Raiders of the Lost Corset

by Ellen Byerrum

  “Shut up, Nigel.” Vic glared at him.

  “We were mates once,” Griffin protested. “Well, sort of mates, anyway.” Donovan held up his hand and Griffin shut up.

  “You said you loved me?” Lacey said wonderingly.

  “That’s right. I love you.” He said it with a trace of resignation in his voice, as if he’d been fighting it, but now he was resolved and not too unhappy about it. He smiled that slow, lazy smile that made his green eyes crinkle. She stood, momentarily mute. “And I came all the way to Paris to tell you that. I just have one problem. I need a place to stay. Got any ideas?” She couldn’t find any words for a moment. “That’s okay, maybe a park bench. They’re nice in Paris, three stars. There’s one.”

  He started to walk toward it. Lacey stopped him with a blush and took his hand. She shook her head, and Vic smiled. His smile could melt an ice cap, she thought, even the one that had chilled her heart. She almost forgot to breathe and she was trying hard to erase the irritating presence of Nigel Griffin. Here they were, she and Vic and her shadow, in the most romantic city on earth, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. It was a scene she had never imagined, and yet now she imagined it could be even more perfect. A moment they would remember forever. A moment without Nigel Griffin.

  “Vic, would you mind telling me that thing about love again at the top of the Eiffel Tower? Just the two of us?”

  “Oh, good God, Donovan,” Griffin moaned, “are you going to let her lead you around by your nose like that? The great Vic Donovan? Cock of the walk, captain of the guard, and all that rot. Get to the good stuff, will you? This sentimental prologue is making me sick. If you’re talking sex, then let’s talk sex.”

  “He babbles like this,” Vic said. “Always has. Shall I run him off? Or punch him again? That shuts him up for awhile.” He looked like a cat seeking permission to pounce on the rat.

  She glanced at Griffin, then back to Vic. She raised an eyebrow. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Hell, yeah, darlin’,” he said. “It would be my pleasure.”

  Griffin retreated a few steps out of punching distance, as if he’d had years of practice at it. He dusted off his trench coat. “No more punching, mate, I can take a hint. See, I’m shutting up.” The cigarette pack came out again and he shook it and took one.

  “Good, I was beginning to think you were just in this for the beatings,” Vic said.

  “He’s always had a twisted sense of humor,” Griffin confided, leaning in toward Lacey. “Someday I’ll tell you all about this rogue. But for now, Smithsonian, I’m leaving the option open for our partnership. And what I wanted to tell you was—”

  “Don’t hold your breath, I’d have an idiot for a partner,” she said. Vic laughed.

  “Sticks and stones,” Griffin said.

  “What about your buddy Gregor Kepelov?” Lacey asked.

  “Oh, we were never serious about each other. Just exploring our options.” He fished a lighter out of another pocket, but it was empty. “Damn, out of fluid. It’s over between me and Kepelov, and that’s why—”

  “You must have other people to bother,” Lacey said.

  “No, not really. You’re my favorite this week.”

  She leaned against Vic. “Can you make him stop? Without hitting him again?” Vic shook his head sadly.

  “Go away, Nigel,” he said. “I’ll find you and beat you up properly later. Promise.”

  Griffin perked up at having permission to flee. “Later, you say? Well, my little news can wait. Wrong time, wrong place, it seems. And you two probably deserve each other anyway. This isn’t the last of me, you know.” He took a step back. “Donovan, old man, we’ll have to catch up, old times and all that. Call on me anytime, I’m never in.” They ignored him. “Right. Later, then.”

  Vic took a step toward him with his fist raised, and Griffin sprinted away. “I’ll be in touch, Smithsonian,” he shouted from a safe distance. “I’ll tell her everything, Donovan!”

  Vic laughed as Griffin retreated in the distance. “Thank God he left. I thought I’d have to keep punching him.” He put his arms around Lacey, kissed her gently, and then harder. “This Paris trip is not just another fashion story, is it? Are you in some kind of trouble again?”

  She looked at him, trying to think what on earth to say. “And it was such a nice day, Vic.”

  “It’s one of those up-to-your-neck-in-alligators stories, isn’t it? And he’s one of the gators, right?”

  “It’s complicated,” she said, remembering this was the point where Vic usually got upset.

  “But not boring, I bet.” Resignation crossed his face, but a smile came with it. “While you’re at it, tell me which sewer Nigel Griffin crawled out of. And how in the name of sweet justice is he connected to you?”

  “First tell me how he’s connected to you. What prep school did you two go to? St. Albans? The one by the National Cathedral?” She was wondering what the tuition must have been. Donovan’s family had to be stinking rich. “I’m sure Griffin would be happy to tell me all about your golden schooldays together.”

  He put up his hands in surrender and laughed. “I give up. We’ll save the double cross-examination for later. Just tell me one thing,” Vic asked. “You’re not in mortal danger, are you?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Lacey said, linking her arm with his. “At least not anymore.”

  Donovan peered up at the Eiffel Tower. “I suppose you were on your way to see this monumental tourist trap? And you want to trap me on it too? It’s not such a great view, you know. All you can see is Paris.”

  “Paris’ll do. And you. I was about to buy a ticket when my shadow arrived. And then you.” They approached the ticket window. “How did you know I was here? You did come looking for me, right? How’d you round me up out here on the open range, cowboy?” She wondered if it would be too romantic to imagine they had some kind of instinctual bond, that he could find her anywhere just by tuning into her wavelength, like a homing beacon. Nah.

  “I believe his name was Henri, at your hotel. Helpful, for a French concierge. Said you asked which Métro stop and how long to get here.” He thumped his head. “Being the brilliant sort of guy I am, I put deux and deux together and got duh. By the way, I left my bags with him at the hotel, but I can still sleep on that park bench.”

  Lacey flashed her eyes at him to shut up about sleeping on park benches. She realized the chatty concierge Henri had probably put Griffin on her trail as well. She bought two tickets for the Eiffel Tower and handed Vic one. “You’ve been here before?”

  “A short visit, a long time ago. And I occasionally have to go to London. I like England, except for having to duck Nigel.”

  “I’ve always longed to see Paris. Did I ever tell you?”

  “Only a thousand times or so. So tell me, Lacey, Lacey, Lacey.” He held her hands and repeated the question she had been dodging. “What the hell kind of mess are you—we—in now?”

  “Who says I’m in a mess?” They joined a line behind a group of Japanese tourists wearing beige topcoats and carrying video cameras. “And did you say ‘we’ or ‘oui’?”

  “I said ‘we.’ And you didn’t have to. There’s our mutual friend Nigel Griffin, for one thing. He’s prima facie evidence of a mess of some kind. I know his history, which we will discuss later. For another thing, there’s Damon Newhouse, a lovesick puppy convinced that you and your barrister Brooke Barton, the love of his life, are in mortal danger. Of course, he also thinks the alien invasion of Earth is just weeks away.”

  “Damon?! What does that cyberpunk would-be journalist have to do with anything?” She paused. “What will Brooke tell him when we get back? She told Damon she was just coming along to comfort me over our, you know, our breakup. Vic, are you sure we didn’t break up?”

  “Positive. And whatever Brooke’s telling Damon, she’s telling him right now. If they get around to talking.”

  “No! He’s here?!” Lacey grabbed his arm as they ente
red the elevator to the upper levels of the tower. “Vic, do not tell me Damon Newhouse is here in Paris!”

  “You got it, honey. I won’t tell you.” They moved to the back to let more tourists on.

  “Tell me! Tell me!”

  “I dropped Damon off at your hotel along with my bags. And his bags.”

  “No! You guys didn’t travel together?!” A trans-Atlantic flight with Damon Newhouse and his crackpot conspiracy theories would drive anyone crazy. Poor Vic.

  “What can I tell you? He was half convinced we’d find the two of you floating dead in the Seine. For so many different reasons.”

  “Yeah, I bet he was the Scheherazade of Air France, with a thousand and one wild tales.”

  Vic put his arm around her, smiling. “He’s in love. It can be pretty hard on a guy.”

  “Tell me about it. Is it hard on you?”

  “You have no idea.” He held her tight and kissed her forehead.

  “I’d love to explore that line of questioning, Vic, honey, but first tell me, what has Brooke been telling Damon?” Brooke was still under attorney-client privilege, but Lacey was afraid something might have slipped out. She had visions of lurid headlines burning up the Web, courtesy of Dead Fed dot com: RADIOACTIVE SPIDERS ATTACK SMITHSONIAN! SUBTERRANEAN CHAMBER OF DOOM! MASS GRAVE OF SMALL FRENCH DOGS!

  The elevator door opened and the tourists flooded out onto the platform to enjoy the spectacular bird’s-eye view of Paris. Lacey grabbed Vic’s hand and drew him toward her as she elbowed for a position overlooking the Seine.

  “Brooke has been telling him you swore her to secrecy,” he said, “which of course set off all the worst kinds of alarms for Damon.”

  “Subtlety was never her strong suit.” Lacey closed her eyes and leaned against the railing.

  “Apparently Newhouse found your gag order very suspicious. And there has been none of the usual banter about conspiracies filling her e-mails to him, no evil empires, gunrunning rogue federal agents, no chat of intergalactic chicanery, just innocent chatter about cafés and cheese and the weather. Also very suspicious. Then he pointed out—”

  “What?” Lacey opened her eyes. Her worries that people might overhear them seemed to be unfounded. All around them, tourists were chattering, taking photographs, and stealing kisses.

  “That the two of you together are double trouble and no doubt in need of help. Damon admires your spirit, he says, but you are, quote, ‘a lightning rod for catastrophe.’”

  “I am no such thing.”

  “He pointed out,” Vic continued with a smile, “that you have certain natural self-defense instincts, you’re dangerous with knives and other sharp implements, and you could probably go bear hunting with a buggy whip. But he thinks Brooke is a delicate little creature.”

  “‘Bear hunting with a buggy whip’! If I get my hands on him, he’s a dead bear,” she growled, much to Vic’s amusement. “And Brooke’s no delicate flower. She’s bigger than I am.”

  “But perhaps without quite as much heart. You don’t even need a buggy whip, and besides, darling, your hands are going to be full. Now that I’m here.”

  She felt herself blush, all thoughts of Damon and Brooke and the hunt for the lost corset momentarily vanquished. She looked out over the Seine at the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur shining in the distance, and she made a mental note to see it up close. With Vic. Maybe it was a good thing that Damon was here to keep Brooke busy and safe. That would give her time alone with Vic. She took a moment to savor the spectacle of Paris spread before her at her feet in the November afternoon sun. She closed her eyes and breathed it in deeply. Vic Donovan’s arms were around her and she was inhaling the warm scent of him, intensely male with a hint of cloves and spice. The afternoon was beautiful, Paris was lovely, the air seemed light and full of promise. It felt like Heaven.

  “Vic, would you please say that thing you said before? Now that we’re at the top of the Eiffel Tower? This would be a good time for it. I promise.”

  Vic smiled and held her a little tighter in his arms and whispered in her ear.

  Oh, yeah, this is Heaven.

  Chapter 22

  “So tell me about this story you’re on,” Vic said later, holding her tight as they admired the view of Paris. “Does it has some wacky fashion angle? And where does the danger angle come in?”

  “You never want to know about the wacky fashion angle.” Lacey didn’t want to lose that heavenly feeling under his interrogation. “All that girly stuff. Do you really want to know?”

  “Of course I want to know. I love girl stuff. Besides, your fashion stories have a habit of winding up with you trying to bean some killer with a frying pan.”

  “I have never used a frying pan!” She recalled using whatever was at hand in self-defense: a sword cane, scissors, hair spray, the power of the press. But a frying pan was not in her repertoire. So far. “And it hasn’t been that often.”

  “The frying pan was a metaphor.” He kissed her hair. “All I’m saying, Lacey, is maybe we shouldn’t keep our secret lives as crime-fighters quite so secret. Not from each other.” He took her hand. “Why don’t you try trusting me?”

  “Does that mean you’re going to tell me all about your own private investigations?”

  “They aren’t nearly as interesting as your fashion stories. Some of them are still classified. And we were talking about you and how trouble seems to follow you. I should buy you a baseball bat to ward off the bad guys.”

  “A baseball bat?”

  “Your mother seems to like golf clubs as a weapon, but knowing how independent you are, I doubt you’d want to compete in the same sport.”

  “She’s even more lethal in the kitchen.” Rose Smithsonian had a disturbing tendency at holidays to pour marshmallows on too many dishes: the Jell-O salad, the sweet potatoes, the Rice Krispies Treats, the meatloaf. “You’d love her killer cranberry marshmallow Jell-O Mold Surprise.”

  “I’m already crazy about you, why wouldn’t I love your mother’s—What’s that again?”

  “You are crazy, cowboy. So what’s on your mind?” Lacey pulled Vic by the hand to circumnavigate the top platform of the Eiffel Tower. She wanted to see the city from every angle.

  “The same thing that’s been on my mind since I first laid eyes on that cub reporter from the Sagebrush Daily Press who stomped into my office at the Sagebrush P.D., demanding to see the police log and all my case files. All big eyes, long hair, killer body, and righteous indignation.” Tingles crawled up and down her spine. Funny how he still had that power all these years later, she thought. “But seeing as how we’re in a public place and I can’t act on those impulses, you’d probably better tell me about your current dance with danger.”

  “What did Damon tell you?” She braced herself for the worst.

  “Way too much. I had to stop listening. He’d half-convinced me you’d been kidnapped by some foreign government that brainwashes journalists into spies. Maybe they were aliens, I forget.”

  “Aliens brainwash fashion reporters?”

  “Not just any fashion reporter. There was talk of U.S. ‘government repossessors.’ Damon says most of these brainwashed reporters have been eliminated. I think he mentioned Area 51.”

  Lacey laughed. “I’m sticking with Damon’s story. Beats my story, which is a wild-goose chase to a dead end.”

  “Come on, Lacey. I need to know what I’m up against.” Lacey noticed a man a few feet away eyeing her in a flirtatious French way, not a ‘government repossessor’ way. He gave her a little wave, but Vic frowned and the man retreated. “And you’re too damned cute. That’s another reason I had to come to Paris. You are too tempting. These guys here are French, you know.”

  “That’s so sweet,” Lacey said, and he rolled his eyes. “This interrogation may call for wine, Vic. A glass of wine and I’ll tell you everything I know. And then some.”

  “Deal. I’ll ply you with wine. There’s a café here in the Tower somewhere. Let’s go se
e.”

  But the little open-air café on the upper level was packed full of tourists, and the formal restaurant on the second level, the Jules Verne, had a wait of days, if not weeks, for a table.

  “The Champs Elysées, Vic? Please.” She’d only glimpsed it in passing, picking up and dropping off the rental Citroën, and she was dying to see the entire avenue. She wondered if she might be able to string the story out long enough to tour the whole city. A bit over wine here, a bit more over dinner there? A bon mot or two at the Cluny Museum, where she could see the famous unicorn tapestries? Above all, she wanted both to see Paris and keep Vic from going off the deep end over her corset caper. In bite-size morsels the lost corset tale might seem a little less crazy. And she could keep him totally focused on her, just as he was right now. “Besides,” she said, “I need to get a feel for French street fashion. I’ve been too busy to pay attention to what the stylish natives are wearing.”

  “Good idea,” he said, as he hailed a cab for the trip across the Seine to the eighth arrondissement. “Fill me in on the fashion clues when a woman is murdered and, I quote, ‘covered in a blanket of twinkling jewels.’ Quite a picture.”

  “Aha. You read my story in The Eye.”

  “I’m a dedicated follower of fashion.” He took her hand to help her from the cab and led the way to the Champs Elysées.

  Lacey’s plan to parcel the story out a little at a time evaporated under the influence of a second glass of Bordeaux and Vic’s penetrating green eyes at a small corner café on the famous avenue. With Vic at her side, Lacey could finally relax enough to observe the street scene. Their corner was a prime spot for Parisian people-watching, which seemed to be the main spectator sport in the city. Men and women paraded past them with a haughty air of self-satisfaction seldom seen in the harried and beaten denizens of Washington, D.C. The variety of street fashion was stunning, from breathtaking elegance to pure grunge. Lacey was charmed by the sidewalk stands offering not the hot dogs and pretzels of Washington, but delicious fresh crepes with a variety of fillings. Vic, however, remained focused on her, as she had hoped.