Raiders of the Lost Corset (41 page)

“I guess I never realized how much I wanted it to be true. I wanted to see it. For Magda. For myself.”

Vic put his arms around her. “It’s still a hell of a story. Let’s get out of here. Let me cheer you up over dinner.”

“No corset. Bummer, man,” Tony chimed in. “Mac’s gonna have an attack.”

“When he has to pay your trip expenses,” she retorted.

“I’m thinking it’ll be an okay story even without the corset,”

Trujillo said. “If we manage to bring back the Rousseau killer. Is it Kepelov or Griffin, you think? Or someone else?”

“Okay, stop it. Now.” Lacey raised one eyebrow. “I don’t know who killed Magda.”

“You did everything you could,” Vic consoled her. “Let’s go. We need to do something about those two creeps. Where’s Stella?”

Lacey had lost track of her stylist as she hunted through the racks of ruffles and rows of frilly party dresses. “Stella!” Vic called out.

“Hey, Stella!” He sounded just like Stanley Kowalski.
Oh, that
was a priceless New Orleans moment
, Lacey thought wryly.
I
guess that was the only treasure I’ll find here at Passion Flowers.

“Just a minute,” Stella hollered from a dressing room. “I’m coming!” She emerged in a rose-colored version of the 1920s fantasy dress on the mannequin in the window, dropped waist, full skirt, floating three-quarter-length sleeves, the dress Stella had imagined wearing to a fantasy wedding in
Great Gatsby
Land. She admired herself in an enormous gilt-framed mirror and blew herself a kiss. Her vampy makeup complemented the dress.

Nicole laughed and clapped her hands. “Oh, it’s you! See how it brings out your eyes?”

It was wildly different from anything Lacey had ever seen Stella wear. But somehow it had clutched the strings of her punk-ette stylist’s heart and played the tune “I Feel Pretty.”

“Stella —?” Lacey began. “Who are you, and what have you done with my friend Stella?”

“I’ll take it,” Stella said. “Charge it!”

“I need a drink,” Lacey said.

Lacey felt as if she’d been blown hither and yon by a hurricane, and she needed a cocktail. It seemed to be easy for everyone else to be philosophical, but she was disheartened. Not only had she failed to find the corset, she doubted that Magda’s killer would ever be brought to justice.

Her blue mood somehow induced her to wear the blue satin corset Magda had made for her. Lacey felt wearing it tonight would be a kind of tribute to her. To the corsetiere’s credit, Lacey’s corset did not look like one of Stella’s racy bustiers or one of the blond call girl Jolene’s fetish fantasies. Instead it served as a beautiful and dressy top, and its firm stays seemed to give Lacey a little extra backbone, something she felt she needed tonight. She wore it with a fitted black skirt and a black embroidered shawl of Aunt Mimi’s to ward off the faint chill in the New Orleans November night air.

Lacey pirouetted for Vic. He whistled at the sight of her curvy figure snugly laced up in blue satin. “You could scorch the chrome off a bumper, lady.”

“Is that considered sweet talk where you come from, cowboy?”

He kissed her shoulder and lifted her hair, and proceeded to shower kisses up the back of her bare neck.

“You look gorgeous, Lacey. Let me show you some real sweet talk.”

“First show me some dinner, pardner, and maybe you’ll get lucky,” she teased. “You know, I’ve been wondering, Vic, why you never told me your folks had money.”

“You mean why I never told you I was ‘comfortable’?” His kiss sent shivers up her spine.

“Yeah, ‘comfortable.’ There’s that rich kid’s secret code again for having money.”

He leveled his green eyes at her. “Maybe because I could tell just by looking at you that you could never be bought.”

It was Lacey’s turn to whistle. “You’re very clever with words when you want to be.”

He gave her another kiss behind the ear. “Maybe I just wanted you to love me for me. Instead of my vast untold wealth.” He smirked at her, and she pushed him back on the bed and climbed on top of him.

“You’re a real smart-ass, you know that?” She bit his ear.

“Darling, you say the sweetest things.”

“Why don’t you sweet-talk me more over that dinner you promised me?”

Dinner at the Praline Connection in the Faubourg Marigny near the Quarter was glorious, black-derby-wearing waiters and huge plates of soul-food-style shrimp jambalaya. Very down-home. Vic turned out to have wonderful taste in restaurants, whether it was a chili place in Old Town Alexandria back home, or something chic and amusing in Paris, or daring her to eat fried Cajun “alligator bites” in New Orleans. Her estimation of his Good Boyfriend potential was growing.

After dinner they wandered up Frenchmen Street to the Spotted Cat to hear Turtledove wail on his trumpet, sitting in with his cousins’ band. Vic had promised Lacey “the Marigny” was the neighborhood where the “real people” in New Orleans hung out to hear live music, unlike the tourist-filled jazz joints in the Quarter.

They arrived during one of the band’s breaks, and the small bar was overflowing and spilling out on the street.

Stella rushed up to them from the massive arm of one of Turtledove’s sexy cousins. She was wearing a revealing black and faux-leopard print bustier, her kohl eye makeup was pure Catwoman, her black hair was slicked back, and she carried a huge drink in one hand. All that was missing to complete her fetish tiger-trainer look, Lacey thought, was a whip.

“Oh, my God! Lacey, I’m so proud of you,” Stella raved. “You are fabulous!”

“Me? What for?” As far as Lacey was concerned she was a fail-ure. She’d come up empty-handed, not only in Mont-Saint-Michel and in Paris, but here and now in New Orleans.

“For wearing your corset! Magda would be so proud of you too! Let me look. Oooh!”

You’re so wrong, Stella,
Lacey thought. Magda would be so disappointed in her. In fact, the memory of the dead woman was like another guest at the party that night, she had intruded so often on Lacey’s thoughts; a silent and reproachful guest. She realized Stella was poking at her and tugging at her laces. “Stop that.”

“Whoa, Lacey, you are pure boy bait in that thing! I’m sure your boyfriend likes it too.” She winked at Vic. “Hi, boyfriend!”

“He does like it,” Vic agreed with a grin.

“I can’t tell you two how happy I am you finally, you know, got it together,” Stella said with a dramatic roll of her kohl-lined eyes.

“I mean, I really thought you two were riding the ‘stubby yellow school bus’ of relationships, if you know what I mean. My favorite

‘special needs’ couple?” She took a sip of her drink. “Like ‘re-tarded,’ you know?”

“Yeah, we get it, Stel,” Lacey said, feeling her cheeks burn. Vic howled with laughter.

“Don’t worry, Stella, we’re on the express bus now. No stops.”

Stella grabbed Lacey’s arm to guide them through the crush of jazz-loving locals. “Come on, you crazy kids, they’re holding a table for us. Your cute Tony Trujillo is here too somewhere.”

The Spotted Cat was small, and they were in constant danger of being jabbed by elbows, spilled on by waitresses weighed down by trays of drinks, and jostled by more people squeezing into the bar.

It was way past capacity. Nobody seemed to care. Turtledove’s trumpet was the star of the show tonight. He transported the crowd to a blue late-night world with new takes on cool-jazz standards like “Flamenco Sketches” and “So What.” During the next break, Turtledove plowed through the crowd to their tiny table and sat down, mopping his brow. He hugged Lacey hello.

“What happened to Kepelov and Griffin?” Lacey asked.

“Oh, we entertained ’em all afternoon with a rehearsal and a jam session. For free,” he said in his husky baritone. “Pretty lucky guys if you ask me. Catch and release, just like bass fishing, and they were very subdued when we let ’em swim away. And Lacey, no humans were harmed in the making of this evening’s entertainment.”

Turtledove always made her smile. “But what about the poor alligators?”

“Gators spat ’em back out,” he laughed. “That English guy’s too bitter to stomach. And the Russian, he’s no jazz fan, lemme tell ya.”

“Why not just turn them over to the police?” she asked Vic after Turtledove returned to his trumpet. “Now they’re back on the loose.”

“All we’ve really got on them is disturbing the peace, dis-charging a firearm, menacing a reporter. Louisiana is different.

Probably no jail time for them, sweetheart, and too much time and trouble for you.” Vic flagged down the waiter to order a Guinness stout. “If you ever hear from either one of them again, I’ll take care of him.”

“What if they were responsible for Magda’s death?”

“Then we need to make a case on a murder rap, not disturbing the peace. And as far as I know, darling, we don’t have any evidence that they did it, right? I know Griffin wouldn’t dirty his own hands with something like that. He’s too slick. And a coward.”

The music resumed and Lacey leaned back in Vic’s arms. Stella danced out on the sidewalk with one of Turtledove’s cousins, the jazz turned sweeter and bluer, Lacey floated away in Vic’s embrace, and all should have been well. But something Lacey remembered was starting to bother her.

Was it possible Magda had left Lacey a message, hidden somewhere? The thought of a lost message from Magda began as a whisper. It tickled her brain all evening until it was a roar. Magda loved the idea of secrets, secrets hidden by your clothes, secrets hidden
in
your clothes, secrets sewn into fabric. She even had her own theory about how the Romanov jewels might have been stitched into their corsets; she had demonstrated to Lacey one evening just how it might be done.

This whole wild goose chase, Lacey reflected, was full of old people leaving cryptic little notes for someone to find years later.

Such a quaint twentieth-century idea,
she thought ruefully,
in this
era of just zapping an ephemeral e-mail around the globe and feeling cranky if it takes a whole minute to arrive.
Juris Akmentins and Drosmis Berzins and Madeline Demaine, three people Lacey had never met, had been busy penning little notes that ended up before Lacey’s eyes. Two of them were dead. Madeline Demaine was lost in a world of her own. Magda was dead now, too.

So where was the little note to her from Magda?

Don’t be ridiculous,
she told herself, and tried to concentrate on the evening and the music and her good friends and Vic. But the thought came back again and again. Was there a hidden message somewhere from Magda? And if there was, where was it?

There was only one place to look.

Chapter 38

Lacey finally removed the blue satin corset after their evening of dining and dancing and drinking. She had never worn it for more than a few minutes at a time before, and she drew a deep breath and scratched her ribs where the boning had held them in. She pulled on a soft pink knit shirt and turned to the task at hand.

“I love the way you look in that silly thing,” Vic said. He kissed her and slid his hands up her back beneath her shirt, tickling her spine. “Although this is definitely a more user-friendly garment.”

She smiled and tried to remember she had an idea to investigate.

Vic went to find the hotel ice machine.

Why had Magda been so insistent that Lacey must have a corset? She hadn’t made much money from it. Was it just for the story’s sake? To impress Lacey with her art? She fingered the pretty blue material. The garment was beautifully made of the finest-grade satin with delicate topstitching. MADE EXCLUSIVELY FOR LACEY SMITHSONIAN BY MAGDA ROUSSEAU was embroidered in gold thread on a white silk label that miraculously did not irritate the skin. It was a lovely final touch that marked the corset as a custom-made, one-of-a-kind creation. Lacey examined every square inch of the garment, returning again and again to the label, which was attached along an inside seam.

Lacey admired again the tiny hidden pocket Magda had sewn in for her between two stays. It was just big enough to hide away a folded-up bill, or a love letter. And of course it was empty. She smoothed every perfectly straight seam with her fingers. Perhaps it was just her imagination, but the fabric felt slightly thicker in one of the back panels along the seam near the label. Lacey convinced herself it was. She dug out her small manicure scissors, the pointed ones stashed in her check-through luggage for the plane trip.

“Lacey, what are you doing?” Vic asked, back with a bucket of ice and a couple of Cokes.

“Checking something out. Just a hunch.” She took care to open the seam at the label so she wouldn’t rip the material. She would have the seam re-stitched later.

“What hunch?” Lacey threw him a look. He cocked an eye-brow. “Fashion clue?”

“Maybe.” Where the fabric seemed thicker, she wriggled one finger inside, then two, and found a piece of fabric that was not attached to the garment. She pulled it out carefully. It was a small slip of white silk with a message in tiny handwriting in blue ink.

“Oh, my God.”

“What is it?

“A note from Magda.”

“You’re kidding. Stitched inside the —? That’s ridiculous. Let me see.” He reached for it, but she backed away, laughing.

“Hey, this is
my
clue, Vic.” She held it out of his reach, behind her back. “It’s a secret message.” Her heart was beating fast. What was this mania for hidden messages? Was it a mindset of people who had gone to war? Lacey knew from reading newspaper clippings in her Aunt Mimi’s trunk that spies during World War II used maps printed on silk and stitched into their jackets, hidden behind the lining. Magda obviously knew this trick too.

“Okay, okay! Hide your secret message from me,” he chuckled.

“You’ll be sorry when you need me to translate it from Latvian for you.”

Lacey brought the slip of silk to the light and read it aloud.

Clever girl! Those of us who work with needles and thread are fond of secrets between the stitches. So for you,
my dear Lacey, I leave a drop of good fortune. Bloody
thread, knock ’em dead!