Chapter 53 2025
“Eh!” the sheriff admonishes, and the puppy looks up guiltily before going back to chewing on the sheriff’s shoelace.
The sheriff nudges her away with his toe and returns his attention to the screen and the article in Sports Illustrated titled, “Is Figure Skating Ready to Have Its Ice Ceiling Shattered?”
Beneath the title is a stunning photo of Patch, the renowned figure skater, doing a split jump extraordinarily high over the ice, her leg muscles defined beneath the shimmering silver LYCRA of her bodysuit and her birthmark and her radiant smile on full display.
He remembers watching that performance with Grace and thinking she was astounding, like no other figure skater he’d ever seen.
She skated with such unbridled joy, and it was as if she had turbojets in her skates, her athleticism spectacular.
And Meryl Fairbanks was her coach, which made it that much more special for him and Grace.
His jaw clenches as he reads about one of the judges describing her as “Stocky, which is not the ideal build for a world-champion figure skater.” Another was quoted as saying, “Pity shouldn’t be a reason someone wins, and pretty shouldn’t be penalized.”
“At least some things are moving in the right direction,” he says to the puppy, who has gone back to gnawing on his shoelace. If Patch skated today, ten years after that incredible performance, no one would dare make those sorts of comments.
He looks down at the drooling black fur ball and tries out the name. “Hey, Patch.” The pup doesn’t look up, plus she’s pure black without a splotch of any other color. “Fine. I’ll keep working on it. Maybe Drool or Slobberface.” The puppy tilts her head as if pleased with the last suggestion.
The sheriff leans back, eyes on the photo.
“I’m missing something,” he says.
He knows now, thanks to the older Mrs. Reicher, that the reverend held a long-standing, deep-seated grudge against Patch because of a financial scam her grandfather perpetrated a generation before that led to the reverend’s father’s suicide.
Meryl Fairbanks was Patch’s coach, and a path leads from Meryl Fairbanks’s house to the scene of the murder.
It feels connected, a niggle at the back of his brain, just out of reach.
He punches her real name, Vivien Kendall, into the search bar and is instantly reminded of the thing he’d forgotten. Her Wikipedia entry reads Vivien Kendall (born March 1, 1997) is an American figure skater most notable for her March for Justice . . .