Figure Skating Mystery Series: 5 Books in 1 Read online

  And still, there were no marks.

  The wait whipped the crowd into even a greater frenzy.

  As Erin sat in the kiss and cry, waving her arms above her head and grinning even more broadly than usual, the fans began chanting, "Six! Six! Six!"

  Patty joined in the chant, then hugged Erin, then looked at the scoreboard.

  But they were still in commercial.

  Patty hugged Erin again. Erin hugged her back. They kept hugging tighter and tighter, until, at risk for suffocation, both awkwardly let go and, running low on patience, looked around as if the scores might be playing hide-and-seek with them. Starting to get pissed off now, they looked down at the ground, then up again at the scoreboard. Erin jiggled her knees. Her mother put one hand on her thigh and shook her head. Erin quit it and chewed on a cuticle. Now Patty's knees started jiggling.

  Finally, Gil Cahill told the referee, "TV's good. Release the scores."

  The scores came up: 5.8s and 5.9s for technical.

  Erin and Patty hugged again. The fans screamed.

  And then the presentation marks: 5.7s, 5.8s, and a 5.6 from the Russian judge.

  Erin's perky grin turned into a furrowed brow. Her mother's brow furrowed, too.

  The ordinals came up. A five-four split. Four votes for Erin, five votes for Xenia.

  Xenia Trubin was the world champion.

  "Impossible!" Francis sputtered.

  "It's a travesty!" Diana almost beat him to the punch.

  "This makes no sense." Francis's finger poked the monitor in front of him. "Both skaters landed the same number of jumps, but Erin had a triple-triple combination!"

  "She seems to have lost this event on the artistic mark!"

  "Ridiculous!"

  "I agree! Her program was lovely. Youthful and joyful and carefree, it's everything one can hope for in a skating performance."

  "You know what the problem is." Francis was peering closely at the marks now. “Take a look at this panel, Diana. We have one, two, three, four judges from America, Canada, France, and Australia giving the win to Erin, and four judges from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Latvia giving the win to Xenia. The interesting decision is right here, by the Italian judge. By all rights, she should have voted with the West."

  Bex's mouth dropped open. Was Francis saying what she thought he was saying? Was he honestly going live on national television and explaining that Western judges were obligated to vote with their Western counterparts?

  "You're right, Francis," Diana concurred. "The Italian judge seems to have voted with the ex-Soviet bloc. That doesn't make any sense."

  "You know, Diana, as a citizen of the world, it was my sincerest hope that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union we would finally see an end to block voting. And yet, here we are again, the ex-Soviets all voting together and, clearly, somehow swaying the Italian judge, too."

  Bex's mouth could no longer drop open. If it dropped open any further, she would be licking her shoes, and in this booth, there was no room for it. What the heck were Francis and Diana saying? Could they even hear themselves? Could they hear what they were suggesting? What can of worms were they opening?

  "Gil," Bex whispered into her headset. "Gil, we can't let them say this. Stop them, please. We have no proof. It's libelous. And it doesn't make any sense—“

  "Be quiet, Bex, it's good television," Gil flicked on his switch to the announcers. "Great chatter, you two, keep it going, keep it going."

  "I wonder how they did it," Diana mused. "I wonder what they offered the Italian judge to ignore that beautiful performance by Erin in favor of that avant-garde mess of Xenia's."

  "This is horrible. Just horrible." Francis's voice had dropped to funeral dirge mode. "I offer my sincerest apologies to everyone watching at home, but, for the life of me, I can't think of any way to explain this decision. I am embarrassed for our sport, Diana. I don't know what to say. Poor Erin Simpson. Poor, poor, lovely Erin Simpson. She won the world championship tonight. And the Italian judge stole it from her as surely as if she'd ripped the gold medal from that sweet, brave child's neck….”

  Jordan Ares was the last skater of the night. She skated well and won the bronze medal. But, by that point, nobody cared. Even before the competition was officially over, the local radio station was announcing: "Corruption at the world championships!"

  By the time Bex followed Francis and Diana out of the announcer's booth, the media, both print and television, was camped outside like a salacious throng, demanding that the pair comment on the travesty that had just occurred.

  “Travesty," Francis said. "That's the perfect word for it. It's a travesty. Obviously, some sort of fix was in, some sort of deal was made, to keep our beautiful and talented, dear American champion from winning the gold medal."

  "It's the Italian judge,” Diana repeated. "Look at her marks. She voted for Xenia over Erin, and there was no reason for her to do that. The Italian judge isn't part of the Soviet bloc. Clearly, she had to have been coerced."

  "How can you say that?" Bex waited until she'd sequestered Francis and Diana in their 24/7 dressing room before unleashing all the comments percolating in her mind earlier. "Don't you realize that by suggesting there was a conspiracy on the part of the Soviet bloc, you're also implying that there was a conspiracy on the Western side? I mean, yes, all the ex-Soviets voted together, but so did all the Western countries. How is that not a conspiracy on both sides?"

  Francis and Diana looked at each other.

  "Hmm," Francis said, "I never thought of it that way."

  "What an interesting point you've made, Bex."

  And then they refused to say another word on the subject.

  Erin Simpson's defeat, plus a fetching photo of her tearstained yet bravely smiling face, made the front page of every major American newspaper the next morning.

  Her quotes, "I skated my very best. I'm happy with my performance. My job is to skate, and the judge's job is to judge. This silver medal is the silver lining on my cloud," made her seem simultaneously modest and plucky. Erin did five satellite interviews, seven cable talk shows (both news and sports), and called in to every national morning show to express her utter satisfaction with the decision.

  Meanwhile, as Erin insisted how content she was and how she wouldn't trade her hard-won silver for a trunk of gold, her official Web site, "Erin Excitement!" launched a petition to strip Xenia of her gold medal and award it to Erin instead. By nine a.m. the morning after the long program, it had seven thousand signatures, including one poster who listed their address as Sierra Leone, Africa. Gee, and here Bex had assumed the people of Sierra Leone had bigger things to worry about—what with the machetes chopping off limbs and all—than the outcome of the World Figure Skating Championships.

  Obviously, not all was sunshine and lollipops in the Simpson camp. Because, for every brave-trooper smile Erin offered the media, five minutes later there was Patty, snarling.

  "Anyone with eyes could see that Erin won last night. She and Xenia landed the same number of jumps, but Erin had a triple-triple combination. And if you want to talk about the artistic mark, well, just listen to what Francis and Diana Howarth said on the air! And their judgment is beyond reproach. They were Olympic champions, for Pete's sake. They truly understand artistry. I'd like to know what the Italian judge was looking at. Actually, no. I'd rather know whom she was listening to!"

  Xenia, for her part, was also besieged with interview requests. Her quotes, though, were less pithy. "I win gold medal. I am best."

  Her coach, Sergei Alemazov, elaborated, "The judges decided that Xenia is the winner. Yes, the vote was very close. But, very often in the past, the vote was very close. Erin Simpson is a nice skater. But Xenia won on the artistic mark. Xenia is terribly artistic. Xenia is a grown woman. Erin Simpson is a child. And Erin Simpson skates like a child."

  In fact, the only person not getting airtime was Silvana Potenza, the Italian judge.

  Though that wasn't due to the
media's lack of trying.

  They'd practically camped outside the poor woman's hotel room door, screaming questions and flashing lights in her face whenever she stepped outside. But Silvana Potenza, a fifty-something woman who either was rather round or simply looked it due to perpetually being wrapped in a russet floor-length fox coat, refused to say a word.

  Gil Cahill was in heaven.

  "Is this terrific or what?" he raved at the production meeting Friday morning. This was a daily event when they were in the middle of a show. The entire cast, staff, and crew got together so Gil could explain to them why they were the most useless people on earth and how he "could pull a dozen, non-English speakers in off the street and they would do a better job in each and every position." The only lucky sons of guns exempt from the daily enlightenment were a rotating series of cameramen, who had to miss the fun because one cameraman was on duty at all times, shooting all the skaters' practices, lest something exciting happen while the rest of them were absent.

  Gil went on, "You know, I thought we might get a little ratings bump with worlds being in America this year, hometown crowd and all, people love that shit. And then, when we had two girls in the top three, I thought, yeah, that should pick up a couple of extra households. But, this! This is freaking, friggin', fucking fantastic. We're raking in free publicity from every newspaper, radio station, and TV station in the country. Everyone's talking about Erin Simpson. I've got a source telling me she's on the next cover of Time and friggin' Newsweek. Can you bums imagine what kind of numbers our exhibition show is going to get on Sunday? Everyone wants to see this kid and the Russian who stole her medal. We're going to go through the roof!"

  "Uhm ..." Bex wanted to raise her hand, but Gil Cahill had a problem seeing anything outside his own ego. She settled for shouting. Or, as they called it at 24/7 production meetings, business as usual. "Gil! Gil! Gil, you know, I was

  thinking. Maybe during the Sunday show, we could do an element-by-element comparison of Xenia's and Erin's program, and show how they broke down and why some judges may have valued technical merit over artistic, and vice versa. I think it could be really informative."

  Gil looked at Bex for a moment. Then he faked falling down on his chair and snoring.

  "I take it that's a no?" Bex asked politely.

  "You're new, Bex, so I'm going to share with you a little 24/7 rule, kiddo. We don't bite gift horses on the ass around here."

  "I'll keep it mind."

  "Good kid."

  Bex changed tacks, addressing Francis and Diana. "So let me get this straight. Just so I can put it down in the research notes for Sunday. You two claim that Erin lost last night because the panel was stacked against her."

  "Well, actually the panel wasn't stacked against her. It was five to four, pro-West. She should have won, if only the Russians hadn't gotten to the Italian judge and made her change her vote," Diana patiently explained.

  "So you're saying that if the Italian judge voted with the West like she was supposed to, Erin Simpson would have won, no matter how she skated?"

  "Erin Simpson skated beautifully last night. No mistakes. No falls."

  "But you're saying that it doesn't matter. That how the two women skated is irrelevant. You make it sound like all victory is dependent on the panel. That it's preordained."

  "The results were certainly preordained last night. The Soviet bloc wanted Xenia to win, and win she did, even with that mediocre performance."

  "But, doesn't that mean that all the times Erin beat Xenia at the Grand Prix this season, she only won because the panel was stacked in her favor?"

  Diana and Francis looked at each other.

  "Hmm," Francis said, "I never thought of it that way."

  "And does that mean that when you two won your Olympic gold medal, it was only because the panel was stacked in your favor?"

  "What an interesting point you've made, Bex," Diana said.

  And stood up to leave.

  With Francis by her side, she was barely to the door, when Mark, the lucky cameramen assigned to shoot the ladies' practice for the exhibition, burst into the room, breathing heavily. He'd run all the way from the arena to the hotel, lugging his heavy camera on his back, and now he could barely get the words out between his gasps.

  "Did you hear?" he demanded. "Silvana Potenza! She's dead! Murdered!"

  CHAPTER TWO

  "What luck!" Gil Cahill exclaimed, offering the 24/7 version of condolences for the deceased and, in the next moment, whipped around to point a finger at Bex. "Bex. What are you still doing here? Why aren't you at the arena, researching this thing?"

  Because just like two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time, one object can't be in two places simultaneously, and/or Because I lack the twinkling ability to transport myself through the air, Star Trek style, were just two of the snappy-if-she-did-say-so-herself rejoinders that flashed through Bex's mind.

  What she actually said was, "I'll get right on it, Gil."

  Of course, Bex wasn't alone as she gathered up her things and ran across the hotel's parking lot toward the arena. The entire staff of 24/7 was right behind her. But they, the lucky bums, were just going to gawk. Bex was the only one expected to actually get some work done.

  Bursting through the arena's side door, Bex followed the murmur of gossip toward the body. The more certain it grew, the closer Bex figured she was getting. When the buzz around her was, "I think something happened, like some skater or coach got hurt or something," Bex knew she was heading in the wrong direction. When she heard a murmured, "Someone's dead. An accident near the rink," she knew she was getting closer. And, naturally, when she heard a voice stating with confidence, "It was the Italian judge, Silvana Potenza, and I'm sure it was something to do with the whole Xenia Trubin/Erin Simpson situation, you know how the Russians hate to lose, I bet the police are questioning them right now as we speak," Bex knew she'd hit the gossip mother lode.

  Yup, this was definitely the place. Bex's incredible research skills had cleverly led her to the heart of the action. Well, Bex's incredible research skills, and the sight of a chattering crowd huddled around the door to the refrigeration room; yellow police Do Not Cross tape practically blinking like a beacon. That last part kind of helped, too.

  She attempted to elbow her way to the front of the throng, boldly proclaiming, "I'm a researcher, I need to get in there," adding, "Stat!" for emphasis. It was, incredibly for someone who'd watched as much television as she had growing up, the only emergency type situation word she could think of.

  Even more incredibly, it seemed to do the trick.

  People moved. Well, their bodies moved. Their pupils stayed glued to the crime scene, which, only an hour earlier, had gone by the more plebian name, door. It must have been a heck of a fascinating sight, too, because the crowds kept rubbernecking long after it became obvious that, just like perennially promised, there really was "nothing to see here."

  That is, if you followed the rules and did not cross the police Do Not Cross line. But Bex worked for television. Television had very quickly taught her that rules and lines and sex-segregated locker rooms only applied to other people. Television folks got to walk in any old place they wanted. It was a rule. Really. Some kind of Constitutional Amendment or something.

  The memo about which, apparently, hadn't been passed on to the San Francisco Police Department. Go figure, but they actually looked surprised to see Bex duck under the tape and boldly enter the refrigeration room.

  There were two cops in the room, both standing over a puddle (in lieu of a chalk outline?) and staring at it rather intently. The entire room was illuminated by a single, multi-watt lightbulb dangling from the ceiling like the penultimate shot in “Psycho,” and, in addition to some old tables with broken legs, chairs with broken arms, and a garbage bag overfilled with old programs someone had obviously dumped there because it was closer than the designated storage room, the bulk of the place was occupied with rusty, brownish pipes
that sang a variation on "clink, clunk, groan, drip." Bex presumed they delivered the coolant to keep the arena's ice frozen and that the dripping water was either condensation or actual holes in the metal.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing in here?" Cop Number One demanded of Bex.

  "I'm with 24/7. We're covering this event." I.e., We bought the media rights for a heck of a lot of money, and that gives us access to every inch of this arena, including murder scenes.

  "Cool," Cop Number Two said.

  It earned him a look of disgust from Cop Number One, which Cop Number Two ignored.

  "Where's the body?" Bex asked, looking around, wondering if it, too, had been dumped in the corner to keep from having to schlepp it outside.

  "Medical examiner took it away." Cop Number Two looked to be in his mid-thirties, with neatly combed brown hair, linebacker square shoulders, and front teeth so white and uniform they could only be very expensive caps. In Bex's narrow world, there was only one reason for a civic servant to have capped teeth. Either they'd all been knocked out in a ferocious fight to protect truth, justice, and the American way, or the cop also did a little acting/modeling/commercials on the side. Considering his glee at hearing she worked in television, Bex was betting her money on the latter.

  "Was it actually Silvana Potenza?" She directed her question exclusively at Cop Number Two. Cop Number One, though at least a decade younger and thus presumably more in Bex's league, did not have capped teeth or even so much as a hint of a nose job. Ergo, she had no use for him.

  "That's what her ID said. Silvana Potenza. She's Italian, right?"

  "So how did she die?"