“There’s an image,” she said. Turtledove could have shaken him upside down with one hand. “What do you know about the letters?”
“I’m just the hired muscle for her D.C. visit. Part-time at that. But from what I’ve heard, the writer’s gone from pleading for a few minutes of her time to demanding to see her on a matter of great importance.” Turtledove drained his glass of cranberry juice, and Lacey brought him another from the kitchen. He looked like he could drink a gallon of it at a time.
“What about the note she found on the mirror?”
“It was nothing like the letters I saw. And I only saw a couple, but they’re very controlled, small writing, in block letters. The note on the mirror was emotional, choppy, angry—scrawled letters. No one from the outside could have come in and slapped it on her mirror. Of course, there were lots of people with permission to run through the place. Could be someone she pissed off just wants to torture her a little. Someone from the catering crew, maybe. Maybe the makeup and hair people. Who knows?”
“What about Zoe or Yvette?”
“She treats them like dirt, and what’s worse, she enjoys it. My opinion.”
“What about Spaulding?”
“Not a peep out of him, far as I can tell.”
“How much longer will you be there?”
“Just a couple of days. Amanda will be leaving, and life will go on pretty much the same.”
“So you’re a professional bodyguard?”
Turtledove smiled and glanced at Lacey’s bookshelf clock. “Sometimes. We prefer the term ‘protection agent.’ What can I say? It’s a gig. And I’ve got to go.” He rose to his feet with grace. “I have another kind of gig going on tonight. I play the late set in a little band at Velvet’s Blues.”
Lacey sat up straight, surprised. “The jazz club down on King Street? Upstairs over that restaurant? I’ve been meaning to go there for ages.”
“Come by some night if you like classic blues and jazz and swing.”
“Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller? Gershwin?” Lacey asked as she stood up and walked Turtledove to the door.
“Absolutely. Everything from Satchmo up to early Miles. We play smooth and we play jazz, but we don’t play no ‘smooth jazz,’ if you know what I mean.”
“What do you play?”
“Trumpet.”
“I had no idea you were so talented.”
“Man of mystery. That’s me.
Ciao,
Lacey. Call me if you need me.” He handed her a business card with just his name, Forrest Thunderbird, a phone number, and a quote at the bottom:
“Truth is always strange.”
—Lord Byron
Lacey had just crawled into bed when Vic called. He was unable to console her in person, being on some dreary stakeout somewhere, but he seemed appropriately sympathetic about Lacey’s car theft. At least until he said, “Well, finally now you can buy a decent set of wheels.”
“Hey! I love that car! It’s a classic Z,” Lacey protested.
“Sweetheart, it didn’t run half the time.”
“It would have, once I replaced all the moving parts,” she said, and he laughed. “I was getting there. The only problem was that the parts were getting pretty expensive. And my mechanic had to swim to Japan every time it needed something,” she said, feeling stranded and miserable.
“I’ll help you find a new car.”
“Promise?”
“A good car, I promise. Something safe, sturdy.”
“I’m not buying a Jeep. Or a Hummer. Or a Sherman tank.”
“Maybe we could look around this weekend.”
“Car shopping on a romantic weekend. Just like a man. Doesn’t sound romantic to me.”
“Car shopping can be very romantic,” he assured her. “Although I do have other plans to keep us occupied. How does a little inn in the Shenandoahs sound? Crunching in the autumn leaves? Intimate dinners and a cozy fire in our room?”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll build the fire, Boy Scout.” She could smell the leaves already. “You driving?”
“Apparently I am.” His voice was lulling her into a deliciously relaxed state. But one thought was nagging at her.
“About your ‘no dead bodies falling in Lacey’s path’ rule: Remember the woman I interviewed today?” There was a pause. “Amanda Manville, the supermodel?”
“The one that was chopped and channeled on TV by the plastic surgeon?”
“Still thinking about cars, Vic?”
“Course not. Amanda Manville’s kind of spooky-looking. Too symmetrical. Nothing that nature intended.”
“I think she’s beautiful.”
“No, she’s freaky, plastic—not beautiful. You’re beautiful, Lacey.”
You think I’m beautiful?
She imagined him reaching out, smoothing her hair out of her face. Then kissing that spot on her neck behind her ear, and then more kisses up and down, making little chills run up and down her spine. She willed herself to stop the fantasy, and sighed. “You say the sweetest things completely by accident, Vic. But about Amanda.”
“The one who dispatched her old boyfriend to the great beyond, right?”
“Allegedly dispatched him.”
“So you met her today. Is she dead yet?” He was waiting for the punch line.
“Not yet. The thing is, she thinks someone is out to kill her. Looks like a case of paranoia. However, in the event someone—”
“Kills her? I don’t like the turn this conversation has taken.”
“She wants me to find out who did it. I mean, in the event it happens. But it won’t. Because she also wants me to stop it first. Not that I believe her.”
There was a pause on the other end. She heard him groan. “Oh, Lacey, sweetheart, what is it about you that draws these wackos?”
“It’s not me; it’s her. She’s crazy.”
“Crazy enough for someone to want to kill her?”
“Hard to say.” Lacey drew her quilt up around her. “But nothing is going to get in the way of this weekend. Just us. Together,” she said as she snuggled down happily into her pillow.
“Lacey, if anything happens to that surgical freak, up to and including death, I want you to promise me you’ll just stand there with your notebook like a responsible reporter and let the police handle it.”
“I’m not sure I like your condescending tone, Mr. Let the Cops Handle It.”
“And you are a responsible reporter?” he prompted her.
“Of course.” She sighed. “I’ll let the cops handle it.”
But I did make a promise to Amanda too. Sort of.
Chapter 9
“Dr. Spaulding, I think you might want to talk with me,” Lacey said as she handed over her business card. “I’m a reporter with
The Eye Street Observer
. . .”
Lacey had waited to intercept Spaulding until after he had finished his presentation to the assembled surgeons at the Mayflower Hotel. She let the crowds of colleagues and admirers thin out before she approached him. She didn’t mind waiting there in the lovely old building with its deep-rose carpets, touches of gold, and heavy chandeliers. She figured he would acknowledge her if she blocked his path, but Spaulding excused himself from the remaining hangers-on and ignored her and her offered card. He kept walking. She kept pace with him.
“I know you’re busy, but Amanda Manville’s been making rather reckless allegations about you,” Lacey said. “I wouldn’t want to print them without giving you the opportunity to respond, but—”
He stopped and turned to regard her. “How reckless? And just who are you again?” The distinguished-looking Spaulding, with his dark hair shot through with strands of gray, had been the featured speaker at the morning session of plastic surgeons. He wore a dark suit and serious steel-framed glasses, but they didn’t disguise his classic good looks. He looked like an actor playing a handsome plastic surgeon on TV. Of course, Lacey reflected, he had already played himself on TV on
The Chrysalis Factor,
so his media-ready polish was no accident.
Lacey gave him a very abridged version of Amanda’s rant.
“That certainly sounds like our Amanda.” He took her card and sized her up in a glance. He pondered for a moment. “Look, I have a half hour or so before my next session. Is there somewhere we can get some coffee out of earshot of my colleagues?”
Lacey led him outside to the Dupont Circle Starbucks up the street. They ordered their coffee black. She would have liked to get a double latte with whipped cream, but she didn’t want Spaulding to think she wasn’t a serious journalist.
Lacey’s law for drinking coffee with a source: If he drinks it black, then I drink it black.
Sitting opposite him, Lacey found it difficult to believe Amanda’s charges. The mild-mannered Spaulding removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They were pale blue and tired.
“Amanda’s in town? In D.C.?”
Lacey nodded. “She’s publicizing her new line of clothing. She knows you’re here. She says you’re plotting to kill her.”
“Kill her?” He looked perfectly appalled. “I don’t even want to be in the same room with her, let alone stay long enough to kill her. She’s been unraveling for quite a while, but this—”
“Unraveling?”
“I’m not telling any secrets here, Ms.—” He pulled out her card. “Smithsonian. Amanda has been irrational, neurotic, paranoid, tyrannical, everything you’d expect in a celebrity of her ilk. But this sort of allegation is new.”
“She seems convinced that you want to destroy your own creation. ‘Erasing your mistakes,’ she called it.”
“Same sweet girl.” He shook his head wearily and shifted in his seat. “But I don’t know what to make of this murder-plot fantasy of hers. . . . Listen, my comments are for background only right now, do you understand?”
Everybody knows the game.
“Yes. I’m not sure what I’m going to write. It may just be a superficial piece about one woman’s journey in the pursuit of beauty here in the twenty-first century. And the fallout.”
“For which we will all be damned in one way or another.” Spaulding finally smiled outright, which unexpectedly revealed considerable charm. “I’m through with that kind of plastic surgery, you know. So extreme you don’t even recognize the person underneath anymore. I don’t think it’s healthy—physically or mentally.”
“Why does she believe you’re going to kill her?”
“She may say it, but she can’t really believe it. Amanda’s still angry with me. The fairy tale didn’t work out the way she thought it would.”
“People are supposed to adore you when you’re beautiful. They’re not supposed to fall out of love with you,” Lacey said. She suddenly thought of Vic. For a modern guy, he really had waited for her for a long time.
And last night on the phone he said I was beautiful. Was that really the first time he’s ever said that? Or just the first time I really heard it?
“Zoe Manville said you’ve changed your focus.”
“I always liked Zoe. Living in Amanda’s shadow’s been very hard on her, I think. It used to be the other way around.” Spaulding reflected for a moment. “Yes, my focus has changed. In the beginning, plastic surgery for me was happy medicine. My patients weren’t sick, and they were generally pleased with the results. I liked making people prettier. Sometimes it really turned their lives around for the better. Then I became involved with that show. It made me a TV celebrity. And it ruined my life.”
“
The Chrysalis Factor,
you mean?”
“Yes. After Amanda and I became a couple. I didn’t enjoy all of the media attention, the interviews, the paparazzi, my photos in those tabloid magazines, the appearances on all those stupid talk shows. In some ways it even damaged my reputation. She was one of the most desirable women in the world, and I was just the man at her side, and we were both going crazy. It was a brief madness for me. I realized I had to wake up.”
“From a dream or a nightmare?”
“Good question. Both, I suppose.”
“And now you’re donating your services to disfigured children. Pretty impressive.”
“I’m not noble. But when I look at these children with cleft palates, conjoined twins, major disfigurements, land mine victims, I have to try to help. Volunteer surgeons can give them a chance for a normal life, instead of an abnormal life, like Amanda’s. It’s been a long time coming for me. A form of redemption, if you will.”
“Penance because of what went wrong with Amanda?” Lacey asked.
“Yes, in a way. That I took this poor homely girl and made her a beauty: That’s the work of the press. She had a kind of beauty before we ever started. That’s all gone now. I’m not blameless. I helped create this monster and it weighs on me.” He wiped his glasses clean without looking at Lacey. “Generally speaking, there’s a very strict psychological screening that the makeover candidates go through. But this time—”
“What does the screening do?”
“It’s supposed to filter out the candidates with too many psychological problems to make the surgery worthwhile, to make the transition successfully, the ones who want it for the wrong reasons. For revenge. To get even with the world. Amanda claimed she was not counting on it to make her beautiful, just to make her normal. She was very good. She gave all the right answers.”
Lacey wondered if Spaulding was just giving her all the right answers. He was smooth and convincingly contrite. But how much of that was his own media spin?
“I’m not really a mad doctor who created a monster; I just played one on TV.”
“But it did make her beautiful,” Lacey said. “And changed her life.”
“It changed both our lives. Catapulted us into a life we didn’t expect. But she couldn’t let go of the bitterness that she masked so well. She had an entire laundry list of people with whom to get even. I suppose I’m on that list now.” He took a slug of the hot coffee.
“You thought she’d be happy,” Lacey said.
Spaulding nodded. He seemed surprised to be bedeviled by these problems. No doubt he had done all the right things: the right schools, the right country club, the right persona for TV. He was certainly well turned-out. She could imagine him dashing into the elegant Thomas Pink store at the Mayflower to order expensive custom-made dress shirts. Yet he was seeking redemption using the same surgical skills that had led him to Amanda Manville. Or so he claimed. Public relations-wise, it was a very clever strategy.