Raiders of the Lost Corset (4 page)

“Why? Does it mean something?” She gazed up at him. “Ah, yes, you mean, ‘Bloody dress, get good press’? She said that whenever she pricked her finger. She was funny that way.”

Lamont lifted an eyebrow at Lacey. She shrugged back. It was yet another variant of the same phrase. Magda seemed to have more than one version of every story. Lacey wondered how many different versions of the corset legend she might have told as well.

“Maybe you should go back to your apartment, ma’am,” he said to Natalija. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

She nodded, not moving, until Lamont pointed the way and a policeman ushered her out to the stairway to the third floor apartments.

“Should I leave too?” Lacey asked hopefully, edging toward the front door.

“Not so fast, Smithsonian. You and I are going to finish that chat. You can start with everything you know about Magda Rousseau, in that clear, concise journalistic manner that I know you’re capable of.”

Lacey took a breath and brushed the hair out of her face. She gave him a brief rundown, leaving out a few tiny details that would just muddy the situation, she thought, like the corset.

“Magda was French and Latvian and grew up in France. She came here years ago, never lost her thick French accent, particularly when she was excited. Even Analiza, her Latvian business partner, had trouble understanding her sometimes. Magda insisted that she always spoke perfect English with no accent at all.”

“Do you know any reason anyone would want Magda Rousseau dead?”

Possibly.
But there was no way Lacey was going to tell Broadway Lamont, the Metropolitan P.D.’s King of Scorn, the story that Magda had told her in confidence. Magda Rousseau was engaged in a long on-again-off-again search for a legendary jewel-filled corset worn by one of the Russian imperial princesses during the execution of the entire Romanov family in a dark basement in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in July 1917. A bulletproof corset that saved the princess from the initial volleys of gunfire. A blood-stained corset stripped from the princess’s body by one of the Latvian guards who had refused to shoot the children of the Czar. The official accounts said that the jewels found hidden in the ladies’ corsets and other clothing were all confiscated by the Bolsheviks and used to further the cause of the Revolution. But according to Magda, one corset had been stolen and spirited away amidst the chaos of that horrible, drunken, murderous night.

The Latvian guard who had stolen the corset, Magda had told her, was Juris Akmentins, her maternal grandfather, who had later emigrated to France and hidden the corset there. Magda wanted to mount a search for the corset, but she couldn’t afford the plane ticket to France and the expenses of the adventure.

Magda had read Lacey’s “Crimes of Fashion” columns and recent newspaper stories about her role in solving several crimes.

She was also impressed by Stella Lake’s slightly exaggerated tales of Lacey’s encounters with murderers. Stella sang Lacey’s praises as a fashion maven and amateur sleuth with a “nose for nuance.”

It was time, Magda had decided, to share the secret with someone crazy enough to believe her: Lacey Smithsonian, a fashion colum-nist who didn’t take fashion too seriously and who had been involved in some unusual investigations. Magda had appreciated Smithsonian’s curiosity, her unquenchable desire to know the end of the story. And the corsetiere used it to her advantage.

Convinced she knew where the corset was now hidden in France, Magda had enticed Lacey, and in turn
The Eye Street Observer,
into sharing her fantasy of finding it. It was to be the story of a seamstress with a dream. Lacey wanted this story, she wanted the adventure of documenting the possibility of finding such a treasure.
Adventure with a capital A.
It didn’t matter to Lacey if the Romanov corset proved in the end to be real or a chimera: It was a great story either way, though actually finding the legendary artifact would be wonderful. Lacey was resourceful and good at self-defense. What’s more, Mac had promised her that the paper would fund the entire search in exchange for the exclusive rights to Magda’s story. She was going to Paris!

Despite the fact that Broadway Lamont once told her he heard

“crazy shit all the time,” Lacey was afraid the tale would sound too insane, like the mutterings of a lunatic. To Lacey’s knowledge, Magda was not a lunatic. But Lamont was waiting for an answer.

“Who would want Magda dead? I don’t know, Broadway, it’s not the best neighborhood here,” Lacey told him. “Maybe someone thought she kept cash on the premises.”

“It’s not the worst neighborhood either, and this dump wouldn’t be a prime robbery target. And we don’t see a lot of drive-by poisonings in the District, if you know what I mean. Poison is personal and premeditated. It’s a female method.”

“Oh, really, Broadway. How gender-biased of you.”

“Hell, yes. So is murder. A man uses a gun, a machete, his hands. Poison is like a woman: subtle, devious.” He gave her the raised eyebrow. “Female. Like that girly little dagger you didn’t notice sticking in the dead woman’s ribs. And women are always in the kitchen cooking something up. Something like poison.”

“I’ll keep that in mind . . . when you drop by for a gingerbread cookie.”

Lamont snorted and almost smiled. Lacey hoped he had ex-

hausted his interrogation and intimidation routine. He gave Lacey a warning and his card. “In case you lost my card from our last encounter.”

“I could never forget meeting you, Lamont.” In fact, he had scared her during the interview. He still scared her a little.

“You do anything about a new car yet?” he inquired.

That was a sore point. Her beloved silver and burgundy Nissan 280ZX had been stolen the month before and, in the police phrase,

“employed in the commission of a crime.” What was left of it was now evidence in a murder case. It made her feel sad and vulnerable to lose it to a killer. She had offers of cars from friends, Brooke and Miguel to name just two, but she’d been too busy with this story to make a decision. In a way she felt getting a new car would be a betrayal of her poor lost Z.

“No, I haven’t had a chance. Been taking the Metro.”

“You think about the police auction, like I told you?”

“Good advice, Broadway.” Lacey would never love another car the way she had loved the Z. Maybe it was better that way, she thought.
It would be easier to say good-bye to some clunker the
next time some miscreant needed a getaway car.
“After all, who wouldn’t want some drug lord’s land yacht with a body in the trunk?”

“You take care, Smithsonian. You wouldn’t want to run out of luck. How did that lucky saying of hers go? ‘Bloody thread, don’t get dead’?”

“Very amusing. I don’t feel so lucky today.”

“You’re lucky as hell. You hang out with victims, you stumble over crime scenes, yet you’re still here. In my book, that’s lucky.”

He finally smiled a big ivory smile that lit up his face. “You think of any of those crazy fashion clues you like to come up with, you give me a call. Got it?” He favored her with one more suspicious look. “I doubt you will, but you could get lucky again.”

“Don’t worry, Broadway.”

You can read all about in
The Eye.
In “Crimes of Fashion.”

Chapter 4

“I’ve got some bad news, Mac.” Lacey stood at the office door of her editor, Douglas MacArthur Jones. She remained standing so she could run away if necessary.

“Bad news, Smithsonian?” He looked up from a pile of newspapers. Reading glasses were perched on his nose above the bushy mustache that made him look like a stern black G. Gordon Liddy.

“I thought you were gone for the day.” Her editor scowled and reached for his bottle of Maalox. He waved it at her. “Do I swig now or later? The suspense is killing me.”

“Magda Rousseau is dead. I just came from her apartment.”

“Dead? Dead as in heart-attack dead?” He looked straight at her over his spectacles. “As in natural-causes dead? Please tell me she’s dead because she was an old lady and her number came up and her heart gave out.” His expression dared her to contradict him. He gestured for her to enter the office and sit down. “She was old, right?”

“Yeah, she was really old, Mac. Really,
really
old. About your age,” she lied. Lacey slipped into the room, closing the door. She realized it was now or never to save this story — and her trip to Paris. She removed a stack of newspapers from one of the chairs.

She piled them on Mac’s desk, dusted the seat with her hand, and slid onto it. “Magda told me she was poisoned. Then she warned me not to drink the wine, which she had been drinking. I suppose she could have been kidding. Or wrong. She might have been stabbed, too. But just a little.”

“She told you she was poisoned? She was alive?”

“Barely. And then she —” Lacey choked up, but she controlled it. “She died. And I didn’t poison her, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Mac glared at her. Lacey glared back at him.

“No, of course you didn’t poison her! That would be too easy.”

He slapped his desk with an open hand. Dust rose from the stacks of
Eye Street Observer
s resting there. “Damnation, Smithsonian. I suppose this little tableau also included police, paramedics, yellow crime scene tape, all your usual fashion accessories. What is it about you?” he muttered. “It’s been nothing but death, death, death, ever since you took over the fashion beat.”

“Technically, that’s not true,” Lacey said, keenly attuned to the facts of her job situation. “It started well before me, with Mariah ‘the Pariah’ Morgan, our late and unlamented fashion editor. You remember, don’t you, Mac, when she died in her chair and you stuck
me
with this beat? And how long did it take you to notice she was dead?”

“It wasn’t that long. I thought she was taking a catnap.”

“Eight hours! She was in full rigor mortis! They had to roll her out in her chair.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. She loved that chair.” Mac sighed and looked weary. “When are you going to let that go?”

“And then you tried to stick me with her damn chair! The chair of doom!” Lacey was surprised that detail could still rile her.

“That is a perfectly good chair. And Mariah died of natural causes.”

“So you say. She probably died just to escape this beat — it seems to be the only way out of it.” Mariah’s chair was still floating around the newsroom, like Lincoln’s ghost train. It was a favorite joke among the reporters to hand it off to interns, casually mentioning the connection to the dead former fashion editor only when the fledgling was firmly glued to his or her seat in Mariah’s Death Chair under crushing deadline pressure.

Mac grunted. Lacey took a deep cleansing breath. It didn’t work. “We both know fashion is a dangerous job, Mac. But I don’t want to argue.”

“There’s a relief.” He leaned back in his own chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “So what were you just doing if not arguing?”

She ignored this. “I want you to know I’ll be on that plane to Paris this week.”
Please Mac, whatever you do, don’t take Paris
away from me.
“It’s still my story.”

He shook his head. “No way. There is no story. Your source is dead. Maybe there’s a murder story now, but that’s Trujillo’s beat, not yours.”

“Look, if she was killed because of the corset —”

“Are you telling me she was murdered because of this mythical nonexistent bullet-riddled corset?” He and his chair snapped forward to full attention.

“Not exactly. I don’t know why yet. But there’s still a story in France and the tickets are already bought and paid for.” She leaned toward him, placing her hands flat on his desk. “They’re nonre-fundable. Like my dreams, Mac.”

“Don’t start with me, Smithsonian. Your life is also not refundable.” He rose from his seat. “No trip! If she was a murder target because of this crazy story, then you’d be a target, too. Besides, you need the Rousseau woman as a guide. And I cannot be responsible for what havoc you might wreak unchaperoned on foreign soil. Even though we don’t officially like France.”

“The story is still out there, Mac.” She stood up and towered over him in her heels. “Think about
The Eye
bringing back the lost corset of the Romanovs. Imagine the headlines: EYE STREET REPORTER MAKES HISTORY! DISCOVERS PRICELESS REMNANT OF RUSSIAN IMPERIAL FAMILY, LOST FOR A CENTURY.”

Mac rolled his eyes. “How about this one: EYE STREET REPORTER CREATES INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT. FRANCE CUTS OFF OUR CHEESE.”

“But what if some other reporter’s onto it?”

“Onto
what
? Even
you
don’t believe there’s a corset full of jewels, Smithsonian.” He stared at her. “This is just a tall tale on steroids. It’s got pathos. It’s got dreams and heartache and history and human interest. And it would sell papers. But nobody believes there’s a corset.”

That’s what he wanted to believe. Unfortunately for Mac,
The
Eye
’s glamorous publisher, Claudia Darnell, took a special interest in the fashion beat and in Lacey, and she loved the whole idea of chasing the lost Romanov corset. Claudia had enthusiastically okayed the story (and the minuscule budget), agreeing that it would have to remain a secret from the other
Eye Street Observer
reporters until Lacey broke it. The secrecy would also keep expectations down if the story turned out to be a wild goose chase or a humiliating disaster. In that event, the story would detail the strange journey of an eccentric immigrant woman and her lost dreams of glory, and Lacey could cram it full of pathos, adjectives, and a literary gloss. And a possible sidebar on the corset renaissance on the Paris fashion runways.

“Why can’t you just write about dresses and shoes?” Mac opened the bottle of Maalox and took a big slug. “I thought women were obsessed with shoes.” His brows knit dangerously.

“I do write about shoes,” she protested. “If you read my column you’d know that. Remember, Mac,
you
stuck me with this fashion beat. Besides, I never get to go anywhere good. Other fashion reporters get to go to Paris, Milan, New York. I go nowhere. This time I’m going to Paris.” She locked eyes with him like a laser beam, daring Mac to look away first.