Gold Medal Murder (11 page)

“George Fayne. I was in the same class.”

“Me too! And my name's Elizabeth Marvin. But everyone calls me Bess.”

“Great. So, do you think it's appropriate for two Olympic athletes to be dating each other? I mean, doesn't that take something away from the innocent spirit of international competition?”

What
? I thought. That was certainly a loaded question.

“I think it's great that two focused, dedicated people with so much in common have been able to find each other,” I replied.

“Yeah,” added Bess. “They're in love. It's totes cute.”

“Great, this is great. So if it's not inappropriate, why do you think they hid it for so long?”

“Probably because they knew that creeps in the media would be all over them if they knew,” George said. She has a knack for saying the things the rest of us just think.

Alex laughed, a loud, fake bark of a laugh.

“Do you think this will negatively affect their performance in the games? Are they really focused on their performances, or are they too busy being ‘in love' to take all of this seriously?”

“I think that if they do poorly at the Olympics, it will be because their relationship was a reason for guys like you to harass them constantly!” said Bess angrily.

“You know what, we actually have to go,” I said. I'd had enough of this guy's attitude. Why is it that journalists always have to look for a scandal or something wrong?

“Well, thanks for your time, girls. Check out Sportztime tonight. I think I'll be running some excerpts from this interview tonight. And if you ever have more to say, here's my card.” He handed us three of his cards. On the front they read
ALEX SMOTHERS—PRESIDENT AND CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, SPORTZTIME.COM—FORMER OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST.

I slipped one into my pocket. My fingers brushed against the photo I had put in there earlier. I'd forgotten
to ask Lexi about it. I looked around and saw her packing up her stuff. Bess, George, and I headed over to her.

“Ready to go?” she said as she slung her bag of gear over her shoulder.

“You don't want to change or anything?” I asked.

“Nah. I'm kind of avoiding using the lockers as much as possible. You know?”

I nodded.

“How was talking with Alex?” Lexi asked.

George snorted. “He's a piece of work!”

“I know, right?” said Lexi. “He's so irritating. I guess it's his job and all, and Lee says that all the press is going to be great for Scott, but I wish he'd just buzz off.”

We headed out to the street. At the door, I hesitated. I looked both ways. It was getting dark now, and I didn't see the car anywhere.

“Uhh… anyone remember where I parked?”

Lexi laughed. “Some things never change, eh?”

“Luckily, Bess and I have taken care of this problem.”

It took me a moment to figure out what George meant. Then I remembered: the remote starter they had installed in the car! I hadn't had a chance to use it yet. I pulled out my keys and clicked the big button they'd put on my key ring.

BOOOOOOMMM
!

Two hundred feet down the street, a giant ball of fire erupted into the sky.

You'd think that being a secret agent on a deadly mission in the middle of the Olympics would have to be exciting all the time, right? Well, you'd be wrong. This was crunch time for the athletes, and if they'd been focused before, now they existed for only one reason: to train. I was a ghost in the arena, pretty much the only person there without something to do.

Of course, that did have one benefit: No one noticed me keeping an eye on Scott from a distance. Although, truth be told, I could have been standing two feet from him, staring at him, the whole day and I don't think anyone would have noticed that, either. Even the towel boys and janitors seemed to be feeling the pressure. Everyone was moving at about twice their normal speed.

And there I was, sitting in the bleachers. I almost wished I had a book with me. Except I knew as soon as I opened it we'd be attacked by motorized snakes or Scott would spontaneously combust or something. To kill time, I got out some pens and found a long piece of cardboard. I spent an hour stenciling “Scott Trevor—Biggest Fan!” on one side of it. I might as well do my best to stick to my cover story, even if it made me look totally lame. I even drew a little pool, with a stick figure swimming through it. When I was done, it looked like an overeager second grader had made it, but I was still pretty proud.

The sign got me some attention. Scott gave me a thumbs-up, and Lee came over with some official Olympic swag—a tracksuit, a handkerchief, and a bunch of promotional programs and posters. Mr. Adams gave me a dirty look when he saw the sign, but for the most part, he seemed to be keeping a wide berth away from anything related to Scott. Nancy said that Lexi had had a talk with him, and it seemed to have had some effect. Publicly, at least. Who knows what he was capable of behind the scenes? I watched him closely, but though he gave Scott dirty looks at every opportunity, I never saw him get close to Scott.

Making a sign wasn't exactly wrestling bad guys to the ground, but at least it gave me something to do. For a while. Then it was back to just staring out at the arena.

“Biggest fan, eh?” said a voice behind me suddenly.
I looked over my shoulder to see a woman in one of the Olympic athlete jackets standing a little behind me. Her hair was wet from the pool, and because she was standing on the bleachers and was already quite tall, she towered over me. Joe had pointed her out to me yesterday—Isabelle Helene. He'd briefed me on their short interactions, and I wasn't surprised that my sign about Scott caught her eye.
Maybe
, I thought,
this will be a good a chance to size her up.

“Yeah—I won a contest!” I did my best to sound like an eager high school kid, excited to get to talk to a real live Olympic athlete.

“So how many world records does he hold?” Isabelle asked. She sat down hard on the bleacher behind me, and put her feet up next to me.

“Three! In the hundred meter, two hundred meter, and four hundred meter freestyle.” I'd done my homework. If she thought she could stump me that easily, she had another thing coming.

“So what are his times?”

“Uh…” I thought for a moment. I knew I'd read them, but could I remember them on the spot? Then it came to me. “46.91 seconds, 1:42 seconds, and 3:40 seconds.”

“Humph.” Isabelle sniffed audibly, clearly displeased that I'd gotten them right. She was silent for a moment. Then she gave a short bark of a laugh.

“All right, ‘Biggest Fan,' whose record is he about to beat for most gold medals by a single athlete?”

My mind blanked. I knew he was about to break the record, but I had no idea who was the current record holder. I tried to think of a good guess. Mark Spitz was up there, I knew. And Jesse Owens. Isabelle was staring at me, a self-satisfied smile growing on her face. I took a gamble.

“Mark Spitz?”

“Nope! Ha! I knew you were just some poser.”

She got up to walk away. I can't say I was sorry to see her go. She was some piece of work. But I was curious.

“Hey!” I yelled at her retreating form. “Who was it?”

Isabelle didn't respond.

But our conversation had alerted all of the journalists to my presence. They were all looking to get some background footage of the Olympics, and with my sign, I guess I made a great visual. Over and over again, I got asked how excited I was to be there, if I thought Scott would break the gold medal record, etc. Hours passed. The arena got darker as the sun set. People began to leave. I was so used to the reporters that when a pretty redheaded woman with a camera in front of her face came up to me and started asking questions, I didn't think anything about it. At first.

“So you're Scott's ‘Biggest Fan,' eh?” she said.

“Yup. That's me! See?” I held up the sign for the
camera and gave a goofy grin. If I thought of it as an acting exercise, this wasn't so bad.

“Yeah, I know kid, I saw you on the television the other night. Frank…”

“Carson. Frank Carson.”

“Right. Carson. Well, mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Go right ahead.” She was a little more no-nonsense than most of the journalists, and she hadn't given me her name, or the name of the station she worked for, but a lot of them were like that. This was their job; they weren't here to socialize.

“So what's Scott like in person?”

“Well, so far he's been really nice to me. He let me sit in on his training session, and we've talked about swimming a lot. I'm a swimmer, too, actually, and—”

“Great. That's great. I hear he can be really difficult to be around sometimes. A prima donna, you know? Kinda spoiled? What do you think about that?”

“What? I don't—I mean, he's never been like that around me. I'm sure anyone would be stressed out if they were competing in the Olympics, though.”

She seemed irritated at my response. She huffed loudly.

“Yeah, but he's totally obsessive-compulsive, right? A neat freak?”

“He's… clean, but I don't think it's weird or anything.”
The gears in my head were spinning. Something about her hair, her voice, and the questions she was asking suddenly clicked in my head. “Wait a second! You're Elisa, aren't you? His former manager?”

“What has he said about me? How do you know who I am?”

She sounded angry, but she never put the camera down. I knew better than to respond while she was still filming. I stood up and started to walk away.

“Hey! You come back here. We're not done yet.”

I ignored her—but her yelling attracted someone else's attention.

“Elisa? What are you doing here?!” Scott was fresh out of the pool and still dripping wet. He looked out of breath—and very, very angry.

“This is a public space, Scott. I can be here if I want to. In fact, I was just talking to a friend of yours.” She jerked her head in my direction.

“Whoa—wait, no way. I was walking away. I didn't say anything to her.” The last thing I wanted was for Scott to think I was conspiring with Elisa. Luckily, Scott wasn't paying any attention to me.

“I have a restraining order. Do you really want me to call security on you?”

Elisa hesitated. Then she made an exaggerated show of looking at her watch.

“Gee, Scott, wish I could talk longer but I've got to go.
I've got a dinner deal with my agent about the book. I'll be sure to send you a signed copy when it comes out.”

With that, Elisa turned tail and nearly jogged out of the building. She was gutsy, I had to give her that. But even she didn't want to deal with the LAPD on high alert.

“Why were you talking to her?” Now that Elisa was gone, Scott seemed to notice me again. He didn't seem any less annoyed without her around.

“See, I was sitting here with the sign, and all these journalists came up, and I didn't know who she was until she started asking all these questions about you being obsessive-compulsive, and that kind of stuff.”

“She said what? I'm going to call my lawyer.”

He reached down to pull out his phone before he realized he was only wearing his bathing suit.

Right as I went to offer him mine, a giant explosion sounded from outside the building. The ground shook. Some of the front windows of the arena shattered, and a hail of glass rained down.

“Earthquake!” yelled someone, I couldn't see who. They were wrong, though. This wasn't an earthquake. This was a bomb.

People were screaming. Thankfully, the arena was mostly empty, or we could have had a deadly stampede. I didn't even notice I was running for the door until I was squirming my way through the milling crowd of confused and frightened people.

I burst out of the door to find Nancy, Bess, George, and Lexi standing in stunned silence, staring off into the dark. Up and down the street, car alarms were going off. Two hundred feet away, the remains of Nancy's car burned brightly, sending terrifying shadows up against the walls. I could smell the burnt metal from where I stood. I could only hope no innocent passersby had been near the car when it exploded.

“All my CDs were in the trunk. Including my signed collection of every disc The Royal We ever put out,” said George.

“My sunglasses. My Armani sunglasses. The ones I rebuilt myself after I found them at a flea market for two dollars,” Bess added.

“My car. What am I going to tell my father?” whispered Nancy.

“Tell him it was impounded for one too many parking tickets. He'd believe that.” Bess giggled. Nancy lifted a pillow off the edge of the couch and tossed it at her—but she smiled. It was the first time any of us had smiled in hours.

After the explosion, the police had grilled Nancy,
Lexi, Bess, and George for more than an hour. Originally, they'd wanted to take them into custody, but a little quick thinking on Frank's part—and a few calls to our father—had gotten them off the hook, although the police were still investigating. I doubted they were going to find any evidence at the scene. By the time we'd finally gotten a taxi to take us back to Nancy's hotel, all that was left of her car was a smoking heap of twisted metal.

But the police had at least given us the night off from watching Lexi and Scott. The Olympics was only two days away, and tonight was the official Opening Gala. Lexi and Scott, and all of the athletes, were the guests of honor. There would already be more security than at Fort Knox, and now that the police knew that Lexi and Scott were being targeted, they would each have their own private security detail. Getting close to them would be as difficult as getting close to Britney Spears. Even ATAC would have had a hard time swinging getting us through the doors, let alone Nancy, Bess, and George. And the way things had been going the past few days, none of us wanted to separate.