Raiders of the Lost Corset

by Ellen Byerrum

  “What did I tell you? The woman is a total genius with underwear,” Stella had said. “She’s French, did I tell you? And her fancy underwear is like outerwear for the inner goddess, you know? You could use that in a column, huh? Give me credit if you use it, okay, Lace?”

  Lacey shuddered at the idea of slipping racy French lingerie into her style columns for the staid, buttoned-down Washingtonian woman, but Stella persevered in her lobbying on behalf of Magda’s talents. Lacey agreed that beautiful underwear deserved respect, as Magda said, and that the secrets under your clothes might be worth examining. Under duress, Lacey even conceded that corsets had a certain charm and a sexy retro panache. Indeed, many designers were incorporating them in their collections, notably in formal wear. But she had told Stella firmly that she should not, could not, would not write about kinky corset fetishes and call-girl couture in a family newspaper. Her editor, Mac, would have a heart attack.

  “I will not write about kinky boys and girls in kinky underwear, do you understand, Stella?”

  “Whatever,” Stella had replied with a dismissive lift of her shoulders. “Don’t knock it till you try it, babe.”

  Lacey’s stylist had dragged her to the small shop where Magda worked, stitching custom underwear, corsets, and costumes, and where she bickered with Analiza Zarina, and Lacey and Magda had hit it off.

  “‘A friend,’ huh? You were working on a fashion story?” Broadway Lamont broke into her thoughts. “What’s the angle? This old broad’s no dish. Not like that fashion model that got herself gunned down in front of you in Dupont Circle a few weeks ago.”

  “Magda’s not a fashion plate, she’s an old-fashioned corsetiere. She makes corsets, fancy undergarments of all kinds, by hand, the way they used to make them. The corset renaissance is the fashion story. Or rather, was the story.”

  “You’re writing about ladies’ fancy undies? I thought The Eye Street Observer was a family newspaper. Corsets are more like City Paper turf, aren’t they?”

  “The Eye believes in the right to wear the underwear of your choice, Detective. Besides, you told me you don’t read my newspaper.”

  “That’s right.” He nodded his large head. “It’s third in line behind the other papers I don’t read. The Washington Post being the number-one paper I don’t read. Don’t mean I don’t know all about it. So what’s the story?”

  “Magda and I discussed corsets and cleavage, uplift and control, things like that. And besides all that, Magda was an interesting character, a real dynamo. And a storyteller.”

  In fact, Magda was even more persistent than Stella. “How can you write the story of the corset without your own corset? How will you know the je ne sais quoi, the feel, the experience?” She badgered Lacey until she gave in and ordered a custom-made corset of her own. Magda promised she would craft a corset for Lacey for only a little over the materials’ cost. She promised she would not reveal Lacey’s measurements to anyone, then loudly announced in front of several clients that Lacey’s waist was nothing to be ashamed of. The ordeal had been excruciating, and Lacey knew that Broadway Lamont did not need every little piece of information her flirtation with fancy underwear might have uncovered. He’ll need a subpoena to get my waist size out of me. Little by little, when Stella wasn’t around, Magda had spun out her theory about the lost corset. She swore Lacey to secrecy. Lacey wondered at first whether this was just a ploy to whet her appetite for the story.

  “Wake up, Smithsonian,” Lamont demanded. “You been drinking that wine too?”

  A puzzled female voice broke in behind them from the back door of the shop. “What’s going on? Where is—” Then a strangled scream. “Magda!”

  Lamont turned toward the voice. Lacey spun around to see a slim, attractive woman being restrained by a police officer. Lacey recognized her as Natalija Krumina, one of Magda’s neighbors, whom she had met in passing once or twice. Aside from the fact that she was also Latvian and she pronounced her name “Natalie,” Lacey knew little about her.

  “Oh, no! My poor Magda! My God, what has happened? Was it her heart?” the woman asked Broadway Lamont. “She told me she had a weak heart. Is she—?”

  “And just who might you be, ma’am?” Lamont asked politely.

  Lamont was never that polite with her. But then Smithsonian bore the stain of being a newspaper reporter, a member of the Fourth Estate, a class merely tolerated if not downright despised by police and politicians alike in the Nation’s Capital.

  “Natalija Krumina. I live upstairs,” she said with a tremor in her voice. She spoke with a slightly musical accent. “I was going to invite Magda over for some fresh herb and olive bread I just baked. She loves it.” She approached Magda’s still body and her eyes filled up with tears.

  Natalija was probably Lacey’s age, her early thirties, with chestnut brown hair that fell below her shoulders in one dark, silky wave. Her features were even and pleasing. She had large almond eyes in a distinctive shade of golden brown, now wet and glistening.

  Oh, yeah. Lamont is no doubt a big sucker for tears, Lacey thought, running her fingers through her own hair, wondering what she looked like after the shock of finding Magda dying. Finding a dead body, no doubt, would be hard on the complexion, as well as the blood pressure.

  The big detective asked Natalija a few questions, whether she remembered seeing anyone visiting Magda earlier, whether she had heard anything. Natalija swore she knew nothing, heard nothing, and had seen nothing.

  “What about her favorite pin?” Lamont asked. “Seems to be missing.”

  Natalija went blank for a minute, gazing at the puddle of fake jewels on the carpet. The detective gestured to Lacey, who dutifully described it. Natalija grimaced. “That old thing? I don’t know. Maybe she lost it.” She looked over at Magda again and shook her head. “She’s really dead, isn’t she?”

  Detective Lamont looked grim and Natalija burst into fresh tears. “Miss Krumina, do you happen to remember a theatre expression Magda Rousseau used to say? A good luck thing?”

  “Why? Does it mean something?” She gazed up at him. “Ah, yes, you mean, ‘Bloody dress, get good press’? She said that whenever she pricked her finger. She was funny that way.”

  Lamont lifted an eyebrow at Lacey. She shrugged back. It was yet another variant of the same phrase. Magda seemed to have more than one version of every story. Lacey wondered how many different versions of the corset legend she might have told as well.

  “Maybe you should go back to your apartment, ma’am,” he said to Natalija. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

  She nodded, not moving, until Lamont pointed the way and a policeman ushered her out to the stairway to the third floor apartments.

  “Should I leave too?” Lacey asked hopefully, edging toward the front door.

  “Not so fast, Smithsonian. You and I are going to finish that chat. You can start with everything you know about Magda Rousseau, in that clear, concise journalistic manner that I know you’re capable of.”

  Lacey took a breath and brushed the hair out of her face. She gave him a brief rundown, leaving out a few tiny details that would just muddy the situation, she thought, like the corset.

  “Magda was French and Latvian and grew up in France. She came here years ago, never lost her thick French accent, particularly when she was excited. Even Analiza, her Latvian business partner, had trouble understanding her sometimes. Magda insisted that she always spoke perfect English with no accent at all.”

  “Do you know any reason anyone would want Magda Rousseau dead?”

  Possibly. But there was no way Lacey was going to tell Broadway Lamont, the Metropolitan P.D.’s King of Scorn, the story that Magda had told her in confidence. Magda Rousseau was engaged in a long on-again-off-again search for a legendary jewel-filled corset worn by one of the Russian imperial princesses during the execution of the entire Romanov family in a dark basement in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in July 1917. A bulletproof corset that saved the princess from the
initial volleys of gunfire. A blood-stained corset stripped from the princess’s body by one of the Latvian guards who had refused to shoot the children of the Czar. The official accounts said that the jewels found hidden in the ladies’ corsets and other clothing were all confiscated by the Bolsheviks and used to further the cause of the Revolution. But according to Magda, one corset had been stolen and spirited away amidst the chaos of that horrible, drunken, murderous night.

  The Latvian guard who had stolen the corset, Magda had told her, was Juris Akmentins, her maternal grandfather, who had later emigrated to France and hidden the corset there. Magda wanted to mount a search for the corset, but she couldn’t afford the plane ticket to France and the expenses of the adventure.

  Magda had read Lacey’s “Crimes of Fashion” columns and recent newspaper stories about her role in solving several crimes. She was also impressed by Stella Lake’s slightly exaggerated tales of Lacey’s encounters with murderers. Stella sang Lacey’s praises as a fashion maven and amateur sleuth with a “nose for nuance.” It was time, Magda had decided, to share the secret with someone crazy enough to believe her: Lacey Smithsonian, a fashion columnist who didn’t take fashion too seriously and who had been involved in some unusual investigations. Magda had appreciated Smithsonian’s curiosity, her unquenchable desire to know the end of the story. And the corsetiere used it to her advantage.

  Convinced she knew where the corset was now hidden in France, Magda had enticed Lacey, and in turn The Eye Street Observer, into sharing her fantasy of finding it. It was to be the story of a seamstress with a dream. Lacey wanted this story, she wanted the adventure of documenting the possibility of finding such a treasure. Adventure with a capital A. It didn’t matter to Lacey if the Romanov corset proved in the end to be real or a chimera: It was a great story either way, though actually finding the legendary artifact would be wonderful. Lacey was resourceful and good at self-defense. What’s more, Mac had promised her that the paper would fund the entire search in exchange for the exclusive rights to Magda’s story. She was going to Paris!

  Despite the fact that Broadway Lamont once told her he heard “crazy shit all the time,” Lacey was afraid the tale would sound too insane, like the mutterings of a lunatic. To Lacey’s knowledge, Magda was not a lunatic. But Lamont was waiting for an answer.

  “Who would want Magda dead? I don’t know, Broadway, it’s not the best neighborhood here,” Lacey told him. “Maybe someone thought she kept cash on the premises.”

  “It’s not the worst neighborhood either, and this dump wouldn’t be a prime robbery target. And we don’t see a lot of drive-by poisonings in the District, if you know what I mean. Poison is personal and premeditated. It’s a female method.”

  “Oh, really, Broadway. How gender-biased of you.”

  “Hell, yes. So is murder. A man uses a gun, a machete, his hands. Poison is like a woman: subtle, devious.” He gave her the raised eyebrow. “Female. Like that girly little dagger you didn’t notice sticking in the dead woman’s ribs. And women are always in the kitchen cooking something up. Something like poison.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind…when you drop by for a gingerbread cookie.”

  Lamont snorted and almost smiled. Lacey hoped he had exhausted his interrogation and intimidation routine. He gave Lacey a warning and his card. “In case you lost my card from our last encounter.”

  “I could never forget meeting you, Lamont.” In fact, he had scared her during the interview. He still scared her a little.

  “You do anything about a new car yet?” he inquired.

  That was a sore point. Her beloved silver and burgundy Nissan 280ZX had been stolen the month before and, in the police phrase, “employed in the commission of a crime.” What was left of it was now evidence in a murder case. It made her feel sad and vulnerable to lose it to a killer. She had offers of cars from friends, Brooke and Miguel to name just two, but she’d been too busy with this story to make a decision. In a way she felt getting a new car would be a betrayal of her poor lost Z.

  “No, I haven’t had a chance. Been taking the Metro.”

  “You think about the police auction, like I told you?”

  “Good advice, Broadway.” Lacey would never love another car the way she had loved the Z. Maybe it was better that way, she thought. It would be easier to say good-bye to some clunker the next time some miscreant needed a getaway car. “After all, who wouldn’t want some drug lord’s land yacht with a body in the trunk?”

  “You take care, Smithsonian. You wouldn’t want to run out of luck. How did that lucky saying of hers go? ‘Bloody thread, don’t get dead’?”

  “Very amusing. I don’t feel so lucky today.”

  “You’re lucky as hell. You hang out with victims, you stumble over crime scenes, yet you’re still here. In my book, that’s lucky.” He finally smiled a big ivory smile that lit up his face. “You think of any of those crazy fashion clues you like to come up with, you give me a call. Got it?” He favored her with one more suspicious look. “I doubt you will, but you could get lucky again.”

  “Don’t worry, Broadway.”

  You can read all about in The Eye. In “Crimes of Fashion.”

  Chapter 4

  “I’ve got some bad news, Mac.” Lacey stood at the office door of her editor, Douglas MacArthur Jones. She remained standing so she could run away if necessary.

  “Bad news, Smithsonian?” He looked up from a pile of newspapers. Reading glasses were perched on his nose above the bushy mustache that made him look like a stern black G. Gordon Liddy. “I thought you were gone for the day.” Her editor scowled and reached for his bottle of Maalox. He waved it at her. “Do I swig now or later? The suspense is killing me.”

  “Magda Rousseau is dead. I just came from her apartment.”

  “Dead? Dead as in heart-attack dead?” He looked straight at her over his spectacles. “As in natural-causes dead? Please tell me she’s dead because she was an old lady and her number came up and her heart gave out.” His expression dared her to contradict him. He gestured for her to enter the office and sit down. “She was old, right?”

  “Yeah, she was really old, Mac. Really, really old. About your age,” she lied. Lacey slipped into the room, closing the door. She realized it was now or never to save this story—and her trip to Paris. She removed a stack of newspapers from one of the chairs. She piled them on Mac’s desk, dusted the seat with her hand, and slid onto it. “Magda told me she was poisoned. Then she warned me not to drink the wine, which she had been drinking. I suppose she could have been kidding. Or wrong. She might have been stabbed, too. But just a little.”

  “She told you she was poisoned? She was alive?”

  “Barely. And then she—” Lacey choked up, but she controlled it. “She died. And I didn’t poison her, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Mac glared at her. Lacey glared back at him.

  “No, of course you didn’t poison her! That would be too easy.” He slapped his desk with an open hand. Dust rose from the stacks of Eye Street Observers resting there. “Damnation, Smithsonian. I suppose this little tableau also included police, paramedics, yellow crime scene tape, all your usual fashion accessories. What is it about you?” he muttered. “It’s been nothing but death, death, death, ever since you took over the fashion beat.”

  “Technically, that’s not true,” Lacey said, keenly attuned to the facts of her job situation. “It started well before me, with Mariah ‘the Pariah’ Morgan, our late and unlamented fashion editor. You remember, don’t you, Mac, when she died in her chair and you stuck me with this beat? And how long did it take you to notice she was dead?”

  “It wasn’t that long. I thought she was taking a catnap.”

  “Eight hours! She was in full rigor mortis! They had to roll her out in her chair.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time. She loved that chair.” Mac sighed and looked weary. “When are you going to let that go?”

  “And then you tried to stick m
e with her damn chair! The chair of doom!” Lacey was surprised that detail could still rile her.

  “That is a perfectly good chair. And Mariah died of natural causes.”

  “So you say. She probably died just to escape this beat—it seems to be the only way out of it.” Mariah’s chair was still floating around the newsroom, like Lincoln’s ghost train. It was a favorite joke among the reporters to hand it off to interns, casually mentioning the connection to the dead former fashion editor only when the fledgling was firmly glued to his or her seat in Mariah’s Death Chair under crushing deadline pressure.

  Mac grunted. Lacey took a deep cleansing breath. It didn’t work. “We both know fashion is a dangerous job, Mac. But I don’t want to argue.”

  “There’s a relief.” He leaned back in his own chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “So what were you just doing if not arguing?”

  She ignored this. “I want you to know I’ll be on that plane to Paris this week.” Please Mac, whatever you do, don’t take Paris away from me. “It’s still my story.”

  He shook his head. “No way. There is no story. Your source is dead. Maybe there’s a murder story now, but that’s Trujillo’s beat, not yours.”

  “Look, if she was killed because of the corset—”

  “Are you telling me she was murdered because of this mythical nonexistent bullet-riddled corset?” He and his chair snapped forward to full attention.

  “Not exactly. I don’t know why yet. But there’s still a story in France and the tickets are already bought and paid for.” She leaned toward him, placing her hands flat on his desk. “They’re nonrefundable. Like my dreams, Mac.”