Can't Tell Them

“Oh, for the love of . . .”

I’d been in the lobby of Greensboro, North Carolina’s, Coliseum arena, the Christmas tree that had been decorated there jerking me back into the season from the skating competitions that had been controlling my life in the last couple of weeks, where Stacy Nelson, the event coordinator, had stopped me and we did a doubletake. The figure skating regionals were always done right before Christmas, which invariably stole the Christmas spirit from me. This year was no exception to that.

I had come back to the arena to retrieve notes I’d left at the judge’s table down near the ice, when we’d heard the voices raised—well, at least one—and we’d headed toward a door into the skating arena.

“That bastard’s been on a tear all week,” she said, as we got to the door and looked down the seating area to the ice. One of the men’s figure skating coaches, Frank Foyle, was out on the ice with two of his young men skaters. As we reached the door, we saw him slap one of them so hard that the skates came out from under the skater and he went down on the ice. My heart took a jump when I realized that it was the nineteen-year-old skating phenom, Kyle Kim, of Asian descent as so many of the U.S. skaters were, and a dream to watch on the ice. The other skater, looking on and cowering, was his stable mate, Jordan Reynolds, who had been the highlight men’s skater of the previous year but had been eclipsed this year by Kim.

We were at the end of the first day of the mid-December U.S. Figure Skating Association’s regional championships. The men had done their short program. Kim was at the top of the rankings; Reynolds was number three. It was after 10:00 p.m. and the complex was about to close down for the night, with Foyle’s men being the last off the rink from the practice for the next day’s free skate competitions.

Frank Foyle had every reason to be proud of where his two men were sitting in the rankings, but he was a demanding coach, as I well knew. Too demanding, I believed. And he could be volatile. He certainly was dominating with his men skaters, and in more than skating terms. One of his promising skaters, Richard Rankin, had folded under the pressure a few years earlier and had committed suicide. Foyle’s methods had been scrutinized at the time, but he had too big a name in figure skating to be kicked out of it.

There were just the three of them on the ice now. The only other person in the arena was a technician up in the lighting booth. Nelson, the event coordinator, was about to bellow something down at the ice at Foyle, but the man already was exiting the boards and going in under the stands where the bowels of the arena, including the locker rooms, were. Kim was picking himself up off the ice. Jordan Reynolds followed Foyle off the ice and under the stands.

Nelson turned and went back to the lobby, and I descended the aisle to the judges’ desk, which was where I sat during the competition. I was a TV sports caster now in Greensboro, but I’d had my own run at the figure skating competitions ten years previously.

“You OK, Kyle?” I called out as I walked down toward the aisle to the ice from arena heaven. “You need help? That wasn’t much in the Christmas spirit.”

“No, it’s OK, Ted,” he said. “Why should Frank be any different during Christmas?” he added. He was already up and skating over to the boards. “I cut my forearm on my blade, though. That won’t help me any tomorrow night.”

“Here, I’ll go back to the locker room with you and get that disinfected and wrapped up.” He could call me by my first name rather than Mr. Joyner, because we’d been intimate. That put us on first-name basis. That had happened the previous summer in Colorado Springs, at the Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame by the Broadmoor Hotel, where ceremonies had been held in last year’s national championships. Jordan Reynolds had taken the gold and Kim the bronze. Kim and I had had an immediate attraction and he’d wound up in my bed at the Broadmoor. That wasn’t unusual for male figure skaters. That made for some awkwardness here in Greensboro, of course, with Kim on the ice and me as a judge, but it wasn’t something we could tell anyone about, and the U.S. figure skating community was small enough that judges knowing the skaters couldn’t be helped. We just tended not to talk about it. Of course, not many judges knew the skaters like I knew Kim—every luscious square inch of him.

It didn’t really matter. It looked like the gold-bronze rankings might be switched this year. Kim’s short skate had been impeccable, unreachable, and it looked like this year he was going to blast right past Jordan Reynolds.

That is if the cut on his arm, caused by his coach, wasn’t bad enough to disrupt his concentration when he skated.

This was where my lack of surprise that Frank Foyle had struck Kyle Kim came in, though. The strong rumor was that Foyle favored Reynolds. I knew for a fact that he was fucking both of his skaters. He had fucked me while he was my coach. That’s the sort of control he demanded over his male skaters and he only took them on if they were cute and willing to go under him. In exchange he made them champion skaters.

But his pique with Kyle for winning the short program no doubt stemmed from Kyle having beaten Frank’s favored skater, Reynolds, so far in the competition. To be fair to Jordan Reynolds, though, although I can’t see him being displeased to being displaced, I got no indication from him that he resented Kim personally or appreciated Foyle’s preference for him. He seemed to be in awe of what Kim could do on the ice, and he chaffed a bit at what he had to give to Foyle to be coached by him. He was at the stage I’d reached when I parted from Foyle.

By the time we got to the men’s locker room, we were the only ones there. Both Foyle and Reynolds had left, along with all the rest. Kyle showered, coming out with just a towel around him, while I went looking for a first aid kit. He wasn’t a bit self-conscious by showing himself nearly naked around me. We were well beyond the stage of such embarrassment considering what we’d done with each other. Then we sat side by side on a bench running between two banks of lockers and I tended to the wound. It wasn’t deep, and although there had been blood, it had mostly stopped on its own.

I had been smitten by the young man in Colorado Springs that summer and I not less so with his sitting beside me, just with a towel around his waist and giving me his forearm. Our heads were close together, and the kiss just came naturally. The second one was deeper and I had my hand under the towel to find that he was hardening. I was in erection too.

I looked around. “Where can we . . . ?” I didn’t ask him if he’d let me lay him. His response made clear that wasn’t necessary. He had me unzipped and we each had our hand on the cock of the other.

“The shower. You could strip and we could go back in the shower,” Kyle whispered.

I was processing that, mentally already being in the shower room with the young man in my embrace, pressing his back against the tiles, his knees hooked on my hips as a fucked up inside him—but all that was dissipated by the sound of whistling from out in the corridor. We managed to pull apart and Kyle had his locker open and his briefs on and was pulling a T-shirt over his head, when the technician who had been in the lighting booth came in. Nodding to us, he opened a locker down the row from where we were and began to strip. He obviously was going to use the shower room.

“I’ll wait for you upstairs in the lobby,” I said to Kyle and then fled the locker room.

A few minutes later Kyle appeared, all bundled up, although it wasn’t too cold out in December in Greensboro. It was evident, though, that the moment was over—at least for now. Or was it?

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“I’m staying at the Holiday Inn on West Gate City Boulevard,” he answered.

“Isn’t everyone?” I asked, with a laugh. “How were you planning to get there?”

“Frank brought me. It looks like he didn’t wait to take me back.”

“It’s tough thinking of you having to stay in a hotel and concentrate so hard on skating right before Christmas.”

“It’s hard having to give up Christmas for this every year,” Kim answered, “but this is what I’ve dedicated my time to.”

“I think what you need tonight is to relax and not think about tomorrow. And you need a little of the Christmas mood. I have a car. I live here in Greensboro, but my apartment’s across town. I have a Christmas tree up in the apartment. You need a bit of the Christmas spirit. I checked into the hotel to be in the mix and for convenience to the competitions. I could give you a lift to the hotel or we could go to my apartment. Your call.” I didn’t want to pressure him, but he wasn’t the only one who needed a break from this figure skating at Christmas.

“That would be nice—a lift to the hotel,” he said, and the look he gave me told me that I could give him so much more than a lift once we got to the hotel.

I didn’t drive him to the hotel. I drove him to my apartment across town. That didn’t seem to bother him a bit. He did note that a was driving off in the wrong direction when we left the Coliseum, but when I said, “There are too many from the competitions staying at that hotel,” he accepted the explanation and immediately understood that it wouldn’t be good for either of us for others to see us hooking up. He didn’t ask where we were going or how long it was taking us to get there.

Where we were going was my bed in my apartment. We had a drink—nonalcoholic, of course—and listened to a Christmas album by the lighted tree, but I can’t say we devoted a lot of time to the Christmas mood. I took him to my bed and we fucked most of the night.

Kyle was small and compact but hard-bodied and, in keeping with this talent for getting low in spins and being able to do a full leg extension and fully extended leg arch-from-behind Biellmann spin, he had extraordinary flexibility. All of that made for a great fuck—well, three fucks. I did him in a missionary, with his legs in several very interesting positions, and a doggy. When we were naked and starting into it on the bed, one couldn’t have told from our frenzied wrestling whether Kyle was resisting or attacking. But when I first got lodged just inside his channel, him gasping and letting out a plaintive little cry, he surrendered to me, collapsing back on the bed, gripping my biceps with his hands, arching his back, raising his tail to me, and just lay there, docilely, only his eyes flashing the taking, as slowly, ever so slowly, as I stretched out over him, I sank in. Both of us were panting, waiting for it to begin—the dancing of the deep, sensuous fuck. And then it did—it began. And it continued, building, eventually up to a fury of giving and taking again.

We were accomplished lovers with each other, taking off here from where we’d left off with the sex in Colorado Springs. After we’d dozed a bit from the first two couplings, I lay back on the bed and he rode me rodeo style in a cowboy. He hadn’t lost his enthusiasm for doing athletic exercises with me in bed.

I had been a figure skater too. I could keep up with him—almost. At least I could manage well considering I was almost ten years older than he was.

After we’d both had our third finish and were lying there, stretched out against each other’s bodies, and in each other’s arms, Kyle whispered, “I guess I’d built up a lot of tension.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to . . . I mean I wasn’t trying too—”

“Shush,” I said, touching his mouth with my fingers. “I know you didn’t. You don’t need to to win this. You’re the best. You just need to be you and keep your skates where they need to be.”

“I think I need to keep me where I need to be too. I just lost myself.”

“With me?”

“Yes.”

“And you regret it?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, but I agree we shouldn’t have done this—let ourselves do this. . We’ll just say this was a mutual Christmas present between friends—just friends—not a skater and a judge.” I meant that. I had been trying so hard. I had significant other now. Matt and I weren’t the same in this regard. I’d always fought promiscuity. He was solid as a rock. The issue made our relationship a bit rocky—the only area in which we weren’t gloriously compatible. If he found out about this . . . with a figure skater, ten years younger than I was . . .

But best not think about that. Matt wouldn’t learn about this. No one would. And I wouldn’t let it happen again. “It was good for you, though, I think. I remember how it was for the day before competing. I always needed something to release the tension—something to keep me from thinking about skating, from going through my routine over and over again in my mind.”

“But I don’t think it was good I did it with you.”

“No, that’s not good. We can’t tell anyone about this. We can’t let them know you let a judge fuck you during the competitions.”

“I think more of this as you letting me be with you,” Kyle murmured. He was silent for a while, but then Kyle said. “He’s cruel to me. Frank Foyle beats me and fucks me. He pushes me hard.”

“Yes, I know how it is,” I said. “I know exactly how it is. Frank Foyle was my coach as well.”

There was some more dead time, and then Kyle said, “Sometimes I think I could kill him—that I’ll have to kill him to get away from him, to be myself on the ice. I want to skate, but I want to skate for me. Frank wants me to skate for him.”

“Yes, I understand all of that too,” I said. I rolled away from him and sat up on the side of the bed. “But now, for right now, you need to get back to the hotel and get some sleep. You skate for the gold tomorrow—no, later today. When you come down for breakfast, it needs to be in the hotel. No one must know you’ve been here and we’ve done this.”

“I guess so,” he answered reluctantly. “But so far, even getting into first today—this. This with you. This has been the best.”

I drove him back to the Holiday Inn near the Coliseum Complex. We got there a little after 3:00 a.m. I let him off a block shy of the hotel so no one from the competitions would see us together. He didn’t have to skate his free program until the afternoon, but I had to be at the Coliseum and at the judge’s table, to check in, by 8:30 in the morning.

I didn’t seek Kyle out anytime during what was a long, grueling day. He got the gold medal with a margin of over twenty points. There was no doubt that he won, which relieved me, not only knowing that our athletic long-night fucking hadn’t done him any harm but also because I didn’t have to worry a bit about favoring him. I could have penalized him across the board and he still would have won.

Jordan Reynolds helped him out. He was a nervous wreck during the free program, which was completely uncharacteristic for him. His main talent was that he was totally reliable. On this day, though, his timing was off. He fell on all of his quads. He didn’t make the podium at all. Whereas I didn’t have to pad points in favor of Kyle, all of the judges had to do that with Reynolds just to rank him high enough for him to go to nationals. He was still a star. This was just a bad day. He needed to compete at nationals, and he needed to make the podium there and go to worlds and do well—even if Kyle remained ahead of him in the results, which there was every reason to believe he would. We needed our best skaters to do well to maximize the slots we got at the next Olympics. We saw all the skaters often enough to know Reynolds ranked near the top even with a bad competition day.

So, I did give favor to someone—because in this business we had to. It wasn’t to the skater I fucked, though. It was to his stable mate.

Speaking of stable mates, though, after all that fussiness of controlling his skaters, Frank Foyle didn’t show up on the men’s free skate day to watch, guide, threaten, or cajole either of his skaters. I think that helped Kyle skate better. I had no idea what had made Jordan Reynold uncharacteristically skate so poorly. As I heard it there had been a brawl between Foyle and his male skater, Jordan Reynolds, in the middle of the breakfast buffet at the Holiday Inn that morning. They’d put on quite a show, with Reynolds going after Foyle with a fork. Stacy Nelson, the event coordinator had had to break it up. The three were sent off in different directions and Foyle just than had not bothered to show up at the skating competition.

That didn’t give Foyle an excuse not to come support Kyle, in my mind.

* * * *

“Matt,” I called out as I entered the lobby of the Greensboro Coliseum the evening after the men’s free skate. I’d come back to watch the pairs division free skate. I knew Kyle had no interest in that and I was trying to be anywhere but near him today to keep his win pure. “Have you come to watch me at work?” I was surprised to see him here, and my immediate reaction was to feel guilt about Kyle Kim and the previous night, but I put a welcoming smile on it.

Matt Cline, my increasingly significant other, dark and handsome, if not that tall—I naturally preferred submissives who were smaller than I was, and, although I’d become taller and bulked out since my figure skating days, I wasn’t exactly a beanpole myself—was not someone I expected to see here. Other than with me Matt had no connection to the figure skating world, and that connection was only tertiary with me now. As a man of all sports, I gave the TV color coverage for a whole range of sporting events for Greensboro audiences.

Matt, four years my junior, was a homicide detective for the city’s police department. What was he doing here?

He turned to me, giving a rather cool, distant smile that had my heart stop and my mind racing with, “Oh, shit, does he know? Has he found out I slept with another man last night?” That thought melted right away, though. There was no way Matt could know that fast—or at all. It was my guilt flowing in. And what could I say? I was guilty.

“Matt Cline with the Greensboro Police Department,” he said, stepping forward to shake my hand. He had been talking with Stacy Nelson, the event coordinator, when I entered the lobby. Standing off to the side was the technician I’d seen in the arena the previous night during the unpleasantness between Kyle Kim and his coach, Frank Floyd. A man in a police uniform was standing behind the technician. “And you, I think are Ted Joyner, the TV sports caster.”

So, this was how Matt was going to play this and why the smile wasn’t warmer. Our private life was going to remain private in this venue.

“I’m sorry to say I’m here on business rather than pleasure,” Matt continued. “Ms. Nelson here was telling me that she and you overheard an argument between the figure skating coach Frank Foyle and one of his skaters, Kyle Kim, down on the ice here last night. She says that Foyle struck Kim and put him down on the ice.”

“Yes, why? It was pretty ugly. Is Kim OK? He looked fine for his skate this afternoon. He won gold.”

“It’s not Kyle Kim,” Matt answered. “It’s Frank Foyle. He’s been found near the amphitheater in the arena complex. Dead.”

“Frank Foyle dead?” I said, not having to feign shock. “I don’t believe it.” What I did believe was that this was quite inconvenient. I didn’t care if Foyle was dead. And then it hit me—why Matt was being so formal. The last time Matt and I had been together, at dinner and a session in bed afterward, it had been when I received confirmation that I was to be a judge in the U.S. figure skating southern regionals—and that Foyle had two men in the competition. I’d cursed Foyle then and wished him dead.

I looked away and saw the technician standing there, with a policeman behind him. The technician looked scared.

“The man over there. The lighting technician. Yesterday evening, when Foyle struck Kim. He was there too.” I don’t know what I was reaching for, but I had the sudden fear for Kyle’s welfare. I was looking for any other possibility.

“Yes. That’s Aaron Blake,” Matt said. “As far as anyone knows, he was the last one who saw Foyle alive. At breakfast yesterday, at the hotel where Foyle and many of the others connected with the skating event here were staying, Foyle was heard to ask Mr. Blake where the amphitheater was. He said something about always missing Christmas and that there was a display of Christmas trees at the amphitheater he wanted to see.”

“Yes, I don’t think the two know each other, though,” I said, arguing with myself more than with Matt—already thinking the pros and cons of the technician having done this.

“Yes, and they also heard Blake say he’d show him where it was, which the bystanders thought peculiar since earlier Foyle had been very rude to Blake and they all saw that. The two left together. We’re just taking Mr. Blake to the department to have his clothes tested. All part of a routine clearing process. Mr. Blake is cooperating.”

“I see,” I said as I watched the policeman and technician leave the building.

“Which leads me to . . . could I talk to you in private, Mr. Joyner.” He was talking to me, but he was looking at Stacy Nelson. She got the message.

“If there’s no more you need from me at the moment, Detective Cline, I still have an event to run.” She moved toward the door into the arena, and Matt did nothing to hold her back.

When she was gone, he turned to me. “In terms of clearing people away, we have you. I can’t forget how you cursed Foyle out the last time we were together. You even wished him dead.”

“Yes, I did. You’ll find a lot of people did. It doesn’t mean I killed him. The grief he gave me—that was ten years ago. I moved on. I survived.”

“But you never forgave him for what he did to you—how he dominated you and was cruel to you when he was coaching your skating career.”

“No, no, I didn’t. But I got over it.”

“Did you? Do you think the two skaters he had here at these competitions were being treated the same as you were a decade ago—Kyle Kim who was seen being struck by Foyle on the ice last evening, for instance?”

There it was. Too much was out there—would still come out—to protect Kyle on this. The best I could do was to give him some cover. “Yes, I think so. Foyle only took male skaters to coach who would let him dominate them sexually. I’m sure that didn’t change with Foyle. Yes, I’m sure he was fucking and manhandling both of the male skaters who are here with him.” So, admit to Kyle, but there was Jordan Reynolds too, and it was little secret that there was something threatening going on between Reynolds and Foyle as well.

“I thought you were checked into the Holiday Inn too, where most of the skating people were, including Foyle.”

“Yes,” I said, at first not getting it—not knowing why that would come up. But then it hit me. “Yes, I am. But I wasn’t there last night. I remembered I’d left some forms I had to fill out at the apartment last night, and I left here so late that by the time I got to the apartment, I just stayed there for the night.”

“I wondered. I tried calling you, but you had your cellphone off, and then I tried through the hotel switchboard, but you didn’t answer.”

“So, you thought maybe—”

“Just checking everything. Where were you at 8:30 this morning? Didn’t the skating competition start again at 9:00, and Ms. Nelson said the judges were supposed to check in at 8:30. I had her look at the roster. You didn’t check in until almost 10:00.”

“I overslept,” I said, “and I had to come from across town. All the judges were supposed to check in by 8:30, yes, but the morning competition was the dance free skate. I didn’t judge that. The 8:30 check-in was just a formality. I’ll bet that other judges not needed at the table this morning didn’t actually check in until later.”

“No, they didn’t,” he admitted. He paused. I think he was preparing to ask me another question, but we were interrupted by a policeman.

“You asked me to track down the skater Jordan Reynolds, Detective,” the policeman said. “You said you wanted to interview him. We found him down in the locker room. If you—”

“Yes, I’ll come down with you now.” Matt gave me a searching look before he left.

I thought he was going to ask me if I had been alone last night. If he had, what would I have said? I had to acknowledge that I probably would have lied and said that I was. My relationship meant that much to me. From what Matt said, I guess it was thought that Foyle was killed at around 8:30 this morning. At 8:30 I was still in bed, at my apartment, and Kyle was in the shower. We both needed alibis. Neither of us had murdered Foyle. But neither of us can tell them we were together. Kyle would lose his gold medal if it was known he slept with a judge.

And I would lose Matt.

* * * *

I was sitting in and looking around the arena, taking in the sights—actually, I was hoping I wouldn’t see Kyle Kim appear so I didn’t have to avoid being seen with him—when my attention latched onto my boyfriend, Matt Cline, standing in the aisle next to my row and trying to get my attention.

Now what? It was nearly 10:00 p.m. What was he still doing here? I had been trying to avoid him as well. He motioned me to join him out in the lobby, and I did so.

“The lighting guy, Aaron Blake, says he saw you and Kyle Kim in the locker room here late last night, Ted. What were you two doing?”

Fuck. Here it comes, I thought. The technician had seen us kiss. Matt was about to lower the boom on me. I’d been foolish enough to tell him I’d had a one-night stand when I went to Colorado Springs last summer. I hadn’t told him who it was with. We weren’t too far into a relationship, but it had almost ended then. It took a hell of a long time for us to come back from that. That’s when I knew Matt wasn’t going to put up with anything but a monogamous relationship. And since then our affair had turned into a full-blown relationship. I wouldn’t tell him about falling off the wagon on sex with men now, that’s for sure. I’d also done everything I could not to have such a secret to hide from him.

But I’d fallen off that wagon last night—and if I didn’t tell him, Kim and I both would be in Matt’s crosshairs for this murder until and unless Matt found who really did it.

I couldn’t lie. But I could fudge a bit. I had to think what would be deflecting here. And I had to think up something quickly. “I was dressing a wound on Kim’s forearm,” I said. “When Foyle knocked him down on the rink last night, one of Kim’s skate blades cut his forearm. It wasn’t a bad cut, but it bled badly and needed to be disinfected. He needed to skate today. He’s the program’s golden boy of the moment; we need him for world competition. I went to the locker room and helped him with that.” I almost added that I then drove Kim to the hotel, but that would be a lie. I needed to stick with the least I had to reveal.

It was a good thing I didn’t elaborate—or lie.

“Yes, that’s what Kim said. You’ve confirmed his story on that.” I could see the relief in Matt’s eyes.

“Is that important? Wait, don’t tell me. Foyle was killed with a skate blade. You found blood on Kim’s skate blade.”

“And there was the cut on his arm, yes,” Matt answered. He didn’t tell me directly that they suspected Foyle was killed somehow with a skate blade, but he as good as had revealed that. “His blade has been sent out for the lab to ID whose blood is on it. I’m freed of focusing on Kim more than anyone else pending lab results. I at least have a plausible explanation for that—and a witness.”

“You’re fine with me as a witness?” I asked. “I mean I can’t account for my time when you think Foyle was killed and you’ve heard me say I’d be delighted if he was killed—and you know I have a motive for not wishing him well. But you’re accepting my word as a witness?” I was pushing it, but we were on ground involving our relationship here that went beyond this case.

“Yeah, I do,” he answered. “There’s no shortage of suspects in this. The man was hated, and apparently deservedly so. He made champions, but he made bitter enemies of champions too. Both of the skaters he brought here have both motive and opportunity. Hell, even the lighting technician has those. People saw Foyle being rude to Blake and Blake not taking it well, but digging into it I find that Foyle was hitting on Blake, who wouldn’t have anything to do with a homosexual hookup. And Blake offered to show Foyle how to get to where Foyle was murdered shortly afterward. Of course, Blake says as soon as they got out of the hotel, he just pointed to where the amphitheater is, which is just a short walk away from the hotel. But we’ve only got Blake’s word for that. I’ve got more than enough suspects. And I believe in you. So, yes, unless you want to confess to killing Foyle, I’ll accept you as an innocent witness. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.” I was relieved that he was going to trust me. I should be no less a suspect at this point than anyone else he could name. What I felt, though, was guilt, and I felt like a heel. I’d betrayed him, but I couldn’t tell him that. I’d lose him and Kyle would lose his regional win and maybe a trip to the Olympics.

But I couldn’t declare that Kyle hadn’t murdered Foyle like I could claim I hadn’t done it and Matt would believe me—not without losing Matt. “What about the technician, Blake,” I asked. “Did the lab work on his clothes turn up anything?”

“Yeah, he had Foyle’s DNA on him, but lots of people watched them get physical in the hotel’s breakfast room. I couldn’t go to court with the position that the DNA didn’t get deposited then. And there was no blood residue on the clothes he was wearing. People said he was wearing the same clothes before and after the murder. And there would be lots of blood.”

“Lots of blood?” I asked.

“Yes. Whoever killed Frank Foyle sliced into his head with some sort of blade three times. You’re probably spot on that it was a skate blade. It was done in anger. We don’t know for sure that it was the blade on figure skates, but the medical examiner says a figure skating blade could do it. There was a lot of blood.”

He wasn’t saying it, but that made one of Foyle’s two male skaters—Kyle or Jordan Reynolds—the leading suspects. I could give Kyle an alibi for the time of the murder, and I knew I should. But it would destroy so much. I’d sleep on it. I had to hope it wouldn’t be necessary.

And, in terms of sleeping on it. I looked hopefully to Matt. If ever I needed to hold him in my arms, it was now. He had shown his belief in and commitment to me. And I was betraying him. I didn’t love or want him any less. If we all somehow came through this . . .

“I’m going home now,” I said. “One more day of this. The free skates for the women and the pairs. It’s Christmas. We should spend some time together. If you’d like to—” I was desperate to check on our relationship—to not let what I’d done with Kim destroy that, particularly not at Christmas.

He knew what I was asking. “I’d better keep at this for a couple of hours,” he answered. “We need to solve this tonight, if we can. But you say you’re going home. You’ve got a room at the hotel. You’re not using it tonight?”

“I’ve checked out,” I said. And I had. I couldn’t handle the temptation of being in the same hotel with Kyle Kim tonight. My want and need for Kyle wasn’t that much less than it was for Matt. I couldn’t take the temptation.

And it was a good thing I’d shown such resolve. As I was about to leave the building, Kyle appeared from around the curve of the lobby that went all the way around the Coliseum building. He looked at me and I looked at him. And then I ducked out of the door into the night and hurried to my car, commanding myself to take a step and then another toward the car and away from temptation. Giving into temptation had put both Kyle and me on spot.

* * * *

I saw her, sitting in her car, quietly crying, when I pulled into the Coliseum Complex VIP parking lot, close to the building, at 8:15 the next morning. I walked to her car and tapped on the driver’s window. Stacy Nelson turned blank eyes toward me. She looked wrung out and as if she hadn’t slept all night. I gestured for her to roll her window down, but her return gesture was for me to come around and climb into the passenger seat.

“What’s wrong, Stacy,” I asked. Her sobs had given her the hiccups. I pulled a handkerchief out, handed it to her, and waited for her to be able to talk. As we waited, I watched Matt Cline’s car pull into the lot. He got out and entered the Coliseum. Back on duty.

“I know it’s been a strain, Stacy, but the police will get to the bottom of this.”

“I know they will—or should. But, I don’t know. I can’t. I just can’t.”

“You can’t what, Stacy? What’s this about?”

There was a pause, but she whispered something eventually.

“What’s that? What did you say?”

“My brother,” she said.

“Your brother?” Was the lighting technician, Aaron Blake, her brother? Did she know he’d done this? But then she shocked me, and it all began to unravel.

“Richard Rankin. You knew him. I’m married—and divorced. Nelson is my married name.”

“Richard Rankin? You’re Richard Rankin’s sister?” I asked, dumbfounded, but getting an inkling where this was going. Richard Rankin had been Frank Foyle’s star male skater five years previously. He’d taken the bronze at the nationals that year and was headed up the ranks. He would have made the top, I was sure. But he committed suicide. The rumor was that Frank Foyle has used him hard and Richard was more committed to winning skating gold than he was in the lifestyle Foyle demanded of him.

“I can’t let either of those skaters take the blame for this,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The backseat. Look in the backseat.”

I looked. There were a pair of men’s skates—used but silver. That had been Richard Rankin’s signature. We all called him “Silver Skates.”

“Those are Richard’s?” I asked. I could clearly see the blood on the blade of one of them.

“Yes. I didn’t mean it—and in the way it happened. He just made me so mad.”

“What happened?”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen him since . . . since Richard died. You’ve been to the figure skating museum in Colorado Springs, haven’t you?”

“Yes, and . . .”

“You’ve seen that wall where they display all of those famous skater’s skates?”

“Yes.”

“I want Richard’s skates on the wall. I’ve tried talking to the museum directly, but they won’t talk to me—considering how Richard died. That he took his own life. I knew they’d put the skates on the wall if Frank Foyle asked them too. He’s the reason Richard took his life. Foyle wouldn’t have had to say anything directly if he asked the museum to take Richard’s skates, but everyone would understand and Richard would get the honor he earned. I brought the skates here to the regionals, knowing Frank would be here. When he left the hotel yesterday morning and I heard he was going to take a look at the amphitheater, I got the skates from my room and went after him—to ask him to get Richard’s skates on the wall. He deserves it. He got a bronze at nationals and would have won the next year, I know it. Frank knew it too. It was Frank’s fault he didn’t.”

“But he laughed at you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he laughed at me. I lost control. The bastard deserved it. But I can’t let either of those young men go down for what I did. I’m just trying to work up the courage to go in and turn myself in.”

“I see that Detective Cline is here now,” I said. “I know him. He’ll understand. He’ll help you. I’ll go in with you, if you like.”

“Would you?”

“Yes. And the skates. When the police are done with them, I’m sure Detective Cline will help us get them back. I’ll see that they get put on the wall at the museum myself.”

“You can do that?”

“Yes, and I won’t take no for an answer.” And I wouldn’t. My skates were on that wall. I’d won a bronze at nationals myself. I knew what it meant to her. I knew what it had meant to Richard.

The bottom-line thing was that I’d dodged a bullet and learned a lesson in fidelity. That thing that I can’t tell Matt and Kyle Kim and I can’t tell is the skating world doesn’t have to be said now. We both have a second chance to do it right. And Matt let me know I had that second chance, a real Christmas present for me.

After he’d heard Stacy’s confession and put her in a police car, he turned to me and smiled. “That’s that, then,” he said. “If your invitation to celebrate Christmas at your apartment still stands—”

“You betcha,” I answered. When New Year’s came around, I knew what my resolution was—to stick with my fidelity to Matt. It was a resolution I intended to keep.