Shot Through Velvet (29 page)

Hansen was formal today. With his usual blue jeans, he wore a blue tie and a rumpled navy blazer.
Blue. How appropriate.
Lacey waved at him and started back to her seat. Hansen took a position behind the casket and started snapping photos of the crowd.

“You reap what you sow,” said a woman next to Lacey. “That’s why he’s blue. It’s not natural. It’s a judgment.”

It was somebody’s judgment,
Lacey thought.

One mother took her young children to see the dead man. “That’s what will happen to you if you do drugs,” she said. “Now, are you ever going to do drugs?”

Their eyes were large and round. They shook their heads no. The boy stretched one fingertip toward Rod’s nose.

“Don’t touch him! Get away! You want to catch that?” his mother said. “You’d turn blue and everyone would know you touched a dead man’s nose.” She bustled her awestruck children to their seats.

Rod Gibbs was certainly popular at his last appearance aboveground. Everyone in town seemed to be there for the funeral of the Blue Devil of Black Martin. Killers might attend the funerals of their victims, Lacey mused, but they rarely wore a name tag to that effect. It would be hard to single out anyone among those who filed past the coffin. The parade of people wanting their own personal look seemed endless.

Lacey turned and nearly collided with her friend. She should have known Stella would show up after all. But the woman standing next to Stella made her do a double take. “Lady Gwendolyn?”

Gwendolyn fluffed her hair, pleased. The frizzy mop of hair was gone, replaced by newly colored auburn waves that grazed her shoulders. Her previously heavy eyebrows had become perfectly shaped wings over her eyes. And there was the slightest hint of makeup, mascara, foundation, lipstick, and blush. She looked much improved. Who knew? Maybe Stella could talk her into braces for her teeth. Lacey just stared at her.

“I meant merely to have a look around the shop yesterday after we left you,” Gwendolyn said. “But before I knew it, Stella had my head in a shampoo bowl.”

“Yes, Stella is very good at that.”

“And then someone put color on my hair. It’s rather racy, don’t you think?”

“It’s a great color, Gwennie, and it totally suits you,” Stella said.
Gwennie?

“The eyebrows.” Gwendolyn pointed and smoothed them out. “Hurts, you know.”

“Takes pains to be beautiful.” Stella fluffed Lady Gwendolyn’s curls, pleased with her handiwork.

“I thought my poor husband would have a coronary. Let him try to make another Medusa joke now.” Gwendolyn scanned the crowd. Stella shot Lacey a
be careful
look. Lacey grabbed Stella’s arm and pulled her aside.

“Stella, what are you doing here?” Lacey whispered. “And why did you bring Miss Marple with you?”

“You know why!” Stella whispered back. “We’re, like,
bonding
, and she totally wanted to come. Like it would
ruin
her trip to America if I wouldn’t take her. She’s, like, a funeral groupie or something, Lace. And she’s kind of fun in a
Twilight Zone
kind of way, though she might frighten the children someday.”

“What did Nigel say about this?”

“Oh, Nigel doesn’t know we’re here.” Stella grinned. “This is just us girls.”

Lacey felt a tug at her arm. Lady Gwendolyn had a firm grip on her elbow. “Oh, don’t blame darling Stella. I practically kidnapped the poor girl. Isn’t she a dear to show me the sights?”

“That’s right,” Stella said. “She showed up with coffee to go at five-thirty a.m. And as I am totally a dear, we jumped in my Mini Cooper, and here we are.”

Lacey could feel her mouth open, but she couldn’t think of anything to say, so she closed it.

“I sneaked out of Nigel’s flat and took a cab,” Gwendolyn snickered. “Left a note, telling the two of them not to bother about me. I felt very wicked. But opportunities like this do not come every day. What a sight! Brilliant!”

What is it with women of a certain age?
Lacey thought.
They suddenly get crazy and fearless?

“Now, Lacey, I understand you have a
process
. Stella says you prefer to work alone at these things,” Lady Gwendolyn was saying, “so we’ll just quietly stay out of your way. Do let us know if you spot the killer. We’ll be ever so discreet.”

Lacey made an exasperated face at Stella. “It doesn’t usually work quite that way,” she said through clenched teeth. “Now please, Stella, for heaven’s sake, keep a low profile. A little respect. It’s a funeral, you know. It only
looks
like a circus.”

Even as she said it, Lacey knew it would be impossible for Stella to keep a low profile. The outfit was somber for Stella, but not for a funeral: skintight black leggings with one leg cut out to accommodate the pink rhinestone-studded cast, the ever-popular black leather miniskirt, and a very tight black sweater with a lot of zippers, unzipped to reveal her lethal cleavage. She wore scarlet lips and big smoky eyes under her tousled cap of shiny chestnut-shaded curls.

Stella looks like a Kewpie doll in a motorcycle gang,
Lacey thought.

Men went out of their way to offer Stella a seat toward the front so she could have a good view of the proceedings—and they could have a good view of her.

Stella’s companion for the day was outfitted in tweeds and sensible shoes. Lady Gwendolyn might be mistaken for Stella’s English nanny, rather than her soon-to-be mother-in-law. Stella clearly hadn’t had a chance to take a whack at the woman’s wardrobe. Yet.

“First, dear, we must have a good look at the guest of honor,” Gwendolyn said, dragging Stella toward the coffin.

“Oh my God, look at him,” Stella said in a loud whisper. “He really is blue.”

“Of course he’s blue,” Gwendolyn said. “That’s why we came. But he’s a lovely, dark, dirty sort of a blue, isn’t he?” She looked extraordinarily pleased. “We don’t have anything like this in England. Not since the Celts and the Picts, with their blue woad and all that. Well, except for the bog people, those bodies in the peat bogs. Murdered centuries ago. They’re usually brown. But blue? My, isn’t he disgusting? It’s simply marvelous!”

Nigel’s mom could dine out on this story for years back home in England.
See the USA, the land of the red, white, and oh, so blue.

“I didn’t expect to see the two of you getting on quite so well, so soon.”

“I come on a little strong, right, Lace?” Stella did a little Betty Boop hip wiggle. “Like a hurricane. But then I grow on ya.”

“I was quite prepared to hate dear Stella, you know,” Gwendolyn confided in chummy tones. “My Nigel marrying some awful American. Good heavens. But Stella’s a dear and not at all boring, and I do like her, and I so adore a mystery, and if she and my darling Nigel manage to stay alive and not fall off any more cliffs, I may see grand-children before I die. And free hairstyling for life? Things could certainly be worse.”

“Like I said,” Stella put in with a smile. “We’re bonding.”

“Where is the ambassador?” Lacey asked.

Gwendolyn looked nonplussed. “No idea. Out and about somewhere. Nigel will keep him busy. They’d both simply die if they knew we were here.” Her smile was conspiratorial. “We’re supposed to be doing something about the wedding. What was it, Stella dear?”

“Picking out the cake.”

“Precisely, which Stella has well in hand. Don’t you, dear?”

“I’m thinking cheesecake,” Stella said. “Who doesn’t like cheesecake?”

“Exactly,” Gwendolyn said. “Can you imagine picking out a cake when you could see the not-so-dearly departed in shades of indigo? And a lovely unsolved murder? Now let us take our seats. I won’t say a word.”

Lacey returned to her own seat and took out her notebook in case good quotes came her way. She counted at least twenty exclamations of “Oh, my God, he really
is
blue,” along with gasps and squeals and suppressed nervous giggles. She spied Brooke Barton and Damon Newhouse taking their place in line.

Brooke was wearing a charcoal gray pantsuit and a pink satin blouse. Pink on Brooke, Lacey knew, was to signal that she was in love with her companion, Damon, who looked rather ill. Normally Brooke disdained pink as weak and girly, but this shade had some life to it. And Brooke must have been feeling frisky, because she wore her long blond hair straight, rather than in its customary braid. Damon wore his own peculiar uniform of black shirt, black shoes, black trench coat and square black glasses. It could be the middle of July on Miami Beach and he’d be dressed the same. The attorney and the conspiracy blogger were a classic Washington couple.
Brooke is besotted, Damon is demented, and love is blind.

Brooke broke away from Damon to say hello. Lacey met her in the aisle. She felt a headache tug at her temples.

“What are you doing here, Brooke? I thought you had briefs to prepare.”

“Be serious, Lacey. The Blue Devil in a casket and the Velvet Avenger on the loose, and you expect me to stay in a stuffy D.C. law office?” Brooke smiled like the blond conqueror that she was. “Can you believe that color? I wouldn’t have missed this.”

“Do you want to sit with Stella?” Lacey indicated their stylist friend, who had also snagged front-row seats, playing her rhinestone cast for all it was worth.

“Stella’s here?”

“With her mother-in-law-to-be.”

Brooke craned her neck. “Oh, really? So that’s the Gorgon? She looks like Mary freakin’ Poppins. As Stella might say.”

Damon sensed Brooke was no longer at his side. He scoped the room, spotted her with Lacey, and relaxed. He came over to say hello and was promptly swept away by the local online fans of Conspiracy Clearinghouse, led by Blythe Harrington and Dirk Sykes. In Damon’s own wacky world of the Web, he was a celebrity.

Sykes cleaned up well in a sports jacket, slacks, and lavender tie, his ponytail smoothly pulled back. Inez, his funeral date, was signing the guest book and would be there in a minute, Sykes said.

“I knew you’d make it, Damon. We saved you a seat,” Blythe said. “So sorry to hear you’ve been ill.” She gave Lacey a thumbs-up. Blythe wore a stretchy purple top and skirt under a royal purple velvet jacket, and a pair of purple-framed glasses. She reminded Lacey of a bunch of grapes.

Inez Garcia rushed up the center aisle to speak with Lacey. She looked perky in a retro, full-skirted dress with black and white polka dots. Inez confided to Lacey that Rod’s death seemed to give Sykes the push he needed to get romantic with her.

Sykes took Damon by the arm. “You got to see the Avenger’s work.”

Lacey cursed herself inwardly for publicizing “the Avenger.” She regretted ever quoting Sykes’s wayward fantasy.

“Smithsonian,” Damon said. “Nice to see you. Thanks for the tip.”

“You owe me. You have quite a fan club, don’t you?” Lacey said.

He blushed. “Everybody knows I walk in your footsteps. Then I take a
turn
, you know?” He and Brooke were surrounded by a love fest of conspiracy theory fans, who escorted them to the body of Rod Gibbs.
As if Damon needed help finding a blue corpse.

Brooke and Damon approached the casket and stood in respectful silence for a moment. Then Damon whipped out his iPhone and photographed the last public appearance of Rod Gibbs.

Lacey felt a hand on her shoulder. Vic pulled her away from the crowd and whispered in her ear. “I see the whole musical comedy cast is here.”

“Oh, please, darling. We’re missing Broadway Lamont. Not his jurisdiction, but he was just as curious about this as everybody else when he showed up at my office. He made me print him some pictures.”

“What on earth is Stella doing here with Nigel’s mother?” Vic asked.

“You recognized the Gorgon with her makeover?”

“Hard to miss a woman who looks like Eleanor Roosevelt, even with a new haircut. I remember it was quite the joke in our prep school days. Even Nigel thought it was a little funny. So?”

“Seems Lady Gwendolyn the Gorgon is a fan of bloodthirsty thrillers, the gorier the better. She’s loving every blue minute of this spectacle.”

“She always was different from the other moms. Where’s Nigel?”

“Don’t know. She says he doesn’t know they’re here.”

Vic smirked at that. “His mother and Stella are running around on Nigel? Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. I just want to know one thing. Can you ride shotgun on your friends?”

“I’m here for the story. I’m sure they can take care of themselves,” Lacey said, and prayed it was true.

“As long as they don’t get in my way.” Even though there was an official police presence, Nicholson had asked Vic to keep an eye on things at the funeral in case there were any problems. “Tell them no jumping into the casket to see if all his parts are blue.”

“Very funny.” She spun around to make sure no one overheard.

“Hey, Lacey. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Hank Richards tapped Lacey on the shoulder.

“I wanted to see the conclusion. And write the ending,” she said. “Or the epitaph.”

“That’s good.” He inclined his head slightly. “You might have guessed I don’t care much for reporters. Most of ’em anyway. But I wanted to let you know, I think you did a real nice job on the factory story, and you didn’t hide Claudia Darnell’s involvement.” He gave her arm a quick squeeze. “We appreciate it down here.”

“It’s my job.” Lacey noticed he was wearing a well-tailored suit and a tasteful tie. “By the way, Hank, you look very nice.”

“My ROD GIBBS IS AN ASSHOLE T-shirt is in the wash.” His smile softened his bearded face. “The suit is just to show a little respect for his wife. It’s what you do. Honey’s gone through a lot of pain with that idiot. Glad it’s over for her.”

The only member of the Dominion Velvet team who wasn’t up front was Kira Evans. But as Lacey turned around, she saw her. Kira was dressed in a trim brown skirt and sweater, and she stayed in the back with her teenage daughter, even after Hank urged her to join the factory team up front. She shook her head no, and he shrugged. She seemed more comfortable out of the limelight, which Lacey thought was quite refreshing.