“Miguel, just to play devil’s advocate for a second, could Bentley’s have been looking for a reason to get rid of you and this was an easy out?”
Miguel was nonchalantly unoffended. “No way, my sales were sky-high, and I just got an outstanding review from the regional manager. Whom I have never ever even slept with.”
Because she seemed to be on good terms with Hugh Bentley, Lacey resolved to ask the old devil about Miguel’s firing.
He probably never even heard about it. Aaron must handle all the dirty work now.
The flickering of the television behind the bar caught her attention. A picture of Esme Fairchild stared back. It was a plain head shot, released by her parents; probably a yearbook photo, better than a driver’s license, but not nearly the equal of the photos that would be featured in the morning in
The Eye Street Observer
. Her companions followed Lacey’s gaze.
“Hey, I know that chick!” Miguel said.
“You do? How?” Lacey once would have been dumbfounded, but she was beginning to get used to the weird way that in Washington everyone in a certain class seemed to know everyone else in the same class—and no one in any other class.
It’s like a layer cake of small towns.
“She shops at Bentley’s. Well, let’s say she browses at Bentley’s. She never buys anything.”
“She’s the intern who’s missing,” Stella announced. Miguel hadn’t seen the news, being wrapped up in his own troubles as the dishonored hero of the Battle of Bentley’s.
“Get out!”
“Yeah, and I bet Lacey knows something about her. I got a feeling.” They both stared intently at Lacey.
“I only know she wanted a job with the Bentleys.”
“Wow, they got rid of her even before she started working for them. Now that’s efficient,” Miguel quipped. Lacey and Stella just stared at him. “So sue me; it just popped out. Do you have any more gossip, Lacey?”
She begged off from more drinks and begged to go home. “You’ll just have to buy the morning paper if you want to know what I know.” She hoped she’d given Esme a fair shake.
Lacey stayed up late that night, alternately looking at her new shoes, trying them on in utter amazement, and reading more letters to Aunt Mimi from Gloria Adams.
Dear Mims,
September 8, 1943
We traveled upstate for a company picnic on Saturday afternoon. Schoolchildren are collecting milkweed pods—you wouldn’t believe it, Mims—big onion sacks full of them, for the boys in the service. Imagine! They say the fibers inside are used to fill life jackets. I even heard a rumor they’re going to use them to produce nylon. I wish I knew how to do that. I haven’t had stockings in ever so long. There are rumors they can be had for $5 or $10 a pair. Good golly Moses! Who has that kind of money to spend on hosiery?
Don’t be mad, but I wouldn’t turn in some poor woman who spends her life savings on a pair of stockings. The fact is, stockings are out there. Yes, I know all about
your
big important job and the war effort and I know that everybody hates the OPA! You should have been at the picnic. We even had chicken and tubs of potato salad.
Your stuffed Glory
Darling Mims,
January 8, 1944
You would hardly know me, I’m so sophisticated these days. I’m wearing my hair differently. You know what a cross it is to bear, but now I wear it in a twist at the nape of my neck caught up a hairnet. On top, I wear finger curls that dip over my forehead. I saw something like it at the pictures last week. Maybe it was Ann Sheridan.
At any rate, it looks quite nice and is finally under control! When I go out with Hugh, I wear a bit of mascara, brow pencil, and ruby-red lipstick. What a vamp! Ha! I know what you’re going to say, but believe me, he’s never going to marry her.
Your Glamorous Glory
Lacey read the letter several times. When
I
go out with Hugh. Gloria had changed, even by her own admission. She had to know he was engaged to Marilyn. But was she in fact going out with the handsome Hugh Bentley? Or was that just a fantasy?
Lacey didn’t know what to think, and she wondered what her great-aunt really did during the war. All she knew was that Mimi had had a government job. She had never really bothered to find out more, and Mimi had already been an old woman, if a sassy old woman, when Lacey was a young girl.
There are so many questions you never bother to ask,
Lacey thought.
You think there will plenty of time to ask them later. But there’s never enough time.
chapter 7
Thursday was September 11.
The Eye Street Observer
featured news of the remembrance ceremony for the victims of the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks, which had transformed life in the country forever. Mac’s editorial reflected briefly on how life had changed since that September day in 2001 and how life in the Capital City continued on with some sense of normalcy despite increased security and the Department of Homeland Security’s ever-present color-coded security alert system. Mac closed with a question:
Will there ever be another Code Green day?
Lacey reflected that she had pretty much assumed there would never again be a Code Green day. She was just grateful that people refrained from color-coordinating their clothes to the security alerts. It would be a nightmare painted in yellow and orange. But maybe, once in a while, that would be better than the constant gray palette the city wore. Ah, for a day of Code Green—Code Innocence.
The Thursday morning papers also featured front page stories about missing Senate intern Esme Fairchild.
The Post
began its story below the fold and tucked her yearbook photo inside the A section.
The Times
gave it two columns and the same photo below the fold. But
The Eye
led with a dazzling two-column glamour shot of Esme the Golden Girl, above the fold, placed top left. The day’s lead story was bylined by Trujillo and Smithsonian. Mac had all three papers on his desk. He exuded satisfaction, which, of course, was a temporary mirage. He complimented Lacey as she passed by his office.
“Nice work on those photos, Smithsonian.”
She silently thanked Nancy Mifflin again. Lacey was glad that her contribution to that story was out of the way. Because Trujillo was the lead, she’d copied him with all her notes and phone numbers relating to Esme, and she didn’t anticipate any more work on it from her end. At the moment she hoped her own beat might open a small window into a side of her aunt she hadn’t known.
What exactly was Mimi’s job at the Office of Price Administration? Did it have something to do with Hugh the B? Is that how they met? And then what? A steamy, doomed love affair?
The first order of the day was to check out DeadFed on the Web. After yesterday’s lunch with Brooke and Damon, anything could happen. Damon had linked her story to his site with his own introduction, which mentioned that
Eye Street
fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian, who had covered the Marcia Robinson scandal and wound up stabbing a serial killer, was now on the Fairchild story.
Stay tuned for further developments from this veteran Washington investigative reporter,
he promised, implying that Lacey would uncover something any second.
“Veteran” makes me sound so old!
Lacey thought.
She had brief e-mails from both Brooke and Damon. His said,
More to come?
Hers said,
Sorry you had to run off; we were all having such a great time,
and implied she would forever be grateful for introducing her to Damon. Lacey sighed.
Her number one desire was to get hold of Hugh Bentley and grill him about those pesky company policies that required firing heroic employees who fought for their lives—and for Bentley’s precious overpriced inventory. Perhaps it would lead to other threads of information. She had chosen to wear another suit of Aunt Mimi’s, a Black Watch plaid that made her feel like a femme fatale in a pulp fiction novel: strong, attractive, capable of facing the bad guys. It had a green velvet Chesterfield collar and cuffs. She wore a pair of green leather pumps, though not the kind that Stella might approve. She hoped the suit would help inspire her to ask the right questions. Too often the right questions came at deadline—or right after the story went to press.
A call to the cell phone of the Bentleys’ jack-of-all-trades, Chevalier, went to voice mail. Hugh had told her at lunch on Tuesday that the Bentleys were overseeing the placement of the exhibits.
The museum.
Lacey grabbed her purse and made a quick exit from the office. She grabbed a cab and headed to the handsome edifice of the yet-unopened Bentley Museum of American Fashion, near Judiciary Square and the National Building Museum, where the fund-raising “Sixty Years of American Fashion” gala would be held.
The new museum was housed in a corner building that presented a facade of three connected redbrick and white-trimmed Victorian row houses, from behind which rose an impressive modern steel-and-glass block. The doors designated the office entrance, the museum shop, and the public entrance, which was open for workmen coming and going.
Lacey entered through the unlocked front door and saw the metal detectors already in place. A security guard at the front desk put his newspaper down and glanced at her with a sour expression. “We’re not open yet, ma’am.” She explained what she wanted. Looking at a clipboard, he said, “You’re not on the list.”
“You’re not even open and there’s already a list?” Lacey inquired sweetly. She flashed her press badge. Reluctantly he picked up his two-way radio.
“We got a woman here, says she’s a reporter.” He paused. “Who you with?”
“Lacey Smithsonian.
The Eye Street Observer
,” she said. “I’m here to see Hugh Bentley or Aaron Bentley. Or Jeffrey Bentley Holmes. Or Marilyn Bentley, or Belinda Holmes, or Cordelia—”
“You hear all that?” The guard shouted into the speaker. He indicated Lacey should stay put. “Someone will be up soon.”
It was Jeffrey Bentley Holmes who greeted her with a welcoming smile. He looked darn good for a man wearing a tool belt full of hammers and nails slung from his hips. The sleeves of his blue work shirt were rolled up, his jeans fit well, and his scuffed steel-toed boots indicated he meant business. This was not the Bentley fashion statement she had expected.
“Lacey, so nice to see you. But I’m confused. Why are you here? Is anyone expecting you?”
“I’m completely unexpected. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” He wiped his hands on his jeans and offered her his hand. “It’s great to see you again.”
“You’re dressed like one of the guys on
This Old House.
Or is it
This Old Museum
?”
“Our new collection, the Bent-nail Look, by Bentley. We’re a hands-on family, as you can see. Anyway, I’m not a fashion guy; I’m the build-the-stores guy. Would you like an advance tour of the museum?”
“I’d love it, but I also have some questions about the robbery at the boutique,” she said. She briefly explained the purpose of her visit.
“Well, that’s a CEO type of problem, not a square-footage-of-display-area type of problem,” Jeffrey said. “You do need Hugh or Aaron. They’re around somewhere. Follow me.” Jeffrey signed her in on the guard’s clipboard. The guard looked sulky and resumed reading the sports pages.
“Only workmen are coming in right now,” Jeffrey said. “Last-minute things, a million of ’em, and I suspect the curator is going mad.” His sense of composure and good humor was comforting. She hoped the other Bentleys would be as welcoming, but she doubted it. “Everyone with a stake in an exhibit wants to oversee their own little piece of genius.”
“Is that what the Bentley clan is doing?”
He laughed. “Absolutely. We are the worst by far. Trust me. Are you sure you care to step into the lion’s den?” They turned a corner into the Bentley wing. Squadrons of display designers, drapers, technicians, and workmen were scurrying everywhere, surrounded by sixty years of the work of a fashion dynasty. But it was full of eye candy for someone like Lacey. Several originals from the fledgling first collection adorned the mannequins just inside the doorway. The exhibit was chronological, from 1944 to the present. Huge photos of Bentley’s humble beginnings contrasted with the sleek imperial castle of gleaming chrome and glass it now occupied in Manhattan. There were even pictures from the first factory floor and the various work-rooms. One featured a dressmaker’s dummy draped in fabric with a woman pinning a pattern together.
Is that the studio where Gloria Adams worked?
“But the museum features other American designers? Other work?”
“Oh, yes, they’re all here, but I imagine Uncle Hugh and Aaron have supplied the most headaches, as well as the most money. Ah, here’s Ms. Mandrake, the curator of the museum. Penelope, I’d like you to meet Lacey Smithsonian. With the—”
“Eye Street Observer,
” Lacey filled in. She put out her hand and wore a determined smile.
A bony woman with a perpetually worried look turned at his voice. She was perhaps forty, perhaps a little younger, but she underwent a transformation in his presence. It was subtle, but Penelope Mandrake glowed in the presence of the handsome Jeffrey, who, Lacey assumed, probably had that effect on any woman between seventeen and death. Penelope then peered suspiciously at Lacey through her decorative lenses. She was dressed in black slacks and top, which were smeared with dust; she looked as if she’d already been moving exhibits and crawling under displays. Her dingy brown hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, and makeup obviously had no place in her life. She shook Lacey’s hand firmly. “We aren’t really ready for the media. In fact, I didn’t know any media were scheduled.” She checked her notebook. “Of course, we have
The New York Times
slated for a special tour on Monday. Then Tuesday is
The Post,
and I believe there are some other special arrangements. And the networks are coming in next Thursday. Oh, and the
Discovery Channel,
the
Learning Channel,
people like that.”