Shot Through Velvet (24 page)

Aunt Mimi’s trunk beckoned Lacey when she got home, as it often did when she was exhausted and out of ideas. It was getting late, but she didn’t care. She put a Cole Porter album on the CD player. Mimi had always loved Cole Porter, and so did Lacey.

The trunk also served as her coffee table. She cleared away the magazines, unbuckled the locks, and lifted the lid. She briefly leafed through a vintage
Vogue
magazine from 1939 before removing several layers of materials, looking for something she had glimpsed before.

She put her fingers on velvet that Mimi had cut into pattern pieces for a bolero jacket more than sixty years ago. And never finished. The dark moss green was woven through with gold threads, and it changed colors as it moved in the light. It was a prime example of shot through velvet. Lacey was glad she’d learned the term for this lovely fabric, though it gave her a pang of loss to realize she’d learned it just as the era of American-made velvet was ending. Mimi intended her bolero jacket to go with a high-waisted green velvet skirt. Lacey put the soft material next to her face and looked at its reflection in the mirror. It was beautiful, and as it changed colors it made her changeable eyes a deeper green.

“Oh, Mimi, it’s beautiful. Thanks, old girl,” Lacey said aloud to the empty room as she swayed with the pattern pieces to the smart and sassy strains of Cole Porter.

The velvet must have come from an American mill a long time ago, perhaps even Dominion Velvet’s predecessor mill in Massachusetts. Lacey judged Mimi’s pattern to be from the late 1930s or early 1940s, and the material was purchased before rationing was instituted during the war. Mimi must have had a vision of the final outfit, but she never got around to making the finished garment. Lacey liked to think that Mimi’s habit of not finishing pieces and saving them forever meant they were destined to be hers. There were also many finished outfits that Mimi had left behind. Clothes were Mimi’s passion, and the trunk was full of projects, finished and unfinished, to keep her thoughts and hands busy during the dark days of World War II.

Lacey decided the green-and-gold shot velvet outfit would be the next one she asked her favorite seamstress, Alma Lopez, to finish for her.

There was a familiar knock at her door: Vic’s secret knock. She let him in, and he took a protective look around.

“Been communing with the spirits in Mimi’s trunk, I see. Learn anything?”

“Only that I love velvet and I’m appalled that the textile business is dying in this country.” She slipped the fabric and the patterns back in the trunk and closed the lid. Now that Vic was here, Mimi’s spirit could go back to sleep.

“And how is the death of the American velvet industry related to the death of Rod Gibbs?”

“Haven’t worked that out yet.” Lacey closed her eyes for a moment. “Do you think it would be possible for us to forget about Rod Gibbs for one whole minute?”

“Works for me. We should both forget about him. At least for tonight.” Vic leaned down and drew Lacey to him.

“Good idea. So all is quiet on the southern front?” she inquired.

“So far.” Vic enveloped her in a big hug. “Turtledove is in Black Martin. We are here. No further developments. I’m done with paperwork for the night. You got a beer for me?”

“A beer? Vic Donovan, I’ve got more than that for you. Shut up and kiss me.”

Chapter 22

Mac never lets me get away with this kind of headline.

Lacey stared at Damon Newhouse’s story in Thursday morning’s online Conspiracy Clearinghouse: DeadFed dot com. She couldn’t wait to see what Damon had written in his flu-fevered dreams. Reading it at home before work made it easier for her to yell at the screen. Lacey read and sipped her cranberry juice. She frowned. The story seemed to be based on the same facts, but somehow it came out different, more lurid, more hallucinatory. More
wrong
.

Lacey had to stop reading before she turned as blue as Rod Gibbs. Damon’s story was accompanied by multiple photographs of the dead man in all his deep-blue glory.
My secret source sent Damon the same photos
. In contrast,
The Eye
’s story seemed quite conservative, though certainly more complete and accurate.

Lacey had read enough to know the story was vintage Damon Newhouse. Damon’s world was locked in an endless cosmic struggle of one shadowy conspiracy against another. She was grateful Brooke had warned her about the story. Lacey closed her laptop and decided to think about something more fun. Like what to wear.

Clothing, she decided as she dressed, could have magical properties. Protection. Passion. Transformation. But that subtle magic depended on the wearer and her belief in those transformative powers. Today Lacey needed something fabulous. She pulled out a cropped black velvet jacket, with generous sleeves and frogs instead of buttons. She paired it with a red wool skirt and a white ruffled silk blouse, and she finished it with high-heeled black leather boots. All that was missing from her look was a whip.

Lacey would be ready for anything today.

She would need to be. Exquisitely bad timing found her arriving at the front door of
The Eye
simultaneously with Walt Pojack, the Newspaper Destroyer. She had taken a moment to admire the paper’s handsome location across from Farragut Square. She picked up a colorful bouquet of carnations, roses, and a few hothouse irises from the flower seller on the corner outside the Metro. Then she ran into Pojack, and things began to go wrong.

He stepped into the first available elevator. Lacey couldn’t avoid him gracefully or dash out rudely to avoid the sour vibes he emitted. After the Crystal City announcement, he knew he was unpopular, and yet he seemed to glory in it. Lacey sighed inwardly and walked in. She hit the button for her floor. She glanced at him and then stared straight ahead. She sniffed her flowers.

Pojack wore a boring brown suit, a tie with an Easter egg design, and a smirk on his face. He looked pretty jaunty for a man who wanted to gut
The Eye Street Observer
.

“Miss Smithsonian.” He punched the sixth floor. “Our own little fashion reporter, isn’t it?”

Is there a civil response to that?
Lacey looked at him, in case he wanted to make a real comment. “Mr. Pojack.”
Our own little Benedict Arnold.

“Yes, I’m glad we met,” he said. “You’re on my list.”

“Your list?” she said.

“When we reorganize the newspaper, there may not be room for the more superfluous departments. For instance, your little beat.”

Little?
His words hit her like a punch to the gut, and still he wore that supercilious smirk.

“My
little
beat? Why? I have a lot of readers.” Lacey’s head was suddenly swimming.

“That may be, and it will be taken under advisement, but consider this a friendly hint. You might want to brush up that résumé of yours, what there is of it,” Pojack said. “It really is too bad there aren’t any real journalism jobs out there anymore, isn’t it?”

The slimy salamander had the nerve to smile. She loathed him.

The elevator opened. Lacey whirled to look Pojack in the eye.

“You can’t cut my beat. This is Claudia Darnell’s paper.” And Claudia was depending on Lacey to stay on top of the murder at Dominion Velvet. She got off and glared at him. She held the door open for his answer.

“It’s Claudia’s paper for now, but remember, Ms. Smithsonian, nothing lasts forever,” Pojack said. “Not newspapers. Not fashion. This is a newspaper, not a sideshow. Politics and government make this town tick. That’s all people want to read about.” The doors slid closed.

“Bet me! You—” But Pojack was gone. Lacey was talking to the closed elevator. “You bastard!” she whispered.

“Which bastard would you be talking about, Lacey?” Wiedemeyer overheard her as he scooted around the corner. “God knows there’s a lot of bastards around these days.” Wiedemeyer had a large cherry almond tart with a chocolate lace heart in his hand, today’s love offering from Felicity. He licked some of the cherries, and Lacey fell in beside him as they trudged to the newsroom.

“Walt Pojack told me to polish my résumé. He’s planning to kill my beat!”

“Your beat should kill his beat first. Except he doesn’t have a beat. He’s a filthy, dirt-eating rat bastard, the worst kind,” Wiedemeyer declared, munching on his tart. “We can’t let him kill your beat. Next he’ll kill mine! He can’t do this. He can’t destroy
The Eye
. We won’t let him.”

“He said nobody’s job is safe.”

Wiedemeyer took another bite. “The Evil One has got to be stopped. That’s all there is to it. How do we do it?” Lacey had just one small idea. It couldn’t really make a difference, but
what the heck.
Wiedemeyer was still talking. “They can’t take
The Eye
to Crystal City! The place is a black hole. A neurotoxin. A plague. A pox. A misery—”