Raiders of the Lost Corset (36 page)

“I don’t know what to say,” Lacey said.
What did that crazy
bastard Berzins do with the corset?
She looked at the urn. It was engraved DROSMIS BERZINS. And a fragment of the Bible verse mentioned in the note in Jean-Claude’s cellar was engraved in English beneath his name: FOR DUST THOU ART AND TO DUST SHALT THOU RETURN.

“Relative of yours?” the woman asked politely. “Must have been a religious gentleman.”

“Must have been,” Lacey agreed.

Could the urn possibly contain Berzins’ own ashes? Lacey wondered. Brooke had found his obituary on the Web; he died long after Jean-Claude’s coal room was sealed up with his torn note in the metal box, the clue Lacey was following in this devious little scavenger hunt. But perhaps he had instructed someone to bring his ashes here after he died?
Please no,
Lacey thought,
no human
remains this morning. I haven’t even had lunch yet.

“How long has it been here?” Lacey asked.

“Oh, my. I really couldn’t say. My husband’s been trying to remember; he’s back there filling prescriptions. We’ve been married twenty-five years — that’s when we took this place over, and it was here before that.” The woman looked at Lacey for some kind of explanation. She seemed to be willing to wait.
Time does move
more slowly here,
Lacey thought.

“It’s pretty heavy, Molly.”
Is that the brightest thing I can think
of to say?

“Feels about like a ten-pound sack of sugar to me,” Molly mused. “I kind of hate to see it go, but my husband says it’s time, I guess. Now that you’ve come for it and all.”

“Would you mind if I set this down here?” It felt full.
Of
what?
she wondered. It didn’t rattle when she shook it, but its contents seemed to shift softly inside. It could have been her imagination. Lacey put the urn down on the marble counter of the soda fountain. She rummaged through her purse for her digital camera.

“Oh, that’s a good idea! Do take a picture, and would you mind letting me get in the photograph? I’d love to have a copy too, if y’all wouldn’t mind.”

Lacey photographed Molly with the urn and then took a seat on a stool at the counter. “When did you stop serving soda fountain customers here?”

“Back in the Seventies, my husband tells me. His folks had the place till they retired.” Molly wiped her fingers along the marble counter.

“That’s too bad. It’s so pretty, so old-fashioned. It’s a shame not to use it.”

“His folks always said it was such a lot of work and folks would just sit here and gab all day, I hear tell. Couldn’t get them out of here. Here, let me get you a sack for that thing, so you can take it with you,” she said and reached beneath the counter for some brown paper bags. Molly put the heavy urn inside, double-bagged it so it wouldn’t tear through, and set it back on the counter.
Oh,
my God,
Lacey realized,
she’s simply giving me this thing?

“So. The urn. Thanks for the sack, Molly. And I can just —

um — take it with me?” Lacey didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it, but she was beginning to have an idea.

“Oh, yes, ma’am. That’s what the letter said.”

“Wait a minute. What letter?”

A middle-aged man with a friendly round face poked his head out of the back room behind the pharmacy counter.

“So y’all’re the urn lady! Well, well. Been here a mighty long time. Yes, indeed.”

“The urn lady. That’s me,” Lacey said. “Molly mentioned there was a letter with the urn?”

He patted his wife on the shoulder and smiled. “Oh, my, yes, but the letter is long gone. My daddy kept it for a long time, but I don’t know what happened to it. He died ten years ago. I do, however, mind what the letter said, at least the gist of it. This thing here has been a family curiosity, you might say.” He leaned on the soda fountain counter. “I never thought I’d live to see the day someone would come for it. Name is Tom.” He put out a large hand for Lacey to shake. “My daddy ran this store after his daddy died.

Family’s owned it nearly a century.”

“How did the urn come to be here in your store?” Lacey took out her notebook and pen.

“Old man left it here one day. Don’t recall if my daddy said he was a regular or a stranger. Paid Pop fifty dollars — lot of money back then — to keep it safe here till someone came for it.”

“Did he say who that would be?”

“Nope. Note said whoever came looking for the name on the urn should have it.”

Lacey stopped writing and stared at Tom and Molly. “Anyone who came looking for that name? Didn’t that strike anyone as a little crazy?”

“This is
Nawlins, cher.
” Tom pronounced it like a native, or so she’d been told. “Crazy things happen every day. Guess it didn’t strike my daddy as
too
crazy. He used to run a post office in this place way back, for the neighborhood, took delivery of packages and such. He told me once he figured someone’d come for this thing in a few days, a month maybe. It was safe right here with him, waiting for the right person to claim it. Nobody’s gonna just pick that foreign name there out of a hat, now are they? Time went on, it became kind of a conversation piece, you know?”

Lacey gazed at the brass urn in wonder. She took a deep breath.

“Well. Thank you for keeping it safe. Do I owe you anything? For storage, all these years?”

“No, ma’am, the story value is as good as anything,” Tom said.

“My daddy was willing to store it in perpetuity, waiting for someone to come for it. Till now. Must be a story to go with it, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at her with the same mild curiosity Molly had displayed.

“About that story,” Lacey began, “it’s a rather delicate thing.

And unfinished.” Lacey needed a close inspection of the urn and its contents, no matter what it contained, even human remains. It might lead her anywhere, or nowhere, but the last thing she wanted was for this story to get out prematurely. Just the kind of wacky local feature story an enterprising
New Orleans Times-Picayune
reporter might jump on. She could imagine the headline: FRENCH QUARTER MYSTERY OF LONG-FORGOTTEN URN. And the DeadFed dot com version: SMITHSONIAN TAKES ROMANOV JEWEL HUNT TO BIG EASY! Lacey couldn’t risk the Fabergé egg hunters catching her trail before she could get the urn — and herself — to a safe place.

“I don’t have the whole story yet,” she said, “and if this gets out too soon I may never get it. Could I ask you not to say anything about this for the next few days? To anyone? Let’s say until after Thanksgiving?”

Tom and Molly looked at each other. “Yes, ma’am,” Tom said.

“But why Thanksgiving, particularly?”

“I only need a few days. I hope. But it will be a much better story if I have a chance to tie the loose ends together. And I can guarantee you will have your picture in the newspaper in Washington, D.C., and you’ll have a whole new story to tell your customers. That is, if you would
like
to have your picture in the paper.”

Tom laughed. “I do love a good story, ma’am, and if my Molly here can keep her mouth shut, you got a deal.”

His wife playfully slapped him on the arm. “Y’all don’t have to worry none about me, if this old bird can just hold his tongue.”

Lacey took several pictures of the two of them with the urn, took a few more notes, and then gave Tom her card with her phone number at
The Eye.
She filled up the top of the bag with drugstore supplies: cough syrup, antacid, aspirin for Stella’s hangover. She also purchased a package of diapers and tucked the urn inside to disguise its shape.

“Y’all’re being real careful,” Molly observed. “I don’t think it’s all that fragile.”

“You know us reporters,” Lacey said, not knowing if they did, but it sounded good at the moment. She was thinking of the unpredictable Nigel Griffin. She hoped he’d given up on her, and yet she found herself scanning every room and every crowd for him.

“So if anyone comes in and asks what I was looking for and what I found?”

“Why, sugar, I’ll just tell those nosy reporters you had one killer of a hangover and needed something strong for it,” Molly said.

“Thank you, Molly, Tom. So nice to meet you. We’ll keep the story between us for now?”

“Y’all can count on us, Miss Smithsonian.” Tom read her business card. “We’ll keep a lookout. Y’all come back, y’hear?”

“Thanks again. I’ll be in touch.” Lacey winked and hefted her bag. She prayed that she and Drosmis Berzins’ mysterious urn would make it back to her hotel together.

Chapter 34

Crazy and horrible thoughts flashed through Lacey’s mind as she strolled casually back to the hotel with her drugstore bag in hand. She forced herself to slow down so as not to draw attention in this slow-moving city. Did Berzins burn the corset? Could the jewels be hidden inside, or did it actually contain human remains? And why? And whose? And what will they look like? The last thought made her queasy. Midday in New Orleans was just as lovely as the morning had been, and just as relaxed, but Lacey’s heart was beating as hard as if she were running through a dark forest pursued by wolves.

Lacey had her room key ready in the elevator. She checked the empty hall and ran to her door and unlocked it in one smooth motion. She sniffed the air, relieved to detect no suspicious woodsy rose perfume, only a hint of the housekeeper’s cleaning supplies.

She double-locked the door behind her and turned the dead bolt, rolled up a towel and jammed it against the bottom of the door, and stuck a Post-it over the peephole.

Don’t be so paranoid,
she told herself.
Brooke and Damon have
really gotten to you.
She flicked on the lights and took the urn to the desk, first spreading out the complimentary copy of
USA Today
to cover the surface. The brass urn was dark with tarnish, so she took a clean washcloth from the bathroom and rubbed it to make sure nothing else was written on it. It was clean. She realized she was also rubbing away decades of fingerprints, but she didn’t care; too many curious hands had already held the urn for it to matter.

The urn looked a little like a trophy, she thought, perhaps a golf trophy, missing the little man with the club. Another irony, she thought. Was this Berzins’ idea of a prize in his scavenger hunt?

She tried to gently pry the lid off and realized that it screwed on.

It was too tight to turn, but after carefully running hot water over the lid, she loosened it enough to get it started. One more hard twist and it came off in her hand. She peered inside, waiting with bated breath to see the white of human bones or teeth among soft ashes, or the glint of jewels wrapped in tattered rags from a long-lost corset. But the urn contained none of those things, no jewels, no human remains. It was full of dirt. And what looked like the edge of a piece of paper sticking up out of the middle.

Drosmis Berzins, you son of a bitch!

Lacey paced the room for a minute to stop her hands from shaking, then she tipped the urn out carefully on the newspaper. The dirt was caked hard — only the top inch or so was loose. Not having so much as a sharp nail file to dig with, thanks to airline security, she chipped away at it around the edge of the paper with a ball-point pen from the desk, ruining the tip. Chunks of dirt soon made a pile on the newspaper. She hoped for at least an errant diamond or ruby.
Nothing.

The paper that poked up through the dirt turned out to be a small envelope. Inside was a folded-up map of the St. Louis Cemetery Number One, a New Orleans landmark just at the edge of the French Quarter, along with a bill of sale and a deed to a single crypt. And on the back of the deed was a surprisingly long handwritten note in what she presumed was Latvian. Lacey sifted through the larger clumps of dirt, breaking them into dust, revealing nothing; no gemstones, no jewelry, not even a scrap of material. She was chagrined. Sweat was pouring off her forehead. She wiped it off and washed her hands before documenting the mess with her camera.

Lacey presumed that if she was following Drosmis Berzins’ mad plan correctly, this note, the map, and the deed were the next pieces in the puzzle. Berzins seemed to be damned fond of notes and of leading people around. She funneled the dirt back into the urn from the newspaper, replaced the lid, packed it back inside the package of diapers, and hid it at the back of the top shelf in the closet, behind an extra pillow. She assumed the tiny safe on the wall next to the bathroom would be the first place a burglar would search, and it looked way too easy to break into. Finally she sat down and called Mac in Washington. She heard herself telling him it was urgent for the paper to get immediate permission to open a tomb.
No wonder Mac worries about me,
she thought.
This isn’t your mother’s fashion beat.

“Your attraction to dead bodies is taking a turn for the worse, Smithsonian,” he said. “Now you want to start digging up crypts?”

“Just one, Mac. Not all of ’em. I’m sure our crack legal team can pry permission from the Catholic Church to pry open a crypt, right? After all, why do we even have lawyers?”

“I hope it’s not to bail you out.” He sounded cranky, but no more than usual, she thought.

Lacey was glad she didn’t have to see the look on his face, which was no doubt stuck in his famous menacing editor mode. He was probably wearing a blue plaid shirt with an orange tie, one of his favorite combinations. “I’m faxing these documents to you,”

she told him. “I’d also like to know what the note on the back of the deed says. Did I mention it’s probably in Latvian?”

“Right. Latvian. Good God. I’ll see if I have an intern to torture,”

Mac muttered. “Latvia’s probably got an embassy here, right?”

“That’s the spirit.” Lacey hung up and trudged down to the hotel’s business center to fax the documents to
The Eye.
She re-folded the originals and tucked them into her hip pocket.

Loud knocking at the door woke her up. Lacey’s eyes felt as if they were glued together, but she pried them open and wrenched herself from the bed and stumbled to the door. She realized she must have collapsed, asleep before her head hit the pillow. The last thing she remembered thinking was how pleasant it would be to close her eyes for just a minute.