10 Lethal Black Dress (30 page)

CHAPTER 37

To greet this Monday morning,
Lacey
opted for easy comfort, navy slacks and a vintage navy gabardine jacket with
pale blue piping and cuffs. The jacket required no blouse, but she added her favorite
bra, her Red Bra of Courage. She wore a pair of teal sandals with kitten heels.
Higher heels were out. She was still stiff from her roll down the riverbank two
days before. Everything hurt.

This isn’t fair
, she thought with each step.
People
in the movies bounce right back after taking a bullet. I’m a wreck after taking
a single rock.

Vic assured her everything would be okay. He followed her to D.C.
and mentioned that Forrest Thunderbird, aka Turtledove, would be in the
vicinity to keep a watch on her and make sure no rock throwers would come near.
She parked her car in
The Eye
’s garage and rode the elevator up through
the building. She gently lurched to her cubicle, her legs stiff and her hips a
little sore from her bumpy ride down the hillside. Tucked under her arm,
wrapped in brown paper, was Nadine’s landscape by Jillian Hopewell, painted on
green silk. In her head, a full agenda. In her tote bag, the 1940 copy of
Mademoiselle
.

Yesterday she had been running all day on adrenaline. Now she
was dragging. All Lacey wanted was a cup of coffee, a couple of aspirin, and a
clear head. And maybe a nap, but it was too early for a nap. She gently set her
packages down and reached for the mug on her desk. She needed a cup of newsroom
kitchenette coffee and she didn’t even care how nauseating the brew might be.

A voice boomed behind her.

“Why, Lacey Smithsonian, what you been up to? You go ten
rounds with someone last night? You’re limping. Something I should know about?”

Detective Broadway Lamont popped his big head out of
Felicity’s cubicle. He had a doughnut in his hand, liberated from Felicity’s
latest groom’s-cake concoction. For this masterpiece, she layered the doughnuts
using a different type in every layer, creating a striped effect with multiple
colors of frosting, blue, yellow, pink, and green. It was frightening.

“Good morning, Broadway. What are you doing here?”

“You’re late.”

She lifted her wrist to check the time. It was nine-thirty.
“Long weekend. Let’s just say I’ve already made up the time in extra hours.”

Lamont was looking especially chipper this morning, in his
pressed khakis and navy blazer over a bright green polo shirt. His grin looked
particularly carnivorous.

“Hard at work? All weekend? You expect me to believe that?”

“Did you want to see me or the doughnut queen?” she inquired.

Felicity was nowhere in sight, but the doughnut cake had
already been photographed for her column and left undefended, with a note on
top: EAT ME!

He laughed, a deep, booming, unnerving sound. “Why not both?”

She waved her mug at him. “Coffee?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” He lumbered after her to the newsroom
kitchen, taking the other clean FASHION
BITES
mug from her desk. She
poured the remains of the carafe into his mug, then made a fresh pot.

“What’s happening on homicide?”

“The usual. Bang, bang, shoot ’em up, you’re dead. That sort
of thing. But then I got a tip today. Anonymous. From a pay phone of all
things, from a hotel that’s retro enough to have a pay phone.”

Lacey waited for the coffee pot to fill, and the other shoe
to drop. When it was ready, she topped off the detective’s cup and then hers.
“What was the tip?”

“Turns out you’re not the only one who thinks Courtney
Wallace was murdered.”

“Really?” First she felt a tingle of excitement. Then she
felt a chill. There was something that felt surreal about this revelation.
Lamont was holding something back. “I never used that word in my stories. I
never said it was murder.”

“You suspected foul play, Smithsonian. You told me so
yourself.”

“Who called you?”

“Anonymous source, no name, female by the way, tried to use a
fake English accent. Bad fake accent. Call came this morning, after your latest
story hit the street.” He pulled a folded copy of the LifeStyle section of
The
Eye
from his jacket pocket. “This thing about the lining. The poison dye
and all that.” He spread out the section on the counter so she could be
reminded of what she’d written. He pulled out his cell phone and held it up, as
if demonstrating how he got the call.

Why is he drawing me a picture
?

“Yeah, that thing. The lining. And—?”

“My anonymous tipster told me the killer is one—Lacey
Smithsonian. Well, that would be
you
, wouldn’t it?”

“What?” she shouted. She shook her head as if she hadn’t
heard him correctly. “She told you
what
?”

He clicked a photo of her with his phone. “See? That’s why I
came over. I had to see the look on your face.” He glanced at the photo on his
phone and laughed with glee. “Priceless! Worth a thousand words. See what I’d
have missed if I called and told you over the phone?”

“This is a terrible practical joke, Broadway.”

“Maybe the caller thought so too, but I doubt it. She sounded
serious. It’s on tape. She says you’re the killer. We have a habit of recording
everything. Sounds better in court when you can play the tape.”

“It’s on tape?”

Several reporters appeared at the door of the kitchenette to
investigate the scream. Lacey pushed past everyone and charged back toward her
desk, Broadway Lamont on her heels, still laughing. She stopped in front of the
small conference room. It had glass walls, but the big advantage over
continuing this conversation at her cubicle was the door. She herded the big
detective inside and slammed it behind them.

“Hey, I’d like another doughnut,” he said to her rolled eyes.
“I am a cop. I’m entitled.”

“Not now!” Lacey couldn’t worry about food at a time like
this.

But who should magically appear outside the conference room
but Felicity Pickles, with a small plate of doughnuts. She tapped on the glass.
Lamont opened the door a crack.

Felicity handed him the plate. “Here, Detective. A little
something to keep your strength up.”

“Why, Ms. Felicity, you are a life saver,” he said to her.
“You will keep me apprised if you ever become free of Mr. Wiener Meyer, won’t
you?”

She giggled in response and waltzed off. Lacey gestured for
Lamont to shut the door. He bogarted the plate and sat down.

“You know that’s crazy, don’t you?”

“I do.” He leaned back in the chair, doughnut in one hand and
coffee in the other. “But it rattled you. And I had to see it in person.”

Her fellow reporters weren’t quite crude enough to press
their noses against the glass walls of the conference room, but there was a
gathering of them taking place outside, with lots of chatting and staring, and
doughnut munching. They’d be a poor excuse for reporters if they weren’t
curious. And hungry. Lacey turned her back. She didn’t think any of them could
read lips, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Her editor Mac Jones appeared at the door and marched right
in without ceremony. He closed the blinds against the stares of the curious
crowd outside. The door opened again and Tony entered.

“Not you, too!” Lacey complained. “Mac, get this story
stealer out of here.”

“Police reporter. You can’t keep me out. What’s up? Lacey?
Mac? Broadway?”

Lacey sat at the table and rested her forehead on it.
Just
to gather my thoughts.

“It’s all over the newsroom,” Mac announced, “that you’re a
suspect in the demise of Courtney Wallace, which is supposed to be a freak
accident. Somebody start talking. Lamont? Smithsonian?”

“That didn’t take long, Jones,” Lamont said to him. “I’m
impressed.” He offered the platter of doughnuts. Mac took one.

“We are a news organization, after all. Smithsonian, what’s
going on?”

“I have no idea. Ask the detective.” She stared pointedly at
Lamont and the others followed her gaze. “Ask him if I’m under arrest, while
you’re at it.”

Lamont was unflustered. “I was just kind enough to report
that I got an anonymous call fingering your fashion reporter here as the
premeditated perpetrator of felony murder in the demise of Ms. Courtney
Wallace. This troubles me, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Now you’re just messing with me, Broadway,” Lacey said. “You
don’t believe that.”

“This troubles me, not because Smithsonian’s been called a
suspect. I consider everyone a suspect, on principle. Though if she was the
killer, it might deprive us all of her unique fashion insight. No, I am
troubled, deeply troubled, that this nice little one-in-a-billion freak
accident of ours, ready to be signed and sealed by the Medical Examiner of the
District of Columbia, has been called into question. Not just by one Lacey
Smithsonian, with her clothing voodoo hoodoo. I get that. I mean she’s got that
murder jones in her bones. Nothing we can do about that. A wacky accident like
this just gets her going, thinking ‘How could this thing secretly be a murder?’
But thinking that don’t make it a murder. That’s the way I like it. The less
murder in this town, the better, that’s what I think. But with this anonymous
tipster, now I got to start thinking farther and wider. I got to start thinking
murder.”

“Do you know who called you?” Tony asked.

“Why, no. Tip came from a pay phone. Might be the last one
left in D.C.”

“Did your caller say how she managed it?” Tony asked. “Just
wondering how Lacey pulled off a murder, what with her day job and her busy
love life and all.”

“Very funny, Trujillo,” Lacey said. “Someone is accusing me
of murder. And murdering someone I barely knew. And if you remember, the dress
did it.”

“What’s wrong with you this morning, Smithsonian?” Mac said.
“You have too much of a good time last night?”

“I’m sore and I’m stiff. Someone threw a rock at me Saturday.
Above Great Falls. My guess is I was supposed to fall into the Potomac River
and drown.”

All eyes focused on her. “Who did it?” Lamont asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, though she was beginning to have an
idea. Was this Johnson’s doing? Vic’s man tailed him on Sunday, but not
Saturday. Did he set someone up to call the police with that tip? That seemed
like his style.
Sneaky.
She rubbed her shoulder and tried to stretch her
arm out. It hurt. “Anyway, I didn’t sleep well.” Tony put his arm around her
shoulder. She flinched. “Ouch. That hurts. Don’t do that.”

“You okay, Smithsonian?” Mac asked.

“Vic was with me. He cleaned it. You want to see my wound?”

“It cut you?” Lamont frowned. “Someone doesn’t belong to the
Lacey Smithsonian fan club. Someone took your article pretty seriously.
Seriously enough to want to get you out of the way. So tell me about this
assault. Walk me through it. Humor me.”

Mac reached for another doughnut and sat down. Lacey counted
off the basic facts on her fingers.

“One: I was at Riverbend Park Saturday afternoon, with Vic
Donovan. Two: Gregor Kepelov and Marie Largesse showed up.”

Tony cut in. “She didn’t have a vision, did she?” He
pretended to faint.

“Don’t mock me.” Lacey continued. “Three: Marie had a vision
and she was concerned for my safety. I am just reporting what happened. No snickering,
please. Stuff a doughnut in it, Tony. And can somebody get me some aspirin,
please?”

“What happened then?” Mac asked.

“Four: We took a walk through the woods. To see the
bluebells. Five: Someone threw a big rock at me, from the woods up on the
ridge. It hit me on the shoulder, hard, although the others think it was aimed
for my head. We were on the trail below, next to the river. Six: I fell down
the bank. Seven: Vic saved me from going in the drink. Eight: Vic and Gregor
Kepelov gave chase. No luck. A car raced out of the parking lot, no plate numbers.
Nine: We reported the incident to the park ranger. He suggested it was just
kids. Ten: I have a headache and my shoulder hurts. That’s it, no more
fingers.”

She left out viewing the painting at the gallery Friday, the
visit to Jillian Hopewell’s house on Sunday, and finding the possible origin of
the dress in an old magazine. Those were not so much facts, she decided on the
spur of the moment, as
leads
.

And if they’re leads in this story, they’re MY leads. Besides,
I’m out of fingers.

There was a moment of silence. Tony grabbed a doughnut.

“Just why were you at this park? Never been there myself,”
Lamont asked.

“To see the bluebells. They’re very pretty this time of
year.” She lifted her mug to sip her lousy coffee. It seemed to take a lot of
effort. Her shoulder hurt.

“Just to see the bluebells?”

“It sounds pretty silly, I suppose.”

“Not to me. I’m rather fond of the tulips,” Tony said, with a
hint of sarcasm. “I like to tiptoe through them.”

“I don’t care how it sounds,” Lamont said. “This rock attack
have anything to do with this murder someone wants to pin on you?”

“Search me,” Lacey said. “You got the call. On tape. You go
find your mystery caller.”

“What are you getting at, Lamont?” Mac asked.

“Voodoo. Smithsonian’s special brand of voodoo. Things that
don’t make sense make my head hurt.”

“Yours too?” Lacey asked. “I’ll split my aspirin with you. If
I ever get any!”

Tony got up and rummaged around in the conference room
cupboard for aspirin. He found a two-pack and tossed it to her.

Broadway looked disgruntled. He swallowed the last bite of
doughnut. Lacey swallowed the aspirin and chased it with newsroom coffee. It
was bracing.

“The rock-throwing incident didn’t happen here in D.C., but
it happened,” Lamont said. “I got a caller dropping the dime on the fashion
reporter. Someone’s nervous that Smithsonian’s getting too close to whatever it
is, or whoever it is, and this Paris Green poison dress is looking more and
more like murder. Why can’t it be a simple shooting, a gang fight, a drive-by,
a robbery gone bad? Nope, it’s gotta be a damn baroque crazy-ass mystery. It
does not make me happy. You got any suspects?”