Skating on Thin Ice (27 page)

Cautiously, I tipped my body forward, reaching my arms out in front of me, and slid first one foot and then the other, advancing slowly. If I took a tumble, I wanted to land on my stomach to avoid cracking the back of my head on the hard ice as had happened during my initial skating attempt. I had to assume that the dim figure splayed on the ice was Jeremy Hapgood; as far as I knew, he was the only person inside the arena at that hour. I felt a sense of urgency and, without reconsidering, continued across the vast expanse of ice in his direction.

It seemed an eternity before I reached my goal and warily squatted down, dropping to my knees—next to Jeremy. I grabbed his oversized down jacket and tried unsuccessfully to raise one arm to turn him over. On the ice next to him was the remote control device he’d demonstrated to Mort Metzger, the contraption that controlled the icecleaning machine.

I tugged off my gloves and felt around his head, attempting to locate where a pulse might beat in his neck. I let out a breath of relief when I detected one, albeit faint and irregular. A dark stain of blood had already congealed under the cheek touching the ice.

I shook a shoulder and managed to dislodge the side of his face glued in place by the blood. “Jeremy,” I said. “What’s happened to you?”

My mind was a jumble of conflicting thoughts, but one took precedence. I had to get help—and get it fast. I looked back across the ice and dreaded the return trip. My cell phone was somewhere over there. I’d come close to falling a number of times on my way to Jeremy; the rink looked like a hundred-mile-long Siberian frozen lake.

I drew a deep breath, managed to get to my feet, and had taken only one step when the screeching rattle of a garage door opening sounded behind me. Startled, I whirled around to see the huge Zamboni lumber up the ramp onto the ice like some prehistoric monster emerging from its dark lair.

I bent my knees to maintain my balance on the ice and waved my arms. “Over here,” I shouted. “We need help.”

The roar of the engine was deafening in the empty arena as the machine slowly turned in my direction, blinding me momentarily with its headlights. One foot went out from under me, and I painfully fell back onto my knees. The machine continued coming straight at me and Jeremy, the razor-sharp blade cutting the top layer of ice, the long brush smoothing out the wash of cold water that formed the new coating. How could the driver not see us?

But questioning why he hadn’t spotted Jeremy’s prone body on the ice, and me frantically waving and yelling, wasn’t doing us any good. The Zamboni continued to bear down on us; the lights of the huge machine were in my eyes and prevented me from seeing who was in the driver’s seat. My voice was drowned out by the increasing roar of the engine as it closed the gap between us. I attempted to stand again, but the soles of my boots couldn’t find any purchase on the ice. I tried crawling, but my knees slipped away.

It was then that I remembered the remote control unit that now lay beside Jeremy. I grabbed it and started flipping switches, trying desperately to remember what he’d told Mort while demonstrating it for him. I looked up. The Zamboni was about to crush us both; its long, razor-sharp blade would slice us to ribbons. Despairing, I pushed every button. The Zamboni’s whirring engine was deafening. Then, as the machine loomed over us, it whined, its forward motion stopped with a jerk, and the engine shut down, a wave of water pulsing forward to dampen my knees.

I’d been holding my breath for the past few seconds. Now I let it out, and my body, which was as tense as a steel rod, relaxed along with the whoosh of exhaled air. I looked up from where I sat on the ice and saw a figure climb down from the high seat. It took a moment for me to see that it was Brian Devlin. As he approached, he said, “Good God, Mrs. Fletcher. What are you doing here? I never saw you. This could have been a horrible accident.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I had no doubt that he’d aimed the Zamboni directly at us.

He reached down to help me to my feet. “Is that—”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s Jeremy Hapgood. He needs a doctor immediately.”

“What happened to him?” Devlin asked. “I didn’t know that anyone was here.”

“We can discuss that after we’ve called for an ambulance. I lost my cell phone.”

“Here. Use mine.”

With trembling fingers, I dialed 911. I told the operator who answered that there was a badly injured man at the ice arena who needed help immediately and was assured that she would dispatch someone right away.

Devlin reached out and plucked his cell phone from my hand. Across the ice, mine began to ring. There was no way I could reach it in time to answer the call without Devlin’s help. He didn’t offer it.

“Jeremy asked me to meet him here tonight, Brian,” I said. “He said he would show me how Alexei died.”

Devlin knelt down beside Jeremy. “How would he know anything about it?” he asked. “Unless he was about to confess to you.” He pushed Jeremy onto his back and slapped the younger man’s cheeks. “C’mon, buddy,” he said. “Wake up.”

“I doubt if that was Jeremy’s reason for calling me. He had no reason to confess because he didn’t kill Alexei.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“What I’m not sure of is why you would be here at this hour driving the Zamboni. You’re a coach. Coaches are not responsible for keeping the ice clean.”

My cell phone rang again. Again Devlin ignored it.

“I spoke with Jeremy less than an hour ago,” I said. “He called me at home from here. Yet within that hour he ends up close to death out here on the ice. As far as I can tell, you’re the only person here aside from him. Are you telling me that you have no idea what happened to him?”

Up to this point Devlin had been conciliatory, feigning concern for me and Jeremy. But my questioning changed his demeanor. He got to his feet, his face set in a scowl, jutted out his chin, and said, “I’ve really had enough of your accusations, Mrs. Fletcher. I resent your tone and your innuendos that I might’ve had something to do with Alexei’s death, or tonight with whatever happened to Jeremy. I’m leaving.” He turned his back to me and began sliding toward the gate.

“You’re not even waiting for the ambulance?” I said, incredulous. “You attacked Jeremy, didn’t you, Brian?” I called to his retreating back. “And you intended to use the Zamboni to make it look like an accident?”

He stopped and retraced his steps to me.

I added, “And you wouldn’t have hesitated including me among the victims.”

He forced a crooked smile. “Oh, you aren’t content with accusing me of killing Alexei, are you? You’re also saying that I wanted to kill Jeremy and you. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Fletcher, and you haven’t from the beginning.”

“Very clever, Brian. A bit of misdirection. No, I’m not saying that you killed Alexei Olshansky, because I know that you didn’t. But you were willing to kill others to shield the person who did.”

We were interrupted by loud banging at the rear entrance. Mort burst in through the door, shouting instructions to his deputies. Instantly, the rink was flooded with light, leaving us blinking in the glare. Then two EMTs arrived, carrying a portable gurney.

“Where is the injured person?” one of them asked.

They had a lot of trouble keeping their footing but eventually managed to remove Jeremy from the ice and carry him out to the waiting ambulance, its rotating emergency beams combined with those of the police cruisers lighting up the dark parking lot. I followed the EMTs, stopping only to retrieve my cell phone, and was grateful to step onto the terra firma of the rubber mats.

“I think it’s time I left,” Brian said, walking past me toward the exit.

“What’s your rush, Devlin?” Mort said. “I’d like to hear what happened here tonight.”

“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Fletcher? She seems to have all the answers, even if none of them are right.”

“It was Lyla who pushed Alexei into that pit, Brian, wasn’t it?” I said.

I expected a vehement denial. Instead, he was silent.

“You and Lyla make quite a pair, Brian, but not as skaters.”

“Mrs. F.? What’s going on?”

“Just the attempted murder of Jeremy Hapgood tonight. I would have been killed in that attempt, too, if it wasn’t for Jeremy’s love of electronics and the remote control he built for the Zamboni.”

Mort looked confused, and I can’t say that I blamed him.

“She’s making it up, the way she does in her books,” Devlin told our sheriff.

“I’m not making up anything, Mort. While you’re questioning Mr. Devlin about what happened here tonight, you might also get him to tell you what he knows about Alexei Olshansky’s murder.”

Mort confronted Devlin. “You have anything to say about that?”

“I’ll tell you this, Sheriff. I didn’t kill Alexei.”

“That’s true, Mort,” I said, “but he knows who did.”

Mort looked even more confused than ever.

“Don’t listen to her,” Devlin said.

At that, a female voice said from the shadows, “She’s right, Sheriff. I pushed Alexei into the pit.”

We all turned to face Lyla Fasolino, who stepped into the light.

“Don’t say another word,” Devlin said.

“No, Brian. It’s no use. I want to stop lying. We were going to be found out sooner or later. She was going to make sure of that.” Lyla walked to his side, then fixed me in a hard stare. “How long did you know?”

“It became evident to me this afternoon,” I replied.

“What tipped you off?” Mort asked.

“A chance visit to Charles Department Store,” I said to Mort. “You and I assumed that the golden chain recovered from the bottom of the ice pit belonged to Alexei. But he’d dropped his off to be repaired and never picked it up.” I turned to Lyla. “Where’s your gold chain, Lyla? You were never without it. But you’re not wearing it now—and you’ve been rubbing a bruise on the back of your neck for days. When you struggled at the edge of the pit and scratched his face, Alexei ripped off your chain and it fell into the water. I think I know why you killed him, but I’m sure the sheriff would rather hear directly from you.”

“You don’t have to say anything, Lyla,” Devlin said, putting his arm around her.

“They may as well hear the truth, Brian,” she said, looking down and rubbing her neck where the bruise must have healed by now. “I don’t know how he found out, but Alexei knew about a disastrous business deal that Brian had been involved in years ago. He threatened to go to Mr. Coddington about it. Brian owes money to a lot of people, some of them not very nice people. He was working on a new way to pay off his debtors. I pleaded with him not to get involved with this guy, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Alexei said he wanted a piece of the action himself to keep his mouth shut.”

“What guy? What action?” Mort asked.

I answered for her. “I believe that Brian entered into a partnership of sorts with Harvey Gemell again. He was a party to the first deal that resulted in a man’s death. Gemell was trying to buy this arena at a bargain-basement price—with Brian’s help—by arranging for a series of disruptions and accidents, intended to pressure Coddington into throwing up his hands. I don’t know how Alexei came into that information, but in the end it cost him his life.” I turned to Lyla. “Please correct me, Lyla, if I have some of the details wrong.”

She offered nothing additional.

Devlin dropped his arm from Lyla’s shoulders and stepped away from her. “Okay,” he said, “you know who killed Alexei. But I had nothing to do with it.”

Lyla gasped.

Devlin cast a final glance at Lyla before striding toward the front door.

Mort pursued him and grabbed his arm. “Where are
you
going?”

“I’m going home. I’m tired of all this. Getting involved in a business deal isn’t against the law, is it?”

“It is if it involves fraud, Devlin,” Mort said. “Besides, if what Mrs. Fletcher says is true about what happened here tonight, you’ll be facing a charge of at least assault, and maybe attempted murder.”

Mort signaled his deputies, who took Brian into custody. “If you’re tired, these gentlemen will be happy to give you a warm, comfortable bed for the night when they drive you down to headquarters.”

When he returned, Lyla was crying. “I was so sure everything was going to go right this time. So much has gone wrong in my life.”

“What was it that went wrong for you, Lyla?” I asked. “I thought you had a good life.”

“I never made a success of anything,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Sure, I won a few skating competitions, but everything went downhill after that. My pro career was a flop, and I had to come home to Cabot Cove and beg Mr. Coddington for a job. And Brian, too, missed that thrill of victory we had when we were young and competing for medals. I thought, this time, we’ll do it together. But I was wrong.”

There was a flurry of activity at the door, and I looked over to see my cabdriver waving at me from behind one of Mort’s deputies.

“You ready to go home, Mrs. Fletcher?” he called out. “I finished the book. It was great. I never guessed who the murderer was.”

H
ad Jeremy Hapgood not recovered in time to relate to Mort Metzger and to me what had transpired at the arena that night, Brian Devlin might have walked away without any charges being filed against him. Here’s what Jeremy told us during a bedside interview early the following morning.

“I came to the arena to meet with Mr. Devlin about becoming Christine’s pairs partner. He turned me down flat. He told me that I was a second-rate skater who’d never make it in competitions, and that I should stick to driving the Zamboni and hang up my skates. I guess I got hotheaded and started swearing at him. I might have even pushed him. I don’t remember. Anyway, this was right before I called Mrs. Fletcher and asked her to meet me at the rink. I had my own theory about how Alexei died. I was sure that Mr. Devlin had done it to shut him up about the coach’s past, and I wanted to tell Mrs. Fletcher about it.”