Hostile Makeover (9 page)

“It’s crazy talk. The police even came one day.” Amanda looked particularly wounded. “Because I’m famous now.”

“The police cleared Amanda of any suspicion,” Zoe interjected.

“Then Collingwood has nothing to do with these threats?”

Amanda closed her eyes momentarily. “Caleb is dead. And no, I didn’t kill him. He committed suicide. If you must know, he left me a note that I gave to the police after someone spread rumors that I had something to do with him disappearing.”

“What did it say?” Lacey asked and she was conscious of a heavy silence. The background music had stopped.

Amanda fixed her gaze past Lacey’s head as she recited the note from memory. “ ‘Caleb Collingwood dies tonight by his own hand. Don’t bother to look. You’ll never find me.’ ”

“That’s it?”

“He never did like writing.”

“His body hasn’t been found,” Lacey pointed out.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Amanda cried, tired of the subject. “Of course he’s dead, somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia. He said we’d never find him.”

There’s a location at any rate,
Lacey thought.
If his bones haven’t been picked clean.
She needed a breath of fresh air. “Where in the mountains?” Amanda merely stared at Lacey and crossed her arms. “Has anyone searched for him? Who has the note? Do you have a copy of it?”

“I’m not talking about him anymore. Caleb is dead and I’m alive. This is about
me.
”

“But there’s no chance that he’s alive?” Lacey pressed.

“I told you! What kind of dumb-ass reporter are you? I’m offering you a great story, a story that could make your career and what do you do? Dwell on the past and unimportant details.” An ugly expression crossed her face. “So what are you going to do? Are you going to help me?”

Lacey wondered if she should tell Amanda what she really thought, but she was fed up with the Frankendiva’s nonsense. “Let’s see. You’ve sneered at my clothes, scoffed at my newspaper, called me an idiot, and demanded my help to solve a murder that hasn’t happened yet. It simply doesn’t bode well for a long-term relationship, Ms. Manville.”

Amanda seemed to be, for a moment at a loss for words. Zoe looked stricken.

“Oh, and you don’t care if I write a story about your designs, only your paranoia,” Lacey continued. “So I think we’re done here.”

She heard snickers from Yvette and a booming laugh from Tate Penfield.

“What! Lacey Smithsonian! You’re worse than all the rest of them. They’re just incompetent. You of all people could help me, and you just quibble over trivialities.” She turned and swept regally toward the door, leaving Lacey to calmly close her notebook. Amanda turned around to make a parting shot from the doorway. “Reporters! I hate you all!” Then she was gone.

Lacey reached for her mug of tea. It was cold.
I guess there’s no point in asking Fawn for a warm-up.

Zoe exchanged a look with Yvette. “Do you want to go after her?”

“Why should I? The whore slept with my husband. Not that she had to force herself on him.” She clicked off on her stilettos in the opposite direction. So it was up to Zoe, once again, to smooth things over for Amanda. It seemed to be Zoe’s main job, besides designing the collection. She tossed a look at Lacey and said, “That really wasn’t necessary.”

“It really was,” Lacey said. “I’ve had my fill of insults today.”

Lacey caught Tate Penfield’s eye. He smiled and started packing up his cameras. Lacey picked up a petit four.
No use letting this go to waste,
she thought, closing her eyes and popping a small piece of nirvana in her mouth. She opened her eyes to see Brad Powers sitting opposite her on the ghastly gray chair that Amanda had abandoned.

“She’s been under a lot of strain lately,” he said.

Lacey could feel her eyebrow lift of its own accord. “Yvette or Amanda?”

He colored slightly and turned his baby blues on her. “Both, actually. They’re old friends with a big misunderstanding.”

“They seem to understand each other perfectly.”
He’s worrying about what I’ll write,
Lacey thought, and looked at her fountain pen.
Such a small yet interesting weapon.

“Let’s just say Amanda’s fears are a little hyper, and my wife is a little too eager to listen to idle gossip.”

Lacey had seen Powers exchange a guilty look with Amanda.

“So no one wants to kill Amanda? Why on earth not?”

He laughed, then sobered quickly. “No, no one really wants to kill her, that I know of. But she has a real talent for cranking up the tension.”

“Is this stalker any threat?”

Powers shrugged. “She’s got bodyguards around the clock.”

“And do you think Collingwood is dead? Did she kill him?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Lacey gathered up her things, feeling at a loss for something to write that wouldn’t sound like a bad episode of
Days of Our Lives
. Of course, there were always the clothes.

“You won’t mention her crazy idea, will you, Amanda? I mean, that she’s going to die?”

“I’ll certainly do a story on the clothes. But I try not to write about imaginary events that haven’t happened, tempting as it is. It’s not sensible reporting.”

“Good. I knew you were a sensible reporter.” Powers smiled with relief, and Lacey felt her eyebrow shoot up again.

Ha. He obviously doesn’t know me very well. Would a sensible Washington reporter be caught dead in my fabulous vintage suit?
Then she remembered that being “sensible” was part of her new Lacey’s Love-life Makeover Plan. A little more sense and sensibility in her life wouldn’t kill her.

Besides,
Lacey thought,
I promised Vic: No more dead bodies. At least not until Halloween.

Chapter 7

She hoped that Turtledove would be willing to give her the bodyguard’s intimate perspective.

Lacey didn’t have a chance to chat with him at Snazzy Jane’s, where his job was to keep the diva in one piece. And it would be difficult to ask him right in front of Amanda whether she was a complete lunatic or if there was some truth to her fears.

However, Lacey hated the idea of calling the one person who would know how she could get ahold of the big guy. That would be his friend Damon Newhouse, editor of the dreaded Conspiracy Clearinghouse Web site, DeadFed dot com, who sensationalized everything and jumped to wacky conclusions at the drop of an e-mail. He was a cyberspace scribe, but he had the soul of a gonzo jazz-age journalist. Lacey visualized him with his press card in his porkpie hat shoved back on his hallucinating forehead. For DeadFed, it didn’t matter whether the story was true; what really mattered was the creepy way it turned your world upside down. Back at her desk, she sent him a brief e-mail. She got back an immediate phone call.

“Smithsonian, what’s up? Must be serious if you’re calling me. Dodging any more errant doughnut signs? Lightning strikes, and Smithsonian is there. That’s why I admire you so.”

“Can the flattery. About Turtledove’s phone number . . .”

“I understand you took a ride with your office jinx, guy named Wiedemeyer? I hear trouble follows him like an angry ex-wife with a bounced alimony check.”

“It hasn’t gotten him yet. And hello to you too, Damon. And before you publish that I’ve captured the beauty secrets of an alien bigfoot, let me state for the record that this call is nothing serious. Just fashion, fashion, fashion. Girly stuff.”

“It’s never just fashion with you. I grant that it doesn’t always come with dead bodies, not daily, anyway. But there’s always sub-text. What is it now and how soon can I post it on my Web site?”

Lacey groaned, put her head down on her desk, and smacked the phone three times before she protested into the receiver, “Really. It’s a fashion story, Damon.”

“Okay, sure, fashion. If you say so. But I like the beautiful-alien-bigfoot angle.”

“They’re shy because they just can’t do a thing with their fur. Trust me; there’s no story,” she said. “Just a crime of fashion.”

“Everything is a crime of fashion in this town. Did you see my piece on DeadFed about tiny microchips they’re implanting in your clothes that tell the government where you shop—”

Almost any idea, no matter how tame, could transport Damon Newhouse to a state of inspired delusion. Lacey would like to blow him off, but he was in love with her friend, Brooke Barton, also a devotee of the grand conspiracy theory. The love-struck duo knew every rumor of a conspiracy behind every bush, down every alley, and, of course, in any dimly lit parking garage in the District of Columbia. Lacey couldn’t fathom the appeal of this stuff, but it seemed to get them really hot. She cut him off.

“Focus, Damon. Your buddy, code name Turtledove? I need to get ahold of Forrest Thunderbird. Is that his real name? And before you get carried away, it’s just for background on a fashion story. He’s bodyguarding for Amanda Manville.”

“Amanda Manville, the human Barbie doll?”

“Yes, Damon, the same.”

“Is she missing? Dead? Kidnapped? A sex slave to a senator or a Saudi prince?”

“Chill, Damon. She’s alive and well.”
So far.

“Have you heard she’s a guinea pig for the government? They’re turning out bionic combat superbabes under the guise of a tawdry plastic-surgery reality show, right before our very eyes. Manville is the prototype. I got an anonymous e-mail—”

“It’s a theory,” Lacey conceded. “Are you having fun?”

“I like it. There are rumors. And where there are rumors, there is some truth. So tell me what this is all about.”

“How can I talk to you seriously, Newhouse? You take my words and twist them into something completely different.”

“I improve them.”

Unrepentant idiot.

“Are you going to give me the information?” He hesitated. “I’ll call Brooke and she’ll break your resistance.”

“Indeed, I am Brooke’s love slave. And she is my blond goddess.” Damon gave Lacey a cell phone number for Turtledove. “But I get first Web links on any sensational stuff you unearth. And I’ll follow up for my readers.”

“I was afraid of that. But you get nothing until after
The Eye Street Observer
gets it.” She signed off and pondered where to start on the Amanda story.

Who was Amanda Manville anyway? A plastic supermodel, a butterfly caught in a net, waiting only to impaled on a spike by the media and added to their collection of beautiful dead things? It was a dismal thought, and Lacey chided herself for it. She left a voice message for Forrest, a.k.a Turtledove. As soon as she hung up, the phone rang.
Wow, that didn’t take long,
Lacey thought. Not expecting a call so soon from Turtledove, she was betting the call was from Brooke, and
The Eye
’s new caller ID confirmed it.

“Lacey, what’s the story? Damon said you called.”

“No court today?”

“Just doctoring some briefs. Boring. You’re writing about Amanda Manville?” There was an air of expectation in her voice.

Lacey started keying in her notes on her computer while listening to Brooke. “A fashion story. She’s unveiling a new line of clothing at Snazzy Jane’s in Georgetown.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve already heard the wicked rumors about her.” Brooke purred like a cat hoarding a bowl of juicy information.

“What rumors?”
That she’s crazy? It’s not a rumor.
“Tell me.”

“About her old boyfriend. You know, the ugly one that was on that TV show.”

“Caleb Collingwood?”

“Umm-hmmm. They say she killed him. As in murdering him, depriving him of life.”

“Oh, that rumor. Sure, but she denies everything,” Lacey said. “She says he killed himself. After meeting Amanda, I can see why he would.”

“So the notorious supermodel can torment men to their death?”

“I think he ran away from her as fast as his long, tall legs could carry him. She’s a mean girl, middle-school scary. If she’s a killer it’s in the grand tradition of Lucrezia Borgia.” Lacey leaned back in her chair, knowing it would be a few minutes before Brooke would let her get back to her keyboard.

“She probably is a killer, and I bet it had something to do with the Bionic Babe Project.”

“The Bionic Babe Project? Is this that conspiracy theory Damon was ranting about?”

“Why do you suppose she was never prosecuted for his murder?”

“Maybe because there was no body?”

“A technicality.”

“Are we in ‘Smoking Gun’ territory?” Lacey knew that Brooke was also a devoted follower of that muckraking Web site.

“I’m afraid the rumors are not that reliable. But it’s supposedly top secret.”

“How secret can it be if you’re blabbing about it to me?” Lacey had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. “And how on earth does the government have time to conduct a Bionic Babe Project and install ‘pheromone jammers’ on the roof of the Pentagon and the White House and keep track of all the other conspiracies in the world while deciding whether the alert level is Code Indigo or Code Fuchsia?”

“I love that you’re skeptical, Lacey; it keeps me on my toes. But someday you’ll believe. The truth is out there. Anyway, some say Collingwood knew too much about the project and was terminated with extreme prejudice.”

“Gosh, that is terribly entertaining, Brooke, but I need facts. My editor prefers them. Maybe the poor guy went into hiding because he was humiliated on national television. I mean, who could blame him? He’s supposed to marry his ugly duckling, but she gets turned into a swan and dumps him like dirty laundry in front of the whole world. And I’ll tell you one thing about Ms. Manville. She’s a basket case. A complete psychotic diva.”

“That or a cold-blooded bionic killer with superhuman strength. But maybe the guilt is getting to her. The diva part is a great cover. So what did she say about him?”

“That was it. She hasn’t seen him in years. And she is tired of being a suspect.”