Raiders of the Lost Corset (5 page)

Tony Trujillo, the cops reporter, stuck his nose through the door. “Lost another source, Lacey? Rumor says you called in the murder and a force of nature no smaller than Broadway Lamont is on the job. So what’s really up?”

“Drive-by poisoning. Go away. We’re talking about shoes.”

Mac leaned back in his chair, setting his feet on his desk, looking like the school principal.

“What about the knife that was stuck in her?” Tony inquired.

“You didn’t mention a knife,” Mac growled.

Lacey looked from Tony to Mac. “I did too. It wasn’t in very deep. It actually looked like a prop knife. The handle was covered with jewels.”

“Jewels?” Tony said. “A jewel-handled dagger? Cool.” She could see him turning the phrase around in his head as if it were the lead in the story. His story.
Good God
, Lacey thought,
this
whole story is slipping right through my fingers.

“Fake jewels, obviously. If they were real, the killer wouldn’t have left it. Besides, she
told
me she was poisoned,” Lacey said.

“Kind of a dying declaration, you know?”

“Yeah.” Trujillo smirked. “I hear that’s becoming a real trend in D.C.”

“Trujillo, go back to your beat.” Mac drummed his fingers on his desk.

“I don’t know, man, this is just beginning to get good. And this
is
my beat. My beat is cops, remember? Dead bodies? Poison?

Jewel-encrusted daggers? My turf, Mac. I need to know.” The handsome, black-haired Trujillo flashed his lady-killer smile, slid into the room, and shut the door. “Lacey’s obviously trying to spin her way out of a hot spot. And onto my beat.”

Lacey tensed for combat. “I resent that editorial comment, Trujillo. And it’s my story. I was there, at the crime scene. Getting Magda’s last words. Trying to save her life. Where were you? Getting your snakeskin boots polished?”

Tony’s smile faded. “I’d have been there too — if you’d called me before it was all over.”

Mac eyed Trujillo. “Don’t you have some mayhem of your own to write about?”

“Not when her beat gets this good. All the mayhem is happen-ing right here. So Mac, what’s going on with Smithsonian? Why all the closed doors?”

“Hey! I’m in the room too, Tony.” She shot him an icy look, but he shrugged it off. “Afraid I’ve got another scoop?”

“Not afraid, just interested. Tell me a story, Brenda Starr. You know we work better together than when we dance on each other’s toes.” He moved a stack of papers and sat down in the chair next to her. Mac sighed. Lacey waited on pins and needles.
Spill my big
secret, Mac, and I’m telling Claudia. You’ll be sorry.

Mac weighed his words carefully. He and Lacey both knew how much their publisher disliked having her orders short-circuited by anyone. “You know Smithsonian was doing a fashion story with the old seamstress dame in France. Corsets in haute couture, past and present, something like that. Now the old lady’s dead.” Mac shrugged elaborately. “End of story.”

“Ha. Somebody is dead and Smithsonian is involved? That is never the end of the story,” Tony asserted, “only the beginning.”

“Not this time. Smithsonian is not going to France now. No old lady, no source, no story. The old lady’s death is just another D.C. murder story. You two split the byline. We’re done here.”

Lacey cleared her throat. “I am going to France. I am writing the story. And Magda Rousseau — um — wasn’t that old.” Lacey folded her arms to keep her fists from creating an incident that would be written up for her personnel file.

“Wait a minute, Mac,” Trujillo said. “France is still there, still the capital of the fashion world, right? Corsets are still hot, even if the source got iced. But just because the old lady’s dead, Mac, you’re pulling the trip? I don’t get it. Or do I? If you
are
pulling it, then the story’s not tied up with fashion, it’s tied up with the old lady. Am I right?”

Mac was silent. Lacey saw her opening. “I’m going, Mac, even if I have to take my annual leave to do it,” Lacey said. “I’ve got the tickets, I’ve got the story. You’ve got Tony. I’ll send you both postcards from Paris.” She stood to leave. “See ya.”

Tony jumped up and blocked her escape. “Spill it, Supergirl, what’s going on?”

Mac chewed his mustache. He didn’t want everyone in the

newsroom badgering him for foreign travel budgets. And Trujillo could be a world-class badger. “Sit down, both of you. What’s said in this room stays here. Got it?”

“Anything you say, boss.” Trujillo looked like a cat with a stolen bowl of cream. Lacey threw a newspaper at him, which he caught in midair.

Mac turned to Lacey. “If she’s dead because of this wild-goose chase you two were on, you’re not going anywhere. It’s too dangerous.”

“Maybe she was kidding about the poisoning,” Lacey said.

“Maybe there’s no connection; maybe she was killed in a botched robbery or something. We won’t know unless I do the story, Mac. Is this a newspaper or what? Stories are what we try to find, right?”

“What’s the story? What wild-goose chase?” Trujillo demanded.

“It’s a wild-fashion-goose chase to find something that was lost a long time ago,” Mac said. “Probably lost forever. Or never existed.”

“What?” Trujillo pressed.

“A piece of clothing,” Lacey said. “An unusual piece. A museum or two would be interested. And Magda Rousseau is still our source for this story, alive or dead.”

“A murder, a mystery, and a scavenger hunt all in one? My favorite kind of story.” Trujillo grinned. “I’m with Lacey here, let’s give it a shot, Mac.”

“Hey, hotshot, a woman is dead,” Lacey growled. “Show some respect.”

“We can’t save her now; let’s at least tell her story.” Trujillo shrugged. “If she’s got a story. I still don’t get the big mystery.”

Mac was clearly fed up with this tap dance. He gave Trujillo a brief summary of Magda’s tale of the fabulous lost corset of the Romanovs. And he cautioned everyone in his office that if this story leaked out before it saw newsprint in
The Eye Street Observer
, Claudia Darnell would have all three of their heads on one platter.

“
Madre de Dios.
A bloodstained corset full of Romanov jewels?” Trujillo’s eyes lit up. “What would that be worth on the open market?”

“It’s anyone’s guess,” Lacey said, remembering that Magda was sure she would be rolling in millions one day, with plenty of time on her hands instead of handfuls of fabric and pins. “And it’s my story.”

“Even if it’s a fool’s errand, it’s a hell of a story.” Trujillo turned to Lacey. “What about Donovan? He’s going to let you go off on a story like this on your own? Or do you have him tucked away in a little love nest in Paris?”

She looked away, feeling a quick pang of regret at hearing Vic Donovan’s name. “We’re not seeing each other at the moment, so he’s not a concern.”

“Whoa! What happened?” Tony’s eyes opened wide. “You guys were just about to —”

“To what?” She flashed him a look that just dared him to continue.

“Nothing.” He looked away. “I just thought things were going so well.”

“They were. It’s complicated,” she said. It was almost inexpli-cable, even to her. Finally, after months of a stalled relationship, it looked like she and Vic were on the expressway to love, or at least something like it, perhaps with love just down the road. Then Vic slammed on the brakes. The last time he visited, he said he wanted to take a break. He didn’t seem to be able to say why. Clumsy words between them escalated into a scene. What about Paris? she asked. She had been so looking forward to spending time with Vic in Paris after wrapping up Magda’s story.

“I’m not going to Paris,” he had told her. “I don’t even like Paris.”

“How could somebody not want to go to Paris?” she demanded.

He had a little list: They don’t like Americans. They smoke, they smoke in restaurants, they let dogs eat in restaurants. They let dogs
smoke
in restaurants. He thought he was being funny, but she didn’t think so. She insisted on his real reasons for not wanting to go with her. He gave her more comedy. She thought this little routine must be just a pathetic cover-up for breaking up with her. And it broke her heart that he couldn’t tell her what he really meant, whatever that was; he had to make a silly joke out of it. It quickly turned into a full-scale fight.

“Good-bye then,” Lacey had said. She led him to the door and pushed him out.

“I didn’t mean forever,” Vic said. “I just don’t want to go to Paris.”

“Fine.” She spat the word. “But the next time you decide to play hardball with my heart, I won’t be home. I’ll be in Paris. Without you.”

“Lacey, wait.” Vic was as handsome as ever, a dark curl falling over his forehead, trouble in his jade-colored eyes, his strong jaw set.

Her last glimpse of him was at her apartment door, which she shut firmly. Lacey had waited for a full minute with her back pressed to the door while her heart sank in a sea of unresolved feelings. Then the tears came. He hadn’t called since; nor had she. It had been over a week.

Take a break indeed,
she thought. Vic was the one who complained they had waited for years to start their relationship, then they waited months to consummate it. Then it was over before it even began.

“It’s complicated,” she repeated to Trujillo. “But I’ll always have Paris. All to myself.”

“Sorry, Ms. Lane,” Trujillo said, “sounds like Superman’s succumbed to Kryptonite.”

“Drop it, Jimmy Olsen.”

“Hey, you two.” Mac’s voice brought them back to reality. “Do the comic book thing on your own time.”

Trujillo rose from his chair. “Send me along, Chief. Lacey and I have tag-teamed before. And I’ve never been to Paris. Sounds great.”

“You’re not stealing my story,” Lacey said. “This one is all mine.”

“Double byline.
S
before
T.
” He aimed the killer smile at her. It didn’t work this time. She was over all of Tony’s tricks. Mac was rubbing his smooth dome in pain.

“I haven’t decided anything yet,” Mac said. “I gotta talk to Claudia. Get out of here, both of you. You give me a headache.”

“Just let me know whether I’m flying to Paris this week on
The
Eye
’s time or on my own,” Lacey said, standing to go. “You can run my backup columns while I’m gone.” She tried to calculate whether she could afford the hotel room the paper had booked. The plane fare could be deducted in installments from her paycheck.

She didn’t care. Paris beckoned. The lost corset beckoned. She had a story to chase. She smiled in a last attempt to soften her editor.

“It’s a treasure hunt, Mac. Everyone loves a treasure hunt.”

She slipped out of the office with Trujillo hard on her heels, but he was distracted by a phone call on his cell.

“No, no, I’ll call you later, babe,” he was murmuring into the phone under his breath. “No, later than that, sugar, I got a story —”

“Another blonde, Tony?” Lacey teased. He looked like he’d been caught stealing cookies. “Don’t strain your brain, boy. With you they’re always blondes.”

Lacey left Trujillo with blonde trouble and made her getaway.

Chapter 5

Lacey retrieved her file of information on the Romanov corset from her overstuffed desk. It included maps to the location in Normandy where Magda believed it was hidden, a letter of introduction Magda had written for her “just in case,” and her own extensive notes. She had been documenting her conversations with Magda from the beginning, and the old woman had encouraged her to write everything down.
Maybe she had a premonition
, Lacey thought.

After the search for the corset had either born fruit or come up empty-handed, Magda had wanted to see an old friend of hers in Paris, the fashion center of the world. Paris was the icing on the cake for Lacey, whether the newspaper would pay for it or not.

Leafing through the contents, she found the plane tickets and Magda’s own English translation of part of a diary written in Latvian by her grandfather, Juris Akmentins. Magda had learned Latvian from her grandparents as a child, and using dictionaries, she had painstakingly translated the diary into French for her own reference. She had written out an English translation of the relevant pages for Lacey, who had only this English version in her file.

“Oh, my God, the diary!” Lacey said out loud. Nobody bothered to look at her. Reporters regularly talked to themselves and read their stories aloud. At the newspaper, it didn’t indicate mental illness, it was just part of the writing process.

The diary recounted the days surrounding the Romanovs’ execution by the Bolsheviks, and Akmentins’ own part in the whole gruesome affair. It was written as a memoir decades after he had allegedly taken the corset, decades after he took the surname “Akmentins.” He had deliberately lost his original name somewhere along the way. Lacey had seen the slim brown leather volume only once.

Magda had assured her repeatedly that the original diary and the French translation were in a safe place, but Lacey realized they were probably just as safe as the keys to Magda’s apartment, the keys that were kept dangling in plain sight above the sewing machine. Were they still in Magda’s apartment now — or had her killer taken them?

Why hadn’t her grandfather rid himself of the corset or sold the gems on some black market? Lacey wondered, and it bothered her.

He had tried to sell it once, Magda said, but he failed and had nearly been caught by the Soviet authorities. He took that as a sign that there was no safe way to get rid of it and realize the wealth he had dreamed of. He had lived the life of a tailor in near-poverty with a hidden fortune in gems, a fortune too dangerous to try to make any use of.

Juris Akmentins’ diary stated that he had no objection to shooting the Czar or the Empress, but he and the other Latvians had no stomach for killing the children. They were already frail from their captivity and illness, and would no doubt die soon anyway. No matter what crimes the Czar was guilty of, his children were innocent. But ultimately Akmentins’ stand changed nothing — it didn’t stop the others from slaughtering the entire family. As punishment for his reluctance, he was ordered to help strip the clothes from the battered and bloodied bodies after the execution.