10 Lethal Black Dress (10 page)

CHAPTER 11

It was a good twenty
degrees cooler
inside The Spotlight restaurant than outside in the bright May sunshine. The
decor was very theatrical, the perfect workplace for a waiter who wanted to be
a Serious Actor.

The Spotlight was dark, painted in deep blues with stars,
comets, and planets covering the walls. Booths lined the walls, with tables in
the center. Every table had its own spotlight. It was impossible to ignore the
giant lighting grids suspended from the ceiling, with theatrical lighting
instruments and colored lights. It was too cute by half and Lacey was slightly afraid
a grid would come crashing down, like the chandelier in
The Phantom of the
Opera.

She arrived at the restaurant just as it opened. The hostess
ushered Lacey to a back booth in Will Zephron’s section. The spotlight over her
suddenly illuminated, a signal for her waiter, who might be preoccupied running
lines from a play while pouring a patron’s coffee.

Zephron was very young. Early twenties, Lacey guessed. Tall
and thin with dark eyes and dark hair, there was a delicacy about him that
would attract men as well as women, and, most likely, casting directors.
Someday he would grow into a gorgeous man, she decided.

In Lacey’s experience, there were a couple of types of actors
who stood out from the rest. Some needed so much attention they sucked all the
air out of the room. They always had to be on, to be the center of attention,
and they were exhausting to be around. And then there were other actors who
were so shy they could barely speak off stage. Some strange personal alchemy
allowed them to shed their outer skin and take on another persona, but out of
the spotlight, they could be exhausting to draw out.

Zephron turned out to be a little of both. He handed Lacey a
menu mechanically, looking half asleep. Then she introduced herself and
complimented his performance as Thisbe in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. At
last his smile came on full and he was in the spotlight.

“And I saw you the other night, too,” Lacey said. “I was
there at the Correspondents’ Dinner. What happened with the champagne, Will?”

His smile faded instantly. “You saw that?”

“I did.”

“Oh my God.” He scanned the restaurant to see if anyone was
within listening distance and sat down in the booth opposite her. “Nothing like
that has ever happened to me before! I can handle a tray full of champagne
glasses like that sleepwalking.”

“You tripped?”

“No. I didn’t.” He scanned the room again, perhaps a little
more dramatically than necessary. “I think I was pushed.”

“In a crowd like that, wouldn’t you be jostled all the time?”

“That’s what you’d think, but not really. Carry a tray of
drinks and people give you space. Nobody wants a tray of champagne or
appetizers down their front. Besides, I’ve done this a lot, I’m always on my
guard. This was definitely different. This was a shove and I was toppled, but I
caught myself before hitting the ground.”

Was there really a shove
? Lacey wondered. It’s always
comforting to blame someone else, some anonymous person in the crowd.

“Did you see who did it?” she asked.

“I was too busy trying to stay on my feet and catch the tray,
and this blond woman in a black dress was right in my way.” He leaned against
the back of the booth. “Honestly, I’m just glad I didn’t hit more people.”

“Do you think that shove was an accident?”

“No way. It was deliberate.” Deep dramatic sigh. “It felt
that way. God, I managed to spray champagne all over a television reporter!
What a mess. Good thing it was the cheap stuff. They’re not going to ask me to
work a gig like that again. And I can use the money. Do you think the whole
thing is on camera?”

Lacey wondered whether he was sorry to be involved at all, or
regretting he wasn’t the star of the show. In Zephron’s mind, he surely was the
star of this tragedy. After all, all the world’s a stage.

“Probably, but no one’s airing it. So you knew who she was?
Courtney Wallace?”

“Is that her name? No. I don’t watch TV. I’m in the theatre.
I don’t have time. I just assumed she was on TV because she was waving a
microphone in people’s faces and trailed by a guy with a camera. People didn’t
want to talk to her. Which is kind of odd, because people go to these things to
get on TV, right? And she was really pretty.”

The blonde thing. Always the blonde thing.
“You
probably are on film, or digital, whatever they were shooting that night.”

“Don’t remind me. I mean, actors always need exposure, but
not that kind of exposure! If anyone catches that performance, I won’t even be
able to get a walk-on as a butler in a dinner theatre. God.” He drummed his
fingers on the table. “Why did you want to talk with me?”

“I’m a reporter, Will. A fashion reporter. For
The Eye
Street Observer
.”

He looked puzzled. “Is this a fashion story? She isn’t
planning to sue me, is she? It was an accident. I didn’t do it on purpose. And
how bad could it be? Just a dry cleaning bill, right?”

A party of four sat down at a nearby table, and the spotlight
above them illuminated. The hostess handed them menus. Will jumped up to get
their drink order, then dashed off to greet another group coming through the
door. He returned to Lacey, order pad in hand. She hadn’t even looked at the
menu.

“So that’s all I know, Ms. Smithsonian. What can I get you
for lunch?”

“Have the police talked to you?”

“For spilling a tray?! Why would the police want to talk to
me? Oh my God, she is suing me. Or the hotel is. That hotel is never going to
hire me again. Oh my God.”

“No, Will. She’s not suing. She’s dead.”

“No way!” He leaped away from her. Dramatically. “How could
she be dead? She was fine. All I did was spill the drink tray! I was pushed!”
He spun around as if looking for a camera, as if this were all an elaborate
joke.

“People can hear you,” Lacey said, signaling to the concerned
hostess that everything was all right.

“Why is she dead? I had nothing to do with that. Or do you
mean, they think I could be some kind of witness? I didn’t see anything! All I
did was—”

“Will. Calm down.” Lacey lowered her voice as if she were
talking to a child. “Courtney Wallace wore a vintage dress with a green silk
lining. The silk was dyed with a substance called copper arsenate. A dye called
Paris Green. When the champagne, or any liquid, soaked her dress, the wet dye
released toxic fumes. Fumes full of arsenic. You can read about it in
The
Eye
.”

“Are you telling me her
dress
was what killed her?”

“After the liquid hit it, yes.” She remembered how queasy she
felt in the tiny ladies’ room with Courtney Wallace and Zanna Nelson. Lacey had
no idea how Wallace could actually have kept that wet garment on for the rest
of the evening. The woman must have started to feel ill very soon. But she was
pumped full of adrenaline, anger, shock, humiliation—and her need for the story
was stronger than her symptoms.

“So getting drenched in champagne killed her?” The color
drained from Will Zephron’s face. He put his face in his hands and rubbed his
hair back. “You think they’ll come after me now?”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know! The ones who were after her.”

Has he been reading DeadFed?
“I don’t think so. It was
probably an accident. Maybe someone just wanted to embarrass her and had no
idea what might happen. Or maybe—”

“Maybe they used me as the weapon!”

“Who used you? Did you see something that night, Will?”

“O. M. G. I have to get out of here!”

He dropped his order pad on the table. Lacey handed him her
card. He stared at it, pocketed it, and darted away. She saw him dash into the
kitchen, dash out again with a backpack, and run through the restaurant’s front
door without another word. He didn’t take her lunch order, either.

If Zephron was lying, he was a better actor than she thought.
He seemed seriously shaken by the news that Courtney was dead. He left
something to be desired as a waiter, however. Lacey figured she wasn’t going to
be served there anytime soon. She picked up her bag and left.

Outside the chilly Spotlight, the sun warmed her. She put her
sunglasses on and breathed in the flower-scented air. Lacey had come to the
restaurant in a taxi, but she decided to walk back to the paper’s offices. She
passed frothy rosebushes that hugged tiny gates and fences in the miniscule
yards of Dupont Circle townhouses. The dogwoods were in full bloom, white and
pink and proud. Spring seemed to be a reward for living through the rest of the
year. She sneezed.

Washingtonians crowded Farragut Square on days like this.
Many sat sunning themselves at the base of the statue of Admiral Farragut, surrounded
by cannons. It was deceptively beautiful and calm in the Square, though it was
the calm before the storm. The weathercasters predicted rain. Lacey loved
marking the seasons and walking through the Square to get to
The Eye
’s
offices, right across the street on the south side of Farragut Square;
appropriately enough, on Eye Street.

“Hey, pal,” a voice said, and Lacey turned toward the sound.

“Hey yourself, Quentin.”

The formerly homeless man she’d befriended had finally
secured a subsidized apartment, but he still panhandled to supplement his
government assistance. He greeted her with a big smile on his beautiful dark
face.

She discreetly slipped him a couple of dollars. “Lovely day.”

“Thank you, pal. Yes it is.” He leaned against a park bench,
his face to the sun. “Terrible news about that television reporter, you know.
Now, you know, I don’t watch the television. I
read
my news. I’m a
newspaper reader.” He produced a copy of
The Eye Street Observer
to
prove it to her. It was the Sunday edition, with the news brief about Courtney
Wallace. “And I get the paper for free. I’m an insider.” He winked.

One of the staff always handed the good-natured Quentin a
copy when the bundles arrived from the printer. He liked to keep current with
the news, except on the occasions he forgot his meds and wound up in the
hospital.

“Keep reading,” she said. “Tomorrow’s story gets more
interesting.”

“Thanks for the tip, Lacey. I’ll put that on my reading
agenda.” Lacey waved goodbye and he shifted his attention to another likely
donor.

Lacey crossed the green space to Firehook Bakery and bought
iced coffee, a muffin, and an apple. Her phone rang before she made it back to
The
Eye
.

“Some friend you are,” Brooke began without preamble. “You
didn’t tell me about the dress that killed Courtney. A poison dress! The Madame
X dress? You didn’t even give me a hint of what you were thinking! You knew all
along that it was, how did you put it, a
lethal black dress
. Clever,
Lacey, but very hurtful. Where’s the trust?”

“Brooke, I didn’t
know
. I merely suspected. When you
started talking about a Killer Flu, that actually seemed, um, more sensible.
And if Courtney was coming down with the flu, it would explain why she looked
so sweaty and glassy-eyed. Even Broadway Lamont thought it was the flu. At
first. And if I
had
mentioned the dye theory, you would have told Damon
and he would have run with it willy-nilly, before I could confirm it and write
it for
The Eye
. And that’s my job.”

“Ha. You followed her into the ladies’ room. You had a
hunch.”

“I was worried about that dress. I figured Courtney was wash
and wear, but not that vintage gown.”

“Then how did you come up with a poison dress? And don’t tell
me the police told you. They wouldn’t immediately suspect a dye that ‘hadn’t
been used in a hundred years or more.’ And I’m quoting here.”

“It had this strange aroma. Even before the champagne hit it.
It could have been moist from the rain, or sweat, releasing the toxins. The
smell was very faint at first. I had a funny feeling about the dress, about
that green lining, that particular shade of green.”

“The smell. Aha. It was garlic, wasn’t it?”

“You just looked it up on the Internet, didn’t you?”

“That’s why it’s there.” Brooke’s voice was frosty.

“Feelings aren’t facts, Brooke. I didn’t have the facts until
today. You read the story.”

“Broadway Lamont told you?”

“An unnamed source in the police department.”

“Lamont. I thought so. I’m still mad, but tell me what really
happened. Everything. I might just forgive you.”

Everything?
“I suggested to Courtney that she should
change out of that soaking wet dress. That we could probably find something dry
for her to wear, like a hotel staff uniform or some other guest’s trench coat.”

“I bet she loved that suggestion.” Brooke chuckled. She
wasn’t irritated anymore.

“Who would? She accused me of being jealous. It was a
beautiful dress. And she was angry because I wouldn’t agree to an on-air
interview.”

“Do you think it was an accident?”

“What else could it be? By the way, is Damon going to write
about this on DeadFed?”
Stealing it as we speak
, she thought.

Brooke practically smirked right through the phone. “As we
speak.”

Lacey raced back to the office. She had to see what nonsense
Damon would spin out of her story this time.

CHAPTER 12

Some merry prankster had placed
a
yellow road hazard sign on Lacey’s desk:

SLIPPERY
DEADLY WHEN WET

The word SLIPPERY had been crossed out and DEADLY written
above. Next to it was a printed copy of her story, with the headline scrawled
across it:

LETHAL BLACK DRESS

“Hey! Who’s the joker?” Silence. No one in the newsroom took
credit for the impromptu display. Her next suspect was someone in the sports section,
but Lacey wasn’t sure they were literate enough to understand road signs.

A familiar whistle sounded nearby. Harlan Wiedemeyer was accompanied
by the aroma of baked dough. She had her suspect.

“Did you do that?” she asked.

“Guilty. Pretty good though, huh? That Wallace dame needed a
sign like that. Sadly, the majority of us poor bastards never take heed of
signs and symbols.”

“It’s a little early in the day for hyperbole, Harlan. And
besides I don’t think a sign would have made a difference to Courtney.”

“You never know. Maybe if it was in even bigger print?”

“Did you want something?”

“Just to congratulate you on a superb scoop on the Paris
Green in the poisoned dress. Any suspects?”

“Did you not read the part about it being an accident?”

“Accident. Sure, go ahead, let’s play that game.” He peered
into his bakery bag and inhaled the aroma. “You can trust me, Smithsonian. One-in-a-million
accidents do happen. Almost never. Or some bastard did her in. Murder happens a
lot. Course, she was a television reporter. They’re like mold spores. You can’t
kill ’em all, they’re everywhere.” He took out a doughnut and bit into it.

“There is nothing new since this morning.”

“Did you check DeadFed dot com? That Damon Newhouse has a way
with words. Not our way, not our words, but his own way.”

Wiedemeyer and his glazed puff of heaven shuffled off and she
turned to her computer. Conspiracy Clearinghouse was bookmarked. The latest
headline surfaced.

Dress of Doom Downs Dogged TV Newshound

By
Damon Newhouse

Conspiracy
Clearinghouse learned today that Channel One News broadcaster Courtney Wallace
died Sunday morning after being soaked to the skivvies in the Dress of Doom she
wore to cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. With a lining as green as
a poison apple, the so-called Madame X gown turned toxic in a strange chemical
reaction when the liquid hit the fan, er, dress. Just a toxic misadventure? Or
a kiss of death from a deadly Toxic Avenger?

The
story was first reported by
Eye Street Observer
fashion guru Lacey
Smithsonian.
It
has yet to be confirmed to CC by the Metropolitan Police…

And Damon does it again,
Lacey thought
. The fastest
fingers in the news biz
. At least Damon gave her credit and a link to her
story. Lacey reached down to stash her purse in her bottom desk drawer and
noticed a pair of black and white snakeskin cowboy boots heading her way.

“Hello, Tony.” She straightened up.

“Hey, Lois Lane. How about escaping the Daily Planet for
lunch?”

“I blew my lunch hour running down a source. But lunch with
Jimmy Olsen? Tempting.”

“I am not Jimmy Olsen. Nor am I Clark Kent. I’m even better
looking than him, in my cape and tights.” He smiled, using the grin to which
she was immune, though many women in Washington were not.

“Not to mention modest,” she said. “I do prefer Brenda Starr,
you know. She has better clothes than Lois, and a sensational sense of style.”

Tony Trujillo was a handsome and hopeless flirt. He and Lacey
were pals with a friendship that would last for years, while his romances
tended to expire early. Both were from the West, and Tony and Lacey shared a
common sensibility. It wasn’t often found in the Capital City, where everyone
looked over your shoulder to see if someone more important had just walked
through the door. But the two hadn’t talked much lately. Lacey blamed
Terror
at Timberline
.

“You could rock a Brenda Starr look. You just need the red
hair. Have you thought about it?”

“I haven’t, but my stylist has. Stella’s pushed every color
in the rainbow. I have resisted, but red is tempting. And I’d love to know how
Brenda managed those great clothes on a reporter’s salary. Guess you have to be
drawn by a female cartoonist. So, what’s up, Tony?”

“We haven’t had a lunch in a while, that’s all.”

That couldn’t be all with Tony, but a real lunch would spare
her from the muffin and the apple.

“Lunch. It’s a deal. But it has to be at a place where they
wait on you. No standing at the counter.”

“You’ll probably want a black orchid delivered to the table
too.”

“Wouldn’t that be lovely? The world is in short supply of
black orchids. Now, where?”

“Outside
The Eye
’s orbit. I don’t want to be overheard
by the random reporter.”

“I thought you put Kavanaugh on night cops.” She retrieved
her bag and closed the DeadFed dot com site.

Tony looked around as if Kavanaugh might be listening. “
She’s
Jimmy Olsen. Come on, Mustang Sally’s outside and the meter runs out in ten
minutes.” He referred to his black Mustang ragtop, the true love of his life.
“Let’s hit the road before Mac decides there’s more work to do.”

“Didn’t you hear, I already got a scoop today. Lethal Black
Dress. And it’s only Monday.”

“Braggart.”

#

It was the perfect day to sit outside at Café Le Ruche, the
French café on a side street just south of the C&O Canal in Georgetown. Lacey
generally disliked eating outside, blasted by the sun, the heat and humidity,
the exhaust of a thousand trucks. But Café Le Ruche was different.

The “pretty quotient” at the café was as high as the roses
that climbed the walls. She and Tony sat under umbrellas at a two-top table.
The waiter arrived with iced tea, along with a fragrant breeze. Lacey ordered
the
potage
Parisien
and
pâté maison
. Tony selected quiche,
proving they were wrong about real men.

“What’s on your mind, Tony?” Lacey asked. “It must be important
or you would have spilled it at the office.” Was he going to suggest they
double-byline the Courtney Wallace story? He might kid her about her Crime of
Fashion stories, but he usually wanted in if he smelled a scoop involving
actual crimes. “Is it my latest story?”

“You’re on your own with this one, Ms. Starr. I have a
conflict of interest.”

“A conflict?” Her eyes popped wide open. “You know something
about the poison dress? Tell me.”

“Not the dress. I went out with the poison apple herself,
until I found the worm inside.”

“You dated Courtney Wallace?” She was shocked. Perhaps she
shouldn’t be, knowing Tony’s appetite for blondes. But Courtney?
The Wicked
Witch of Channel One?

“Inside voices,” he said, even though they were outside. The
waiter arrived with a basket of hot bread and butter and hurried away.

“Another one of your tall cool blondes? I never saw you with
her. Couldn’t have lasted long.”

“No, not long. It was nearly a year ago. Thought we’d be good
for maybe four or five dates.” He had a system. Four dates, five dates,
finito,
forget about it. After that, he once told Lacey, you’re practically picking out
tea towels together.

“You are a cold rake, Trujillo.”

Tony’s particular “gift” was that his magnetism attracted
women, then repelled them. He wouldn’t be young and handsome forever, but he
didn’t seem to know that. He was lucky Washington had such a transient
population, with a rapid turnover in available blondes.

“The way the world works.”

“Not for everyone.”

“Not for you and Donovan. I get that. I missed my chance.”

“Oh please. Did you break up with her after five dates for a
reason, or because her meter expired?”

“Hey, Lacey, I always hope it will be more, but that wasn’t
the reason. You think I was using her? She was using
me
. Courtney was scarfing
my stories. I mentioned a couple things I was working on, and before I could
file, they were on television with her shiny chompers smiling into the camera.
Like a vampire.”

“Did you want to kill her?” Lacey smiled her most fetching
smile.

“Not in the permanent way. Maybe in print. She was a snake,
but if people started killing all the snakes in D.C., this would be a ghost
town. We had words. It wasn’t pretty. I told her to go stick her fangs in
somebody else and suck the blood out of another sucker.”

“Was she upset?” Lacey understood about protecting your beat.
She’d felt almost the same way about the late television reporter.

“Nah. Not terribly. I had the feeling she had another sucker,
or suckee, waiting in the wings.”

“Did this affair happen before her fall from grace?”

“You mean the Granville scandal? Right before it broke.”

“You know the details?”

“Just what I read in the papers.” He laughed. “She never
talked about it. I followed the story because I knew her. She believed a rumor
and reported it without verifying it. She made slips before. But this time, she
tangled with the wrong dude, Thaddeus T. Granville.”

“Long-time politico. Some sort of campaign wizard? Something
like that?”

He gestured with another piece of bread. “That’s his rep.
Courtney torpedoed Granville and his candidate, a Senator Swansdown. Accused
both of them of dirty tricks. Other stations picked it up. Story spread like
wildfire. Turned out it wasn’t true, probably a plant by his enemies. Courtney
wasn’t an investigative reporter, she didn’t have the chops. She just repeated
rumors, things she heard in bars, or maybe in bed.”

“But the senator squeaked through, as I remember.”

“Yeah, but there were ramifications.”

“Refresh my memory,” Lacey said. “What was the scandal about,
the dirty tricks?”

“Washington’s favorite subject. Sex. I’m guessing sex is so
popular because all the workaholics never get any. Makes it that much more
salacious.”

“Details?” She sipped her drink.

“Right. Courtney, the Emmy winner, reported that Granville, the
granddaddy of dirty tricks, was preparing to out the opposing candidate’s wife
as the former madam of an escort service, who’d cleaned up her act. Granville
allegedly was going to publish a list of all the johns, including a number of congressmen.
The story also alleged that the madam had been a high-level escort herself and
was blackmailing her former johns to help pay for her husband’s campaign.”

“It’s ringing a bell. Sounded plausible but none of it was true,
right? And the candidate’s wife attempted suicide?”

Tony nodded. “Took an overdose of something. Survived. But
Courtney kept the heat on Granville and his history as a devious campaign
mastermind. The focus was so hot on the campaign, Thaddeus T. fell on his sword
for the good of all and resigned.”

“This had to be after Senator Swansdown proclaimed he was one
hundred percent behind Granville.” Lacey knew the D.C. drill.

“Exactly. The kiss of death. Swansdown barely won. He would
have lost if Granville had stayed on. But probably also because the other
candidate’s wife looked a little mentally fragile at that point, the candidate
too. He lost and handed Swansdown the win. The day after the election Granville
went public with some kind of proof it was a setup, that Courtney had reported
a fake story.”

“Sounds like a Pyrrhic victory to me.”

“And Granville was ready to torch the town, using Courtney as
the torch. He stormed straight to the head of the station and screamed bloody
murder. Demanded she be fired. There was an on-air apology, and Ms. I-won-an-Emmy
was off the investigative team.”

Lacey shook her head. “She hadn’t even tried to confirm the
story?”

“She was a woman in a hurry.”

“Not anymore.”

“About Courtney.” He considered something and picked up a
knife. “I wouldn’t call what we had an affair. More of a hit and run. But yeah,
it was right before her scandal. A few weeks. I wasn’t sorry when it all went
down. I thought it served her right. At any rate, I’m not going to write about
her. Too close to home for me. I thought you should know.” He stabbed at the
butter.

“Thanks for telling me about this.”

“Impressive scoop, by the way, Lacey. No one else would have
tumbled to the fashion angle.”

“It’s not finished yet.”

“Your interpretation or Mac’s?”

She tore off a piece of bread and buttered it. “I would like
to find out how Paris Green, a dye not used since the nineteenth century, got
mixed up with champagne here in the twenty-first. And a vintage black dress
that probably dates from the Forties. What’s that all about?”

“You think this is another true fashion crime? Not just a
random bizarre incident?” He leaned in with a smile. “Tell me, Brenda Starr, exactly
how does a little black dress become a ‘lethal black dress’?”