“Are we really going to fight about this, Vic?”
He paused and rubbed his eyes. “We’ve been through this. We use a photo lab that deals with this kind of thing and I can secure chain of custody.”
She sighed. “I’m trusting you on this, Vic.”
“And I know a blood-spatter expert. I don’t want anyone else to die, Lacey.”
“I want to see the photos as soon as they’re ready, I want the negatives, and I want to talk to your expert. Okay?” She handed him the roll and folded her tripod.
He pocketed the film and helped her walk a sluggish but conscious Marie out to her car. Marie had come to as Vic and Lacey finished their task—blank as a new videotape.
How convenient,
Lacey thought.
“Be careful, scoop. I like your hair the way it is,” Vic said. He ruffled her hair and gave a tug on a lock. Just like a big brother would.
Marie took the passenger seat and Lacey took the wheel. Marie was in no shape to drive yet. But she did seem to be in shape to eat. Lacey agreed; Marie would drop her at home later. Vic would wait at the warehouse for the next security shift.
Lacey found herself at almost two a.m. ordering an early breakfast at Bob & Edith’s diner on Columbia Pike, on a school night with a so-called paranormal seer who was drawing a complete blank. Marie sat alertly at a blue Formica-topped table and appeared much refreshed by her impromptu nap.
“My psychic senses just plain overloaded. It was too intense,” she said. “I don’t do trauma very well.”
“Now you tell me. Do you remember anything?”
Marie said she was sorry and dug into a hot breakfast that smelled delicious. “I probably have it all recorded somewhere inside. I’m like a VCR. We could always try hypnotic regression.”
Lacey let go of her last hope of a psychic breakthrough.
I am an idiot.
“Let’s sleep on it.”
It was after three in the morning when she got home. Before tumbling into bed, Lacey left a message on Mac’s voice mail that she wasn’t feeling well and she’d be in late. Very late.
Chapter 20
Lacey had thought about calling Mac while she was in Virginia Beach, but it seemed too complicated to explain, and he might have ideas of his own that would make her life more difficult, so she let it ride. When she dragged herself into the office at noon on Thursday, he was in a meeting. She hoped it was one of the long boring kinds that Washington specializes in.
Her first call was to Marcia Robinson, but there was no answer, again. She’d been calling since seven. Maybe Marcia was screening her calls. Or maybe her new attorney took away her cell phone. Lacey left another message saying it was urgent.
She wondered what hair fetishes and a cheesy video featuring rich geezers had in common. But to assume that the videotape was not pertinent made it too great a coincidence. She remembered the smashed VCR on Angie’s floor. Did the burglar throw it in a fit of anger because the videotape was gone? If Angie and Tammi were killed because of the missing video, maybe the haircuts were a red herring. She checked out the DeadFed Web site to see if any of the suspicious suicides had expired with a really bad haircut. Unfortunately, the answer seemed to be no. Some in fact did have bad haircuts, judging from the photos, but they were bad in an ordinary, Washington-haircut way.
Her mind kept rolling back to stylists, pink-collar workers taken for granted in a self-important white-collar town. Women who labored beneath the radar screen in Washington, women of no importance unless they cut the right head of hair. Finding one dead stylist in Washington was one thing, but the dead stylist in Virginia Beach kept washing across her mental landscape. Virginia Beach is another world from D.C.
What if it wasn’t the same guy who killed the stylists; what if it wasn’t a guy at all? After all, it was a wicked witch who cut off Rapunzel’s hair to keep the prince away. Lacey called Sherri Gold, the closest thing she’d seen lately to a wicked witch. There was no answer, so she left a message.
She groaned to herself.
For God’s sake, Lacey, who do you think you are? You can’t even get a new beat. Or keep your car running two weeks in a row.
Mac strolled over and looked at her. “You just took two days off and you look beat. So it was a good vacation?” he insinuated.
“Not exactly.” Lacey summed up Tammi White’s death in Virginia Beach and her efforts to get some answers. Mac was so thunderstruck he sat right down on Felicity’s desk, crushing a plastic-wrapped lemon bar. Luckily Felicity was away from her desk. The sight might have killed her.
“You held out on me,” Mac accused. “Another death? What the hell is it with you and dead hairstylists? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Good grief. I just got back to the office,” she countered.
“You could have called it in,” Mac said. “It is news. This is a newspaper. We do have a phone.”
“I don’t phone it in, Mac. I’d lose control of it.”
“Why’d you go to Virginia Beach in the first place?”
“Working on my tan.”
“You were chasing the story and you didn’t tell anyone!”
“I wasn’t sure there would be a story,” she said.
“And it turns out to be another dead hairstylist with a bad haircut? Christ. Anything else?”
“That’s all I have now,” she said.
“So, another crime of fashion. Write it up.”
“But Mac, I already gave you a ‘Fashion Bite.’ Besides, my deadline was yesterday.”
“And now it’s today. I’ve got the power and you’ve got a column to write.” Mac considered her for a long moment, daring her to complain; then he grabbed Trujillo and dragged him into a heated discussion. Lacey decided to ignore them and forge ahead on a little cyber research to see what kind of person would want to take the hair. She soon found herself lost in the kinkier corridors of cyberspace, hunting hair fetishists.
Lacey cruised bald-babe bulletin boards and head-shaving chat rooms. She found a plethora of personal pages featuring bald and near-bald, naked and near-naked women of every description. Lacey uncovered an abundance of men seeking women who were shaved here, there, and everywhere, from top to toe.
She discovered the existence of “Jack the Clipper” and “Razor Dan the Shaving Man.” She watched “Bald-Headed Lena” happily getting her head shaved—three times. She discovered men who were looking for women they could personally shave, anytime, anyplace. She even found confessions from men who popped out of alleys to cut off women’s pony-tails and braids as they jogged by.
But would they kill for it?
she wondered.
What does a video with Marcia Robinson and Boyd Radford have to do with the price of haircuts? Or the price of congressmen?
She vaguely sensed someone peering over her shoulder. Thankfully, it was not Felicity, who was pointedly ignoring her now that Mac seemed to be Lacey’s personal copy editor. Today, the food editor was wearing some sort of plaid flannel sack that looked like a nightgown and reached almost to the floor, obviously caught in the clutches of a
Little House on the Prairie
fantasy. Lacey observed her carrying a cup of coffee and an enormous cookie to her desk. She knew that Felicity would break the cookie into small fragments and nibble delicately until they all vanished, because everyone knows small pieces have fewer calories.
Wait’ll she sees that lemon bar,
Lacey thought.
The lingering sensation of being watched made Lacey turn around. Trujillo, resplendent in a new pair of Justin alligator boots, was standing behind her.
“Pretty wild, huh? So what do you think, Smithsonian? Is there a link between your two dead haircutters? Some hardcore hair ball with a lust for curly locks? Your killer got a major hard-on for hair?”
“I hate people who look over my shoulder, Tony.”
“That’s cool. Slide over.” He pulled up a chair—Mariah’s Death Chair. Someone had painted a skull and crossbones on the seat back with Wite-Out. “So you think the killer gets off on cutting—”
“I’m just gathering information.”
“Level with me, Lacey.” His voice was silky, seductive.
He’s not getting to me,
Lacey told herself. “We could smoke this lowlife out. Write the Big One together,” he said. Tony laughed, showing off his pretty white teeth. The “Big One” was
The Eye’s
sarcastic shorthand for the story that would win the Pulitzer. It was self-mocking sarcasm, as no one at
The Eye Street Observer
, Paper Number Three, had a prayer of winning the attention of the hallowed Pulitzer Committee.
“It’s my story, Tony.”
“We’ll tag team it.”
“Yeah, right. You’ll take out everything I write and give it the old Trujillo treatment, a little spin here, a little stretch there.”
“I’m hurt.” He sounded offended, but she knew it was an act. His hide was thick. “It’s more than a fashion story, you know. It’s got cultural impact, social significance, and all that. Maybe even sex.”
“And I am more than a fashion reporter.” She exited the screen. “Abuse your own Internet privileges.”
“Protecting your turf is cool, Smithsonian. I respect that, Just remember: We’d make a great team. Think about it.” He stood up.
Lacey smiled at him. “You remember: If we do, Smithsonian comes before Trujillo.”
“You
would
use the alphabet against me.”
“Aren’t those boots made for walking?”
He socked her in the arm and strutted off. Her phone rang. It was Marcia calling, from a pay phone in Virginia Beach, too freaked out, she said, to use a cell phone now. The Feds could intercept them, she pointed out.
“What’s your connection to Tammi White?” Lacey asked.
“Nothing, really. I hardly knew her. And I’ve been
so
warned not to talk with you anymore.”
“Agent Thorn?”
“Among others. Many others.”
“Are you sorry you talked to me?”
“Well, I do have a cute new lawyer. Who also told me not to talk to you.”
Lacey was counting on Marcia’s deep-seated desire to talk. “Tell me about the videotape.”
“How do you know about the videotape? Do you have it?” Marcia’s voice rose.
“No. I haven’t seen it.”
“Oh. Well then, what videotape do you mean?”
“Don’t be cute, Marcia. The one with Boyd Radford romping nude with a celebrity blonde wearing pearls. Older guys in suits and teenage pages in birthday suits. You made a guest appearance in an outfit you probably don’t want to see in ‘Crimes of Fashion.’ Talk to me, Marcia.”
“I can’t.”
“How many women do you want to die?”
“I don’t want anyone to die!”
“Tell me why you gave Angie the tape in the first place.” Lacey was reaching. She hoped she was right. There was a long pause.
Marcia sighed. “I asked her to hide it. People were following me. I had it with me, and I was desperate to stash it somewhere. My lawyer refused to take it. Said he might have to produce it in court. We figured there’d be a search warrant. My mother wouldn’t take it. She said we had to get it to a safe place and no one would guess my hairstylist. She said the videotape was my only insurance in this whole mess, but it was just too hot to handle.”
“You have an unusual relationship with your mother.”
“We’re more like girlfriends.”
More like delinquents.
The tape, Marcia admitted, contained material that had been intended for her now-defunct Web site, but was deemed too dangerous, too weird, or too creepy.
“So I guess it was the blooper tape?”
“Worse.” It was a compilation of hidden video of the high and mighty doing the down and dirty at various times and places. And there might have been some politicians. Marcia wouldn’t say who made it or name names of anyone on the tape, but she admitted that Boyd Radford was one of the unsuspecting players. She wasn’t sure he even knew the tape existed. However, Marcia’s mother had told her close friend Josephine Radford about the tape, because Josephine was concerned about where Stylettos’ profits were going. Boyd Radford was a big contributor—to politicians and to women. Too big, Josephine thought.
“Marcia, who helped you with the video? Who shot it?” No answer. “Are there more videos? Other copies?”
“No. Everything else got subpoenaed.”
“Are you sure you don’t have another insurance policy? Who were you going to blackmail with this stuff?”
“Nobody! It was just for protection, you know? Anyway, it isn’t really blackmail if you don’t ask for money. Everyone knows that.”
“Trading other people’s secrets for favors or protection isn’t blackmail?” Lacey was aghast. “What the hell do you call it?”
“Negotiation! I hide your little secret, you hide mine. I spill his little secret, you let me off the hook. This
is
Washington, you know. Everyone does it. You should get out more.”
“So after your mother counseled you to obstruct justice, what did you do?”
Marcia ignored the dig. “After things calmed down, I wanted it back, but Angie said she’d mailed it to a safe place. I didn’t expect her to
mail
it to somebody! I was so pissed, I canceled my appointment.”
“Do you know who she sent it to?”
“I wish. Just to someone in Virginia Beach. I’d kill to get it back. Sorry, bad choice of words. I was crazy to let my mother talk me into dumping it on Angie.”
“Maybe you were so angry you went to the salon after it closed and confronted her and things got out of hand.”
“What are you saying? I didn’t kill her!”
“Why are you in Virginia Beach?”
“I needed a break. My mom has a place at the beach. But I never went to the salon.”
“Did you see Sherri Gold?”
“No! I hate Sherri Gold. God, Lacey, I thought you understood.” Marcia hung up.
Lacey decided there was no more putting it off. It was time to write about Dead Hair Day Number Two. She owed it to Tammi White to write a fair and accurate story. Since she didn’t have enough facts to make it accurate, she’d have to settle for sensationalistic and inflammatory.