Hostile Makeover (2 page)

“Pretty damn lucky, huh?” Wiedemeyer elbowed her in the side as the crowd milled around them.

“I’d hold your horses, if I were you, Harlan.” Lacey was wondering how she would get home. If Wiedemeyer hadn’t insisted on being chivalrous, she would have taken the Metro and been home already, warm and dry and doughnut-free. “I’m not feeling that fortunate right now.”

“Yeah, damned lucky, I’d say. Lucky we weren’t inside my car. Lucky we weren’t squashed like bugs, lucky to be alive,” he said with relish. “We should get a couple of dozen doughnuts just to celebrate.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation.

“We could have been killed.”
Thank you very much
, she added silently,
you Jonah, you.

“We escape death on a daily basis, Smithsonian. A daily basis, if not an hourly one.” His weird mix of fatalism and optimism grated on her last nerve. “Some other poor bastard’s number was up today.”

She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the storm. Up until now, the October weather had been deliciously warm, but the day had turned cold in a matter of hours. She gave up trying to talk to Wiedemeyer and ordered that cup of coffee and a doughnut, breaking her vow to eat healthier. “Nothing like a little caffeine and sugar to steady your nerves,” she said. The sarcasm didn’t faze him.

“Good idea, and I’ll need a tow truck. You got a cell phone? Mine’s in the car. Of course, it may be a while before they lift that sign off my Volvo. Every safety feature known to Swedish science, and look at it. It’s totaled for sure. Poor bastard. Ready to be cubed.” He observed the damage, clicking his tongue on his teeth before calling his insurance adjuster, with whom he was on a first-name basis. Lacey figured they had a long history.

A Fox Television network van slammed on its brakes outside. A broadcast reporter ran out of the van and through the rain into the Krispy Kreme store, demanding to know whose car lay smashed beneath the doughnut sign. “We were just cruising back from a story to get some hot doughnuts! Pretty lucky, huh?”

“We’re all pretty damn lucky tonight,” Lacey murmured. She visualized a headline: “Fashion Reporter’s Brush with Death—and Doughnuts!” She tried to clean away a streak of mud from her raincoat with a napkin, but succeeded only in adding a streak of doughnut glaze.

A small Asian woman at the counter waved her hand for the Fox newsman like the star pupil. “I saw it. I saw everything. You put me on television?”

The reporter trundled Wiedemeyer and the counter lady outside for a live news bulletin, while Lacey called for a taxi on her cell phone. The dispatcher told her to sit tight, that it would take a while because of the storm. As she hung up, it jingled.
That had better not be Yellow Cab telling me I’m out of luck,
she thought.

“I don’t care!” she snapped without even checking the number on her phone’s display. “I still need a taxi!”

“Smithsonian? Are you okay? You took a ride from that lunatic! I told you not to do it, Lacey. Now bad luck is going to follow you like a boomerang until you shake him off.”

“And a good evening to you, too, Trujillo.”

“I guess you’re alive, in spite of the Wiedemeyer Effect. So you weren’t in the car when it happened?”

“How do you know what happened?” Lacey demanded.

“It’s on the news right now. How does Fox do that?” She heard Tony snort into his phone. “It’s always something with that guy. A lightning bolt heads straight for Wiedemeyer, misses him, but gets everything around him. Why did he want to take you home anyway?”

“Maybe he’s a nice guy,” she said, but she knew that wasn’t the answer.

“Yeah, sure. The real reason.”

“He was pumping me for information about Felicity.” She grimaced to herself at the very thought of Felicity Pickles,
The Eye
’s food editor and part-time copy editor. Lacey’s least favorite person in the newsroom had just returned to work after a short leave of absence, following the well-publicized demise of her minivan in an explosion outside
The Eye Street Observer
—an explosion meant for Smithsonian. Everyone had known Felicity was back by the aroma of freshly baked brownies and the crowd of hungry reporters swarming around her desk. Felicity Pickles used food as a weapon and a lure, but her ultimate goal, Lacey was certain, was to fatten up everyone in the newsroom until they all looked like Felicity Pickles. With her long, straight auburn hair, round china-blue eyes, and creamy complexion, Felicity had a strange doll-like look. A chubby child’s doll with a hidden evil side, like something out of a bad horror movie.

“No kidding? Felicity?” Lacey could almost hear the gears turn in Trujillo’s head. “I remember Wiedemeyer was starting to hang around her just about the time her van blew up.”

“You’re blaming Harlan for the minivan explosion?” That cheered her up, since she’d blamed herself for that.

“Well, no, everyone still blames you, Lacey. But I put my money on the Wiedemeyer Effect as a contributing factor. Wait till everyone hears how he got Krispy Kremed!”

A torrent of rain was still gushing out of the sky, and more curious onlookers were flooding the store and lining up at the counter, strangers who were now bonding over another stranger’s misfortune. And hot doughnuts. “Tony, how did you know it was his car?”

“It’s on TV. The ‘poor bastard’s’ license plate.” Harlan’s Virginia plate read PRBSTRD, in honor, he said, of all the poor loser bastards in this world with no one to memorialize their passing but Harlan Wiedemeyer. “Besides, he just talked to the Fox reporter. On camera.”

She groaned. Wiedemeyer was trudging back into the store and making a purchase at the counter. “I have to go, Tony. My jinx is here. I’ll catch you tomorrow.” She hung up.

Wiedemeyer pulled up a chair next to Lacey, took a moment to contemplate his doughnuts, then popped one into his mouth and swallowed it whole. He moaned with audible pleasure. Lacey averted her eyes and looked at her watch.

“You’re not sorry you let me drive you home, are you?” he asked.

“Well, Harlan, I’m not dead. But I’m not exactly home either.” She closed her eyes and sipped her coffee, hoping he would be gone when she opened them. He was looking a little worried, as if he knew what Trujillo had said.

“I know what they say about me. It’s not true, you know. I am not a jinx. Someone probably told you that, right?” She opened her eyes. He was still there. “I mean, who knows how these silly rumors get started?” Another lightning bolt lit the sky, followed by a tremendous crash of thunder. Wiedemeyer flinched. “It’s just ridiculous to say something so ignorant in the twenty-first century. I mean, that’s like saying some poor bastard here is going to fall into a vat of hot doughnut grease just because I walked into the store, right?” He reminded her of a chubby-cheeked chipmunk. He might even be considered cute by some women.
If they closed one eye,
she thought.
And if they thought Sleeping Beauty was a fool not to hook up with one of those cute single dwarves. Harlan’s dwarf name would be Lucky.

“Better gulp down that doughnut, Harlan. Some poor bastard’s heading for the grease right now.”

He laughed, took another bite, and followed his own thoughts. “So I was wondering, Smithsonian, what is . . . um . . . what is Felicity Pickles really like?”

Oh, here it comes again.
“I’m not really the person to ask.”
I can’t stand her. The less I know about her the happier I am.
“I don’t really know her.”

“But you sit right next to her,” Wiedemeyer insisted.

“Remember when her minivan exploded last month, Harlan?”

He nodded. “Boy, that was something, wasn’t it?”

“She blames me for that.”

Relief washed over Wiedemeyer’s round little features like the rain on the windows. “You’re kidding! I was sure she blamed me! Because of . . . well, you know.” Lacey stirred her coffee. “I guess you’re telling me you’re not the best of friends.”

“She was trying to steal my beat and it backfired on her. Scratch one minivan.”

“Who wouldn’t want to steal your beat, Lacey? It’s dangerous and exciting.”

“It shouldn’t be. I’m the fashion reporter. Remember? Danger is
not
my business. It’s yours.”

“Yeah, but you make it so much more. All those killers! Felicity probably just envies you all the excitement.”

“Not anymore. Felicity hates my guts.”

Wiedemeyer sighed. “Felicity.” The way he caressed Felicity Pickles’s name made it clear he did not see her as the malevolent cookie pusher and vicious copy slasher with whom Lacey was only too well acquainted. “She is such a substantial woman. And she’s got such a big . . . Well, she’s substantial.”

That’s one word for her
, Lacey thought, but did not say. She merely nodded. It struck her then that Harlan Wiedemeyer was one poor love-struck bastard. And it was probably the last thing on earth he would want anyone else to know.

“She’s just got such a big . . . such a great big well of sweetness waiting to be unleashed,” Wiedemeyer mused. Lacey nearly choked on her doughnut. She did not want to see any part of Felicity unleashed. “Is she . . . is she seeing anyone at the moment?” He inhaled another doughnut.

“No, I don’t think so.” Lacey really had no idea. She and her nemesis never chitchatted, though inevitably she overheard a few tidbits. The only personal information she recalled was that Felicity lived alone with a couple of fat, lazy felines named Custard and Mustard or Brownie and Blondie or something like that. “Oh, Harlan, you really like her, don’t you?”

Wiedemeyer ducked her glance and stared intently into his coffee while Lacey watched his rather large ears turn red. “I don’t know . . . she’s, well . . . What would she see in me?”

Lacey turned her gaze to the ceiling and rolled her eyes. “Or vice versa. You’re too good for her, Harlan. Too . . . um . . . nice.”

He reached for another chocolate-sprinkled doughnut.

“You’re right; she’s out of my league.” He was a miserable man. “I’m such a dumb bastard.”

“That’s not what I meant, Harlan. You
are
too good for Felicity Pickles. That is exactly what I mean.” At the sound of a taxi honking, Lacey touched his arm lightly. “My ride is here. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She gathered up her things. “Maybe you should just ask her out.”

“I don’t know. A woman like Felicity . . . Gee, this has been great, Lacey. Can we talk like this again?”

Lacey ran for the door as another thunderbolt rattled the windows.

Chapter 2

“Lacey,
cher,
you there? Marie Largesse here, y’all’s friendly neighborhood psychic.”

Lacey braced herself for whatever wacky prediction du jour her friend Marie had left on the answering machine. Usually it had something to do with the weather.

“I’m feeling in my bones a heavy storm’s gonna knock you on your fanny—so to speak. Maybe you should wear those padded bike shorts. Ah, that’s not your style, is it?”

“I doubt it,” Lacey said aloud to her machine. She shook her head and squeezed the moisture out of her hair and realized her knees hurt. She lifted her skirt to see that they were scraped and her hose were torn. “Kneepads would be more like—”

“And here’s the thing,” Marie’s recorded voice continued. “I’m feeling there’s some kind of jinx whirling ’round your head, trying to latch onto you, so you be careful, hear? I know you don’t believe me; sometimes I don’t believe myself. But there you go. A jinx grabs onto your astral body, it’s got to be redirected back from whence it came. Like a lighting bolt hitting a mirror.”

“Thanks, Marie.” Lacey shook her head and reminded herself that Marie was usually wrong, and besides, she was never quite sure what on earth the soothsayer meant.

“Y’all come on by the Little Shop of Horus; I’ll do a reading for you. With Halloween around the corner it’s a madhouse, but you’re always welcome. Maybe I’ll start carrying those bike pants. Bye-bye now.” The machine beeped to end her message.

Lacey rolled her eyes and willed Marie’s words out of her head. She was a dear, but after dodging the lightning bolt with Wiedemeyer, Lacey was anxious just to forget it all. Besides, Marie’s psychic warning was too late—and too cryptic—to help.

Lacey turned from the answering machine to watch lightning strikes hitting the Potomac River. There was a lovely view from the French doors of her balcony. But her soaked clothing was sticking to her skin, and she was desperate to get into something dry. She stripped on her way to the bedroom and tossed her wet clothing into the tub. She slipped into some jeans and a soft red sweater, grabbed a towel for her wet hair, and then stood by the windows and allowed herself to be mesmerized again by the drama outside. In between thunderbolts and lightning, she heard a knocking at her door. Aware that she might look like a drowned cat after her rainy afternoon’s adventure, she wiped her face, hoping her makeup hadn’t streaked.

Through the peephole she saw the one man who could give her heart palpitations without an actual lightning bolt required. Vic Donovan.

He would choose this moment to show up. When I’m feeling about as seductive as a mud puddle,
she thought, but she smiled to herself anyway. Lacey opened the door with one hand and held the wet towel in the other. Vic Donovan took her in with one long, dangerous look. His grass-green eyes were amused, his cocky grin revealing beautiful white teeth. His hair was wet, and his dark locks curled enticingly on his forehead, like a Heathcliff who had just ridden in from the rainy moors.

“Get caught in the storm, Lacey?”

“That keen private-eye observational skill slays me every time.”

“You’re dripping. I’d be happy to help towel you off.” She chuckled and backed away. “That’s no way to greet a weary traveler,” he said. “By the way, you’d look beautiful in nothing but a wet towel.”

She pulled him inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. “Shut up and kiss me, you wet fool.” Sprinkling her with rainwater from his curls and clothing, he swept her into his arms and tightened them around her. Vic Donovan kissed her like a cowboy back from a long, hard ride on the range, and he looked like one as well in his tight jeans and scuffed cowboy boots. Under his beat-up black leather jacket, he wore an old blue denim shirt. The buttons were strained taut across his chest.