Veiled Revenge (6 page)

But Tony had seen and heard Vic’s proposal, while everyone was dodging bullets in a cabin in the wilderness back in Colorado.

“Is it a secret, or have you changed your mind?”

Yeah, every woman dreams of that romantic moment, under attack and surrounded by her nosy coworkers.
When Vic proposed, she was thinking only about him. And the bullets.

“Nobody changed their minds.” Lacey turned away from Trujillo. “I just have too many things on my list right now.”

“And that translates to nothing on your finger?”

“Listen, boot boy, I am dealing with Stella’s wedding!”

“And she’s supposed to be the crazy one.” He had the nerve to snicker.

“Well, it’s catching, so back off.”

Tony just laughed. “Are you stuck on what to wear to a wedding? How not to outshine the bride?”

“I like it. Let me write that down.”

“Hey, Smithsonian. Don’t run away from love. I hear it’s great stuff. Me, I can take it or leave it.”

She graced him with a smile. “You ought to take it, Tony. With the right bachelorette.”

“I might do that someday. Without the bullet holes.” He winked at her and she laughed.

Trujillo had a history with women. They generally melted when they met him. It was easy to do when he was so easy on the eyes and so charming. His olive skin, dark eyes, and flashing grin were surefire attention-getters in D.C. If that weren’t enough, Tony Trujillo was a real guy’s guy and seemed comfortable in his own skin, his leather jackets, and his cowboy boots, a sexy contrast to the nervous buttoned-down lawyers and lobbyists of the Nation’s Capital. But once women got to know him, it was a different story.

He was a flirt and a heartbreaker. Like many men in Washington, Tony had a fatal flaw: No matter how fabulous the woman at his side might be, he was always looking for the
next
incredible woman to walk through the door. He once told Lacey it was impossible for him “to settle on just one female when there are so
many
women, so pretty, so smart, and well, just so impressive. How could I possibly settle for just one?” Lacey liked Tony, but they were friends and nothing more. She felt sorry for the women he went out with.

“Leonardo,” Lacey reminded him. “Cause of death unknown. Take it away, Trujillo. Let me know what you find out.”

He nodded and leaned over Felicity’s empty desk one last time, looking for crumbs.
Nada
. He sighed and headed back to his corner of the newsroom.

Lacey attacked her deadline Fashion Bite one more time when Brooke called.

“If this is about your bridesmaid dress, Brooke, think pink. Like that blouse you’ve been wearing to perk up your gray suits.”

“It’s rose, not pink. Damon likes it.”

“Rose, then,” Lacey said. “A rose by any other name would look just as pink to Stella.”

“But a whole dress, Lacey? It could damage my credibility as a legal eagle.”

“Be brave, girlfriend. Pink, or bear the Wrath of the Bridezilla.”

While she was on the phone Tony shot her an e-mail, which she read while Brooke nattered on about the legal implications of pink versus gray. Leonardo’s death hadn’t been ruled on yet by the medical examiner. There would definitely be an autopsy. The late Leonardo’s housemate said the deceased texted him from a bar that he was distraught over “some fortune-teller’s prediction.”

“All I know is the D.C. cops are trying to find this fortune-teller,” Tony’s e-mail concluded. “Off the record, one cop told me it looked like some kind of poison. Probably because there was no apparent trauma, or maybe that was an early guess by the medical examiner. What do you know about all this?”

Not nearly enough
, Lacey thought. But poison? Leonardo hadn’t eaten anything at the party. He’d slugged down some pink champagne, but they all drank that and no one else died. Tony’s tidbit should have set her mind to rest, but it had the opposite effect.

“I haven’t found out anything about Leonardo yet. The cops aren’t talking, or else I haven’t found the right cop yet, and Marie hasn’t answered my calls either,” Brooke was complaining in her ear.

Lacey made her excuses and hung up without mentioning Tony’s info. Poison? Brooke would find out soon enough from her own police sources, and then she would call Damon Newhouse, who would soon create a storm of cyber-nonsense about the “haunted Russian shawl” over at DeadFed dot com, delighting his credulous readers and infuriating a skeptical Lacey Smithsonian. She wondered exactly what Leonardo’s housemate had told the police about the “fortune-teller.” Had they located Marie, and if so, what was she telling them?

What exactly is the shawl supposed to have done, and who has it harmed, if anyone?
Lacey asked herself.
Where did this curse nonsense get started?
Maybe if I can find Marie she can clear the whole thing up
.

It felt like hours since Stella had burst into the lobby with her news. Lacey filed a news brief on the opening of a new clothing store, then turned off her computer and grabbed her bag, intent on consulting the psychic. She could warn Marie that in the matter of the shawl, discretion was the better part of valor.

Lacey momentarily wished she had driven to work today, but the roads into the District were always such a mess: According to headline news in her own paper, the city was rated second in the country for gut-wrenching traffic. Now she’d have to take the Metro to Alexandria, then back again, before this day was over.

She almost made a clean escape from the office, but her desk phone rang and she made the mistake of answering it.

“What’s the deal with this ghost shawl?” the voice demanded without preliminaries.

“Damon.” Brooke was even quicker on the trigger than Lacey expected. “I’m fine, and how are you?”

“I understand this shawl, or whatever it is, has mystical powers and it’s Russian in origin, is that right? Is it some sort of secret Soviet-era assassination weapon? A high-tech weaponized babushka of death?”

Lacey rubbed her forehead, trying to avert the headache she was sure to have. “
The X-Files
went off the air—have you heard? Are they still in reruns in your head? Or are you listening to the
other
voices in your head?”

“Don’t change the subject, Smithsonian. You are Spook Central right now, you and your baldheaded ex-KGB buddy, Kepelov. Don’t tell me you don’t know. You know what’s going on, and DeadFed needs to know. The world needs to know.”

She exhaled loudly and tried to breathe in some fresh air. “I don’t have time for you, Damon. Or your insane ramblings. I’m on deadline.”

“We’re all on deadline, Lacey. All of us, all the time. We’re on a deadline to disaster.”

Lacey knew why reporters were hated in so many quarters of the Capital City. Because of reporters like Damon. Reporters who only reported what they already believed and who twisted every fact to fit their beliefs.

“Don’t you have any blue aliens or cannibal congressmen to report on?”

“That’s a good one.” He laughed. “And they’re supposed to be green, not blue. The aliens, not the congressmen. Sorry, fresh out of alien cannibal congressmen. I’d kill to write that story though.”

“And I’m fresh out of Soviet weaponized shawls. Bye.” Lacey hung up and raced for the door. Her cell phone rang. She checked the number: Damon again. She turned it off. She wanted to get to the bottom of this haunted shawl nonsense before Damon Newhouse turned it into this week’s “alien autopsy” story. Not only that, he often linked her articles in
The Eye
to his site, making it seem like she was his partner and collaborator, part and parcel of his whacked-out world.

The problem with Damon is not just that he’s crazy. Who cares if he’s crazy? It’s that so many crazy people believe him.

Lacey Smithsonian’s

FASHION BITES

The Magical Properties of Clothes

Do you believe in the magic of what you wear? That your clothes have a meaning, a story to tell, or even a life of their own? Or do you scoff at the very idea that your clothes can speak for you, or speak to you?

What about that dress that always seems to bring you luck? Is it an illusion, or is there really something magical about it? Do you bring it out again and again to revive that blissful mojo? Or what about the suit you wore when disaster struck? Is it really cursed or just a reminder of bad times? Whichever it is, do you avoid it like the plague?

Of course you do—we all do. Even if we don’t admit it. We all invest what we wear with memories, meaning, and personality.

Clothing preferences start in the nursery. Children often have clothes they cling to—the shoes they won’t take off, the dress they wear until it’s in tatters. Perhaps they refuse to wear any color but red or periwinkle. They grab hold of what they love, what makes them feel good, with joy and abandon. And stubbornness. But they know what they want. That’s one of the privileges of childhood. Your personal style hasn’t been drilled out of you yet by people telling you what you should want to wear.

Our clothes become personal symbols to us. You might have a dress you wore when trouble struck. You wore it again: more bad luck. Someone lost a love, or a loved one lost his or her life. You will never wear it again, and no one would blame you, because the very sight of it brings back sad memories.

Is there a summer frock somewhere in your closet that you can’t bear to part with? It’s long out of style, the sleeves too puffy, the skirt too full, and it’s too optimistically pink (or green, or yellow). But it’s the dress you wore when you first fell in love. And you’d like someone to someday rediscover the dress that drew Cupid’s arrow. That dress will never get thrown away.

Women are drawn to style, and men are drawn to a woman with style. It may be the way her silver hoop earrings catch the light with just a hint of the Gypsy. It reminds him of something he can’t quite recall. Ask him years later if he remembers those exact earrings and he won’t—but he’ll remember you.

He remembers the red dress you wore on your first date. Not the style or the cut or the length, but the color. The lure of the red dress, celebrated in so many songs, may be only a biological imperative, but guys are crazy about the lady in red. Is the magic in the red dress—or in you?

Another man might fixate on that long-lost girl in that perfect miniskirt he can’t quite forget. Or the aquamarine sweater that matched her eyes. Even if her eyes weren’t really quite aquamarine. He may dwell fondly on the black tights and plaid skirt that a certain girl wore in high school. He may even remember her cowboy boots and her silver spurs as they jingle-jangle-jingled.

Our clothes help us create our own aura, our own style, our own magic. Some days our clothes just do their jobs and we do ours, no magic involved. But think about this the next time you’re dressing for a big event, a first date, a special party, a wedding: Is the magic in the clothes we wear, or is the magic in us? And does that magic linger in what we wear, even after we’ve put the clothes aside?

Of course it does. That old black magic might just be a Little Black Dress.

Chapter 7

The purple AMC Gremlin was parked illegally in front of
The Eye
’s offices, next to the flower seller hawking fresh violet-hued irises.

There could only be one bright, shiny, freshly washed grape Gremlin like that in the entire Washington, D.C., area. Some people called Marie Largesse’s mid-1970s psychedelic survivor of a vehicle
ugly
, but Lacey thought it had an undeniable air of goofy cuteness. In many ways, a Gremlin seemed like the perfect car for an ex–New Orleans fortune-teller—her mechanical
familiar
, so to speak.

Lacey was heading to the Metro to travel to that very car’s owner when she spied the purple Gremlin parked in front of
The Eye
. A tourist aimed his camera at the ancient purple car juxtaposed with the violet flowers. The Gremlin was empty, and Marie was supposedly sleeping late today.
Who’s got the Gremlin?

Someone grasped her arm. Before she even turned around she knew who it was by the heavy feel of his hand.

“Hello, Kepelov,” Lacey said. “Nice day for irises.”

“All this time we are friends, Smithsonian, and you never call me Gregor?” His other hand held a large bouquet of the violet blooms, which with a slight bow he presented for Lacey’s approval. “Do you think my Marie will like them?”

“Yes, Kepelov. Gregor. Marie will love them.”

“And me?”

“She already loves you. Why, I have no idea.”

Gregor Kepelov laughed and Lacey squinted at him in the April sunshine. He seemed slightly different somehow.

“The mustache. It’s gone,” she said.

“You noticed! No one else notices.”

He’d shaved off his bushy blond mustache and he wasn’t wearing his usual Moscow-meets-Montana cowboy attire. Instead he was in crisp gray slacks and a blue shirt that brought out the cool blue of his eyes. Kepelov’s face always struck her as just a little bit off normal and his stare somehow too intense. He made her uncomfortable. Lacey could easily imagine him as the KGB spy and assassin he used to be. And might still be.

“What brings you to Eye Street?” she asked. “Surely not the blossoms.”

“These? A happy coincidence. I come on a little errand. To see you.”

“Funny, I was just on my way over to see Marie.”

“She said you would be coming.” Kepelov thumped his shaved head with an index finger. “Psychic, you know. But Metro is slow and I am fast. Allow me?”

Fast? In the Gremlin?
“Marie had a feeling?”

“You are surprised? She also had a little visit from police. To discuss the death of a certain Mr. Leonardo.”

“Aha. You want to drive me across the river in that thing? Will it float?” She had never actually been inside Marie’s gaudy little car. He shrugged.

“My car is in—garage. For upgrades,” he said vaguely. Kepelov wasn’t exactly the purple Gremlin type; he was more the invisible gray surveillance vehicle type. He opened the passenger door for her. “But Gremlin is classic American drag race car. Little car, big engine. Decent mileage too.”

“Pretty conspicuously purple, isn’t it? For a spy?”

“Me, a spy? What spy? Lacey Smithsonian, you have wonderful sense of humor.” He climbed into the driver’s seat while she buckled up. “True, I was with KGB, but long ago. KGB is no more, and Gregor Kepelov makes a new life in America. Because inside? I am a
cowboy
.” Kepelov thumped his chest.

“You’re a cowboy and I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

“Besides, who would suspect any driver of this fine purple vehicle of being a spy?” He gave her his unlikely lopsided grin and pulled the Gremlin into Eye Street traffic, heading for the Potomac River and Alexandria, Virginia.

What spy?
Everyone knew Washington, D.C., was Spy Central. According to the District’s Spy Museum, the city was awash in intelligence agents, either for other nations or for America. Kepelov might not be on any particular intelligence service’s payroll, but he was certainly a freelance operative, a “soldier of fortune.”

Lacey had first encountered him in the guise of a seeker of lost treasure, a sometime associate and sometime enemy of Nigel Griffin, Stella’s betrothed. Kepelov had made connections in the local security industry, and he’d even taught a session of the private investigation course Lacey had taken a few months before.

Kepelov’s main interest, besides Marie, seemed to be hunting for purloined jewels and lost artifacts. He favored anything with a Romanov provenance that he could sell to collectors for big money. Lacey was never quite sure whose side he was on, except his own. And, she hoped, Marie’s.

“How fortunate I caught you heading for subway,” he said as he threaded the little Gremlin between two big black Lincoln Town Cars, practically the Official Vehicle of Washington, D.C.

“Why exactly did you come to get me? I was already heading that way.”

“For a few minutes of pleasure of your company, Smithsonian. My Marie needs your assistance. She values your opinion, you know. You have experience dealing with police here, and she is perhaps a little too—honest.”

“She told the police about the shawl, didn’t she?” Lacey had been afraid of that. “She told them a haunted shawl killed Leonardo because he mocked it?”

“That is how she sees it, so that is how she tells it.” He shook his head. “My business? I tell nothing to nobody. My darling Marie, her business is tell
everything
to
everybody
.”

“I’m guessing—and hoping—the police figured she’s crazy.”

“That would be lucky break.”

“Unless they think she’s crazy like a fox, and knows more than she’s telling.”

“Everyone always knows more than they tell. You know that. I know that. But a shawl killing a person? Would look stupid on police report. The cops might suspect Marie is using the shawl for distraction.” Kepelov pulled into traffic in front of a speeding bus and Lacey gasped.

“Be careful! These D.C. bus drivers are insane,” she said. “They kill someone every month.”

“I learn to drive in Moscow with lunatic KGB instructors. Kill people every
day
.”

Lacey held on to the seat belt as her stomach lurched. “Okay. You want to protect Marie. But why does she believe this wild tale about the shawl, Gregor? Did you fill her head with the idea that the thing is haunted, or cursed or possessed or whatever it is?”

“Not me. To me it is an old family heirloom, very pretty, very historic, but just a shawl. It was Olga.”

“Olga? Who’s Olga?”

“My sister.”

Kepelov shot across two lanes of traffic to make a right turn onto Fifteenth Street. Lacey gasped again. He paid no attention
. Probably KGB driving instructors never gasp.

“Are you following someone? Or fleeing someone? Are we being pursued?”

“No. Not yet. Is how I always drive. Why do you ask?” He roared down the street, as loud as a Gremlin can roar and far faster than she thought it was capable of speeding.

“Because you’re driving like a maniac.”

“Thank you. Back home in Russia is great compliment. Only maniacs get anywhere in Moscow traffic. Force of habit.”

Lacey tried to swallow her fear of meeting imminent death on the streets of D.C. “You have a sister? Olga?”

“It happens. Even in best of families. You have a sister too, no?” He checked the rearview mirror as if they were being followed.

Leave my sister out of this.
“So your sister, Olga, told Marie the shawl was haunted?”

“I’m afraid so. Olga is, like you say in America, piece of work.”

Says the Russian piece of work!
“I can hardly wait to meet her,” Lacey said. A car honked and a driver flipped the bird at them, whereupon Kepelov hit the accelerator and wove through traffic. “If I live that long.”

He surprised her by laughing. “You amuse me, Lacey Smithsonian.”

“My pleasure. You don’t think the shawl is haunted, do you, Gregor?”

“Before today, I would say no. But today? With the death of this Leonardo?” He shrugged.

“Tell me about the shawl.” Lacey had heard a little about it from Marie, but not from Kepelov. Things often were lost in translation.

“You probably know all this. It is old family heirloom, of my very old family. One of a kind. It tells the story of the Kepelovs in tiny pictures, tales told by thread and needle. Deaths, disasters, triumphs, all our little ups and downs. Quite the conversation piece. Always draws a crowd.”

“Why do people think it is haunted?”

“You must understand one thing, Lacey Smithsonian.
Everything
in Russia is haunted!” He turned his head and the Gremlin jerked. “Russian winters are very long. People need something to do. They write stories. They tell stories. Long stories. Ghost stories.
Long
ghost stories. They embroider a shawl like they embroider a story. In my family, the two go together. The old grandmothers, the
babushkas
, they sit together long winter nights, they sew, they embroider, they tell stories. The shawl has been in many hands through many generations. A bride dies, a husband runs away, a child falls down a well, the story is embroidered into the shawl. Suddenly the shawl itself is haunted! So typical. So Russian.”

Even in fear of death in a speeding purple Gremlin crossing the Potomac River, Lacey pushed for a little more background.
How reporters really die
, she thought.
Asking one too many questions.

“But there must be a specific story, a kernel of truth that started the legend?”

“Irina Katya Kepelova. It started with her. She was the great-great-great-great-whichever-great-grandmother it was who first took it into her head she wanted a shawl like no other. The family was very poor back then, so a new shawl was all she had to give to her daughter for her wedding trousseau. She embroiders it in secret. She explains to the daughter on her wedding day how she sews it with little flowers, usual sort of thing. But also how she puts in a tiny house to represent her house, where her daughter was born. The river through their village. The church where the daughter is wed. She adds a wedding veil for a good marriage, a crown for prosperity, a firebird for good luck, rings and crosses and icons. So small you almost cannot see them. Very Russian stuff. She leaves lots of room for the daughter and her daughter’s daughter’s daughters to add their own history to the shawl.”

“Pretty nice wedding gift.”

“Perhaps a little too nice. Irina Katya Kepelova had a greedy niece, so greedy she would steal a hot stove. Old Russian saying. The niece gets her hands on it and
bingo bango
, she dies of fever, wrapped in the shawl. The shawl returns to Irina Katya’s daughter. With death in it. Maybe a curse. After that, most people are not so eager to steal the shawl. But some want it more, because now it has some kind of power, some kind of magic. Goes on and on like that. Generations of crazy stuff.”

“What do you believe?”

“Me? I believe you should live in a warm place where winters are not so long.” He laughed. “But after so many years, so many people saying this thing is cursed, is haunted, is full of ghosts—” He let the thought drop.

Kepelov circled off the Fourteenth Street Bridge on the Virginia side of the river and careened south down the George Washington Parkway toward Alexandria.

“Is there another reason you want me to speak with Marie?”

“Marie and Stella believe you have the, what do they call it, the EFP.”

He has to be laughing at me
, she thought. “Ha. Talk about people making up crazy stories.”

“ExtraFashionary Perception, they call it,” Kepelov said. “Clothes talk to you, Smithsonian. Or you know how to look and listen. Whichever. They believe it and so I believe it too. All I ask is look and listen. If you find the shawl has no mystical powers and you convince Marie of that, all is good.” He paused for a breath. “And if it is truly possessed, well— That is maybe even more interesting.”

“Because it might be worth something?” Lacey didn’t trust him.

His smile was always a little startling. “It’s always about the price, yes? But have no fear. I would never take the shawl away from Marie. It is a present, an heirloom. From a man to his betrothed.”

“I suppose the legend would make it more valuable?”

“To a Russian? Of course. But the old Soviets, my old buddies, ex-KGB, for example? They would be more interested in what it could do. If it can do anything.”

“And pay a high price.”

“Why pay, when you can terrorize and steal? Intimidation and theft work so well.”

It was no secret that the KGB and the Soviet military had delved deeply into fringe science and paranormal research in the post–World War II era. Millions of rubles were spent on psychics and weapons of the mind in an effort to outmaneuver the Americans in the arms race, the missile race, the space race, in
any
race.

“Is that why you were attracted to Marie? Because she’s a psychic?” If that’s the case, he might have looked for one who didn’t faint in the presence of danger.

“Always the skeptic, Smithsonian. I respect that. But I love my big beautiful Marie. She is my bounty and my treasure. Okay, maybe someday her psychic powers lead us to other treasures, together. A little bonus. But I would love her just as much without all the astral
this
and the paranormal
that
. She has a great big heart. You know that. Who would not love Marie?”

A catering van cut right in front of them, and Kepelov pounded the Gremlin’s horn like the pounding in Lacey’s heart. It made no difference to the truck driver. The Russian was not about to be shamed by a big slow American van, so he floored the Gremlin and swerved in front of a Prius on the right. He passed the van and cut in front of him, with his own triumphant third-finger wave.

“Asshole,” Kepelov yelled out the window.

“You having fun?” Lacey yelled at Kepelov.

“If not fun, why do it? I came to America to have fun!”

“Good. As long as
one
of us is having fun.” Lacey held her breath and shut her eyes.

“In the old Soviet days in Russia, someone like Marie would be at the mercy of KGB. Like a bug under a microscope. You have no idea what kinds of things KGB would do to people to find out secrets of the mind.”