Raiders of the Lost Corset (2 page)

It was a disaster. Even at the best of times, she reflected, it was barely controlled chaos, but today it was chaotic even by Magda’s standards.

Lacey glanced up uneasily at a row of wig heads that stared at her with sightless eyes under elaborate curled hairdos.
No wonder
I feel like someone’s staring at me.
The workshop where Magda made her living occupied the second floor of a converted town house in Washington, D.C.’s Eastern Market neighborhood, over a storefront on the ground floor. Magda’s apartment was on the third floor, one of two tiny apartments. Near the sofa where Magda lay, Lacey saw the large antique oak notions cabinet, its many glass-front drawers open, their contents spilling out, a treasure chest of faux jewels, bits of gold braid, and chains like the ones that decorated her still form.

A nearly finished corset in sassy pink satin with black lace trim was provocatively positioned on a dressmaker’s dummy, next to another dummy displaying a purple velvet Elizabethan corseted gown for
The Merry Wives of Windsor.
A third dummy, with a drape of blue silk for a fancy bustier, had fallen or been thrown to the floor. A profusion of corsets and bustiers in silk and satin and brocade in every stage of construction were strewn about. But Lacey knew that none of these was the corset Magda was talking about.

“A corsetiere knows all your secrets,” Magda had often said to Lacey with a wink. “The secrets you keep and the secrets you give away, all the secrets you hide beneath your clothes.” But clearly she wasn’t parting with any secrets today. Perhaps, Lacey thought, she could keep Magda among the living by engaging her, by simply refusing to let her go.

Keep her talking,
she thought.
She’s such a storyteller, maybe
she’ll get started on a story and forget to die.
“What’s with all the baubles, Magda?” she said. “You couldn’t decide what to wear tonight?”

The old woman shook her head. “The corset! Nothing else matters. You must talk to my cousin —” The words were gasps of agony between shallow breaths.

“Forget about the corset! Someone tried to kill you,” Lacey shouted, trying to get through the woman’s fog of pain.

Magda wasn’t listening. Even while losing her grasp on the material world, dreams of a treasure beyond imagining were never far from her mind. “At first, you know, I thought my grandfather had stolen a Fabergé egg, not a bloodstained corset. Did I tell you about all this?”

Lacey could see her struggle for air, and for her thoughts. “Your grandfather, I know, the corset, you told me. But who did this, Magda? And why?”

Magda summoned the last remnants of her strength and clarity and fixed her gaze on Lacey. She said very distinctly, “Promise me you will find the corset!” Then she closed her eyes.

Oh, no, Magda, you can’t die,
Lacey thought irrationally,
you
still have stories to tell!
And it was so like Magda to hold a hasty promise over Lacey’s head as she died, to haunt her with this peculiar pipe dream. And where on earth were the D.C. paramedics?

Find the corset.
A spectral command. “Yes, the corset! Magda, whoever poisoned you, were they after the corset? Tell me, Magda!”

It wasn’t just any corset, Lacey knew. It was a corset of rumor and legend, a corset that would be worth millions, a corset of infamy sewn with hidden imperial jewels, lost for most of the twentieth century.
More than enough motive for murder.
That is, if Magda were to be believed. Lacey was never sure how much the old corsetiere might have embroidered her stories. Quite a lot, Lacey suspected, which would be appropriate for an expert seamstress. Perhaps some tales were even made up out of whole cloth.

But the mythical corset was a treasure that Magda Rousseau had intended to recover, with fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian of
The Eye Street Observer
at her side to document the search. It was a lunatic idea, which made it appealing to both of them.

“Magda?” Lacey said. “Magda Rousseau!” There was no answer this time, and Lacey knew she was dead.

What once was Magda sat on the faded floral sofa in the middle of her workroom, her head leaning back, her fingers still touching the poisoned glass of wine. Her purple shirtwaist dress was old, clean, and well tailored, but the top button was missing. Her short curly brown hair, shot through with gray, perpetually resisted all her attempts at taming it and was now sticking straight up.

Oddly, Magda looked at peace, the jumble of jewels and all.

Magda was probably between sixty and seventy, but looked older.
It isn’t the years, it’s the mileage,
Lacey thought. Magda’s upturned cat eyes had always sparkled with a bit of humor, as they did even now. Her lips bore traces of coral lipstick and her ghastly white cheeks sported two bright spots of rouge, and her love of wine and vodka showed in the broken capillaries across her cheeks. Lacey stared at the dead woman, hoping vainly that her friend’s death was just an illusion and she might soon rouse herself and say, “All a joke, Lacey! A good joke, no?”

The sun was sinking lower beyond the room’s one large window. The golden afternoon light glinted on the paste jewels and reflected from dust floating quietly over the scene. It had started out a fine November day, with a hint of warmth in the air, but darkness would come soon enough and a chillier air would seize the night.

Lacey remembered the cell phone and picked it up from the coffee table to hear a voice.

“Ma’am, are you there?”

“Why the hell aren’t you here?” she shouted, her frustration taking over.

“They will be there soon, ma’am. Please stay on the —”

Lacey clicked off the phone. She didn’t want to talk to the voice anymore. The heaviness of death settled on her shoulders, leaving her with a melancholy that bore into her bones. She knew she would cry later, in private. But she called on her reporter’s hard-ness, woven through with cynicism, to help her through the next few hours. She would wait for the ambulance. And the police. She wanted to see Magda through to the bitter end.

Mac isn’t going to like this,
Lacey told herself, and then she thought of all the people who wouldn’t like it. Her editor, Mac, was just one, her erstwhile boyfriend, Vic Donovan, was another, and she put herself at the top of the list.

“This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go,” she said aloud. She pulled out her cell phone again to dial Tony Trujillo, police reporter at
The Eye,
but she hung up. It was past today’s deadline.

Let Trujillo find his own news.
Lacey was tired of being in the center of bad news. The small shop would become a circus-like scene soon enough. She saved that conversation until later and put the phone away.

Feet pounded up the steps to the second-floor workshop. Paramedics stormed through the unlocked door and advanced on Magda, even though Lacey said, “You’re too late.” They paid no attention to her. Lacey gazed at her friend one last time before the old woman was subjected to their indignities. Magda’s strong, dex-terous fingers still bore multiple rings, each holding a sentimental memory. She leaned in to take a closer look.

“That’s funny,” Lacey said aloud, realizing that it was absurd that she would notice anything amiss under Magda’s gaudy gar-lands of costume jewelry.

“What’s funny?” a booming baritone voice bellowed behind her.

Lacey knew that voice.

Chapter 2

Detective Broadway Lamont of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department filled the doorway.

Oh, no. Not Broadway “the Bull” Lamont.

“Lacey Smithsonian. Good God almighty. What are the damned odds?” His brown face glowed with sweat. He didn’t look pleased to see her either.

A man and a woman in dark blue uniforms were performing CPR on Magda. As they repositioned her body, blue, green, purple, and red rings, bracelets, and bangles scattered and streamed to the floor, clinking and pinging against one another.

“Talk to me,” Lamont ordered in that threatening way Lacey had come to know and appreciate. She imagined suspects who faced the huge African-American detective were duly cowed. She felt a little cowed herself, but she wasn’t about to let him see that.

“Nice to see you again too, Detective.”

“You call this in?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, and —? Don’t make me cranky, Smithsonian.” He looked like he was already cranky. “Who’s the Christmas tree?”

“Her name is Magda Rousseau.”

“They said it was poison. You tell ’em that?”

“That’s what she told me when she was still talking.”

Lamont loomed over the sofa and bent his head close to the busy paramedics to take a good look at the victim. He snorted.

“Poison, huh? She got a knife stuck in her, she tell you that? There, right between her ribs.”

“What!?” Lacey followed his look. With the blanket of faux jewels cleared away, she could see a petite amethyst-and-emerald-handled knife protruding from Magda’s ribs. It looked like a prop dagger, something in a costume drama. A little blood seeped around the wound, staining the purple dress darker. Lamont pulled her away. “My God, I swear I didn’t see that,” Lacey said. “There was so much stuff on her —”

“Where I come from, we call that a clue, Smithsonian. A big fat clue.”

“She didn’t say anything about being stabbed. Just poisoned. I was rubbing her feet.” Lacey choked back a sob. “She said they were cold.”

“Don’t fall apart on me just ’cause you didn’t see it.” His baritone softened ever so slightly. “You’re no detective is all. Or else you’d have noticed there’s something wrong with this picture. A poison victim with a knife stuck in her? What’s up with that? And there ain’t much blood for a stabbing. Ought to be more blood, you know. And what the hell kind of voodoo shop is this place?”

“ ‘Bloody thread, knock ’em dead,’ ” Lacey said in a whisper.

Lamont looked at her sharply. She quickly explained, “She’s a corsetiere, a costume maker. For the theatre, among other things.

‘Bloody thread’ was an expression of Magda’s, a backstage theatre expression, she said, a superstition. Like saying ‘break a leg’ to an actor.”

“Yeah? Impress me with your backstage theatre knowledge.”

“She said costume makers believe if they prick their fingers while they’re making a costume, it means they’re putting their blood, their soul, into the work and it’s bound to be a good show.

At least that’s what Magda claimed.”

“This ain’t my idea of a good show. Poison
and
a knife. Doesn’t add up. I don’t like it, not a damn bit.” He looked even crankier than before, if possible. “Especially with you in a starring role.”

He lifted his chin toward the deceased. “Knives are your specialty, aren’t they?”

“Hey! That was self-defense and you know it.” Lacey didn’t like the look on his face.
What was he implying?

“More than once, Smithsonian.”

“If I’m going to skewer someone, Lamont, it’s going to be in self-defense.” He scowled, but he backed up a step. “Magda was my source. My friend. I was trying to save her life. I had an appointment with her. We were working on a story. A
fashion
story.”

“Oh, God, here we go again.” Broadway Lamont’s eyebrow lifted. “You gonna start telling me about fashion clues?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Just as well. Looks stupid on my report.” He snorted. “So how do you get involved in these messes? A pretty woman like you should have better things to do. And you’re supposed to be sort of smart, aren’t you?”

“ ‘Sort of smart’?” She could feel her own eyebrow lift involuntarily.

“If you were really smart, you’d keep your ass outside the crime scene tape.”

Lacey sighed. “Point taken.” She couldn’t argue with that, and she was determined to stay out of the way, out of trouble. This time.

“This corset-maker of yours, this Magda Rousseau,” he said, “she work here alone?”

“No, she has a partner.” He waited for more. “Analiza Zarina.

She’s usually around, but she doesn’t seem to be here today.”

“ ‘Anna Lisa’?” Lamont asked, his notebook and pen poised.

“She a foreigner too?”

“It’s Latvian.” Lacey spelled the name for him. The co-owner of the shop was in her mid-forties, a flighty woman who never seemed to stand still. Analiza’s tumble of curly strawberry-blond hair bounced as she fluttered through the workshop like a nervous sparrow. Analiza sewed at top speed, Lacey remembered, racing her seams through the madly beating machine, the needle clacking up and down. Her sewing machine was quiet now, a length of bright red material draped over it waiting to be turned into a cape, perhaps for a Little Red Riding Hood in a school play. A beaded black sweater hung across the back of her chair; Analiza always complained of the cold. Magda was always the calmer one, the know-it-all, the boss.

“Any tension between the two of them?” Lamont interrupted her reverie.

All the time,
Lacey thought. The women were always sniping at each other in a familiar, comfortable way. Magda grumbled at Analiza for wasting expensive material; Analiza groaned that Magda would worry about the price of air, if she could. They even argued over that costumer’s saying of Magda’s, “Bloody thread, knock ’em dead.” Analiza insisted it was “Bloody stitch, all get rich.” “Just general coworker kind of tension,” Lacey told Lamont. “Like siblings.”

“The kind that ends with a knife between the ribs?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so, but —” She shrugged.

“So, what’s so ‘funny,’ Smithsonian? That’s what you said when I came in.”

“There’s nothing funny here anymore, Broadway.” Lacey tried to get a glimpse of Magda, but her view was blocked by the medical team. They were still in a flurry of activity, but they seemed to be losing enthusiasm. Faux jewels covered the floor like colored raindrops in a pool of fading sunlight. “There was a pin, a broach she always wore, but she’s not wearing it now. I thought it was funny that it’s missing. It’s hard to ignore, it’s so gaudy.”

“Gaudy? In this mess? How could you tell?” Lamont glowered.

Lacey realized the statement sounded ludicrous considering the outrageous bejeweled mess covering the sofa and spilling onto the floor. She looked again, but the pin was not among the scattered plunder.