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was a gentleman of an equally advanced age, who I assumed was her husband. His gray sweatpants were tucked into his black skates, and he had pinned his entry ticket to his zippered jacket. They smiled at me as they walked past and entered the rink.
    I unzipped my carrier and pulled out my skates. I’d spent the good part of an hour the evening before trying, not entirely successfully, to polish out the old scuffs and smudges, and had tried out four pairs of socks before finding one that allowed my foot to squeeze into the skate without pain. I put guards on the blades and placed both skates on the floor in preparation for donning them.
    Across from me was Jeremy Hapgood, the young man who worked at the arena. He was removing his socks while I was putting mine on. He picked up a hockey skate and, after liberally shaking baby powder into it, shoved in his bare foot.
    “You skate barefoot?” I said, shaking my head.
    He heard me, smiled, and nodded. “Oh, hi,” he said. “Best thing to do if you forgot to bring socks or brought the wrong ones. The powder makes the inside of the boot slippery, makes it easy to get your foot in.”
    “But aren’t your feet going to freeze without socks?” I asked.
    “When you get moving, you warm up everywhere,” he replied. “Thick socks help only if your skates are too big and don’t fit properly. A thin sock isn’t going to make that much of a difference anyway. Besides, I like to feel the texture of the ice, and you can do that better when the only thing between you and the ice are your boots and blades.”
    “You’ve been skating for a long time, I take it.”
    “Since before I was four. My dad bought my first hockey stick when I was born.” He laughed. “You think he had plans for me?”
    “And do you play?”
    “Sure! Sometimes. When I can get a little time off. Actually, I do more teaching than playing. I’ve got team practices. Coach Beliveau has me leading the drills for the mites and squirts.”
    “Sounds like an infestation.”
    “The little-kid hockey leagues. I like hockey, but I don’t play all that much.”
    While we’d talked, he’d powdered and put on his second skate, laced up both of them, and shrugged on an oversized brown down jacket with CABOT COVE ICE ARENA across the back in block letters, and his name, JEREMY HAPGOOD, in small letters on the front.
    A man in a matching jacket clapped him on the back. “Hey, Jer. Will I see you guys later?”
    “Sure, Mark, we’ve been working on our side-by-side toe loops.”
    “Great! Don’t forget to change skates,” the man said, walking toward the rink.
    “Jeremy,” I said, “aren’t you the one who found the screws on the ice? I heard about that.”
    He acknowledged that he was. “Can you believe it?” he said. “Some jerk trying to make trouble. We finally get some excitement going in this town with the hockey teams and the skating school, and somebody wants to mess it up.”
    “Why do you think someone would want to do that?” I asked.
    “Who knows why people do dumb things,” he said. “Like the dork who drilled a peephole in the ladies’ room wall.”
    My face mirrored my surprise.
    “Yeah,” he said, “Christine—she’s training with Alexei Olshansky—she discovered it late yesterday and reported it to Security.”
    “Any idea who might have done it?”
    He shook his head. “Some pervert, I guess. They patched it up.” He stood. “You’ll have to excuse me. I don’t want to be late. He drew a whistle on a long cord from his pocket and looped it around his neck.
    I was wondering whether the incident with the peephole had been reported to the police when music suddenly came from large speakers suspended from the ceiling. That hour’s public skating session had begun.
    I made my way unsteadily to the boards that encircled the ice and saw that the older couple was already skating and had been joined on the ice by two girls who skated holding hands; several men of varying ages