Skating on Thin Ice Read online

  “Okay, hon. What can I do?”

  Mort thought for a moment. “I already called for the ambulance,” he said. “You can go help that kid getting me the list of the staff who worked tonight. And see if he put up a pot of coffee.”

  Maureen went to find Jeremy, leaving Seth, Mort, and me inside the garage with the body. The two ice resurfacing machines stood on the ramps outside the massive doors, like an enormous pair of guard dogs.

  “Can you give us a time of death, Doc?” Mort asked.

  “I can give you a guess, but it’s going to be tricky considerin’ the body’s having been in ice water.”

  “He has a scratch on his nose,” I said.

  “What does that mean, Mrs. F.?”

  “I don’t know, but it wasn’t there the last time I saw him alive. Have you checked his hands, Seth?”

  “Not yet. They’re swollen from the water. Might be some bruises and cuts. No rigor mortis yet. From the looks of the skin, I’d say he was in the water no more than three or four hours, Sheriff, but don’t hold me to it. I’ll need to examine the body more carefully to be sure.”

  “Any ideas, Mrs. F.? Looks like an accident to me.”

  “A good possibility,” I said. “Or a suicide. Or murder. I’m sure you’re not ruling out any of those possibilities.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I doubt that he would have killed himself, though. He was a very confident young man, even overconfident. I can’t imagine anything throwing him so much that he would take his own life, especially by drowning himself in ice water.”

  “Maybe he received some terrible news from home,” Mort suggested, “something that would have made him feel miserable or guilty.”

  “Alexei had a very strong ego. He didn’t strike me as a young man who would blame himself for anything—even if he were responsible.”

  “So we rule out suicide?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Accident?”

  “Could be.”

  “What do you say, Doc? What would’ve happened if he just fell in? Could the cold water kill him?”

  “Not immediately. Normal body temperature is around ninety-eight, ninety-nine degrees. People vary. Clinically, hypothermia starts when the core temperature is at ninety-five degrees.”

  “That’s not much of a drop, Doc.”

  “No, it isn’t. Even so, death from hypothermia usually takes a bit of time, even in ice water. What can happen, however—as the body temperature begins to fall, the victim is not always aware of it. He may become confused, make poor decisions, have difficulty performing tasks, not realize it’s because he’s losing heat.”

  “You’d think he would at least call for help,” Mort said.

  “I’m not sure anyone outside this room would hear him,” I said. “The walls are concrete and the doors are steel. And you heard how noisy it was out there.”

  “Besides, if he swallowed some water when he fell in, he might’ve been straining just to breathe,” Seth said. “Hard to yell under those circumstances.”

  “Alexei was very strong,” I said. “If he simply fell in, he should have been able to pull himself out of the water even if he was short of breath.”

  “Ayuh,” Seth said. “The body pumps out adrenaline when it recognizes danger. That would’ve helped him.”

  “How do you know how strong he was, Mrs. F.?”

  “He and his skating partner, Christine, were talking about practicing their lifts. She must weigh around a hundred pounds, yet he was expected to lift her over his head.”

  “But his clothes would’ve been heavy from the water and pulling him down. He might not have been able to fight the added weight,” Mort speculated.

  We stopped talking for a moment, each of us contemplating the factors that might have contributed to Alexei’s death.

  “If he just fell in,” I said, breaking the silence, “why was the grating covering the pit?” I walked to the snow pile and examined the ironwork grille, careful not to touch it. “It looks like it’s pretty heavy, not something that would have tipped back in place easily. That suggests murder to me.”

  “I’d like to keep it considered an accident,” Mort said. “If he grabbed at the grate to help pull himself out, it might’ve fallen back on him. If his calls for help couldn’t be heard over the noise in the rink, and if he drowned before anyone missed him, he could have sunk to the bottom. Or someone could’ve just closed the grate the way Jeremy opened it and not noticed the body.”

  “That’s possible,” I said.

  Mort studied my face. “But you don’t think so?”

  I shook my head.

  “So, Doc, would you be able to tell if he was pushed into the pit?”

  “Probably not,” Seth said. “Any bruises he might have sustained could have occurred whether he fell or was pushed. If someone hit him on the head or another part of his body before he went into the water, we should see evidence of that. But unless the wound can be matched to a weapon, we couldn’t be certain he didn’t just hit his head on the corner of the grating or on the edge of the pool.”

  “But if that was the case,” I said, “you’d probably find particles of concrete or shards of metal in the wound, wouldn’t you?”

  Seth nodded. “The autopsy will tell us more.”

  “I’d better call the medical examiner,” Mort said.

  “You’re looking at him,” Seth said. “Doc Foley picked this week to go to Florida. I’m filling in as ME.”

  Mort sighed. “Well, then, until you finish the autopsy, I’m reporting it as an accident. But I’ll call in the evidence techs just in case,” he said.

  Worry was written all over our sheriff’s face, and I shared his unease. I had little doubt that Alexei had been pushed into that frigid body of water, and the fact that he was a figure skater from Russia would undoubtedly raise the stakes where any investigation was concerned. Maureen Metzger’s comment about the arena being jinxed now resonated. Murder represented the ultimate jinx.

  “We’ll have to find out if Olshansky made any enemies since coming to Cabot Cove,” Mort said. “See if anyone disliked him. Enough to kill him, that is.”

  The door creaked open, and we all turned at the sound. It was Jeremy.

  “The ambulance is here, Sheriff.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mort held the list of staff in one hand and a paper cup of coffee in the other. “I got thirteen names,

  but there are only nine of you here. Who am I missing?”

  “Lyla got hit with a puck, and Mr. Devlin drove her to the doctor’s,” Marisa said. “They never came back.”

  “And two people went home when we emptied the rink,” Jeremy said. “Apparently they didn’t hear the part of the announcement directing the staff to stay.” He glanced over at Marisa, who turned away.

  Marisa and Jeremy sat on opposite sides of the arcade room now, on benches set up across from the coin-operated games to accommodate those waiting to play. Earlier, they had been standing with other staff members, watching some of their colleagues slip quarters into the pinball machine, when the evidence technicians had arrived toting a suitcase of equipment including still and video cameras.

  “What’s going on here?” Marisa had asked.

  Jeremy hadn’t replied.

  Sometime later, when the EMTs wheeled the gurney holding Alexei’s body past the door to the game room and out to the waiting ambulance, Marisa gave Jeremy a stunned look. “You know about this, don’t you? Who is that?” she’d demanded.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “The sheriff asked me not to say anything.”

  “You can’t tell me? I’m your partner. I tell you everything.”

  He shook his head and turned away.

  She now refused to sit next to him, moving as far away as she could.

  Sitting between them were their coach, Mark Rosner, the hockey coach Luc Beliveau, the three officials in black-and-
white striped shirts who’d called the bantam-league hockey game that night, and two teenagers, Joanne and Zack, who worked at the concession stand.

  Once the ambulance departed, with Seth accompanying the body to the morgue at our local hospital, Mort began by telling the assembled group what had happened. It was a tragic accident, he’d said. Alexei had fallen into the pit in the Zamboni garage and drowned.

  Marisa gasped, a hand flew to cover her mouth, and she started to cry. Mark slid closer and put an arm around her shoulder. Jeremy stared at the space between his shoes. Other than Marisa’s whimpers, there was silence in the room.

  “I’m going to ask you not to talk about this to anyone,” Mort continued. “As much as we can, I’d like to contain the mountain of gossip that this is going to generate. Can I have your word?”

  There were nods all around.

  “Did anyone here see or talk to Alexei tonight?” Mort asked.

  One of the hockey referees raised his hand. “I’d like to help you, Sheriff, but we don’t even know what this guy looked like,” he said, glancing at the other two officials. “Luc here can tell you. We came down from the next town over to officiate the game.”

  “That’s right, Sheriff. They wouldn’t know who Olshansky was,” Beliveau confirmed.

  “Actually, I saw the guy’s picture in the paper,” one of the officials said, “but I don’t know that I’d recognize him if I ran into him.”

  “Maybe you could let these guys go home now,” Beliveau suggested.

  “Not just yet,” Mort said, sipping his coffee. He studied the list of names as if it revealed some secret, but I knew he was just gathering his thoughts. “Let me start by asking if any of you saw someone—anyone—enter or leave the Zamboni garage tonight?”

  “Only Jeremy,” Mark Rosner said. “But I didn’t pay any attention to him. That’s his job.” He shook his head and snorted. “There’s going to be some lawsuit. Does Coddington know?”

  “One of my deputies is calling him now,” Mort said. “Did you see Mr. Olshansky at the rink today?”

  “Mr. Olshansky?” Rosner said. “Yeah, I saw Alexei this morning.” He shifted in his seat, taking his arm from around Marisa, who’d been slumped against him and now wiped tears from under her eyes with a trembling finger. “He and Chris were rehearsing for the exhibition next week. I guess that’ll be canceled.”

  Marisa’s head whipped around. “It will?”

  “Probably. I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Rosner, I understand that you and Alexei had an altercation one morning this week,” I said. “Could you tell us what that was about?”

  Rosner squeezed his eyes shut, stretched his neck, and scratched his head.

  “It was my fault,” Marisa said.

  “No, no, it wasn’t,” Rosner said, annoyed. “I hate to say ill of the dead, but truth is, he was a pain in the neck. Right, Luc?”

  “Leave me out of this.”

  “Well, he was. Always testing the boundaries, seeing what he could get away with. He kept torturing her.” He cocked his head toward Marisa. “I don’t know what he thought he could accomplish—maybe break her concentration, weaken her confidence. Why? Who knows why Alexei did anything? Anyway, I ripped into him, and we got into it a bit. Brian broke us up. He apologized later. Alexei, that is. I told him to apologize to Marisa. Did he do that?”

  Marisa shook her head. “No.”

  Rosner sighed. “Let’s just say I’m not one of his admirers, Sheriff. But to tell the truth, it was so busy tonight, I don’t even know that I would have noticed him if he were here. He might have gone into the Zamboni garage tonight, but I didn’t see him. Did anyone else?”

  “Are you kidding me? He never stepped foot in the garage,” Jeremy said. “That was for the peons who work at the rink, not for prima donna skaters like him.”

  “He must’ve gone into the garage sometime today,” Mort pointed out, “unless someone carried him in and dumped his body in the pit.”

  Jeremy flushed bright red and looked at the floor again.

  “Coach Beliveau, you had a game,” Mort said. “You must’ve been here a long time. Anything strike you as unusual this afternoon or tonight?”

  Beliveau shook his head. “We had a panel fall out of the boards. That was the big news. By the way, I heard that Lyla’s okay. Happy to hear it.”

  There were nods and murmurs of agreement.

  “Did you see Olshansky at all today?” Mort pressed.

  “Sure thing,” Beliveau replied. “This morning when he and Christine practiced with Devlin. Look, Sheriff, he wasn’t much interested in hockey, and I’ve never been known to give a hang about figure skating.” He leaned forward and looked at Marisa and Mark. “Apologies to present company, but you know it’s just not my thing.”

  “That’s okay, Luc,” Rosner said. “I don’t give a hang about hockey.”

  “Anyway, I never let anyone put my head in a bucket,” Luc said, using a colloquial Maine expression. His eyes went to Jeremy. “No Russian kid is going to turn me around.”

  Jeremy appeared startled. “He didn’t turn me around. I knew what he was about. It was just that he was constantly looking for ways to put me down.”

  “Be specific,” Mort said.

  Jeremy shrugged. “He had it out for me. I don’t know why. He was always accusing me of trying to mess him up, said I’d loosened the screws holding the blades on his boots or that I’d flattened a tire on his car. If anything bad happened to him, he’d point a finger at me.”

  “Why do you think he did that?” Mort asked.

  Jeremy shrugged.

  “Did you see him do that, Marisa?”

  “Everybody did,” she answered. “You can ask anyone here. Well, I mean those who are here all the time. The only people Alexei was nice to were Chris and Mr. Devlin, and maybe Lyla. He gave everyone else a hard time, but I guess he was afraid of being disrespectful to the coaches.”

  Mark snorted. “Except me,” he said. “He had no compunctions about speaking disrespectfully to me. Then again, I wasn’t his coach, just a coach at the rink.”

  “But he was meanest to Jeremy,” Marisa put in. “He always picked on him—and me.”

  “Why do you think he picked on Jeremy?” I asked her.

  “He was jealous,” she replied. “He thought that Chris had a thing for Jeremy and that Jeremy wanted him out of the way.”

  “Was that true?” I asked Jeremy. “Does Chris have a crush on you?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Men usually can tell when a woman likes them,” I said. “But what about you? Do you have a crush on Christine?”

  “ ‘Crush’ is such a weird word,” Jeremy said.

  “Answer the question,” Mort said.

  Jeremy stole a glance at Marisa, then looked away. “I like Chris. She’s a great girl, real pretty and always smiling.” He shrugged. “But we don’t, you know, we don’t have a relationship or anything like that.”

  “That’s not what Mrs. Fletcher asked you,” Mort said. “She didn’t ask if you and Chris had a relationship. She asked if you’d like to have a relationship with Chris, if you have feelings for her.”

  “So I like her,” Jeremy said. “So what? That doesn’t mean I’d kill her partner, for crying out loud.”

  “We didn’t say that you did,” Mort said. He let a moment pass before asking softly, “What kinds of things would Olshansky say to you that got under your skin?”

  “He used to say that Jeremy would never be good enough to match up with the elite pairs skaters,” Marisa said.

  “I’m asking Jeremy the question, Marisa. I’d like him to answer.”

  “Well, like, he was boiled when Mr. Devlin included me as one of the ‘stars of tomorrow’ at the chamber of commerce meeting. Kept calling me ‘a little fishie from Cabot Cove,’ ” Jeremy spoke in a high voice imitating Alexei’s teasing. “He said I would have to ‘swim fast’ to make it even into novice competition. I couldn�
��t walk past him without him getting in a dig.” He gave Marisa a fast glance. “And he was mean to Marisa. She never did anything to him, but he ranked on her all the time.”

  “So, you really didn’t like him,” Mort noted.

  “I hated him,” Jeremy said, his eyes filling with tears. “But I wouldn’t push him into the pit. I might have dreamed about doing it, but I’d never do it. I didn’t do it.”

  There was a flurry of activity at the door. Mort turned at the sound of voices. “I said to keep everyone out,” he shouted. “What’s going on?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Evelyn Phillips said as she barreled in with a deputy hanging on her arm. Right behind them was Richard Koser, carrying his camera.

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” the deputy said. “She insisted.”

  “I don’t have enough to do. Now I have to deal with reporters,” Mort groused.

  “Ever hear of the First Amendment, Sheriff Metzger?” Evelyn asked haughtily. “Freedom of the press?”

  “We’re busy here, Mrs. Phillips.”

  “The scanner said there was a death at the rink,” Evelyn said, looking around to take in who was in the room. “Once this story gets out, you’re going to wish it was only me. You’ll be inundated with press.”

  Mort nodded wearily. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The fact that there was nothing of interest for Richard to photograph didn’t deter him. Mort wouldn’t allow anyone into the Zamboni garage; he’d had the technicians seal off both rinks as well. Nevertheless, after Mort gave them a quick update on Alexei’s death, Evelyn and Richard lingered in the hall of the arena, Richard shooting pictures of the block letters on the yellow tape: CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.

  “Why are you stringing up crime scene tape if the death was an accident?” Evelyn pressed.

  “Because I don’t have any yellow tape that says ACCIDENT SCENE on it,” Mort replied. “We don’t have any evidence that this was anything other than a tragic mishap.”