Skating on Thin Ice Read online

  “Why do you think she came here, Mrs. Fletcher?” Marisa asked, pointing to Irina Bednikova’s picture.

  “To try to lure Alexei back to Russia, so she could be his pairs partner again.”

  “I wish she’d succeeded,” she said. “Then we wouldn’t have this mess. People keep asking me questions, taking pictures, leaving flowers, yak, yak, yak, everything Alexei. That’s all I hear. I’m sick of it. Sick of him.” She stopped and looked around, realizing someone might misinterpret what she was saying, but no one else was nearby.

  “Look, I’m sorry he’s dead. Really. I know I said I didn’t like him, but I’m sorry he died. He was pretty young, too. I never knew anyone that young who died before. It’s really weird. I just saw him on Friday, and now he’s never coming back again. Am I awful that I didn’t like him? Why couldn’t he have been nicer? I never said anything bad about him, at least not to his face.”

  Lyla, who had been listening in on our conversation, took Marisa by the shoulders and turned her around. “I think you need to take a break,” she said. “Go lie down on the sofa in my office.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Go! I don’t want to see you for ten minutes.”

  “Do you have a minute to talk?” I asked Lyla when Marisa had closed the door to the coach’s office.

  “I guess so. I’ve never seen this place so empty. There’s barely anyone here skating, even though the parking lot is full.” She shook her head. “They’re all outside watching the press or waiting for something to happen.”

  “That’s just a temporary novelty,” I said. “The skaters will come back.”

  She glanced at the door and rubbed the back of her neck. “Not if they’re afraid to come inside where someone died. They’d better get over that fast or we’ll go out of business again.”

  “Lyla, may I ask you a few questions about Alexei?”

  “Why not? Everyone else has.”

  “Last week, when the Russian camera crew was here, why did Alexei get so angry when the reporter brought up his former partner?”

  “They didn’t part on good terms. Irina’s been bad-mouthing him ever since. It’s been all over the Internet and on the skating blogs. She was a star at home, the center of attention, and now she’s not. Instead of the talk dying down as it usually would, she continued to fuel the fire.”

  “What did she say?”

  “There was nothing attributed directly to her, but I knew Irina was behind all those nasty comments being passed around about Chris.”

  “What kind of comments?”

  “At first, there were ugly rumors circulating that if Chris’s father hadn’t paid off Alexei, she couldn’t have attracted a partner on her own, that she’s not good enough. It’s just not true. Then the rumors said Alexei was getting back together with Irina, and Chris was begging him to stay.”

  “It all sounds very dramatic, like a daytime soap opera.”

  “You’re not far off. The other day, someone wrote that the only reason Chris and her father moved East was to get away from a stalker. Another blogger said her father was divorcing her mother so she wouldn’t stand in the way of Chris’s career. Chris was very upset by that one. I don’t know where they get these things.” Lyla linked her hands behind her neck, looked down, and sighed. “Anyway, these kinds of rumors happen all the time. Skating is a tight community; there’s a lot of gossip, jealousy, and backbiting. But it can be devastating when you’re the victim of it. Plus, it wasn’t very good publicity for Alexei and Chris starting out together.”

  “So Brian Devlin allowed the Russians to film to give them a positive story to cover.”

  “That was the idea. In Russia, Irina and Alexei were followed by paparazzi. They were a very volatile couple, always arguing in public, angry at each other, constantly in the press. Sometimes that could translate into passion on the ice. The judges love to see that. But it makes a lot of work for the coach. Their last coach spent half his time trying to get them to skate without killing each other.”

  “Doesn’t sound as if it makes for efficient practices,” I said.

  “It sure doesn’t. Brian had a lot of reservations about bringing Alexei over. But Mr. Allen was convinced he was the right partner for Chris. Heaven only knows why. The combination of a black skater with a white skater means that you’re taking a chance.”

  “Why is that? Do you think some judges would have been prejudiced against them?”

  “Judges are human beings. The scoring system in competitions has always been controversial. You’re bound to find some prejudiced judges. Why stack the deck against the pair to begin with?”

  “It didn’t seem to hurt a German pair who were successful,” I said. “They were an interracial couple, and they went on to win the world championship.”

  Lyla sighed. “There are always exceptions.”

  “Maybe Chris and Alexei would have been an exception, too,” I said.

  “We’ll never know now.”

  I left Lyla at the desk and wandered past the rows of fifty-cent lockers toward the concession stand, where Joe the security guard was getting a cup of coffee. I looked around. Mort and I hadn’t found Alexei’s skates in his apartment. They must be somewhere here at the rink. Surely, the staff and elite-caliber skaters like Alexei and Christine wouldn’t be expected to put in quarters in order to have a place to stash their possessions.

  “Hi, Mrs. Fletcher. Feeling better?” Joe asked when I came up to him.

  “Oh, yes, much.” I thanked him again for having driven me to the ER and asked where the skaters in training had lockers.

  “Behind the new hockey locker room,” he replied. “Used to be the old hockey locker room. All the coaching staff and special students have lockers back there, if they want to use them. Most don’t bother.”

  I thanked Joe and pulled out my cell phone, dialing Mort’s number as I walked toward the new area. I told him about the special locker room.

  “See if you can find his locker. I’ll be there in a little while,” he said. “I’m on the phone with the leader of the dive team.”

  Walking past the hockey locker room, I came upon a door marked STAFF. It was locked. Retracing my steps to the front desk, I caught Lyla as she was donning her jacket and gloves.

  “Why do you need to see Alexei’s locker?” she asked when I requested the key to the staff area.

  “The sheriff is gathering his personal effects to send home to his family,” I said. It wasn’t entirely untrue; I didn’t want to raise any eyebrows if I admitted that Alexei’s possessions might yield some understanding of his death.

  “I don’t ever use those lockers since I have an office here, but Marisa has a master key,” she said.

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “Stay here. I’ll get it for you.”

  She returned a few minutes later with the key on an oversized key ring. “Return it to Marisa when you’re done,” she said.

  When I unlocked the door marked STAFF, I found myself in a small anteroom that had two doors leading from it into separate areas labeled MEN and WOMEN. Obviously, Alexei’s locker would be in the section reserved for men—which posed a question for me. Did I dare enter that area and perhaps embarrass myself, not to mention whoever might be there, possibly undressed? I put my ear to the door and focused my hearing on the other side. Nothing. I took a breath, knocked on the door, waited a moment, then put my hand on the brass plate and pushed it open. The hinges squealed, but I had hesitated for nothing. The room was empty. It was much smaller than I anticipated, and pretty run-down. Clearly, this was an area of the ice arena that Coddington hadn’t gotten around to renovating. Eldridge had spent his money on places the public would see but had held back when it came to staff accommodations and, according to Devlin’s complaints, behind-the-scenes amenities for his students.

  A row of lockers was on my left. Scarred wooden benches ran their length. At the far end was a door that led to the showers. I listened intently aga
in. No sound of running water. I peeked in. The shower section had been added when the new hockey locker room had been built. The tiles were gleaming; it looked as if it had never been used.

  I walked back along the lockers and read names on pieces of white tape affixed to the doors. Most of the lockers were open, but a few weren’t. I found what I was looking for. The black writing on the tape said AO, which had to be the initials for Alexei Olshansky. An old padlock was inserted through the hole in a flange on the door that lined up with an identical one on the locker. Where was the key? Mort and I hadn’t found any keys in our cursory search of Alexei’s apartment. Could the key be at the bottom of the pit?

  I turned at the sound of a squeak to see Mort Metzger coming into the room.

  “Did you get the report from the dive team?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We won’t get forensics on the trace evidence back for a while, but they found his cell phone, his gold chain, and his keys. I asked to get a list of the last calls he made. That should come through fairly quickly and give us some leads to follow,” he said. “Which one of these is his locker?”

  “It’s right here,” I replied, “but it’s padlocked.”

  “No problem. I think I’ve got a bolt cutter in the trunk of my cruiser.”

  Mort returned moments later. “Someone walked away with my bolt cutter, but these should do the job.” He held up a screwdriver and a hammer. Positioning the blade near the shank of the lock, he gave the top of the screwdriver a few good whacks with the hammer. Seconds later, he placed the open padlock on the bench and pulled open the door to Alexei’s locker.

  “With those skills, you could have been a first-rate safecracker,” I said.

  “Sometimes it’s the simplest tools that are the most efficient,” he replied. “Let’s see what we got.”

  Alexei’s apartment had been relatively neat, but his locker was a lot messier, and I had a hunch it was a more accurate reflection of the way he usually lived. Workout clothing, emitting the expected scent of having been worn during strenuous exercise, hung from hooks on either side of the narrow, metal closet. A towel taken from a prominent hotel was balled up on the shelf above. As Mort pulled out each item and dropped it into an evidence bag, I made a note of it on a pad of paper.

  There was a pair of skates in a plastic skate carrier on the floor of the locker. Tossed in on top of the carrier were envelopes and scraps of paper. Mort opened a second evidence bag, this one considerably smaller than the one that held Alexei’s clothes. We scanned what was written on the papers before Mort deposited them in the bag. Some were postmarked Moscow and written in Russian, probably letters from his mother or friends back home. I was about to give up hope of finding anything helpful when the final slip of paper fell out of Mort’s hand and landed at my feet. Without picking it up, I read it:garage—5:30—friday

  The day he died, and the approximate time of death according to Seth’s initial estimate.

  “Do you think that’s his handwriting?” Mort said as he added the note to the evidence bag.

  “I don’t know, but it should be easy to verify,” I said. “The more difficult question to answer is: Who was he meeting?”

  “Maybe that turkey with the gun Jeremy found sitting on the Zamboni. He said someone had pointed him out as the guy who was interested in buying the rink.”

  “Did you call Eve to find out if it might have been her client?”

  Mort nodded. “I left a message on her guy’s answering machine, but he hasn’t returned my call yet. You think he’s still in town?”

  “Probably not, especially if he’s guilty,” I said.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. F. You never can tell what crazy people will do. I’m going to run these back to the station. Need a lift anywhere?”

  “No, thank you. I think I’ll poke around a little longer, if you don’t mind.”

  “Suit yourself. Thanks for the call about these,” he said, hefting the two bags. “Worse comes to worst, they’ll go back home to his mother.”

  Mort took the evidence bags out to his cruiser while I returned the staff locker room master key to Marisa and bought myself a hot chocolate at the concession stand. Sipping the sweet drink, I contemplated the myriad questions floating around my mind.

  Why had Alexei changed his mind about skating Friday afternoon? And whom had he met in the Zamboni garage, a place he rarely if ever visited before his death? The last slip of paper we’d found indicated that he’d arranged to meet someone there late in the afternoon on that fateful day. Was it Eve’s client Harvey Gemell? And if so, why would Gemell want to kill Alexei? How would he have gained by the skater’s death? What would anyone have gained by killing Alexei?

  The hot chocolate provided a welcome calm. But I had some questions for Eldridge Coddington. I left the table and main hall and climbed the stairs to the second floor, pausing at the windows overlooking the hockey rink, which was hosting lessons on one end of the ice and hockey-stop drills on the other.

  The gym was locked, as was the dance studio Brian Devlin had sneered at the first time I’d wandered upstairs. But Eldridge Coddington’s office door was ajar. I heard his end of a conversation but couldn’t tell if he was on the telephone or talking with someone in person.

  “I swear you’re setting me up, but I’ve half a mind to sell it to you so you can reap the lawsuit along with all the other headaches this place has been giving me.”

  I heard a soft murmur; he had someone with him.

  “Why does he want it? That’s what I want to know. Nothing but one crisis after another. The utility cost is sky-high. When the temperature outside drops, I keep the windows open overnight so I don’t have to pay to keep the ice frozen. Does he have any idea what it takes to run a business like this?”

  Another murmur.

  “You tell ’im he’d better come talk to me directly. I don’t want the mayor and town council falling down on me like a brick wall if he wants to raze the place and build another shopping center. I have to live in this town. What’s that? No, you can’t stand in for him. You’re not going to own the place once he puts down the money, are you? You let me take the measure of the man, and then I’ll think about it. But that’s all I’ll do. Don’t take this as a commitment. Now let me get back to work.”

  Someone opened the door, and I heard a voice I recognized. “You won’t be sorry, Eldridge. I so appreciate your seeing me today, especially after this Grand Guignol.”

  “What the heck’s that?”

  “Horror show.”

  “Certainly is. Can’t believe he sent you to see me in the wake of it,” Coddington muttered. “The man must have a stone stomach.”

  “Au contraire, monsieur. He is très sympathique.”

  “For the love of Harry, woman, speak English.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I hear from him.”

  Eve Simpson stepped into the hall and closed Coddington’s door behind her.

  “Hello, Eve,” I said.

  “Oh, Jessica, what a surprise.” She smoothed down the front of her wool skirt and looped her handbag over her arm. “Are you here to talk to Eldridge?”

  “I thought I’d stop in and say hello.”

  “Terrible news about Alexei,” she said. “So tragique, even though Loretta told me she’d heard he wasn’t a very pleasant young man. Well, I have to get back to the office. Nice running into you.”

  “Wait, Eve,” I said, taking hold of her arm as she tried to brush past me. “Is Harvey Gemell the only person interested in buying the ice arena?”

  “So far as I know. Eldridge never mentioned anyone else. Oh, dear, you haven’t heard something I don’t know, have you?”

  “Was Gemell here on Friday?”

  Eve smoothed her hair. “I’m not certain. I don’t keep track of his whereabouts.”

  “Come on, Eve. I saw you escorting a man around the rink last week. Wasn’t that Gemell?”

  “I thought that was you on the ice. Are you feeling all ri
ght, Jessica?”

  “Perfectly fine, Eve. Was that Gemell you were with?”

  “Yes. Nice looking, isn’t he?”

  “That was Wednesday. Was he still in town Friday afternoon?”

  Eve squirmed a bit. “Really, Jessica—”

  “Please, Eve. It’s important.”

  “Probably not, but I actually don’t know. He wasn’t supposed to be. He told me he was going to leave on Friday morning. He doesn’t know anyone else in Cabot Cove. There wasn’t any reason for him to stay.”

  “So you think he’s back in Connecticut now?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he is. I spoke with him this morning.”

  “Mort would like to speak with him. Would you ask him to call the sheriff’s office?”

  “Why does he want to talk to Harvey?”

  “Mort needs to know if Harvey was at the rink on Friday, and if he was, if he noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

  “All right. He should be calling me later today. I don’t want to call and have him think I’m badgering him. You know how men can be. I’ll give him your message.”

  “Thanks, Eve. Oh, by the way. Do you know whether Mr. Gemell carries a weapon?”

  “What?”

  “A weapon. A handgun.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Sometimes you ask the oddest questions. Ciao, Jessica.”

  I waited for her to reach the staircase and disappear from view, then knocked on Coddington’s door.

  “What is it now?” his gruff voice sounded through the wooden panel.

  I opened it. “May I come in?” I asked.

  Coddington shook his head. “May as well. Everyone is conspiring to keep me from working today. I should go home, put my feet up, and watch the Bruins lose another game instead of messing around in here. Can’t be any worse for my indigestion than sticking to this desk.”

  “Eldridge, are you really ready to sell this arena?

  He gave a big sigh. “I’ll give it to you, Jessica. At least you come right out and ask. No pussyfooting around. That’s what everyone in this town wants to know, and not a spleeny one of them has had the nerve to put the question to me directly. Why not?” His voice rose. “Am I such an ogre?” He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Bunch of gorbies trying to steal my dinner.”