and ripped up a notebook. Shelby was good at many things, but hiding her annoyance wasn’t one of them.
What did those notes say? And why was Jordan keeping it a secret from Tatiana?
And how did I keep coming up with more unanswered questions?
Dad started laughing. “I don’t know much about figure skating. The only time I watched it was years ago. Back in the dark ages before I even met your mother.”
Oh, right. Sometimes I forgot that my parents were once kids, too.
Dad leaned back on the bench. “It was right before the Olympics. This one skater was leaving practice and got attacked. Some thug hit her in the knee right before a competition.”
“Whoa,” I replied.
“Yeah, it ended up being this big deal. It was all over the news. Then it came out that the person who orchestrated the attack was the ex-husband of her main rival.”
“Are you serious?”
Dad nodded. “Yeah. Then they both went to the Olympics.”
“Wait,” I interrupted him. “That other girl still got to compete? That’s not fair!”
“No, it wasn’t. Her name was Tonya Harding. She claimed that she was innocent and didn’t know, you know, blah, blah, blah. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t do well and in the end got kicked out of skating. That is what you call karma, my boy.”
Okay, that was unreal.
“What about the lady who got injured?”
“Nancy Kerrigan,” Dad said with a nod of respect. “She rallied and ended up getting a silver medal.”
Wow. I tried to imagine getting injured and coming back to win something.
Okay, I’ll admit that I totally thought figure skating wasn’t a real sport. My mind started changing after putting on skates and watching the dedication of the skaters at the rink. But this was next level.
Figure skaters were tough.
Dad shook his head. “Let me tell you something, figure skaters look all prim and proper. But they are not to be messed with, especially when it comes to competition.”
No kidding.
I never understood why Mom liked coffee so much. It smelled gross. It looked even worse, like sludge. Yuck.
But now I totally got it. I almost poured myself a huge cup before leaving for Chelsea Piers the next morning. Even after crashing at eight o’clock last night, I was dragging my feet as Shelby and I arrived at six.
Again, that was six o’clock. In the morning.
“Today, we need to find out as much as we can about everybody in that rink. Everybody, and I mean everybody, is a suspect until I say otherwise.” Shelby paused outside the main door to the building. “Since we are four days away from regionals, this is what I see as our options at this point. One, we wait for the culprit to mess up. Two, we come early and hide to see if we can catch them in the act of leaving a cipher. Or three, come clean about who we are, to see the changes that happen. The guilty person would obviously act differently.”
“I vote number three,” I said quickly. I couldn’t imagine getting up even earlier than we’d been. No way did I want to be waiting around a cold rink in hopes that we could catch the person. Knowing our luck, we’d miss it. Most likely because I would be in a deep sleep.
I really missed sleep.
“Number three is our last option. I always find it most beneficial when people are left in the dark,” Shelby fired back. “If they think we’re simply amateur skaters, they won’t try to throw us off their scent. We want this miscreant to think no one is on to them.”
Of course Shelby wanted to leave people in the dark. I could never follow her scent. And I was her partner!
“See you on the ice,” Shelby stated as she walked into the girls’ locker room.
After changing into my skates, I lumbered over to the rink. I’d gotten a little more comfortable in my skates. In a few weeks, I’d probably stop falling. But this case could NOT go on for that long. Regionals were on Saturday. We had to find the person. If Jordan continued to miss her jumps, her season would be done.
One spill and BAM. Game over.
Aisha was in the middle of skating to music while Jordan, Douglas, and Belle sat together on a bench watching something on a phone. They were all laughing. It was something I’d do with my friends. Maybe they were this family like Jordan had told us.
Once the music stopped and Aisha’s program or whatever she was skating to was finished, Sergi skated over to the entrance of the rink. “Enough break! You break after regionals.”
Tatiana came in from the hallway. “You do not boss my skater around.”
Sergi’s eyes narrowed. “Well, your skater distract mine.”
“We’re going!” Belle was the first of the group to hit the ice.
Jordan and Douglas exchanged a look, like siblings who were embarrassed that their parents were fighting. Then they did that hand-thing I saw on the video. After, he put his arm around her shoulder as they approached the divide between their rinks. “You’ve got this.”
“I hope,” Jordan replied with a frown.
“You know.” Douglas nudged her.
“Thanks. And you guys are looking great. Belle, your axel is tight.”
Before Belle could reply, her mom piped up. “She doesn’t get as much height as you, Jordan.”
Sergi blew a whistle, a very loud whistle, and everybody got back to work. Tatiana pulled Jordan aside and whispered to her, stroking her hair. Jordan shook her head fiercely before getting back out onto the ice.
That couldn’t be a good sign.
Aisha came off the ice to sit down and retied her skates.
“Hey,” I said with a nod of my chin.
Real suave, Watson.
She looked up and gave me a smile. And, okay, I’ll admit that she was cute and all, but she could be the enemy.
And, well, my record with befriending the culprit wasn’t so great. I mean, it wasn’t my fault my first non-Shelby friend here stole his sister’s dog.
“We didn’t get a chance to really talk yesterday.” Aisha smiled at me. “I’ve never seen you guys around the circuit. But I guess I’ve always done singles, so I only know the pairs I share the ice with.”
“Yeah, well . . . um, we’re new to the city.” Yeah, I was killing it being undercover. (NOT.)
“Where do you live now?” she asked as she batted her long eyelashes at me.
This wasn’t good. I was supposed to be interrogating her, yet I wasn’t really used to talking to such pretty girls. And she was a girl. Dressed head to toe in pink.
“Harlem,” I answered.
“We’re neighbors,” Aisha said. “I’m in Morningside Heights. But my dad works in Harlem. Well, one of his two jobs.”
That surprised me. I automatically assumed all these figure skaters were rich and lived on Park Avenue or Central Park West. Shelby had informed me that both Douglas
and Jordan grew up in wealthy families. That made sense. This sport couldn’t have been cheap: coaches, private ice time, skates, outfits, and choreography. And that was solely what I knew from the little research I’d done. I was lucky the sports I was into only required a ball. Which you could share.
I had that sinking feeling in my gut. Did Aisha have another motive to send Jordan messages? They were each other’s biggest competition. Aisha didn’t have the money Jordan did. She needed to win more.
Aisha stood up and shook her legs out. “I guess I better get back to work. See you around, Julian.” She gave me a wink before skating out onto the ice. She was graceful. She was strong. She was extraordinary.
I was making things worse. Shelby had told me more than once to not get involved with clients or suspects. But I wasn’t getting involved. I was doing my job.
Yep, that was all I was doing.
“Anything?” Shelby asked as she stretched near the entrance to where Jordan had been skating since we arrived.
I hesitated for a second before finally replying, “Maybe.”
Shelby tilted her head. “Oh, this is precious. Julian Law, do you have a crush?” She then pretended to throw up.
I ignored her. “There might be a money issue with Aisha. Her dad works two jobs.”
Shelby studied Aisha as she skated. “Money is a powerful motivator for any suspect. Well done!”
Weird. I didn’t feel that great about discovering a motive.
Tatiana came over to us. “Roberta and Julian, there is something you need to see in the equipment room.”
“I presumed there would be,” Shelby replied with a confident smirk.
Shelby and I walked over to the room. As soon as we turned the light on, we saw a cipher on a whiteboard.
Shelby approached the cipher and studied it closely.
She folded her arms. “Well, it looks like the decision has been made for us.”
I looked at the cipher, confused. “What decision?”
“We are going with number one, Watson. The perpetrator has made a mistake.”
There it was: a smudge.
A mistake.
A clue.
You might be wondering how a smudge could be a big deal. I would’ve thought the same thing two months ago.
Now, I knew better.
Shelby’s face was barely an inch away from the cipher. “This is the first time the person has used a white-board instead of pen on paper. Now we know that they’re left-handed.”
“How?” I asked.
Shelby flipped over the whiteboard and started writing with her right hand. “A right-handed person wouldn’t have left a smudge. However, a left-handed culprit, especially in the case of a wet marker, would . . .” She started writing with her left hand. Her left palm came in contact with the board and made a similar smudge.
“You know what this also means?” She held up her stained hand.
“If the person wrote the cipher this morning, they’d now have blue ink stain on their left hand.”
This was good. This was going to get us somewhere.
“There’s more,” Shelby stated as she flipped the white-board back to the cipher and pointed at the top four lines. “This was written by a different person than this one.” She tapped at the bottom one.
“How can you tell?” I asked as I started to examine the drawings.
“There are slight differences. First, not a single smudge on the bottom line. Second, the characters are slightly bigger, as well as the lines for the hands are straight, not curved like above. Different handwriting, different person. So it appears that Jordan has answered back.” Shelby was practically giddy.
“But what exactly did Jordan answer? And, you know, what was the question?”
Shelby took a photo of the board with her phone. “I think I finally have enough to figure it out.”
“Really?”
“After school, Watson. We’re going to crack this thing.”
“We are!” Finally!
“Soon we’ll know what is being communicated, but for now, we need to see if we can deduce who left it.”
Yes, now to the business at hand of finding the culprit. And I do mean at hand.
“How are we going to be able to examine everybody’s left hand without them knowing what we’re up to? Especially since . . .” I wiggled my hands in my gloves. We all wore gloves on the ice because it was cold. “Maybe we should just come clean and demand to see everybody’s hands?”
Shelby shook her head. “Absolutely not.” She closed her eyes for a few minutes, something she did when she was trying to figure out a plan or access something in her brain attic. Shelby opened her eyes and clapped her hands together. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. We are obviously big fans of these skaters.”
“We are?” That was news to me.
Shelby scowled. “Well, Roberta and Julian certainly would be.”
Oh, right. Yes.
Shelby continued, “So when they take a break, you are going to ask each one of them for an autograph and a picture.”
“Why do I—”
Shelby kept talking over me. “However, I’ll be recording a video instead of a photograph. We will ask them some basic question as they’re signing their autograph and posing. It is difficult for people to keep lies straight when they are doing two things at once. One of the best tactics when interrogating someone is to have them do another task to distract them. We can analyze the video for micro-facial expressions when we are finished.”
It sounded like a pretty solid plan, but . . .
“Can’t you ask for the autographs?” I asked. I mean, I didn’t know how well I could pretend I was this gigantic fan. I’d never been the kind of guy to gush. Not like Shelby ever dared compliment someone else, but she was better at this acting stuff than me.
Shelby waved her hand away. “Just pretend that they’re one of the basketball performers you admire.”
“But—”
“Watson,” Shelby stated, and it was clear her patience was wearing thin. “It has to be you.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Um, no. Unless it was because Shelby loved nothing more than making me look foolish. Because that was obvious.
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
Ah, yeah, because I had no idea what she was getting at.
Shelby sighed. “You need to be the one to do it, because you are much better with people than I am.”
Oh, yeah.
Well, she had me there.
So this was embarrassing.
I waited until Douglas took a break to approach him. I’d had no clue who this dude was only a few days ago, but now I had to pretend to be this huge fan. There was no way he was going to fall for it.
“Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Douglas replied, but his focus was on Jordan, who was gliding across the ice, moving her arms all gracefully. She took a giant leap, twirled once in the air, and came back down on her foot, wobbling a bit before getting her balance. “You got this!” Douglas shouted at Jordan with a fist pump. He then lowered his voice. “Now she just needs to get back to nailing her triple jumps.”
“Focus on this rink!” Sergi said as he pointed to Belle, who was doing some twirly thing.
Douglas clenched his jaw as he turned his attention toward his partner.
I guess this was my chance. “Yeah, so this may sound silly”—because it was—“but I’m a huge fan and I was wondering if I could get your picture . . . and an autograph.”
Douglas paused from taking a sip of water. He blinked a few times before giving me a nod. “Of course.”
Or maybe he had an ego like most athletes and assumed everybody was an admirer.
Shelby hovered nearby with her phone, so there would be proof of me making a fool out of myself.
Awesome.
“Let me just take this off.” Douglas removed his blue headband and then smoothed
out his hair.
“Here’s your autograph book,” Shelby said as she handed me this pink sparkly notebook.
Come on! Pink? Sparkly? Shelby was going to be in so much trouble for that.
“Yeah, ah,” I stuttered as I handed Douglas the notebook and a black pen.
Douglas took off his gloves and I tried to examine his left hand, but he picked up the pen with his right.
It wasn’t him.
Or maybe he wrote the cipher with his left hand? Or maybe he accidentally brushed up against the board?
Shelby cleared her throat, which meant I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do: ask him questions while he was distracted. First, I had to start with easy stuff. We had to know what his normal expressions were before we started talking about Jordan in case there was a change.
“So I used to skate after school,” I stated. “How long did it take you to get used to these early mornings?”
“A couple weeks.”
A couple weeks? We didn’t have that much time. And there was no way I wanted my alarm clock blasting at five a.m. to be normal for me.
“I believe it’s important to be first on the ice.” Douglas’s eyes stayed focused on the autograph book. “I can sleep after the Olympics.”
So, he was here first thing in the morning and could’ve left the cipher before anybody else got here.
“Yeah.” I laughed. “Your dedication is insane.”
“Thank you,” he replied coolly as he wrote best wishes to Julian.
Huh. Douglas seemed really warm and friendly around Jordan and Belle, but he was not to me. What was he hiding? Or maybe he was being distant toward me because he thought I was competition? Because, like, as soon as he saw me “skate,” he’d realize what a joke that was.
Guess it was time to bring up Jordan.
“Was it hard switching partners?” I asked.
Douglas glanced at Shelby, probably wondering if I was thinking of leaving her (the thought had recently crossed my mind—see: sparkly pink notebook).
But then it happened.
It was like a double whammy of micro-facial expressions. Douglas paused, looked to the right (which meant he was lying!), and then said, “It was for the best” while shaking his head slightly (a signal that he didn’t believe what he was saying!).
The Great Shelby Holmes and the Coldest Case Page 6