Raiders of the Lost Corset

by Ellen Byerrum

  “Maybe the French are even tougher fashion critics than I thought. But I also smelled the perfume, just now, the same perfume I smelled in my room.”

  “Lacey, this is the world capital of perfume.”

  “I’m just saying there’s a woman, a girlfriend of his, and maybe she—”

  “You don’t even know who this alleged girlfriend is, her name, what she looks like. If there is a girlfriend. Frankly, Lacey, this Kepelov sounds more like a lowlife thug than KGB. Thugs shoot other thugs. Fact of life.”

  At the corner Lacey stopped to wrap her shawl tighter. “He was stalking us.”

  “Or someone else. He was drinking. Maybe he picked the restaurant at random. He takes one look at you and bolts.”

  “That’s flattering.”

  “Only because you sow terror in the hearts of men.”

  “That better be a compliment, honey.”

  He held her tight and kept them walking away from the scene, past the taxicabs parked at the corner. “For all we know, your thug was depressed. He failed to score this Romanov treasure, be it egg or corset, hit the vodka too hard, and decided good-bye cruel world.”

  “That’s so dumb, it could be true.” They strolled along the street. Even though it was nearly midnight, the streets were full of people strolling, and some restaurants were still serving dinner. Lacey agreed it would be awkward to go to the police. “I still feel weird leaving the scene.”

  “Yeah, it’d be great to have your friend Broadway Lamont here to interrogate you.”

  “Very funny.”

  “By the way, sweetheart, about Thanksgiving.” Vic stopped. “Do you have any plans?”

  “Thanksgiving? How can you bring up Thanksgiving at a time like this? I’m speechless.”

  “That’ll be the day. So do you have plans?” He drew her close to him and said softly, “We’ll talk about Red Boots later, when we’re sure we’re alone.”

  “Vic, are we being followed?” she whispered. He shrugged and eyed the pedestrians walking past them.

  “I don’t think so. Just checking. About Thanksgiving.”

  “I turned my mother down. So no, I have no plans.” He didn’t need to know that Rose Smithsonian had invited him too. Throwing parents into the mix right now was too unpredictable. She drew her shawl tighter and snuggled next to him.

  “You’re invited to my folks’ house, then. Lots of food, lots of room, lots of people.”

  “Your parents?” She had a sudden pang of panic. She hadn’t met his parents. She’d been wondering whether she ever would. And now she knew they were “comfortable.” Vic’s rich parents. What on earth will they think of me? “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll love you. I have orders to bring a guest. I want it to be you.”

  “But you said your parents loved your ex-wife, Montana.” Vic had sworn she was out of the picture, but Lacey suspected Montana might still have other ideas.

  “Maybe not loved, exactly. They, um, felt sorry for her.”

  “I don’t know, Vic, suddenly meeting your parents is just plain scary. And throwing in the holiday is loading the dice. If they don’t like me I’ll have ruined their Thanksgiving, not just some random evening. They’ll hate me.”

  “They’ll like you! They don’t bite. And you couldn’t ruin one of my mom’s dinner parties with an atom bomb.”

  “Famous last words.” She realized she was tired, they both were. This was not the evening to start a silly fight over being included in his family’s holiday plans, of all things. “Ask me again tomorrow, Vic. Please?” The little hotel beckoned, safe and warm and ghost-free, and Lacey and Vic picked up the pace for the next few blocks until they were back at the Hotel Mouton Vert.

  Upstairs in their room, she sat down on the bed and kicked off her heels. Vic sat on the floor beside her and lay his head on her lap. Lacey hugged him close.

  “I just hate not knowing what happened,” she lamented. “Is he alive? Is he dead? Who shot him? Why? I should tell Brooke.” She reached for her phone, but Vic put his hand on hers.

  “You’ll just get her all wound up, both of them. They’ll be up all night surfing the Web for news. In French,” Vic said. “Save it for tomorrow.”

  Lacey let him unzip her dress and she peeled it off, revealing her flashiest red underwear.

  “Just relax, Lacey. Let me rub your shoulders.” He kneaded her tight muscles with his strong hands. She willed herself to let go of her worries. Oh, this is helping.

  “I’m thinking you have a lot of useful skills,” she said, as he un-hooked her bra.

  “You’d be surprised.” He started kissing her and didn’t stop.

  A knock on the door the next morning woke Lacey up. She threw on her black silk robe and staggered out of bed. “Who is it?” she asked through the closed door.

  “It’s Brooke.”

  Lacey opened the door a crack and peered out. “What time is it?” Brooke was entirely too awake and cheerful. Her hair was braided. She was wearing jeans, running shoes, and a gray hooded sweatshirt that said YALE in letters at least a foot high.

  “Why don’t you just wear a sign that says JE SUIS AMÉRICAINE?”

  “I am American. Who needs a sign?” Brooke leaned on the door, pushing it open a bit more. She peered in at a sleeping Donovan. “Oh, you guys aren’t up yet?” She grinned.

  “No, and I’m going back to bed right now.” Lacey started to shut the door.

  “Hey, did you know there was a shooting last night outside the restaurant? Right after Damon and I left. Did you guys hear anything?”

  Lacey opened the door a bit wider. “We heard gunshots. What do you know about it?”

  “Not much,” Brooke said. “That was all Monsieur Henri could tell me.”

  Lacey slipped into the hall and shut the door gently so they wouldn’t disturb Vic. If I tell her it was Kepelov, I’ll get sucked into the deadly vortex of DeadFed dot com. “So what are you going to do today?”

  “This morning we’re going to visit locations on the Champs Elysées and the Palais Royale from the movie Charade. You remember, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, murder, intrigue, romance. It’s one of your favorites too, I know. You guys should come along.”

  Lacey eyed Brooke’s outfit du jour. “Sans Audrey’s fabulous wardrobe by Givenchy.” Lacey momentarily thought about those beautiful suits Audrey Hepburn wore in Charade, all those three-quarter-length sleeves designed to be worn with long gloves. Très elegante.

  “Well, I’m dressed for speed. I have to be able to move to play hide and seek,” Brooke insisted. “Spy versus spy. Us versus Kepelov.”

  “I have a feeling he won’t bother you today.” Lacey had no idea if Kepelov were still alive. Part of her hoped he was, the silly man with his silly mustache and his absurd American dream. She also reminded herself that he had stalked her, attacked her, and knocked her out. And he was just plain weird, if not a complete lying sociopath.

  “Damon and I can still play.” Brooke caught Lacey’s smile. “I’m sure you and Vic have your little games to play too.”

  “We’ve been playing a game for the past six years.”

  “So now it’s game, set, match? Or is it love all?” Brooke zipped up the hooded sweatshirt and bent down to tie one of her shoelaces. “Gotta run. We have so much ground to cover before we go see Jim Morrison’s alleged grave in Père-Lachaise cemetery.”

  Lacey slumped against the wall and hugged her robe tight around her. “Wait. Not Jim Morrison of the Doors? Heroin overdose? You said ‘alleged.’ You don’t believe those rumors, do you? Oh, of course you do. What was I thinking.”

  Brooke smiled at her naive friend. “Heroin overdose is the official story, but no one ever saw the body, except for his girlfriend who reported the death and a doctor no one ever heard from again.” Brooke stretched her quads and then her back.

  “Oh, Brooke. You think the Lizard King is still alive, right?”

  “He told people he was going t
o fake his death just a couple weeks before he, quote, ‘died,’ unquote. Coincidence?”

  “Nobody ever just plain dies in your universe, do they? The cemetery is on my list too, but not to visit Morrison.” Lacey put her hand on the doorknob and yawned. “I can’t believe you’re so into dead people.”

  “Only some dead people,” Brooke corrected her. “And missing persons who pretend to be dead. Damon is writing a case study on how to disappear and why Paris is such a good place to do it. So why don’t you two meet us there at—” She checked her watch. “Say two thirty at the, quote, ‘tomb,’ unquote, of Jim Morrison.”

  “But I don’t even like the Doors! ‘Light My Fire’ just makes me want to—”

  “It’ll be fun. We’ll see you there. Damon’s waiting for me. Au revoir, chérie.”

  Lacey watched Brooke sail down the stairs in her jogging shoes, her blond braid flying. She opened the door to find Vic up and getting ready to shower.

  “But I thought we could—You know. Go back to bed?”

  “You don’t want to miss anything, do you? Especially if we have to meet those two at two thirty at Père-Lachaise.”

  “You heard all that?”

  He grinned. “Darling, you expect me to just let you slip off into a dim hallway where ghosts, spies, jewel thieves, killers, or your lunatic friends could spirit you away from me?”

  “Ah, you haven’t met the ghost yet,” Lacey said. Over Vic’s shoulder, Lacey watched as the lamp beside the bed flickered on and then off again. Vic saw her eyes go wide and he turned around, but it was over.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” Vic smiled. “The day is young.”

  Chapter 26

  Consistency is the key to a woman’s signature look, Lacey decided.

  Lacey had always strived for a consistently pulled-together look, but especially since becoming the fashion reporter at The Eye Street Observer. Everyone she knew suddenly expected her to look well-dressed all the time. Quel drag. The other reporters simply took her word for it; they assumed whatever she wore was in style because she was wearing it, the way readers assume that the sports reporter understands football. But this was Paris. Parisians, she assumed, would be highly critical connoisseurs of style.

  This morning her reflection in the mirror satisfied her, and she hoped it would even satisfy hypercritical Parisians. The plain black skirt, tights, and boots went with anything, and the emerald sweater made her blue-green eyes sparkle. A matching emerald jacket with a belted waist, copied from a vintage Forties jacket in Aunt Mimi’s trunk, completed the look. She added gold hoop earrings and a cuff bracelet. But maybe looking good had more to do with being in love, she thought. Whatever it was, it was working.

  “You’re gorgeous,” Vic said. “Let’s go.”

  “You just interrupted my work. I was making up a new theory about fashion.”

  “Time’s a-wasting. It’ll come back to you.”

  Before they left for the day, Lacey wanted a chat with the helpful concierge. With Vic waiting outside on the sidewalk, Lacey turned the charm of her carefully chosen outfit on Monsieur Henri. The fastidious little man was wearing a starched white shirt and a green wool vest with brown slacks. He greeted her, his perfectly trimmed mustache conveying utmost seriousness.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Colbert.”

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle.” He gave a curt nod and a lightning appraisal of her outfit. She must have merited his approval. His face relaxed and his mustache flirted with the hint of a smile.

  Lacey thanked him for his excellent service and asked if he knew the hospital where last night’s shooting victim was taken. He did. Would he be so good as to make a call and ask about the condition of the victim, a man named, she thought, Gregor Kepelov?

  “For you, mademoiselle, but of course.” He picked up the phone. While he was engaged, she picked up brochures featuring Parisian attractions. Henri was taking what seemed like a long time to the final au revoir. She looked up.

  “Ah, Mademoiselle Smithsonian. I regret to inform you they say there is no Gregor Kepelov at the hospital,” Henri said. “And so, thinking there was perhaps a mistake with the name, I inquired, was a man who was shot outside this restaurant last night admitted? I was informed she could not say, which means, of course, he was. But it must be a different man. I am so sorry.”

  Henri looked perturbed that his special charm had not wormed more information out of the hospital. Lacey assured him he was brilliant and thanked him profusely.

  Kepelov, no doubt, had many aliases. Whatever his real name was and wherever he was, if he was still alive, there was nothing she could think of to do to learn more about him. She briefly pondered whether Griffin might have shot him, but Griffin didn’t seem the murderous type, and he could barely open a pack of cigarettes. And who was the mystery woman wearing Magda’s scent? Lacey determined she would not dwell on Kepelov or Griffin today. Or phantoms.

  Lacey and Vic were on the Métro on their way to the famous Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages when she suddenly realized she needed to jot down notes for a “Fashion Bite,” her irregular column of humorous fashion advice and commentary. Her editor, Mac, professed not to understand a word of them, which gave her the freedom to write nearly anything she pleased.

  She had begun to wonder if she were hanging out in all the wrong places in Paris to catch a glimpse of the elusive glamorous Frenchwoman of fashion legend. In the fashion world the mystique of the effortlessly stylish Frenchwoman with her legendary scarf-tying abilities would never die. Lacey thought most of the women she saw on the streets here looked perfectly normal, some slightly better dressed than others, some worse. Where were those dazzling and elegant trendsetters she had been conditioned to expect?

  In the real world of Paris fashion in the street, Lacey was not seeing anything like a parade of haute couture knockouts, but she was noticing some trends. There was a certain consistency of style among Frenchwomen that could be counted on, and it was in the details where their genius lay. And the genius was sheer confidence, an attitude that said, “Of course what I am wearing is in style, because I am wearing it!”

  “Laundry list?” Vic asked, peering at her notes.

  “Fashion clues.” She kept writing as he nibbled on her ear. “I like Paris, it brings out the romantic in you.”

  “I’m a natural-born romantic, didn’t you know? Are you writing about the alleged corset?”

  “No, I’m working on a column. A ‘Fashion Bite.’”

  “I’ll bite. What’s the key clue?”

  “Attitude, mon cher, attitude.” Lacey wrote a few more notes on her theme that the Frenchwoman had the style war won over the American woman in only one key attribute: attitude. They believe they look great, and this gives them the confidence to look their best, so everyone else believes it too. She closed her notebook, thinking that perhaps if she could don a little of that nonchalantly fearless attitude, perhaps others would see the same courage in her. Perhaps even she would begin to feel it herself.

  Lacey sat on a bench in the darkened circular hall of the Cluny Museum. She was reveling in the exquisite artistry of the brilliant unknown weavers who had created these six vibrant tapestries: The Lady and the Unicorn.

  Every mystery requires a key to unlock it, she was thinking, as she drank in the sight of the famous tapestries. Lacey marveled at the skill it must have taken and wondered about the La Viste family who had commissioned the tapestries, though no one quite knew why. What did the images signify, beyond what the glossy guidebook told her? What was the key?

  She learned that the tapestries were woven in the late 1400s. Five panels of The Lady and the Unicorn depicted the five senses: Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, and Smell. The focus of each panel was a soigné blond Lady and a playful white unicorn. Each featured a scene symbolic of that sense, enacted on a sapphire-blue rug or island set against a blazing crimson background, dense with birds and flowers and small animals. A sixth panel, A Mon Seul Désir, “To My Sole Desire
,” seemingly depicted the Lady putting away her rich necklace, renouncing her worldly passions, or so the book said. Lacey peered closely at the necklace in her hands, poised above a chest of similar jewels offered by her maidservant. The image seemed ambiguous. What if the Lady were picking up the jewels, she wondered, not putting them away? Perhaps the Lady in the tapestry was trying to tell her something, offering her a key to her own mystery. Should she put away all thought of finding the elusive corset and their legendary jewels? Or should she try to take the mystery in hand and pick up the thread of the search?

  The Lady was inscrutable, and her unicorn smiled enigmatically. Lacey was pleased the two of them were taking such an interest in her dilemma. She wished Magda could have been here to see this sight again. Magda had seen them years ago and had never forgotten them. The old corsetiere had told Lacey that if she loved stories told by fabric and style, she must see the tapestries at the Cluny.

  They were a revelation. For Lacey, the Middle Ages had always seemed a dismal, dirty, dark era, cold and muddy, a place where no one bathed. The sumptuous French tapestries revealed a different world altogether, with their luxurious bold colors and serenely mysterious tableaus. Untold numbers of stitches from unknown numbers of weavers had created them for an unknown purpose, to tell an ambiguous story. It seemed to Lacey that so much of France’s history was told in stitches. It was told in tapestries and in the elite world of haute couture. It was told even by the women who knitted at the guillotine and dropped a stitch every time a head rolled, making a count of the bloody victims of the Revolution.

  Vic had been discreetly casing the hall of the tapestries to make sure that they hadn’t been followed by Griffin or a mystery woman perfumed with a woodsy rose scent. He returned to her side, resting his arm over her shoulder and putting his lips to her temple. She smiled at his touch and felt a little sorry for the Lady in the tapestries, attended by her pretty unicorn, her servants, and her jewels, but with no man in the picture.