Designer Knockoff (2 page)

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Authors: Ellen Byerrum

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Designer Knockoff
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“Unless you plan to cover the new American fashion museum, I don’t think I’ll be trampling on your beat, oh king of the hill.”
“Fashion museum? What fashion museum?”
“You hadn’t heard? Chairman Dashwood is threatening to withdraw government grant money for it. Museum sponsors are defending their right to wallow in the public trough.”
“There’s an approps bill for a fashion thing? Good God. The trivial things you cover.”
“It’s considered a big thing on my beat. Somehow millions sneaked into the approps bill to support the fashion museum and no one is taking credit for it. That’s a big oops.”
Peter glared down his nose at her as he pushed his oversized aviator glasses back up.
What’s the fashion statement there, giant ant in a sci-fi movie?
He puffed up his concave chest, sucked in his rounded belly, and smoothed back his thinning brown hair. He spun on his heel and stalked away to cover a hearing on Homeland Security, the importance of it all weighing heavy on him.
For Lacey Smithsonian, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee oversight hearing on a new museum dedicated to American fashion was more than just a story—it also provided the perfect occasion to wear a vintage designer suit with jeweled button covers, filigreed gold set with tiny pearls and rubies. Lacey stood out like a swan among the ducks in her tailored black summer-weight wool, a rare vintage 1940s suit styled by the renowned House of Bentley and bequeathed to her by her great-aunt. The suit caressed her hourglass curves, and it fit her better than any modem ready-to-wear or designer knockoff, which was all she could afford on a reporter’s salary. The jacket buttoned to just below her collarbone. The skirt, with just enough swing for easy walking, hit right below the knee. The only thing that compromised the outfit was her press identification card with the requisite funhouse headshot, photographed by a vengeful government employee.
Nevertheless, Lacey felt good. Her light brown hair had grown out nicely from a disastrous spring fling with bangs—after receiving an unplanned trim from a psychopath with a razor. Now she had new highlights with a hint of early Lauren Bacall and a devastating vintage suit, and she was here to witness a killer in action.
A lady-killer, to be exact.
According to her late great-aunt Mimi Smith, Hugh “That Bastard” Bentley, the legendary American designer, slated to testify before the committee, was a notorious playboy, a heel, a cad, a louse. A heartbreaking fiend. Lacey had heard tantalizing tidbits over the years about Hugh “That Bastard” Bentley, who wined and dined Mimi during World War II—the same Bentley who designed the suit she was wearing. The subject of the exclusive Bentley’s Boutique on Wisconsin Avenue, just outside the District, would occasionally rise like a bubble to be popped. Mimi refused to shop there and only released tiny tempting hints. Mimi never even wore the suit, but she hadn’t had the heart to throw it out—she called it a “true Bentley’s original.”
Did they have a torrid affair, I wonder?
It was a pathetic comment on Lacey’s own lack of romance that she wondered about Great-aunt Mimi’s love life. Her most recent heartthrob, ex-Steamboat Springs police chief Vic Donovan, had returned to Colorado in July to deal with “personal family business.” He told her he’d be coming back soon, but men said a lot of things. Now it was September and Congress was back in business, but Vic was still missing in action.
But Lacey didn’t have time to dwell on Vic. She reviewed her notes. Hugh Bentley was the primary inspiration, constant mover, and major backer (along with the taxpayers) of the Bentley Museum of American Fashion. Besides her Bentley suit and Mimi’s tenuous Bentley connection, Lacey figured the hearings and “Hugh the B,” as she liked to think of him, were worth a column or two. She was right; the hearing room was nearly packed with media when Lacey arrived. A line of would-be spectators snaked down the halls, held back by security, and they protested every time a reporter or staffer was allowed inside before the doors officially opened.
Wires ran everywhere, festooned with lighting technicians and cameramen. The bright hot lights were already raising the room’s temperature to an uncomfortable level. The networks were there, as well as CNN and the other usual suspects from the wonderful world of broadcast. Even
Entertainment Tonight,
that braintrust of political savvy, was on hand.
Luckily the press table had a sliver of available seating. But a female reporter from
The Washington Post took
one look at Lacey and bristled in defense of her territory. “There’s room at the other table. It’s really crowded here,” she said. With a chilly look, the woman indicated another table, stacked tall with press releases, where the overflow trade press were huddled like a boatload of orphans.
“No, thanks, I’ll sit with the grown-ups.” Lacey smiled at the woman, who scooted over half a millimeter, sniffed, and proceeded to ignore her. The Post reporter was outfitted in a stretched-out black-and-white houndstooth jacket and black skirt. Her mouse-brown hair was worn in a short puffy suburban-mom hairdo, although she wore no wedding ring. She raised one eyebrow at Lacey’s outfit, then returned to studying her notebook.
David Kenyon, a bearded reporter from
The Washington Times,
made room for Lacey. “So they still let you out of the office.”
“Occasionally.”
“Isn’t that kind of dangerous? The last time they let you out, didn’t you stab someone?”
“I haven’t stabbed anyone in months, David. Not with scissors anyway.”
“Just your barbed wit.”
“It’s a weapon of class destruction.”
Kenyon laughed. The Post reporter raised her eyebrows again.
“Well, with all the security here, I guess I’m safe,” Kenyon said. “Besides, I don’t see where you could possibly hide a pair of scissors in that suit.”
“Thanks. I hope I don’t need them.” Score one for Mimi’s
suit.
Lacey surveyed the crowd, trolling for tidbits for “Crimes of Fashion,” her weekly column. She spotted most of the usual faces, but something—or, rather, someone—was missing. “David, have you seen Esme?” A well-connected intern who had kept Lacey in the loop when the committee press secretary ignored her calls, Esme Fairchild had been working specifically as a liaison between the museum advocates and the appropriations subcommittee.
Kenyon grimaced. “Unfortunately, no. But the little grumpy one is here.” He pointed to an obviously irritated young staffer who was loaded down with press releases and copies of senators’ statements. She was fighting a battle with people who weren’t reporters trying to grab the papers out of her hands. She was short. She was outnumbered. It was a losing battle.
“I’m sorry, these are only for the press!” She glared at the press table before turning to her harasser. “Yes, sir, I understand; I will give them to you when I can. After the press gets them. They’re for the media!” She sighed in exasperation as she set the releases on the table. True to form, the reporters jumped on them like a pack of dogs.
“Excuse me, is Esme Fairchild here?” Lacey asked, riffling through her copies of testimony and statements and guarding them from attack.
The grumpy baby-faced brunette was dressed in a stodgy style that Lacey called “prematurely serious,” which proliferates in Washington like Pentagon budget overruns. Her staff badge identified her as Nancy Mifflin. She peered at Lacey through her trendy little lenses.
“Esme? I wish. She’ll probably show up when all the heavy lifting is done. By me.”
“I left a message for her yesterday,” Lacey said.
“I haven’t seen her since then. Esme said she simply had to get a manicure and pedicure before the hearing.” Nancy glanced at her own nervously chewed nails. “Heaven knows how important that is when the press is nipping at your heels.”
“Listen, Nancy, I really appreciate what you’re doing. It can’t be easy; we’re a pretty rabid bunch sometimes,” Lacey said. “Thanks.”
Nancy looked a bit surprised. She smiled, then turned her back to stand guard over her precious papers. She was immediately engulfed by a pack of reporters and disappeared from view.
Esme, on the other hand, would have been impossible to miss. She was tall, slender as a postage stamp, with long honey-colored hair and golden eyes, and she always made a point of being seen. She made no secret of the fact that she had done some modeling in college and had her heart set on a fashion career in New York, which was why, Lacey supposed, she had latched onto the Bentley fashion museum project with such fervor. She was all of twenty-one and already worried that time was running out.
The young woman had proven to be a decent news source, if fashion was considered news. Esme Fairchild wore her ambition as boldly as she did her short-skirted suits, which barely met the Senate dress code. Washingtonians like ambition, but the consensus was that Esme’s was a little too raw, naked, and desperate. She had even courted coverage by Lacey Smithsonian and that scrappy little newspaper of hers,
The Eye.
Not that Lacey minded; that was part of the game.
“It must have been something big,” Kenyon said. “Wild boars wouldn’t keep her away from this hearing.”
“How well do you know Esme?”
“How much do you want to know?”
“The big-print
USA Today
edition. Not the
National Enquirer version.”
“We’ve hoisted a few beverages.
The Enquirer
would have been bored. But she’s a friendly girl, a very friendly girl. She makes quite an impression. I know that she invested everything in making a good impression on the Bentleys for a job.”
“But as what, specifically?” Esme had merely hinted at her game plan with Lacey.
“Company spokesmodel.”
“But they have Cordelia Westgate, the party girl with a pedigree.”
“Yes, but Cordelia’s pushing thirty and Esme thinks she ought to be put out to pasture before old age gets her.”
“If Esme thinks she can push Cordelia out of the saddle, she’s got a steep learning curve ahead of her. Especially if she made it known. And to a reporter.”
The meeting came to order. It looked like the full Senate panel would be in attendance with all senators on deck, not, of course, to listen to the designers, but to rage and rumble about the funding irregularities—and to gawk at Cordelia Westgate, who was more famous for posing nude in
Playboy
than for her role as celebrity spokesmodel for the Bentleys.
They were dressed for the occasion in the full senatorial palette: gray, black, gray, gray, charcoal gray, navy, and one Democrat in olive green, the rebel. The lone female senator on the panel wore a red power suit. She was a Republican. Lacey turned her gaze to the witness table.
Hugh “That Bastard” Bentley in the flesh turned out to be a slightly shrunken octogenarian. However, the old roué had aged well, with his steely blue eyes and his thick mane of silver hair parted on the side, worn long and combed back. His dapper mustache was expertly trimmed in a style from another era, the era of Ronald Coleman and Errol Flynn. He was dressed in one of his own designs, a navy suit that he wore with a silver vest and a blue-and-silver-striped ascot. The silver cuff links on his shirt peeked out beneath the cashmere jacket. Hugh carried a silver-handled walking stick, not a cane, which Lacey had heard was an old affectation. In his prime Hugh had resembled a movie star, with his black hair, strong jaw, and dazzling smile. In his old age he still did. He could pass for sixty-something, and he made the senators look like accountants.
Lacey was itching for details. She scolded herself. The scolding didn’t work.
They must have had a fling. If I’d been Aunt Mimi sixty years ago—my God, sixty years ago!
—
I might have.
Although Hugh the B came from a hardscrabble early background, no one would know it. He carried himself like royalty. His immigrant grandfather, Hugo Bentbridge, had been a tailor; his father, Harry Bentbridge, had owned a small garment factory; and Hugh had broken into designing women’s wear midway through World War II. It was Hugh who had classed up Bentbridge into Bentley, much to Aunt Mimi’s amusement. Mimi was a Smithsonian who had “declassed” her name to Smith. “Blame Jimmy Stewart and
Mr
.
Smith Goes to Washington,”
Mimi often said. “That was the kind of Smith I wanted to be. Besides, I was tired of being a phony Smithsonian, like those phony Bentleys.”
Despite wartime clothing regulations, Hugh the B made a name for himself and established an American fashion dynasty. LIFE magazine once profiled him in the late Forties with a cover story entitled, “A Star Is Worn.”
Lacey studied the lineup. The Bentleys and the comely Cordelia were seated front and center at the witness table. Belinda Bentley Holmes, Hugh’s younger sister, was seated on his right. Belinda was everything semi-old money and clever cosmetic surgery could achieve on a seventyish canvas. She looked expensive and wore her still golden-blond hair in a sophisticated French twist. Her new Bentley suit was peacock blue. On his left, Marilyn, Hugh’s queenly wife and famed muse, was resplendent, if slightly plump, in mauve. She wore her snowy hair in a regal coronet. On her left Aaron Bentley, Hugh’s forty-something son, was, if anything, handsomer than his famous father had been. The divorced playboy was a familiar face in the pages of
Vogue
and
W.
Aaron, the reigning king of the fashion house, was expected to plead the family’s case for the worthiness of the Bentley Museum of American Fashion, citing fashion’s importance to the American economy.
Quite a family photo,
Lacey thought.
Tomorrow’s headline? “Senate Dazzled by Royal Family of American Fashion. ”

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