Skating on Thin Ice (3 page)

“You do. I never said you were out of shape, just too ... let’s say ‘along in years’ to begin skating again. You’ll fall and give yourself a concussion, if not a broken bone. How are you going to write with your arm in a sling?”

“My goodness, you are certainly predicting dire consequences if I get back on the ice. But I’m willing to take the chance. Besides, I think it’s going to be fun.”

“If you fall, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t,” I said.

And I didn’t. But he found out anyway.

“A
ll right. Do it again. This time focus on soft, deep knees; feel like you’re sinking into the ice on that outside edge. I want to see a long ride-out. From the back crossovers. Let’s go. Deep knees. That’s better. On three, the double axel. Hold that back outside edge. One . . . two . . . three.”

Brian Devlin clapped his gloved hands and pivoted on the ice as the two skaters passed him and executed a side-by-side jump. “Better! But check that rotation, Alexei. You have to be in control of your shoulder. Chris, watch when his right leg comes around, and match your timing to his. Let’s try it with music.” Devlin pulled a paper from his pocket and consulted its contents. “Cue the exhibition program, Lyla,” he yelled to his assistant coach, who was in a booth beside the rink.

The two members of the pairs team Devlin was coaching had arrived in Cabot Cove separately several months ago. Christine Allen was a pretty eighteen-year-old with a halo of curly black hair that she’d inherited from her African-American father, and dark almond-shaped eyes, a legacy from her Korean mother. She had moved from San Francisco to train with Devlin. According to a feature article in our local newspaper, she’d skated at the Yerba Buena Ice Skating and Bowling Center, training home of famed Olympic gold medalist Brian Boitano. She now was living with her father, William Allen, a banker, who had taken up temporary residence here in a rented house downtown, at least until he was confident that his daughter had settled in. Her mother, who had stayed home with a younger daughter, planned to visit at a later time.

Christine was lithe but muscular, and she looked petite standing next to her partner, who was broad shouldered and at least a foot taller. With a shock of blond hair falling in his eyes, Alexei Olshansky seemed the more self-assured of the pair. The newspaper had quoted him as saying he was from Moscow and had come to Cabot Cove after he and his previous skating partner Irina Bednikova had parted ways. I had never seen the Russian pair interviewed on TV, but from what I gathered in the article, Alexei’s English must have been more than adequate, which was fortunate for him. As far as I knew, no one in Cabot Cove spoke fluent Russian. Certainly, Coach Devlin didn’t.

 

I leaned against the boards, watching the young couple practice. They had been skating together for only a short time and were working to develop the seamless unity required to compete at the highest levels.

Alexei skated a circle around Christine, showing off with fancy footwork. He pretended to lose his balance, rocking back on his skates and wheeling his arms, catching himself at the very last moment to lean forward into a low bow. I couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but their laughter carried over the ice.

Strains of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” came over the loud speakers.

Alexei smacked his palm to his forehead with exaggerated exasperation. “
Nyet! Nyet!
Not that again,” he cried.

Devlin ignored his histrionics. “We’ll listen to new music this weekend,” he said. “Please, Alexei, let’s not get into a squabble over the music. I want to see you skate around the rink together.” They took off across the ice. “Switch sides, please. Alexei, you have to be on the outside.
She’s
on the inside. That’s it. Match your strokes. Signal to each other when to start the crossover. I want to see you in unison.”

“Isn’t he dreamy?” a voice to my left said.

Marisa Brown leaned her elbows next to mine on the railing and stared out across the rink.

“Which one?” I asked.

A puff of air escaped her lips. “Brian Devlin, of course,” she said, her brows disappearing under her brown bangs as her eyes met mine. “You couldn’t think I meant Alexei.”

“Well, he’s attractive, as well,” I said, smiling at the teenager who’d been hired to staff the front desk. A homegrown skater with a lot of potential but not a lot of capital to support her passion, Marisa was paying for her lessons by working part-time at the rink.

“I suppose Alexei is nice-looking in an adolescent sort of way,” she said, “but Brian is gorgeous. He has such sultry eyes. Doesn’t he remind you of George Clooney? Everyone says so.”

“Everyone?”

“All my girlfriends.”

Devlin was considerably older than Marisa and sported two days’ growth of stubble on his chiseled jaw—by design, I thought—and possessed the sort of dark, brooding looks so many men in Hollywood cultivate these days. I could see how he would appeal to the local teen population.

“How old is Alexei?” I asked.

“Twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that,” she said, waving a hand around. “He doesn’t even have a beard yet.”

“He’s mature enough to have traveled halfway around the world to further his skating career,” I said.

Marisa shrugged. “True,” she said. “He’s traveled a lot. But he still lives with his mother when he goes back to Russia. That’s what the skating magazines say. Anyway, travel doesn’t make him a man. From what I’ve seen, he still acts like a kid. Carries on whenever he doesn’t get his way.”

“Ah,” I said, taking another look at Christine Allen’s new partner.

Devlin’s assistant coach, Lyla Fasolino, overheard our conversation. “If he’s rude to you again, Marisa, please don’t complain to Jeremy,” she said. “There’s enough bad blood between them. Just let
me
know.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t you have some work to do for me in the office?”

“I already typed up the list of students for the exhibition.”

“You may have typed it up, but I haven’t seen it,” Lyla said, turning Marisa toward the door and giving her a gentle push.

“All right,” the younger woman said with a sigh. “I’ll go print it out and put it in your mailbox.”

“Along with the new hockey schedule, please. And we have rehearsal later. We’ll see you on the ice at five. Don’t be late.”

“How is she doing?” I asked Lyla as the girl walked away.

“She’s a great kid. Works really hard and has a lot of talent. She took first place last fall at the regional competition and just missed the podium at the sectionals. I’m sure by next year she’ll be ready for the junior ladies championships.”

“You must be very pleased,” I said.

She shrugged. “I am. I guess.” She nervously played with a gold chain around her neck, and I gathered she was less than thrilled with the prospect.

“Why do I hear a ‘but’ in there?” I asked.

“Marisa needs to focus,” she said, tucking the chain into the neck of her shirt. “She’s been thinking about competing in pairs. One of the other coaches, Mark Rosner, has matched her with Jeremy Hapgood. He works here, too. You may have seen him on the Zamboni.”

“I have. That’s exciting. Won’t being a singles skater help with her pairs skills?”

“Without doubt, but she’ll also be doubling her chance of injuries by participating in both pairs and singles, and she won’t be giving full attention to either discipline.”

“It’s been done before, hasn’t it?”

“That’s what Mark argues. But the decision should be based on what’s best for Marisa, not because Mark wants to compete with our star over there by coaching another pairs team.” She nodded toward where Brian Devlin continued to work with Christine Allen and Alexei Olshansky.

“Can we get a little speed up there?” I heard Devlin yell at Christine and Alexei as he clapped to set the pace. “Move, move, move, move. You’re skating on ice, not mud. The judges want to see action.”

Lyla turned to me. “So, what brings you down here, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“Just looking around; I’m planning to start skating again soon.”

“You are?”

“It’s been years since I’ve been on the ice,” I said, “but I used to be a pretty fair skater. I’m going to give it a try. We’ll see what happens. I’m hoping it’s like what they always say about riding a bike when you haven’t ridden for years, that the skill will come right back to you.”

“I hope so,” Lyla said, looking doubtful, “although it’s not quite the same. But it’s a great sport. Remember, we have skating chairs for beginners, if you need one.”

“Skating chairs?”

“Metal chairs you can push around the ice to give you something to hold on to, to keep you from falling. We don’t allow them on the weekends when it’s crowded, but you could use one during the week until you get your skating legs back. It might be a little low for you, though. We have them for the children.”

“That’s a new wrinkle to me. There have been so many changes here since I last skated. I was reading about them in the newspaper this morning. Oh, and here’s the man responsible for it all. Good morning, Eldridge.”

Eldridge Coddington strode past us without acknowledging my greeting, his eyes trained on the trio on the ice. He was a tall, spare man with pale blue eyes and a fringe of white hair sticking out from under his olive green flat cap. A deep vertical line was etched between his eyebrows thanks to his usual scowl, and no one would chalk up the channels that bracketed his mouth as being caused by excessive smiling. He and his wife, Bella, had been childless, and though he’d always been an irritable man, she had softened his edges and pushed him into social and civic activities. When he’d lost her to a flu epidemic a decade ago, he’d retreated into solitude, rejecting all offers of sympathy and sinking deeper into depression. Nothing seemed to interest him. The town had seen his recent efforts to fix up the ice arena as a positive sign, evidence that he was emerging from the doldrums. The word around town was that the leopard was changing his spots. But I was not so sure.

Coddington leaned over the boards, waving a copy of the
Cabot Cove Gazette
in the air. “Devlin!” he roared. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

The coach didn’t bother turning around. He pointed to his pairs team and waved his hand in the air, indicating for them to continue practicing.

Alexei and Chris began skating backward.

“Devlin! Did you hear me?” Coddington boomed again.

The skaters stopped where they were, confused about what to do.

There was a moment of silence before Devlin slowly rotated on his skates. “
I
am giving a class right now,” he said in clipped tones. “
You
will have to wait.”

“How dare you talk to that reporter about what we discussed? Those were privileged conversations.”

“You are interrupting my lesson and wasting my time. We can discuss that later.” Devlin turned his back on Coddington and continued talking with his students.

“It had better be sooner than later,” the rink owner shouted, his face red. “I’ll be in my office. And I want some answers.”

“Oh, dear,” I said to Lyla as Coddington stomped out. “He’s not very happy today.”

“Mr. Coddington is never very happy,” Lyla whispered. “I’m used to his ways, but Brian isn’t. Big-time coaches can have big-time egos. They like to be stroked. Mr. Coddington is not very good at stroking.”

“Evidently,” I said. “I wonder what he was so angry about. I thought it was a wonderful article.”

“This is the second week in a row that he’s become apoplectic over something in the paper. Last week, it was the police report.”

“Oh, yes. I saw that,” I said. “He must have been upset about screws being deliberately dropped on the ice.”

“He was more upset that it was mentioned in the paper. It wasn’t that many screws, really. They probably slipped out of someone’s pocket. I don’t think it was intentional. But Jeremy made a big fuss with Mr. Coddington about how it could have damaged the Zamboni, not to mention causing skaters to fall. Anyway, Mr. Coddington called in the sheriff. Frankly, I think he was more worried about the machine than the skaters, but that’s just between us.”

“You really think so?”

She nodded. “Of course, when Christine tripped over the rubber mat here and hurt herself, I heard him tell Marisa to check his liability insurance. Christine’s father, Mr. Allen, gave the old man a heck of a tongue-lashing and threatened to sue, but I don’t think he will. He’s counting on Brian Devlin making his daughter a star. Anyway, she wasn’t badly hurt. Skaters fall all the time. They’re used to it.”

“But they usually fall
on
the ice,” I said, “not off.”

“She’s tough. And it looks like we’re settling into a good routine now.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Lyla Fasolino had come home to Cabot Cove after a career as a professional skater. She’d joined Holiday on Ice right out of junior college and stayed with the touring show for five years, performing all over Europe. But she’d never made it into the featured ranks. Tired of travel, she’d come home to run the figure skating school, only to have the rink close for renovations. But it was back now, and so was she, giving group and private lessons and administering the program.

“How do you like working with Devlin?” I asked.

“I won’t lie,” she said. “It was a bit rocky at first, you know, having to get used to another coach who demands a lot of attention and who’s more important than I am. Mr. Coddington has Devlin addressing the local business organizations to get their support. He never asked
me
to do that. But I’m warming to Brian. He can be charming when he wants to be. And he’s not hard on the eyes.”

“Marisa certainly seems to agree.”

“I have to admit that his movie star looks haven’t hurt business. We’ve gotten a gaggle of teenage girls signing up for classes. Sold out this season. Of course, they were all disappointed when it wasn’t Brian who showed up to teach, but they seem to be content with glimpsing him from afar.”