Read Designer Knockoff Online

Authors: Ellen Byerrum

Tags: #Mystery

Designer Knockoff (31 page)

For interns, Washington was a big game of musical beds, and yet grown-up women couldn’t get dates. “I appreciate the information, but why are you so interested in telling me all this?”
“You want to find out the truth about Esme. I’m down with that, and squawking to a fashion reporter is more amusing than tipping off the political reporters.”
How wonderfully condescending of you. But useful.
“You wouldn’t happen to be one of those other women wanting to shine a light on the senator’s sins, would you?”
“Me? I’m just an informed source. Gotta go; my ride’s here.” Tyler hung up.
An informed source who may have slept with Van Drizzen and wanted to see him get his, Lacey thought. Esme’s death was a good excuse for all sorts of sources, informed and otherwise, to kick up the dust, spread rumors and innuendo, and float trial balloons. No doubt Van Drizzen’s political opponents were waiting to see where the dust settled. Lacey dialed Van Drizzen’s office. Doug Cable refused to take her call. Instead she was passed off to a junior press flack who offered a very polite “No comment.”
Within a half hour after Lacey’s call, the senator’s office issued a statement that he and Mrs. Van Drizzen were separating amicably, but he was hopeful of an eventual reconciliation and asked the press “to respect his family’s privacy in this difficult time,”
blah blah blah.
The statement categorically denied that there was any connection to Esme Fairchild’s death.
Mac sent a photographer to take pictures of the moving vans outside the Van Drizzens’ stately McLean home.
The Eye
planned to rerun photos of the senator’s wife wearing the Bentley scarf and the Bentley scarf Esme planned to buy, side by side. They were intended to let the readers draw their own conclusions. A leak from the coroner’s office informed Trujillo that Esme was strangled with a silk scarf.
“Tony, what kind of scarf was it?” Lacey demanded.
“Hey, man, don’t torture me. Don’t pull this fashion clue stuff on me.”
“What did it look like?”
“Caked with grime and mud. You saw the body.”
“It would help if we knew what brand it was. There might be a label.”
He groaned. “I’ll work on it.”
Lacey’s head was spinning by the time Jeffrey Bentley Holmes called from New York, his voice full of concern. “I just heard some awful news. Is it true your car was the target of that insane explosion?”
“Luckily it wasn’t my car. I’m fine.” She heard him relax. “But it gets worse.” She noticed that her desk was a disaster and Honey Martin’s flowers were dead. Balancing the phone receiver on her shoulder, she dumped them in the trash can.
“What?” The concern was back.
“Your mother paid me a visit yesterday.”
He whistled. “What did she do now?”
“I know this sounds loony, but she tried to buy me off.” Lacey tried to move the papers around into organized stacks, but it was a losing battle. “Apparently I’m not a suitable match, whatever that means. I told her we only had dinner. Once.”
Jeffrey sighed. “I’ll double whatever she offered you if you just ignore her.”
“She’s done this before?”
Of course she has.
“I’m afraid so. And unfortunately, there is simply nothing I can do about her. I should have warned you, but I never even told her about you. I don’t know how she found out.”
“Maybe she’s having you followed.”
“Mother? She’s not that organized. She’s really quite harmless. Yet annoying.” His exasperated tone changed. “Lacey, let me make it up to you.”
“I don’t know if anything in the world can salve my wounded pride. I usually pass muster with boys’ mothers.”
“Dinner tomorrow night. Any place you want.”
“That’s a start.”
She felt herself smile and noticed Trujillo crossing her path. She swiveled her chair away from him and looked out the window at Farragut Square. “How about something relaxed, casual, where they serve great Mexican food?”
And it doesn’t cost a month’s rent.
“You’re on.” They said good-bye, and she thought about how much she needed a relaxed night out. Of course, that wasn’t what Stella would say she really needed.
“Smithsonian, you got a date?” She heard Trujillo’s boots stop behind her chair.
“You are so nosy, Tony.”
He spun her chair around. “But I’m right. You’re grinning like a Cheshire cat. Who is it?”
“Jeffrey Bentley Holmes, if you must know.”
He stood back, alarmed. “One of the infamous Bentley Boys? I mean, that family has not got a good record with women. You know that better than anyone.”
“He’s not like the rest of the family. I hope.”
The horror of the Bentleys spurred Tony to action. “I’ll take you out for a steak, Lacey. On me.”
She laughed. “And deprive the rest of the female population of your divine company?”
He smirked and started rearranging the papers on her desk so he could sit there. “It would be a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
“You’re cruising for a bruising, Trujillo.”
“You are really going out with him? What about Vic?”
She froze for a moment.
Indeed, what about Vic?
“You are not my duenna.”
“Perhaps you need one. Is it over with Vic?”
“Vic who?”
“Do you have your cell phone?”
“You know I do. I’m ignoring it.”
“Let me see it.” Lacey moaned and produced the little monster. Tony punched in some numbers. “Now I’m on your speed dial.”
“You and the rest of the world, Trujillo, but what if you have a hot date?”
“If?
Simple. I’ll just tell her you’re my ailing mother.” Lacey hurled a copy of the morning paper at him. He ducked and ran away, but not before he cast a forlorn look at Felicity’s empty desk.
Something needed to be done, and Lacey needed help. There was no privacy in the newsroom, so Lacey ducked into the Mayflower Hotel to use the telephone. She had just enough change for the call. She thought briefly about using her new phone, but cell phones could be monitored. She would answer if it rang, she decided, but she wasn’t touching it except in an emergency. She hesitated for a moment, then picked up the pay phone and dialed.
“Brooke, it’s me. I need your help, and Damon’s too.”
“Lacey? What’s that noise behind you? Wait—are you calling from a pay phone?”
“Yes.” Lacey said. She felt like a jerk, but she didn’t care. She did not want this phone call traced or monitored. “Indulge me.”
“Okay, we’re there for you. What’s up?”
“I need the sort of convoluted, conspiracy-crazed thought processes that only you two have.”
“I’m flattered,” Brooke purred. “Go on.”
“I have to hide something that I don’t want found. It needs to be taken to a self-locking storage facility.”
“Your car?”
“No, that’s locked up at the garage. Just come over at nine, possibly with Damon and his most trusted confidants, if he has any.”
“You’re thinking about a diversion?”
“A diversion? Sure, whatever.”
“Right, we’ll need at least three cars to throw off anyone who might be watching.”
“Three cars?” Someone was waiting for Lacey get off the phone.
Why doesn’t he have a cell phone like everyone else on the planet?
She hoped he wasn’t listening to her conversation. “I don’t really think anyone is watching.”
“Come on. The FBI’s Undertaker is knocking at your door. He may not care if you personally get blown up, but he wants to be around to pick up the pieces and bag his quarry.”
“And that quarry would be?” Lacey turned to look at the person behind her. He ostentatiously looked at his watch.
“Whoever killed Esme Fairchild is undoubtedly the same person who is at the heart of the mysterious computer adjustments in the appropriations budget. This killer is at the core of the congressional ring of sleazeballs preying on the tender young flesh of innocent interns.”
“You say that with such relish,” Lacey said. Since she and Lacey had conducted a bit of surveillance work in the spring, Brooke was more than ready to taste a little adventure. She spent her days looking for loopholes in federal regulations and writing briefs that were anything but brief. Life as an attorney was not colorful enough for Brooke Barton, Esquire.
“And it almost sounds plausible when you say it, Brooke. But please, don’t jump to any conclusions,” Lacey said, although she knew there was no way that was going to happen.
Back at the office, Lacey returned a call from the woman who administered pensions for retirees of the old ILGWU. Her name was Sal. “Oh, yeah, this is your lucky day, Ms. Smithsonian. Miss Dorrie Rogers turns out to be a Dorothy Rogers who qualified for a pension. She stayed with the Bentley company until she retired fifteen years ago.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Oh, yeah. I already called her about you wanting to contact her. Sharp as a knife. Not like some, you know. She never married, no family. Kind of a shame. But a union member all her life.”
“Can I call her?”
“You’re cleared for takeoff.” Sal rattled off Miss Rogers’s phone number.
Lacey dialed, then listened to the phone ring. A raspy voice answered. “I’ve been waiting for your call,” the voice said, after Lacey introduced herself.
Miss Rogers explained that after the initial contact by Sal at the pension office, she had, with the help of an aide at her assisted-living facility, surfed the Web in the home’s library seeking information on Lacey Smithsonian and found the stories in
The Eye.
“I guess you’re interested in what happened to Gloria Adams.”
“Yes, please, what can you tell me?” Lacey knew she was being too eager.
“What makes you think I know anything?”
“You were her roommate. I’d like to know more about her. And I’d love to meet you. Anyone who knew my aunt Mimi is someone I want to meet.”
Although her health was frail, Dorrie was sound of mind, and she remembered her few contacts with Mimi vividly. “Well, I suppose any niece of Mimi Smith’s is all right with me. But it’s not the kind of story I’m going to tell on the telephone.”
Dorrie Rogers resided in a facility in New Jersey, near Princeton. “It’s a tomb for the living. We just haven’t been embalmed yet.” Lacey made arrangements to visit over the weekend. At Dorrie’s suggestion, they agreed that Lacey would claim to be a remote relative, a Miss Lacey Smith, when she came to visit on Saturday afternoon. Miss Rogers also mentioned that visiting relatives usually brought a little something to show that they cared, flowers perhaps, or a box of chocolates. But of course, she sighed, she had no real relatives left in the world. Lacey got the message. She would take care of shopping for Dorrie Rogers tomorrow. Right now she had a diversion to attend to.
Lacey Smithsonian’s
FASHION BITES
When Bad Clothes Happen to Good People
Sometimes it just happens. You think you’re wearing a great outfit, or an okay outfit, or at least something you’re not ashamed of. Then it happens. You realize that what looked like a good idea in the dim light of dawn has turned out in the cruel light of day to be a fashion disaster. You may or may not actually look that bad to others, who, after all, have their own fashion disasters to worry about, but your clothes have suddenly turned on you, the little traitors, and they’re making you feel awful. it’s probably not true that all eyes are upon you, staring in horror and then looking away in embarrassment from your fashion faux pas, your disgraceful hanging hem that suddenly gave way, the disgusting coffee stain on your white slacks, or the unexpected gap between overstressed blouse buttons—but then again, maybe they are. Nip that nasty wardrobe malfunction in the bud—now.
Why did this happen? Perhaps it’s because you have forgotten just how bad those treacherous clothes really are. You’ve enabled them. You’ve made excuses for them. You’ve lied to yourself and said, “I know this skirt made me look fat before, but I’ve lost five pounds. It’s not the skirt’s fault.” Oh, yes, it is. That skirt hates you, and skirts gathered at the waist hate everybody. And here are some other turncoats to watch out for.
•
Incorrigible stain suckers.
You thought that stain came out in the wash, but you were wrong, because you ironed them in the dark early in the morning on a towel on your dining room table because you were too lazy to get out the ironing board. Those slacks were hiding that stain like a terrorist in a spider hole. And white slacks just love to guzzle black coffee, spaghetti sauce, and ink. They like the taste. They’ll find more.
•
Knee-high hose under your skirt.
No one will notice? Trust me, people will notice—when you sit, when you walk, when you bend over to buckle that shoe that won’t stay buckled (another little traitor). You may think it would be fun to feel like Marilyn Monroe—until you’ve had a Marilyn Moment with a sudden updraft up your skirt on K Street. And men will bear me out here: Marilyn wasn’t wearing knee-high hose.
•
The closet calamity waiting to happen.
That polyester of unknown origin that drapes beautifully on the hanger? Go ahead, put it on—and just watch it stretch or shrink or bag or bulge or creep up in very unflattering ways, all while you’re wearing it. How does it do that?
It’s alive!
This stuff belongs in a dark closet in a horror movie, not yours.
•
The sentimental favorites.
That adorable miniskirt you loved in college, the frilly blouse that made you feel so dressy once upon a time, the little cropped top you had such a fling with one summer long ago. You still love them, but they have a secret: They hate you. They are so over you. They think you’re a little, well,
old
for them now. And if you take them out on a date, they will break your heart. There is only one cure: You must be brutal. You must cut them out of your life.

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