Raiders of the Lost Corset (29 page)

Griffin was fidgeting like a man who needed a smoke. “No idea, but he did have something else. Wanted me to look at a piece of possible Romanov jewelry he was coming into.”

“What was it?’

“I never saw it. He said it was platinum, full of gemstones. He wanted me to evaluate it. Last night. At that restaurant. That place is so overrated, you know, why the bloody hell does everyone in Paris have to go there, just because Hemingway used to get sloshed there with —”

“So he was waiting for you?” Brooke asked. “He wasn’t following us?”

“Or he was keeping an eye on all of us. Not a trusting chap, Kepelov.” He winked at her and swallowed some wine. “I was a little late. Not my fault. I see Kepelov on the ground, too much blood, too many police. I realized I had urgent business elsewhere, as they say.”

“Suppose we believe you,” Vic said. “Kepelov had something Romanov. Maybe he’s close to finding more. So the competition kills him — we’re assuming he’s dead — to take it? To keep him from getting to some bigger Romanov treasure trove first? And to eliminate anyone who even suspects it exists?”

“Would that include us?” Lacey said.

“Bingo, bright girl.” Nigel lifted his glass to her. “No one ever listens to me.”

“That can mean only one thing,” Brooke said. She and Damon exchanged a look.

Damon lowered his voice. “The Romanov Revengers. That’s what my CIA contacts call them, anyway. A Russian equivalent of the U.S. Government Repossessors, a highly clandestine shadow government group. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Revengers operate with various partners. The Romanov monarchists. Rogue ex-KGB elements. Maybe even the Russian Mafia. Who knows?”

Griffin looked bleary-eyed. “Good lord. What are you blathering on about?”

Damon looked at Griffin with pity. “Nearly every major indus-trialized nation has a quasi-governmental group to do its secret dirty work, protect national interests, eliminate threats that can’t be addressed in a court of law, that kind of thing,” Damon explained patiently. “The U.S. group is known as the G.R. Code name ‘Grim Reaper.’ ”

“It’s common knowledge,” Brooke said, quite as if it were.

“Bloody hell. You’re saying that our Rasputin was blasted by these Romanov radicals?”

“It’s just one of any number of possibilities,” Brooke suggested. “For all we know, Griffin, you’re the next one on the hit list.” She smiled sweetly. “Pass the wine, please.”

“I have never seen a conversation spin so out of control,” Vic said later. “I think they’re very useful.”

“Who?” Lacey asked.

“Brooke and Damon, of course, the most gifted obfuscators I’ve ever seen. She even had Nigel baffled into believing her. Or at least not disbelieving her. She must be awesome in court.”

“She has a gift.” Lacey nodded. “And yet she believes all that stuff herself. I think.”

Lacey and Vic finally found themselves alone on the street.

Brooke was feeling feverish, so Damon hailed a taxi to take them back to the hotel for a nap and some aspirin and tender loving care.

Griffin was interested only in more wine. Lacey and Vic left him at the café, with the wine tab. It was the least he could do, they all agreed. Everyone but Griffin, that is.

A nap sounded divine to Lacey, but unfortunately, she had work to do. They were walking purposefully. “Where’s that Internet café you found for us?”

Vic checked the map. “Close. Around the corner, down the block.”

The little café had several vacant computers and a high-speed connection. Lacey picked the one in a semisecluded corner, next to a purple velvet wing chair where Vic could keep her company. She regretted she was not out on the streets of Paris. She had reread part of
A Moveable Feast
on the airplane to France, and it was haunting her imagination. She thought about Hemingway writing
The Sun Also Rises
while sitting on the terrace at La Closerie des Lilas, the famous café in Montparnasse. Hemingway wrote with a fountain pen, Lacey’s favorite instrument, or else a clattering manual typewriter. What would he have thought of the Internet? Would he have written a blog?
The Blog Also Rises dot com
? She sighed.

The fun of the Parisian café was watching real Parisians, not staring at a soulless computer screen. But at least she was staring at a soulless computer in a café in Paris, she thought.

Vic agreed she should file a story for
The Eye Street Observer
from the nearest Internet connection. She had her notes with her, and in her head, and at least she’d have a chance of filing something before Damon could concoct some wild tale. Once some of the information about Magda’s supposed treasure was out in the open, everyone would be safer, they both believed. It would be too late to stop the story by killing anyone, Lacey included.

Lacey began by calling the newsroom at
The Eye
on the sleek international cell phone Brooke had loaned her. The six-hour time difference made it just before noon in Washington, and she caught Trujillo on the way to lunch. She cut short his barrage of questions about Paris and learned that the D.C. cops were definitely calling Magda’s death a murder, and the cause of death an unknown poison, but they had no leads and no suspects. The toxicology screen for the poison was still pending, the dagger and crime scene yielded no prints, and Trujillo said Mac had been telling Broadway Lamont that Lacey had gone home early for Thanksgiving. “So what’s the well-dressed fashion reporter wearing on the Champs Elysées this season?” Trujillo asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She told Trujillo to alert Mac to an incoming story, promised to CC it to him as well, and clicked off. Then she began to type.

She summarized Magda’s family history, her grandfather’s diary, the dead end in the coal room in Normandy, the attack in the cellar, and the shooting in Paris of the alleged ex-KGB agent Kepelov. There were certain facts she withheld for safety’s sake. She did not mention that Magda’s “treasure” was said to be a Romanov corset. Nor did she mention the phantom address on the Rue Dauphine or identify Jean-Claude Rousseau or the location of his farmhouse, sparing the Frenchman from having strangers excavate his cellar, or perhaps doing it himself at gunpoint. She would supply an epilogue, she decided, after she and Vic went to New Orleans.

TREASURE SEARCH ENDS IN COBWEBS AND GUNSHOTS

By Lacey Smithsonian

PARIS—Magda Rousseau created treasures of the seamstress’s art, crafting beautiful costumes for the theatres of the Nation’s Capital, elegant gowns and corsets that were the stuff of many a Washington woman’s dreams. However, it was a very different treasure Magda dreamed of. She lived her life with the dream of returning to her native France to find a treasure she believed was hidden there long ago by her grandfather. Some people believe the treasure she spoke of was an imperial Fabergé egg, one of a handful that remain missing, its potential value untold millions. A murderer cut short Magda’s dream. With her dying breath, she asked me to carry on her search for it.

Her directions led me to a farmhouse in the green countryside of Normandy, where I wound up flat on my back, covered in cobwebs. There was no treasure there. But there were others looking for a legendary Fabergé egg, and perhaps willing to kill for it. . . .

Three mocha lattes and one caffeine buzz later, Lacey looked up from the computer and realized there was no fashion angle.

“That’s bound to cause trouble in paradise. I better call Mac,” she said to Vic, dialing the cell phone again. Using Brooke’s expensive minutes, she finally reached Mac, back from lunch and chewing antacid tablets in his office.

“Nice of you to call, Smithsonian, while you’re wasting the paper’s money in France.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Mac, I was chloroformed in the cellar of the farmhouse by a Russian ex-KGB agent who later went lingerie shopping with me and ended up being shot on a Paris street.”

He paused for a moment. Lacey heard him chewing. “You writing fiction now?”

“No, it’s the truth.”

“I take it you’re not injured?” He sounded mildly curious.

“I’m fine.” She felt grumpy and her muscles were stiff. She stretched.

“Who shot this spy?”

“I don’t know. But I didn’t do it. He’d been stalking us.”

“Are you in danger now?”

Actually, she felt pretty safe with Vic there. “I don’t think so. I’m okay.”

“Answer me one question, Lacey. Can you even walk down the street anywhere in the world without causing trouble?”

She could imagine Mac’s brown face glowering, his bushy eyebrows knit together, his free hand reaching for his blue and white bottle of Maalox. “Aren’t you glad I’m okay?” She could hear a sigh.

“Of course I’m glad you’re all right, damn it. There. I said it. But I gather you’re not calling just to make my ulcer bleed. What’s up?”

“I’m e-mailing the story in a few minutes.”

“Wait a minute, Smithsonian.” This was a major change in plans. They had agreed she would finish the story in Washington.

“That’s not because you’re going to be in a French prison tomorrow, is it?”

She made a face at the phone, and Vic lifted an eyebrow at her.

She shook her head at him and said to Mac, “You are
so
not amusing. No, Damon Newhouse is here in Paris and I know he’s going to have some garbled half-fictionalized version of this story on Conspiracy Clearinghouse.”

“How soon?”

“No telling, could be tomorrow. He’s following me around.

Thinks he has a scoop.”

“Maybe I should hire the guy. He’s persistent.”

“Except you don’t publish fiction. And if you hired Newhouse, he’d have to work the fashion beat too, ’cause I’d quit.”

“Kidding, Smithsonian, only kidding!” he grumbled. “What’s the fashion angle?”

Lacey closed her eyes. “Well, there’s not exactly a fashion angle.”

“Smithsonian, your beat is fashion. There’s got to be a fashion angle. What about the corset?”

“What about international intrigue?” she said. “Shady characters, dark conspiracies?”

“The corset, Smithsonian.”

“We can’t mention the corset, Mac.”

“Why the hell not? You’re over there because of the damn corset!”

“It’s complicated.” She heard his growl from across the Atlantic. “And dangerous. I haven’t found the corset. If there is a corset. But the people looking for it think it’s a Fabergé egg.”

“What?” He sounded ready to explode. “Are you crazy? Are
they
crazy?”

“No. Really, some people think the treasure is a Fabergé egg. Look, I’ll just mention her career as a corsetiere and seamstress. How’s that?”

“Make it work. And this better be good. Don’t cause an international incident.”

She hung up and slumped in her chair. Then she returned to her story and added a sidebar on Magda and the elegant art of the corsetiere. As a peace offering, she also sent Mac her “Fashion Bite” on Parisian women and their relentlessly self-confident fashion attitude. Vic checked his watch and started massaging her shoulders.

“I’ve read every magazine in the café. Twice. Even the ones in French. How’s it going?”

“He wants the fashion angle.”

“Tell him where he can put his fashion angle,” Vic said soothingly. “Let me buy you dinner.” He smiled and held her jacket for her.

“We only have one more day in France.” Lacey felt sorry for herself. She paid for her Internet time and pocketed the bill for her expense account. He held the door for her, and they strolled into the glorious late afternoon. The rain had stopped. There would be a beautiful sunset.

“Let’s make it count, then,” Vic said. His smile was all she needed. “What do you want?

“Romance and Paris and you and all the sights we can see.”

He rolled his eyes. “Are you always this demanding?”

“Vic, honey. You don’t
know
demanding.”

Lacey Smithsonian’s

FASHION BITES

French Fashion Superiority? It’s All in the Attitude,
Chérie

Oh, that fabulous, fabled, fashionable French female! So chic, so superior, so legendary. Her allure makes strong men weak, and weak men turn to crime. They are the stuff of sul-try film noir. Her legend is so potent, it’s enough to make you wonder if she’s real or simply a myth with a superb press agent. Or is it just the accent?
Ah, men, zey are fools for ze
accent, chérie. N’est-ce pas?

We know the type. We’ve seen her in the movies, in the incarnations of Bardot, Deneuve, Moreau, and the rest, and we’ve read about her in books and in
Cosmopolitan.
The Frenchwoman is a style icon, so effortlessly stylish, so cool, so
ooh la la.
She drinks coffee and guzzles wine and smokes cigarettes all day so she can eat a nine-course meal at night and stay thin as a supermodel. Her fabled scarf-tying skills are the stuff that fashion myths are made of. She is soigné.

All she needs is a black dress, a cleverly wrapped silk scarf, a smudge of smoky eye makeup, a smear of red lipstick, and a healthy serving of elegant disdain. And a light.

There’s a French saying: If a woman is not beautiful at twenty, it is Nature’s fault. If she is not beautiful at forty, it is her own fault. Tough graders, those French, but you be the judge. Exhibit A: Catherine Deneuve at sixty-something.

Here are a few observations from Paris, the City of Light.

Not every Frenchwoman is Catherine Deneuve, but she does have a few tricks that any woman can use, beginning with attitude. The French have attitude by the wine barrel. The Frenchwoman believes she is chic because she is French, and because she thinks so, everyone else thinks so too. I know, this seems too simple to be true, and yet it is. These lessons are passed down from French mother to daughter. (Remember, get the attitude down,
chérie
, and everything else follows. You can fake
ze accent.
)

• Frenchwomen are consistent. They don’t dress up one day and dress down the next. Their style signature is something you can count on. If they wear makeup, they wear it every day. If they like a piece of jewelry, they wear it a lot. If scarves are their keynote, they have a drawer full. If they wear high heels, they wear them everywhere. She’s memorable, and she makes it a pleasure to remember her.