Hostile Makeover (17 page)

How could she tell Vic? After the police interview, Vic had found her sitting in the hall at Violent Crimes and had driven her back home in silence. They were both too tired to talk. She had kissed Vic good-night and sent him home. She thought she wanted to be alone. But now, in her apartment without him, and confronted by the impending disaster of her mother’s visit, she longed to feel his arms around her. She didn’t want to admit she felt scared, but she did, a little.

What is he thinking right now?
she wondered. She would bet he was trying to sort out the shooting as if he were still a cop, comparing his methods with those of the Metropolitan Police.

She went to bed and tried to sleep. It wasn’t happening. The phone rang a few minutes later. It was Vic.

“I was halfway home when I realized I was crazy to leave you alone after this night.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I’m at your door. Let me in. Please.”

She raked her hands through her hair and glanced in the mirror before going to the door. No makeup, but she was wearing a favorite black silk robe over a white nightgown. She wasn’t a pajama girl. She was sure she looked like a stressed-out mess after tonight, but there was only one soft light on, so it would be okay. She opened the door. Vic looked troubled and sexy, with an unruly curl falling over his forehead. He cracked a sheepish grin. “Hey, beautiful.”

She felt herself smile. “Come on in; you look beat.” She pulled him in and shut the door. He wrapped her in his arms in a hug. “Did you straighten out the cops?”

“They know where to find me. It’s no fun being on the other side of the table in a witness interview,” he acknowledged. “And you?”

“I didn’t announce the killer-magnet part. He’s going to have to find out on his own.”

“Good. Let him work for it.” Vic turned and made sure the door was double-locked, and he slipped the chain on. “I don’t like it, your being pulled into this. The Manville woman and her obsession is one thing—”

“She was right; someone was trying to kill her.”

“Stealing your car and using it in this attack is another thing altogether. It’s really loony.” He took off his leather jacket and draped it over the back of a wing chair. “Contrary to popular fiction, most killers don’t lay out their work in some twisted pattern to send a message and impress the police with their brilliance. But this guy’s got an agenda.”

“And you think I’m part of it?”

“You are now. I don’t want you to be alone until this jerk is put away.”

“Don’t worry, I have bad news.”

“More bad news? Did someone else get shot?” He started to glower, and she fell onto the sofa in exhaustion.

“Worse. My mother has announced she’s coming here for the weekend. With my sister. They’ll be here on Friday, thereby killing our plans for a romantic weekend.”

“You can’t stop her? Put her off for a week or two?”

“Can you stop a locomotive barreling down the tracks at a hundred miles an hour?”

“But why now?” He put his arms around her. “To stop you from running away with me?”

“Because of my car being stolen. She kept repeating something about comforting me in my hour of need. As if that were possible. She doesn’t know anything about you.”

“You haven’t told her about me?” He paused. “Not even in passing?”

“Good God, no. I don’t tell my mother anything important.”

“Finally an admission from you that I am important.” He chuckled. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really. You?”

“No, I was just going to bed.”

“Mind if I join you?” She must have looked startled. He added, “To sleep, that’s all. I’ll bunk on the sofa. I have before. Trust me, this wouldn’t be the right night for our big romantic moment.”

“The sofa won’t be necessary, Vic.” Lacey led the way into her bedroom. He kissed her, then sat down on the bed to remove his boots.

“I’ll just go and turn out the lights,” Lacey said, her heart beating fast. By the time she returned, he was sound asleep on her bed, one boot on, one boot off. She didn’t disturb him; she just pulled off the other boot, threw a blanket over him, and turned off the bedside lamp. She crawled under the sheets next to him and kissed his cheek.

“I think I love you, Victor Donovan,” she whispered softly.

Chapter 13

“Smithsonian. In my office. Now,” was Mac’s first order of the day Thursday morning.

Lacey had suspected she would need a little extra moxie that day, so she selected her black Gloria Adams suit, the original prototype of a famous Bentley’s suit from the Forties. It hugged her curves and gave her an extra measure of sass when she needed it. She wore it with her black suede tango shoes, so she could dance on men’s hearts if the occasion called for it. And it might. She quelled her nerves, squared her shoulders, and swaggered into her editor’s office.

Mac noted her bravado with one raised eyebrow and gestured for her to sit down. The phone interrupted with a shrill, insistent ring. Mac picked it up, placing his hand over the receiver, and said, “Relax. Sit.”

She had to clean a stack of newspapers off the extra chair in order to use it. She plopped the papers on a large pile of files precariously perched on Mac’s desk. Then she sat on the edge of the chair while he listened. She couldn’t relax. He hung up and looked at Lacey.

“That was Trujillo. Amanda Manville just died. Never regained consciousness.”

“She’s dead? Damn.” It hit her like a leaden blanket thrown over her, cutting off her air supply.
It’s not your fault,
she told herself. The detective had said it didn’t look good. And Amanda was a perfectly unpleasant person, but still, a human being who desperately wanted to live. Mac leveled his eyes at her.

“Talk to me, Smithsonian. Tell me what I don’t know that you’re going to tell me now so that I’m in the loop.” It was an order.
Might as well,
she thought.
He’ll read all about it in my story anyway. Eventually.

“I was there last night in Dupont Circle,” Lacey began hesitantly. “I saw her get shot. I was just there to follow up on my interview with her.” She could tell that Mac was about to say something snarky, so she quickly continued. “But that’s not the worst of it, for me. Remember my car? Stolen out of the company garage? It was used in the drive-by, I’m sure of it. I told all of this to the police. Tony probably has it all written already.”

“Damnation, Smithsonian!” He said it so loud that nearby reporters looked up from their desks, where they were playing solitaire and surfing the Web. Mac moved swiftly to shut the door and pull the blinds over the glass windows. Lacey suspected that reporters were tiptoeing to the door to listen. It was what she would do.

“You’re telling me the shooter stole your car and then used it in the attack? On purpose? It’s not some insane coincidence?”

“Well, that would be nice, Mac. But it’s about as likely as another 1983 silver-and-burgundy 280ZX just like mine being driven by the shooter.”

“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
How does he know?
“I’m waiting, Smithsonian.”

“Amanda Manville told me someone was trying to kill her. I didn’t believe it.”

He took a deep breath and wiped his hands across his face. “I don’t need to know why, Smithsonian. No one knows why things happen. But what I’d like to know is how you do it. Get yourself all jammed up in these murder stories. It’s not like you’re a war correspondent or a police reporter, or even an obituary writer, for Christ’s sake. You’re the fashion reporter. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me either.” She stared at the high pile of papers on his desk; it was threatening to fall. If she moved a little to the left, she could almost hide behind it, but he’d probably find her.
Eventually.
“Maybe if you switch me off the fashion beat, the killings will stop.”

Mac actually laughed. A good sign. “Very funny. But this is another fine mess.”

“It’s not my fault, you know.”

He looked at her with a glare that sent shivers down her spine. “Right. Maybe it’s Wiedemeyer’s? It is never your fault, Smithsonian. But there you are. And before you open your mouth to protest”—he put his hand up to stop her from talking—“I’m not ordering you off the story, even though my blood pressure is off the charts. You’d find a way to get mixed up in it anyway.”

“Thank you, Mac.” She was going to say something when he interrupted.

“However, you’ll cover the fashion angle. Sequins and satins, buttons and bows, colors and quips. Got it?”

“But this is a murder.”

The glare was back. “I’m sure you can dig up some fashion angle, right? Tony is covering the police angle,” he said. “And Lacey, this next part I have to say because it’s my job and I do care, and because maybe if I say it enough times, my words will mean something to you. Be careful, damn it!
The Eye
does not ask its reporters to endanger their lives. My motto: Get the story, but don’t get killed doing it.”

“Maybe you could have cards printed up and just hand me one every time I get into trouble,” she offered.

“Not funny, Smithsonian.”

“Duly noted, boss.”

“Get back to work. Write a story about her fears, the terrors of sudden undeserved fame, America’s love-hate relationship with celebrities, whatever. You’ll pull it together. And unless she went around telling every reporter in Washington that she was pursued by a killer, you’ve got an exclusive.”

“A fashion exclusive?”

“Find a way.”

She stood up quickly before he could get any more bright ideas. She opened the door, and several reporters quickly scattered, acting like they hadn’t been glued to the door listening. They were such bad actors, it almost made her laugh. But she was determined to behave as if everything were under control. She sashayed back to her desk. After all, the Gloria Adams suit and the tango shoes deserved it. At times like this, looking put together and polished was an antidote to the storm of emotions swirling inside.

Luckily, it was still early. Felicity hadn’t yet begun her daily ritual of offering calorie-laden, sugar-soaked snacks to everyone. All it would take for people to stop encouraging this would be one good case of food poisoning, Lacey thought. But Felicity didn’t want to hurt anyone; she just wanted everyone to be fat and unhappy.

Lacey tried to keep her mind on the story, but the picture of Vic, sweetly sleeping on her bed that morning, kept distracting her. They had both overslept, and he was out of there like a jackrabbit on speed, but not before offering advice in true cowboy-hero style.

“I could lend you one of my guns.”

“No, Vic. You know they’re illegal in D.C.”

“That doesn’t stop every punk criminal from having one.”

“Even you don’t carry a gun, Vic,” Lacey pointed out.

“Not usually. But I also don’t get involved with the wrong sort the way you do.”

“The wrong sort like you?”

“We need to go to the range again anyway. You need some practice.” He kissed her good-bye, then paused on his way out the door. “I’ll be back.”

Hurry,
she thought.

After turning on her computer at her desk, what she needed, she decided, was some java to jump-start the old brain. She made her way to the small staff kitchen.

“Well, well, well. I guess that trading her integrity for unlimited free plastic surgeries in search of a new face and body didn’t help the ultimate makeover queen,” Cassandra Wentworth, editorial gunslinger, said as she crossed Lacey in the lair of the coffee drinkers.

“Working on some pearls of wisdom for the next edition, Ms. Wentworth?” Lacey rinsed her cup and sniffed the pot of coffee. It smelled slightly bitter, with an odd overtone.
Worse than burning truck tires, but better than battery acid,
she decided.
It will have to do.
She took her chances and poured.

“For Sunday actually. It is a rare day that I get such a clear-cut and dramatic example of America’s rotting moral fiber.” Cassandra said it with relish. “With the exception of Congress, of course. What are you writing about it? That it’s a tragedy for retailers and trendy young anorexics?”

“Not quite. But I will be putting Amanda’s demise in a fashion context.”
Somehow.

“How do you plan to do that?”

“She lived for fashion,” Lacey said. “Maybe she died for it.”

Cassandra finished stirring something disgusting and herbal into her cup. It smelled as bad in its own way as the coffee, but the aroma was more
Swamp Thing
and less industrial sludge. “I guess the killer preferred the original Amanda, the one who had a heart, who handed out bowls at the soup kitchen, to the plastic doll she became.”

“It sounds like you know a lot about her, Cassandra. I could swear you’ve been reading my fashion magazines.”

“Research,” she protested. “Just good research. Know thine enemy.”

“Still, being shallow and superficial and going to extremes to be beautiful are no excuse for murder.”

“Hmmph. I guess not.” Cassandra took her steaming cup of ooze and turned to leave the kitchen, deep in her fevered editorial dream. She bumped head-on into
The Eye
’s Peter Johnson, the scourge of Capitol Hill. He was just as surprised as Cassandra, who slopped some of her herbal porridge on Johnson’s ugly tie du jour. Lacey thought it did no harm to the tie, but Cassandra was unexpectedly distressed.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Peter.” She turned scarlet and began to mop away at the tie with her free hand.

“No, it’s okay.” He grimaced and then strained to turn it into a smile. “Smells good; what is it?”

Smells good?
Lacey thought.
Like low tide on the Potomac smells good.

“Oh, you know, a little echinacea, licorice, ginger, cumin, green tea . . .” Cassandra rattled off a few more incompatible ingredients, but Lacey was concentrating on their body language.