Raiders of the Lost Corset (35 page)

On
What Will I Wear Tomorrow?
your clothes sometimes seem to have their own story lines. They can turn into your enemies faster than an infestation of alien pod people. Who knows why the same outfit that was perfect on Monday is perfectly horrible on Thursday? How can you look svelte in that cute dress at 9:05 a.m. only to discover that by midafternoon you look like a hippo, and it’s the darn dress’s fault? Maybe your clothes have cannier writers than you do, and they all want to be villains. Every star knows it’s more fun to play the villain. What’s a fashion-savvy woman who wants to be the star of her own fashion story to do?

• Think about the clothes you love and that always love you back. Analyze what they have in common, why they are so flattering on you, whether it’s an Empire waist or a straight skirt or the perfect colors that flatter your skin tones. Memorize these golden outfits. Use them as your touchstones when you’re shopping, when you’ve forgotten momentarily who you are and what you look like. (It happens to all of us.) However, a warning to all of us obsessive-compulsive types: This does not mean you have to chart your successful outfits on a spreadsheet, seal them in Ziploc bags, and hang them in your closet labeled by the days of the week. Although, come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea.

• How much of your wardrobe is stuffed into a dark corner where you can’t see it? Are you often surprised by what you find there? Do you lose track of something you bought on sale in the spring, only to find it in the fall? Do you remember buying great clothes that have somehow slunk into that dark corner, never to be seen again? Seize control of your closet!

• We all need fewer clothes that work better and harder. (Or bigger closets.) Always thin the herd of the weaker specimens. Be ruthless. One way to be sure you’ll always know what to wear tomorrow is to get rid of the clothes that don’t work for you today, especially the sneaky ones that turn on you in the middle of the afternoon.

If you only have clothes that work together and flatter you, then you won’t make any wrong choices. It’s a theory, right? Of course, that only happens in the movies, where the heroine has the giant walk-in closet with all the bells and whistles, the shoe racks, the skirt rods, the clear glass drawers for everything from sweaters to scarves. It’s a Hollywood fantasy.

But you can avoid the trauma of another nerve-shattering episode of
What Will I Wear Tomorrow?
Take control of your own fashion story now, don’t wait until showtime. And soon
What Will I Wear Tomorrow?
will be the feels-good, fits-right hit of the season.

Chapter 33

Lacey and Stella hadn’t even arrived in the French Quarter and already the taxi driver was dissing her choice of accommodations.

“Dat Beaumont House Hotel? I ain’t take nobody dat hotel three years or mo’. Why’n’cha stay at de Royal Sonesta or de Fair-mont? Now dat’s a
hotel, cher,
you wanna talk hotels —”

Lacey was sick and tired of people bemoaning her choices, but she didn’t even have to respond — the taxi driver kept up a solid string of commentary throughout the drive. They should eat at Brennan’s, he said, and Emeril’s. He was encouraging them to drop a lot of cash in the Big Easy. She wondered if he got a kick-back. And nobody says “Da Big Easy” in New Orleans, he informed them, only outsiders, and besides that,
cher,
the city is correctly called “Nawlins.”

Stella had a hangover and was feeling queasy, but that wasn’t keeping her from flirting. “That’s so cute. You’re cute too, cutie.

You remind me of a nice old grandpa.”

“Grandpa!” He chuckled. “Ah’ll show you a grandpa,
cher.
”

While Stella flirted with the taxi driver, Lacey was wondering how to lose her friend while discreetly checking out the address on Rue Dauphine. This was such a fool’s errand, she told herself.

Drosmis Berzins was long dead, and the entire landscape could have changed. Yet time was said to move slowly in the Big Easy.

Nawlins
, she corrected herself. The seasons seemed to move slowly as well. Though Indian summer had lingered in Washington, it brought crisp golden days and chilly nights. But here in New Orleans, the November air was positively balmy and the breeze cuddled the skin rather than chilled it.

The taxi pulled up to their hotel on Decatur Street. “So what’s wrong with this place?” Lacey asked, but the driver shrugged.

“Nuttin’. ’S aw right. Y’all be fine here.” The Beaumont House Hotel was proudly pink with filigreed white balconies decorated with hanging ferns and baskets of flowers. It looked to Lacey as if it had put on a party dress just for her.

“Y’all take care now,
cher.
Y’all need a cab, ya call me, hear?”

He hauled out their bags and handed Lacey his card.

“Thank you! We love the hotel! It’s totally girly,” Stella told the driver. He grinned and took off to counsel other tourists on how best to spend their money in
Nawlins.

“Wait till you see what I brought,” Stella announced on their way up in the elevator.
Can’t wait
, Lacey thought with a smile. No doubt a suitcase-full of tarty Bourbon Street outfits. “This is a wild and crazy party town, Lacey, not like D.C. So I pumped up the color, like you told me.”

“That is a startling statement coming from you, Stella.”

“Well, there’s startling, and then there is
really
startling. I’m un-leashing my inner Catwoman here.” Stella meowed, but it turned into a yawn. “Oh, Lacey, my head feels like a jackhammer.” She fumbled with the room key and unlocked the door, tossing her suitcase inside.

“I’m so sorry to wimp out on you, but would you mind if I crash for a few hours? That was really an early flight.” The little stylist leaned against the open door into her pink lair and struggled to keep her eyes open. “I mean it’s only nine thirty in the morning for pity’s sake! And I was up way late celebrating our trip. So wake me up later, okay, we’ll go get some spicy Cajun, which I guarantee will knock any hangover right out of your head. What do you say?”

A long nap was tempting. But this unexpected gift of precious time without a bodyguard was too much for Lacey to resist. “Absolutely, Stel. I need a good three hours myself. Then we’ll get lunch.”

Stella blew her a kiss and stumbled into her room. Lacey was delighted to find that her own room down the rose-carpeted hall, in shades of rose and moss green, had French doors to a balcony with huge baskets of flowers overlooking Decatur Street. Vic would no doubt grumble about the security of such an accessible room. Any monkey, he would tell her, could reach a second-floor balcony, and there were large gaps around the slightly warped French doors. But she tried not to think about that. Kepelov was dead and Griffin had not resurfaced since Paris. He’d told Vic when he called with the news of Kepelov’s death that he was

“going to ground,” as he called it. Lacey hoped that meant he was in a burrow somewhere and he’d given up on trailing her.

She changed from her standard all-black traveling clothes into a light lavender knit top and periwinkle-blue capris and a pair of comfortable sandals. After wearing so many boots and dress shoes in Paris, sandals made her feel like she really was on vacation. The delicate light blue satin corset Magda had made for her peeked out from under her other clothes. She had packed it on a whim, perhaps to remind her of her goal in New Orleans. Or perhaps just to amuse Vic.

As corsets go, Lacey’s corset was very modest. It would look chic with the sleek black skirt she packed to wear to a fancy restaurant with Vic, throwing a shawl over it if she felt too bare. She tucked it back into her suitcase, inside the closet. Then she grabbed her shoulder bag and fished out her guidebook and map of the French Quarter. She had a date with the Rue Dauphine.

On foot in the French Quarter, Lacey could see the early Spanish influence in the architecture, with its pretty filigreed wrought-iron balconies and galleries. Buildings were painted in pastels, and plants and flowers bloomed in abundance. She noted the street signs in the Quarter were all bilingual in French and English, in honor of the city’s French origins. The hotel was on Decatur Street, also marked as Rue Decatur. Lacey smiled as she read in her guidebook that New Orleans was known as “the Paris of the South.”
Okay, Magda,
she thought,
this is our last shot, let’s make
it good.
Lacey turned up Rue Decatur and headed deeper into the Quarter.

New Orleans felt and looked dramatically different. Washington, D.C., in the fall is crisp and businesslike, with a first-day-of-school feel. The sober citizens of our Nation’s Capital put away their summer clothes and break out the tweeds and woolens, even if it still seems too warm. The Crescent City, in contrast, retained a lingering sense of eternal late summer. People strolled along the streets and lazed about in cafés in cutoff jeans and T-shirts. It was a different kind of casual. Whether the attitude was joie de vivre or

“I don’t give a damn,” Lacey wasn’t sure. But everyone seemed happy and relaxed.
Washington is never ever like this
, she thought.

A pretty curly-headed brunette about twenty wobbled leisurely past Lacey on an ancient three-speed bicycle, seemingly without a care in the world, and without a bike helmet. She wore a Hawaiian print dress and clear Lucite heels at least four inches tall. So unlike Washington, Lacey thought, where
The Eye Street Observer
’s editorial writer Cassandra Wentworth grimly pedaled her high-tech ti-tanium bicycle to work in an ecologically correct fervor.

Cassandra’s bike outfit of black stretch tights, yellow reflective jacket, oversized sunglasses with rearview mirrors, and stream-lined neon-yellow helmet made her look like an exotic alien insect.

An insect with a deadly serious purpose and no time to waste on merely enjoying the day.

New Orleans was sweet eye candy and an exotic world. Lacey was thrilled she didn’t have to learn a new language to enjoy it, although she overheard the locals speaking an exotic variety of English. Her attention was caught by a stocky man with

close-cropped hair and a bullet-shaped head, dressed according to some code, tight black T-shirt, black shorts, black running shoes, white socks. But what caught her eye were the twenty pairs of gleaming silver handcuffs clipped to his heavy black belt. Lacey didn’t even want to guess what he might do for a living. “S&M club bouncer slash bounty hunter” came to mind.

Lacey’s own pace was casual. She glanced in the store windows at the tourist bait, cheap Bourbon Street beads and voodoo kitsch and purple-and-green Mardi Gras masks everywhere, but it was a black cook’s apron featuring a white skull that brought her back to her present purpose. DON’T MAKE ME POISON YOUR FOOD, the apron warned.

Lacey checked her map again. She passed Jackson Square and Café du Monde on Decatur Street and took a left turn on Ursulines Street. She walked four blocks, past Bourbon Street, to Dauphine Street. She felt a little tingle of excitement to see the street sign also identified it as Rue Dauphine, just as Vic had said it would.

On the corner of Dauphine and Ursulines, at 1101 Rue Dauphine, the address in Drosmis Berzins’ note, she found a two-story brick building that housed a pharmacy on the street level. Lacey double-checked the address. It seemed that time hadn’t changed this mostly residential part of the French Quarter. The building must have been there for at least two hundred years, she thought.

Lacey hesitated, wondering what to say to whomever she might find inside. She would try the truth, she decided: a reporter looking for information. Her Congressional press pass was in her purse in case anyone needed proof. She opened the door and stepped inside the pharmacy. She felt as if she had stepped into a time capsule. The floor and walls were trimmed in white-and-rust-colored tile and the ceiling was pressed tin. An old-fashioned soda fountain with a marble counter and a row of small round stools filled one wall, but clearly it hadn’t been used in awhile. Posters from another era decorated the walls, advertising long-forgotten products.

The pharmacy, however, looked businesslike and well-stocked.

How did this place connect with Drosmis Berzins?

“May I help you?” A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman behind the pharmacy counter greeted Lacey with a smile. She wore her light brown hair in a flip from the same distant era as the posters. Her name tag said MOLLY.

“I’m not sure.” Lacey identified herself as a reporter. She explained that she was looking for anything connected to the man whose name she wrote down for Molly on a sheet of paper. “He was an elderly Latvian immigrant named Drosmis Berzins. I believe he may have lived here, or worked here, or had family or friends here. Perhaps he was a customer here. And he may have left something here, some time ago, for someone to pick up? Perhaps a message, a book, an envelope, a package?” She felt like an idiot.
Someone I never met may have stashed something here that
I can’t describe. Who knows what, when, or why. Got anything like
that?

The woman stared at her for a moment. She looked away and seemed to remember something. “My goodness. What was that name again?”

“Berzins, Drosmis Berzins. I’m not sure how it’s pronounced.”

“Just a moment, please.” The woman took the paper and slipped into the back room. Lacey wandered around the little drugstore. No one else came in the store, but Lacey assumed it was still early by French Quarter time. Molly left Lacey waiting long enough for her to imagine the woman coming back with a shotgun to run her out of the store. Instead, Lacey heard a couple of voices joined in laughter. Molly emerged alone from the backroom holding an object in her hands.

“I hadn’t looked at this thing in so long I wasn’t sure about the name. But sure enough, it’s the same. It’s been up on a shelf in back for years and years and years.” Molly chuckled. “Kind of turned into a family legend. A curiosity, you might call it.”

The woman handed Lacey a tarnished brass urn, the kind used to store human ashes. “Ashes to ashes” came to her mind in mock-ing tones.
Ashes? Oh, no! He couldn’t have burned the corset!