Skating on Thin Ice (14 page)

Big white flakes were still softly falling, filling in the ruts in the snow that had been made by the tires of departing vehicles. The night was eerily quiet—and peaceful.

Too bad, I thought, that only Mother Nature was at peace at that moment in Cabot Cove.

T
he next morning, Saturday, was a gray, cold day. After a breakfast of oatmeal, half a banana, and a cup of steaming-hot coffee, I joined Mort Metzger at the rented home of William Allen, Christine Allen’s father. I wasn’t sure whether Mort would grant my request to accompany him as he began his questioning of parties of interest the day after finding Alexei Olshansky’s nearly frozen body, although he had given me a copy of the staff list Jeremy had typed up. But to my surprise, he readily, perhaps even eagerly, agreed. “You were there when we found him, Mrs. F.,” he said, “and you seem to have a pretty good handle on what’s been going on at the arena. Happy to have you along with me.”

Seth had called from the morgue the night before to say he wouldn’t start the autopsy until the morning. In order to file an initial report and alert international authorities, Mort had driven to the sheriff’s office after letting Maureen off at home. Jeremy and I had accompanied him.

The antipathy between Jeremy and Alexei was well-known; the two simply did not get along. Mort pressed him again in the station house. Jeremy was eager to list Alexei’s offenses, all the while insisting he had nothing to do with Alexei’s demise.

Hours later, Mort sent Jeremy home with instructions not to leave town. “Obviously, the Russian kid was a foul ball,” Mort told me. “It’s clear that he wasn’t well liked, but I still think there’s a good possibility that this was an accident.”

 

William Allen sat in a wing chair in the living room. The table at his elbow held a pile of newspapers neatly refolded after having been read. Notwithstanding the fact that it was early Saturday morning, he was dressed formally, in a starched white shirt and maroon and green patterned tie. The trousers of his navy suit had a sharp crease in the center of his knee where it crossed his other leg. His shoes were polished. In contrast, his barefoot daughter huddled in a corner of the sofa, looking small inside an oversized gray sweatshirt and leggings. Her eyes were puffy and red. She clutched a pillow to her stomach as if she were in pain.

“We found him online,” Allen responded to Mort’s question of how he and his daughter came up with Alexei Olshansky as her pairs partner. “There’s a Web site that specializes in matching pairs skaters. Alexei had recently separated from his partner and had put himself up there. We knew he was serious because he included a photo and video. Of course, we’d done our homework, watched as many videos as possible of his past performances, and read what we could find about him. On the part of the form where it asks if the skater will relocate, he said ‘yes,’ and where it asked his skating goals, he’d written that he wanted to find a partner in the U.S. to skate in senior competitions.”

“What do you mean when you say you knew he was serious?” I asked.

Mr. Allen glanced over at his daughter. “Many pairs skaters are young and immature. Sometimes they’ll get angry at their partner and want to hurt or scare them. They’ll post that they’re looking for a new partner before they’ve told their old one they’re leaving. Usually, if you call their bluff, they’ll back down. It’s a foolish thing to do, and it doesn’t happen often, but it happens. We looked for clues that he was sincere. He did have a reputation for being volatile.”

“So you knew that going in?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” he said, running his thumb and forefinger along the crease in his trousers. “But that went together with being fearless. Christine’s former partner was too tentative. You can’t make progress if you’re afraid of making a mistake.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Mort said, “why would you choose to work with a skater from Russia? Wouldn’t it have been easier to find an American partner?”

“Perhaps Christine would like to address this?” Mr. Allen replied.

Chris had been picking at a loose thread on her pillow. She raised her eyes, heaved a sigh, and coughed to clear her throat. “There aren’t enough of them,” she said. “There must be about a hundred girls for every American boy who wants to skate pairs.”

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. No one really wants to talk about it, but I have my own theory.”

“Which is?”

“It’s probably because in the States and Canada if a guy thinks he wants to skate, his parents push him toward hockey rather than figure skating. They think figure skating is for girls, or for guys who are gay.”

“Why would they think that?” I asked.

“Because you have to be graceful as well as athletic. A lot of us study ballet. The men, too. I don’t think that parents in Europe are as interested in hockey, most of them anyway. Russians love ballet and figure skating and don’t think anything of men doing it. That’s why I wanted a partner from Russia. They don’t put labels on people like we do here.”

“As far as you know,” her father said.

“Yes. As far as I know.” She dropped her head again. “Anyway, there just aren’t that many senior male skaters available here, gay or straight,” she mumbled.

Mr. Allen shifted in his chair, “Regardless of the reason, introducing foreign skaters has been a boon for the sport.”

“How so?” I asked.

“The sport was dying from a lack of pairs making it to the senior levels. The International Skating Union wanted to loosen things up to bring more athletes into the picture. They changed the rules to allow a pair to compete so long as one member of the team held a passport from the country they were going to represent. They still have to sit out competitions for a year, but it’s better than it used to be. They used to require them to sit out for two years. They’ve made it easier now if you want to find a foreign partner.”

“It’s still two years if their home country won’t release them,” Chris put in.

“Was that going to be a problem with Alexei?” I asked.

She shrugged. “We didn’t know yet.”

“I understand it’s different for the Olympics,” I said.

“Yes,” Mr. Allen explained. “The Olympics require both members of a pair to hold passports of the nation they skate for.”

“Did you consider that when you brought Alexei over to skate with Chris?” I asked.

“Those are hurdles you face when you get to them,” he said, his eyes meeting mine for the first time. “First, you have to find a partner to skate with. Then you have to be good enough to attain the senior levels. Then you have to win competitions. We’re talking years of training before the subject even comes up.”

“But you assumed Alexei would be willing to become an American citizen if he and Chris achieved all those goals and were capable of making the American Olympic team.”

“Mrs. Fletcher, I make no guesses as to what went on in that young man’s head.”

Chris raised her eyes to look at her father, then dropped them again. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t matter now. We’ll have to start the process all over again,” he said, his disgust evident.

“Mr. Allen, when was the last time you saw Alexei Olshansky alive?” Mort asked.

“Yesterday morning, when he left the costume fitting.”

“Was that the last time you saw him, too, Chris?”

She nodded but kept her gaze on the pillow.

“Did you practice every morning?” I asked her.

“Every day except weekends.”

“Why not weekends?”

“We wanted to, but Mr. Coddington had the ice booked all day Saturday and Sunday, mostly for hockey games and public skating. Mr. Devlin tried to get him to give us more time, but he said we might have to wait for the end of the hockey season before he could free up some weekend ice for us.”

“But you were scheduled to practice yesterday afternoon, weren’t you?” I said. “Lyla told me the ice was reserved for you for after the noon public session.”

“We didn’t use it. We had booked the ice, but Alexei changed his mind about practicing.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He knew his former partner was in town looking for him. He thought if he could avoid her a few more days, she’d go home.”

“Then why didn’t you use the ice time for yourself?”

“It was an unnecessary expense,” Mr. Allen inserted. “They needed to work together at this point, not separately. I didn’t want to waste the money.”

“Marisa was working at the rink last night,” I said. “She mentioned that she hadn’t seen Alexei that evening but that she
had
seen you.”

Chris shook her head vehemently. “I wasn’t there. She must’ve been mistaken. Maybe she mistook someone else for me.”

“Were you with your father yesterday afternoon and evening?” Mort asked.

“Yes,” her father answered.

“I’m asking Chris, Mr. Allen. I’d like her to answer for herself, please.”

Chris glanced at her father and back to Mort. “Yes, sir, I was right here with my father all afternoon and evening. We watched a movie on TV and I did some schoolwork. I’m taking an online course for college credits, you know, on the computer.”

“Speaking of the computer,” I said, “why do you monitor her e-mail, Mr. Allen?”

“I don’t know where you get your information, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“That came from you, actually,” I said. “I overheard you last week at the rink tell Chris you wanted to check her e-mail before you kept an appointment. I found that somewhat curious.”

“Do you have children, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“I don’t. But I have many friends with children, and I don’t know too many teenagers whose parents keep an eye on their e-mail correspondence, although they’re strict about what Web sites they visit.”

“Perhaps if you had children, you would understand the need to protect them from strangers, from people who don’t have their best interests at heart. We live in a dangerous world, Mrs. Fletcher. I protect my own. Anything else?”

“I did have one more question,” I said. “I overheard Brian Devlin say something about a scandal involving Alexei. Do you know anything about that?”

“My, what big ears you have,” Allen said to me. “Do you listen in on everyone’s conversations?”

He turned to Mort. “I don’t mean to be rude, Sheriff, but these are a lot of questions for what appears to be a tragic accident. I told you that Christine and I were not at the rink. What more do you need to know?”

“We haven’t determined yet if Olshansky’s death
was
accidental, Mr. Allen,” Mort said. “That’s why we’re asking questions, to help us make that determination.”

“Do you think someone pushed him into the pit on purpose?” Chris asked me, her voice quivering.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said. “The sheriff needs you to answer all his questions as truthfully as you can. Were you aware of any scandal surrounding Alexei?”

“Whatever it was, I’m sure it was nothing more than the usual adolescent high jinks,” Mr. Allen said.

“Chris, had you heard about a scandal?” Mort asked.

Chris hesitated before replying. “There was a rumor that he might’ve gotten his girlfriend, Dariya, pregnant, and that’s why he left her at home when he came here.” She rushed to add, “But I don’t know if it’s true. He never said anything about her to me.”

“Then I take it Alexei was not gay,” I said.

“Is this relevant to your questioning, Sheriff?” Mr. Allen asked.

“It could have an impact on who his friends and acquaintances were,” Mort replied, “and who we’d want to question about his death.”

“In that case, yes, my understanding was that Alexei was heterosexual. Wouldn’t you agree, Christine?”

She nodded. “He always had a lot of women around him. That’s why Mr. Devlin tried to keep most of the practices closed, to keep him from getting distracted. I know he was upset when Mr. Coddington insisted that some of our practices were open to the public. Frankly, I didn’t like having people there, but it wasn’t my decision to make.”

“Satisfied, Sheriff?” Allen said.

We got up to leave when I remembered something. “By the way, Chris, what movie did you say you watched yesterday?”

“Huh? I didn’t say.”

“You said you worked on your computer and watched a movie. What was the name of it?”

“Oh, just some silly old thing in black-and-white. I wasn’t really paying much attention.”

“Were you paying attention, Mr. Allen?”

“Not in the least. I was catching up with my newspapers.” He patted the pile on the table.

We thanked them for their time and went to Mort’s marked patrol car.

“Cold son of a gun, isn’t he?” Mort said. “He doesn’t seem too broken up about Alexei.”

“He obviously didn’t like him,” I said.

“Then why pay for him to come all the way here from Russia?”

“He’s a determined man, Mort. I think he was willing to overlook almost everything as long as it resulted in a world-class skating partner for his daughter. Parents will do strange things for a child. I think William Allen is a man who has made a lot of sacrifices to give his daughter her best chance to succeed at what she loves. Bringing a partner from Russia to skate with her is just one of those sacrifices. But aside from his personal dislike of Alexei, I don’t think he was too happy with the results.”

“But did he dislike him enough to heave him into the icy water?”

“He might have wanted to, but it doesn’t matter. They gave each other an alibi. They were home together watching an old black-and-white movie that, conveniently, neither of them remembers. Where to next?”

“The victim’s home, Mrs. F. Let’s see what we come up with there.”

A
lexei’s rented rooms were on the second floor of an old house down near the harbor. Built by a whaling captain in the nineteenth century, the house had been renovated twenty years ago to accommodate a downstairs gallery and shop, which represented local artists and was popular with tourists, especially in the summer, and an upstairs apartment with one large main room with an open kitchen, off which was a small bedroom and bath. The apartment was furnished with a long sofa, coffee table, and two bookcases flanking a window that overlooked the street and provided a partial view of the docks. A pair of tall stools drawn up to an island in the kitchen served as an eating area, and another table had been pushed against a wall to double as a desk.