Raiders of the Lost Corset

by Ellen Byerrum

“That is a startling statement coming from you, Stella.”

  “Well, there’s startling, and then there is really startling. I’m unleashing my inner Catwoman here.” Stella meowed, but it turned into a yawn. “Oh, Lacey, my head feels like a jackhammer.” She fumbled with the room key and unlocked the door, tossing her suitcase inside. “I’m so sorry to wimp out on you, but would you mind if I crash for a few hours? That was really an early flight.” The little stylist leaned against the open door into her pink lair and struggled to keep her eyes open. “I mean it’s only nine thirty in the morning for pity’s sake! And I was up way late celebrating our trip. So wake me up later, okay, we’ll go get some spicy Cajun, which I guarantee will knock any hangover right out of your head. What do you say?”

  A long nap was tempting. But this unexpected gift of precious time without a bodyguard was too much for Lacey to resist. “Absolutely, Stel. I need a good three hours myself. Then we’ll get lunch.”

  Stella blew her a kiss and stumbled into her room. Lacey was delighted to find that her own room down the rose-carpeted hall, in shades of rose and moss green, had French doors to a balcony with huge baskets of flowers overlooking Decatur Street. Vic would no doubt grumble about the security of such an accessible room. Any monkey, he would tell her, could reach a second-floor balcony, and there were large gaps around the slightly warped French doors. But she tried not to think about that. Kepelov was dead and Griffin had not resurfaced since Paris. He’d told Vic when he called with the news of Kepelov’s death that he was “going to ground,” as he called it. Lacey hoped that meant he was in a burrow somewhere and he’d given up on trailing her.

  She changed from her standard all-black traveling clothes into a light lavender knit top and periwinkle-blue capris and a pair of comfortable sandals. After wearing so many boots and dress shoes in Paris, sandals made her feel like she really was on vacation. The delicate light blue satin corset Magda had made for her peeked out from under her other clothes. She had packed it on a whim, perhaps to remind her of her goal in New Orleans. Or perhaps just to amuse Vic.

  As corsets go, Lacey’s corset was very modest. It would look chic with the sleek black skirt she packed to wear to a fancy restaurant with Vic, throwing a shawl over it if she felt too bare. She tucked it back into her suitcase, inside the closet. Then she grabbed her shoulder bag and fished out her guidebook and map of the French Quarter. She had a date with the Rue Dauphine.

  On foot in the French Quarter, Lacey could see the early Spanish influence in the architecture, with its pretty filigreed wrought-iron balconies and galleries. Buildings were painted in pastels, and plants and flowers bloomed in abundance. She noted the street signs in the Quarter were all bilingual in French and English, in honor of the city’s French origins. The hotel was on Decatur Street, also marked as Rue Decatur. Lacey smiled as she read in her guidebook that New Orleans was known as “the Paris of the South.” Okay, Magda, she thought, this is our last shot, let’s make it good. Lacey turned up Rue Decatur and headed deeper into the Quarter.

  New Orleans felt and looked dramatically different. Washington, D.C., in the fall is crisp and businesslike, with a first-day-of-school feel. The sober citizens of our Nation’s Capital put away their summer clothes and break out the tweeds and woolens, even if it still seems too warm. The Crescent City, in contrast, retained a lingering sense of eternal late summer. People strolled along the streets and lazed about in cafés in cutoff jeans and T-shirts. It was a different kind of casual. Whether the attitude was joie de vivre or “I don’t give a damn,” Lacey wasn’t sure. But everyone seemed happy and relaxed. Washington is never ever like this, she thought.

  A pretty curly-headed brunette about twenty wobbled leisurely past Lacey on an ancient three-speed bicycle, seemingly without a care in the world, and without a bike helmet. She wore a Hawaiian print dress and clear Lucite heels at least four inches tall. So unlike Washington, Lacey thought, where The Eye Street Observer’s editorial writer Cassandra Wentworth grimly pedaled her high-tech titanium bicycle to work in an ecologically correct fervor. Cassandra’s bike outfit of black stretch tights, yellow reflective jacket, oversized sunglasses with rearview mirrors, and streamlined neon-yellow helmet made her look like an exotic alien insect. An insect with a deadly serious purpose and no time to waste on merely enjoying the day.

  New Orleans was sweet eye candy and an exotic world. Lacey was thrilled she didn’t have to learn a new language to enjoy it, although she overheard the locals speaking an exotic variety of English. Her attention was caught by a stocky man with close-cropped hair and a bullet-shaped head, dressed according to some code, tight black T-shirt, black shorts, black running shoes, white socks. But what caught her eye were the twenty pairs of gleaming silver handcuffs clipped to his heavy black belt. Lacey didn’t even want to guess what he might do for a living. “S&M club bouncer slash bounty hunter” came to mind.

  Lacey’s own pace was casual. She glanced in the store windows at the tourist bait, cheap Bourbon Street beads and voodoo kitsch and purple-and-green Mardi Gras masks everywhere, but it was a black cook’s apron featuring a white skull that brought her back to her present purpose. DON’T MAKE ME POISON YOUR FOOD, the apron warned.

  Lacey checked her map again. She passed Jackson Square and Café du Monde on Decatur Street and took a left turn on Ursulines Street. She walked four blocks, past Bourbon Street, to Dauphine Street. She felt a little tingle of excitement to see the street sign also identified it as Rue Dauphine, just as Vic had said it would. On the corner of Dauphine and Ursulines, at 1101 Rue Dauphine, the address in Drosmis Berzins’ note, she found a two-story brick building that housed a pharmacy on the street level. Lacey double-checked the address. It seemed that time hadn’t changed this mostly residential part of the French Quarter. The building must have been there for at least two hundred years, she thought.

  Lacey hesitated, wondering what to say to whomever she might find inside. She would try the truth, she decided: a reporter looking for information. Her Congressional press pass was in her purse in case anyone needed proof. She opened the door and stepped inside the pharmacy. She felt as if she had stepped into a time capsule. The floor and walls were trimmed in white-and-rust-colored tile and the ceiling was pressed tin. An old-fashioned soda fountain with a marble counter and a row of small round stools filled one wall, but clearly it hadn’t been used in awhile. Posters from another era decorated the walls, advertising long-forgotten products. The pharmacy, however, looked businesslike and well-stocked. How did this place connect with Drosmis Berzins?

  “May I help you?” A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman behind the pharmacy counter greeted Lacey with a smile. She wore her light brown hair in a flip from the same distant era as the posters. Her name tag said MOLLY.

  “I’m not sure.” Lacey identified herself as a reporter. She explained that she was looking for anything connected to the man whose name she wrote down for Molly on a sheet of paper. “He was an elderly Latvian immigrant named Drosmis Berzins. I believe he may have lived here, or worked here, or had family or friends here. Perhaps he was a customer here. And he may have left something here, some time ago, for someone to pick up? Perhaps a message, a book, an envelope, a package?” She felt like an idiot. Someone I never met may have stashed something here that I can’t describe. Who knows what, when, or why. Got anything like that?

  The woman stared at her for a moment. She looked away and seemed to remember something. “My goodness. What was that name again?”

  “Berzins, Drosmis Berzins. I’m not sure how it’s pronounced.”

  “Just a moment, please.” The woman took the paper and slipped into the back room. Lacey wandered around the little drugstore. No one else came in the store, but Lacey assumed it was still early by French Quarter time. Molly left Lacey waiting long enough for her to imagine the woman coming back with a shotgun to run her out of the store. Instead, Lacey heard a couple of voices joined in laughter. Molly emerged alone from the backroom
holding an object in her hands.

  “I hadn’t looked at this thing in so long I wasn’t sure about the name. But sure enough, it’s the same. It’s been up on a shelf in back for years and years and years.” Molly chuckled. “Kind of turned into a family legend. A curiosity, you might call it.”

  The woman handed Lacey a tarnished brass urn, the kind used to store human ashes. “Ashes to ashes” came to her mind in mocking tones. Ashes? Oh, no! He couldn’t have burned the corset!

  “I don’t know what to say,” Lacey said. What did that crazy bastard Berzins do with the corset? She looked at the urn. It was engraved DROSMIS BERZINS. And a fragment of the Bible verse mentioned in the note in Jean-Claude’s cellar was engraved in English beneath his name: FOR DUST THOU ART AND TO DUST SHALT THOU RETURN.

  “Relative of yours?” the woman asked politely. “Must have been a religious gentleman.”

  “Must have been,” Lacey agreed.

  Could the urn possibly contain Berzins’ own ashes? Lacey wondered. Brooke had found his obituary on the Web; he died long after Jean-Claude’s coal room was sealed up with his torn note in the metal box, the clue Lacey was following in this devious little scavenger hunt. But perhaps he had instructed someone to bring his ashes here after he died? Please no, Lacey thought, no human remains this morning. I haven’t even had lunch yet.

  “How long has it been here?” Lacey asked.

  “Oh, my. I really couldn’t say. My husband’s been trying to remember; he’s back there filling prescriptions. We’ve been married twenty-five years—that’s when we took this place over, and it was here before that.” The woman looked at Lacey for some kind of explanation. She seemed to be willing to wait. Time does move more slowly here, Lacey thought.

  “It’s pretty heavy, Molly.” Is that the brightest thing I can think of to say?

  “Feels about like a ten-pound sack of sugar to me,” Molly mused. “I kind of hate to see it go, but my husband says it’s time, I guess. Now that you’ve come for it and all.”

  “Would you mind if I set this down here?” It felt full. Of what? she wondered. It didn’t rattle when she shook it, but its contents seemed to shift softly inside. It could have been her imagination. Lacey put the urn down on the marble counter of the soda fountain. She rummaged through her purse for her digital camera.

  “Oh, that’s a good idea! Do take a picture, and would you mind letting me get in the photograph? I’d love to have a copy too, if y’all wouldn’t mind.”

  Lacey photographed Molly with the urn and then took a seat on a stool at the counter. “When did you stop serving soda fountain customers here?”

  “Back in the Seventies, my husband tells me. His folks had the place till they retired.” Molly wiped her fingers along the marble counter.

  “That’s too bad. It’s so pretty, so old-fashioned. It’s a shame not to use it.”

  “His folks always said it was such a lot of work and folks would just sit here and gab all day, I hear tell. Couldn’t get them out of here. Here, let me get you a sack for that thing, so you can take it with you,” she said and reached beneath the counter for some brown paper bags. Molly put the heavy urn inside, double-bagged it so it wouldn’t tear through, and set it back on the counter. Oh, my God, Lacey realized, she’s simply giving me this thing?

  “So. The urn. Thanks for the sack, Molly. And I can just—um—take it with me?” Lacey didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it, but she was beginning to have an idea.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. That’s what the letter said.”

  “Wait a minute. What letter?”

  A middle-aged man with a friendly round face poked his head out of the back room behind the pharmacy counter.

  “So y’all’re the urn lady! Well, well. Been here a mighty long time. Yes, indeed.”

  “The urn lady. That’s me,” Lacey said. “Molly mentioned there was a letter with the urn?”

  He patted his wife on the shoulder and smiled. “Oh, my, yes, but the letter is long gone. My daddy kept it for a long time, but I don’t know what happened to it. He died ten years ago. I do, however, mind what the letter said, at least the gist of it. This thing here has been a family curiosity, you might say.” He leaned on the soda fountain counter. “I never thought I’d live to see the day someone would come for it. Name is Tom.” He put out a large hand for Lacey to shake. “My daddy ran this store after his daddy died. Family’s owned it nearly a century.”

  “How did the urn come to be here in your store?” Lacey took out her notebook and pen.

  “Old man left it here one day. Don’t recall if my daddy said he was a regular or a stranger. Paid Pop fifty dollars—lot of money back then—to keep it safe here till someone came for it.”

  “Did he say who that would be?”

  “Nope. Note said whoever came looking for the name on the urn should have it.”

  Lacey stopped writing and stared at Tom and Molly. “Anyone who came looking for that name? Didn’t that strike anyone as a little crazy?”

  “This is Nawlins, cher.” Tom pronounced it like a native, or so she’d been told. “Crazy things happen every day. Guess it didn’t strike my daddy as too crazy. He used to run a post office in this place way back, for the neighborhood, took delivery of packages and such. He told me once he figured someone’d come for this thing in a few days, a month maybe. It was safe right here with him, waiting for the right person to claim it. Nobody’s gonna just pick that foreign name there out of a hat, now are they? Time went on, it became kind of a conversation piece, you know?”

  Lacey gazed at the brass urn in wonder. She took a deep breath. “Well. Thank you for keeping it safe. Do I owe you anything? For storage, all these years?”

  “No, ma’am, the story value is as good as anything,” Tom said. “My daddy was willing to store it in perpetuity, waiting for someone to come for it. Till now. Must be a story to go with it, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at her with the same mild curiosity Molly had displayed.

  “About that story,” Lacey began, “it’s a rather delicate thing. And unfinished.” Lacey needed a close inspection of the urn and its contents, no matter what it contained, even human remains. It might lead her anywhere, or nowhere, but the last thing she wanted was for this story to get out prematurely. Just the kind of wacky local feature story an enterprising New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter might jump on. She could imagine the headline: FRENCH QUARTER MYSTERY OF LONG-FORGOTTEN URN. And the DeadFed dot com version: SMITHSONIAN TAKES ROMANOV JEWEL HUNT TO BIG EASY! Lacey couldn’t risk the Fabergé egg hunters catching her trail before she could get the urn—and herself—to a safe place.

  “I don’t have the whole story yet,” she said, “and if this gets out too soon I may never get it. Could I ask you not to say anything about this for the next few days? To anyone? Let’s say until after Thanksgiving?”

  Tom and Molly looked at each other. “Yes, ma’am,” Tom said. “But why Thanksgiving, particularly?”

  “I only need a few days. I hope. But it will be a much better story if I have a chance to tie the loose ends together. And I can guarantee you will have your picture in the newspaper in Washington, D.C., and you’ll have a whole new story to tell your customers. That is, if you would like to have your picture in the paper.”

  Tom laughed. “I do love a good story, ma’am, and if my Molly here can keep her mouth shut, you got a deal.”

  His wife playfully slapped him on the arm. “Y’all don’t have to worry none about me, if this old bird can just hold his tongue.”

  Lacey took several pictures of the two of them with the urn, took a few more notes, and then gave Tom her card with her phone number at The Eye. She filled up the top of the bag with drugstore supplies: cough syrup, antacid, aspirin for Stella’s hangover. She also purchased a package of diapers and tucked the urn inside to disguise its shape.

  “Y’all’re being real careful,” Molly observed. “I don’t think it’s all that fragile.”

  “You
know us reporters,” Lacey said, not knowing if they did, but it sounded good at the moment. She was thinking of the unpredictable Nigel Griffin. She hoped he’d given up on her, and yet she found herself scanning every room and every crowd for him. “So if anyone comes in and asks what I was looking for and what I found?”

  “Why, sugar, I’ll just tell those nosy reporters you had one killer of a hangover and needed something strong for it,” Molly said.

  “Thank you, Molly, Tom. So nice to meet you. We’ll keep the story between us for now?”

  “Y’all can count on us, Miss Smithsonian.” Tom read her business card. “We’ll keep a lookout. Y’all come back, y’hear?”

  “Thanks again. I’ll be in touch.” Lacey winked and hefted her bag. She prayed that she and Drosmis Berzins’ mysterious urn would make it back to her hotel together.

  Chapter 34

  Crazy and horrible thoughts flashed through Lacey’s mind as she strolled casually back to the hotel with her drugstore bag in hand. She forced herself to slow down so as not to draw attention in this slow-moving city. Did Berzins burn the corset? Could the jewels be hidden inside, or did it actually contain human remains? And why? And whose? And what will they look like? The last thought made her queasy. Midday in New Orleans was just as lovely as the morning had been, and just as relaxed, but Lacey’s heart was beating as hard as if she were running through a dark forest pursued by wolves.

  Lacey had her room key ready in the elevator. She checked the empty hall and ran to her door and unlocked it in one smooth motion. She sniffed the air, relieved to detect no suspicious woodsy rose perfume, only a hint of the housekeeper’s cleaning supplies. She double-locked the door behind her and turned the dead bolt, rolled up a towel and jammed it against the bottom of the door, and stuck a Post-it over the peephole.

  Don’t be so paranoid, she told herself. Brooke and Damon have really gotten to you. She flicked on the lights and took the urn to the desk, first spreading out the complimentary copy of USA Today to cover the surface. The brass urn was dark with tarnish, so she took a clean washcloth from the bathroom and rubbed it to make sure nothing else was written on it. It was clean. She realized she was also rubbing away decades of fingerprints, but she didn’t care; too many curious hands had already held the urn for it to matter.