Armed and Glamorous

by Ellen Byerrum

  She put in a call to the Metropolitan Police Department about the burglary at Cecily Ashton’s home. She was told exactly what she expected to hear. No arrests, no leads, no recovery of the stolen goods, no further information available. “Do you even care?” she asked the officer.

  “Yes, of course, ma’am, crimes against property are a top priority here in the District of Columbia. No ma’am, we haven’t put it on the back burner, we wouldn’t do that, ma’am. And now Virginia’s got a much bigger case to solve, with Ms. Ashton’s murder. That’s not a quote, ma’am.”

  While Lacey was on the phone trying to pry a fact or two from the public information officer, her fellow reporters began filing back into the newsroom, stiff and grumpy from the accursed editorial quality meeting. With the phone to her ear she scanned the rest of her boring e-mail, skipping over a local fashion show for charity, a boutique opening in Bethesda, a fashion industry trend forecast for spring, when something unusual caught her eye: A press release from the White House. On the subject of fashion.

  Stop the presses!

  Lacey Smithsonian’s

  FASHION BITES

  Style Emergency: White House Bans Provocative Displays of Apparel!

  Stop the presses! The latest fashion buzz, or anti-fashion buzz, around the Capital City is that the Provocative Display of Apparel, or PDA, will no longer be tolerated at the White House. What is a Provocative Display of Apparel? In D.C., many everyday fashion crimes qualify as a PDA. And no, by PDA we do not mean Public Display of Affection. That kind of PDA was banned in Washington long ago.

  On the White House PDA hit list, according to an official press release: jeans, sneakers, shorts, miniskirts, T-shirts, tank tops, and flip-flops. (No more flip-flops in the White House? Dream on, Washington!) Their goal: no more flashing of bottom cheeks or décolletage before the dignified portraits of our Founding Fathers.

  That’s right, the National Apparel Propriety Police have banned America’s most popular casual wear from America’s House! In addition to gutting the off-duty wardrobes of most government workers and the jeans and T-shirts of many style-impaired journalists, these new anti-PDA rules are aimed straight at the hearts (and suitcases) of tourists. Tourists, those indispensable, clueless, shoeless folks who snap photos, smile, wave at the camera, spend money at museum gift shops, wander for hours on the Mall in neon T-shirted hordes, and clog the stairways of the Metro at rush hour. We love them—and we don’t love them. We want their money. Just don’t dress like them and expect to be allowed into the hallowed halls of the White House anymore. No PDAs allowed.

  We are all created equal under the White House dress code, tourist and Washingtonian alike. The White House does not want us to arrive dressed to hang out or flip-flop, to dangle, mangle, tumble, or stumble. No admittance if you’re dressed to plow the field or mow the lawn, or to go for a swim in the Tidal Basin with the nearest intern. Dress the way you would in your own house? In the White House, that’s now a Provocative Display of Apparel.

  It’s about respect, the White House press release notes. Respect for yourself, and respect for the highest office in the land, the Office of the President. Toe the line—and no toe cleavage—or you won’t get past the West Wing gate.

  But fear not. From what I’ve seen recently, Congress is still a fashion-code free zone. And very nearly a fashion-free zone. Tourists welcome! Reporters on the loose! Beaten and battered blue jeans, free-range flip-flops, and rude, crude political-message T-shirts are all alive and well and roaming the halls of Congress.

  So attention Washington tourists! If your Provocative Display of Apparel makes you persona non grata in the White House, go hang out in Congress. There you can be casual where your tax dollars are misappropriated and misspent. And where the flip-flop is not just casual footwear, it’s a treasured American political art form.

  Chapter 20

  Lacey was tapping diligently away at her follow-up on the Ashton museum exhibit when she became aware of a strange sound nearby. The sound of giggling. It was coming closer. Lacey glanced up in the direction of the sound. Felicity Pickles and Harlan Wiedemeyer were laughing and cooing like hormonal teenagers, bumping their hips together like drunken sailors as they walked. They stopped at Felicity’s cubicle right across the aisle from Lacey. There was no ignoring them.

  Oh, good. More unlikely lovebirds, Lacey thought. Stella and Nigel. Brooke and Damon. Felicity and Harlan. Who’s next?

  Love in bloom in the newsroom might be distracting, but she had to admit the atmosphere was happier now that she and Felicity were no longer glaring daggers at each other. Lacey helped connect her with Harlan, and while the fashion reporter and the food editor were not quite friends, they were no longer enemies.

  Felicity was also looking more attractive these days. Being in love agreed with her. Her chestnut-colored hair was glossy and her milk white skin was clear. The job of food editor was clearly an occupational hazard to her figure, but her well-padded curves had met their soul mate in chubby little Harlan Wiedemeyer. Today Felicity wore a shapeless blue sack dress, which did nothing to flatter her figure, but it matched the color of her eyes.

  The man with his arm around Felicity was equally round, from his round head to his round belly. His brown tweed sports jacket strained across the chest, but it was too long in the sleeves. His khaki slacks were standard reporter wear, maybe a little shorter, a little tighter in the thighs. Under the jacket, he wore a brown shirt with a loosened tie, liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar from his last doughnut at Krispy Kreme, his second office. One reporter, standard issue, slightly used, Lacey thought. With doughnuts. And in love.

  “Lacey!” Harlan spluttered. “We have big news! Front page news! Stop-the-presses news!”

  “Does it have anything to do with exploding toads?”

  He and Felicity both burst out laughing, gazing fondly into each other’s eyes.

  “No! But wasn’t that a great story I wrote on that? Those poor bastards!” Known around the newsroom as the death-and -dismemberment reporter, Wiedemeyer had a nose for news of the bizarre and the bloody. It wasn’t just his off-the-beaten -path beat that seemed to disquiet the other reporters, it was the sheer glee he took in it.

  “Nope. No exploding toads this time,” he said, barely containing his joy. “No spontaneous human combustion, no house cats that foretell the angel of death. Something even more amazing than any of that.”

  “Oh Harlan, what is it? What could be more shattering than exploding toads? It isn’t exploding goats, is it?” Lacey braced herself. Harlan gulped and gazed down at the floor, suddenly shy. He took a deep breath.

  “Well, you see, my amazing Ms. Pickles, my sweet Felicity, she has agreed to—” Harlan’s voice broke. He wiped his eyes. Felicity smiled at him encouragingly and squeezed his hand.

  “Go on, Harlan, honey. You wanted to tell Lacey. He wanted to tell you first, Lacey, because—well, you know.”

  “Because the woman of my dreams has agreed to accept my proposal. And you’re the one who brought us together!” Wiedemeyer danced a little two-step with Felicity Pickles, the woman of his dreams. “We are getting married!”

  “Married?” Aw shucks, no exploding goats? “You two are getting married?”

  Harlan swept Lacey up into a big unwelcome surprise hug, but it was over soon. Please! Reporters don’t hug! Felicity thrust out her left hand to display a one-carat diamond solitaire in a platinum band on her ring finger. She wiggled her fingers and her grin was nearly as bright as her diamond.

  “Why it’s beautiful, Felicity. It’s so sparkly!”

  Perhaps not as sparkly as Felicity at that very moment. Lacey had noticed the very same style of engagement ring on many fingers in the District recently, but that made the ring no less lovely. It had the seal of approval of betrothed interns, besotted Capitol Hill staffers, and young lawyers in love. No one had asked for Lacey’s hand in marriage lately, she thought, but it might happen, someday far in the future.


  Lacey murmured more compliments about the ring. It was lovely, tasteful, elegant, and not ostentatious, and she realized it must have set Harlan back a chunk of cash. Anyone on an Eye Street reporter’s salary would pale at the price of a good quality one-carat diamond ring.

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had.” Felicity had tears in her azure doll eyes. “I told Harlan that really it’s too much and that we should be sensible and save for a nice house but— Oh my, just look at it—” She gazed at the ring with a passionate and possessive fervor. Lacey knew that ring would never leave Felicity’s finger.

  “Throw sensible out the window,” Harlan said. “Love isn’t about being sensible, it’s about being passionate.” His voice was rising. A few reporters looked over, then away again. “I’m such a lucky bastard!”

  “Spoken like a true romantic.” Lacey was charmed by Harlan’s over-the-top declaration of love.

  “I was going to wait until Valentine’s Day to pop the question,” Harlan said, still pumped with energy. “I always thought the little cherub with the arrow was an appropriate expression of my feelings, and I wanted to wait till it was his day. But wouldn’t you know it, I just couldn’t wait. So here we are. Isn’t it amazing?”

  A mischievous child with a quiver full of deadly arrows? Certainly that was appropriate to Harlan Wiedemeyer’s reputation as the newsroom jinx, Lacey thought. As soon as Felicity developed a crush on Harlan, her minivan had been blown up. The Eye’s Capitol Hill reporter had once tangled with Harlan and saw his car destroyed almost on the spot by a city bus. Lacey herself had barely escaped being flattened by a falling Krispy Kreme doughnut sign, merely for accepting a ride from Harlan. Their editor Mac liked to say there was no such thing as a jinx, but even he conceded that unusually bad luck seemed to follow those who crossed Wiedemeyer’s path. Mac tried to keep his distance. Lacey hoped she’d been cured of the jinx by helping connect Harlan with Felicity. But if there’s no such thing as a jinx, she wondered, is there really a cure?

  “My feelings just exploded, so to speak,” Harlan continued. “Like an exploding toad.” He chuckled at his own joke, gazing at Felicity in adoration.

  There’s a resemblance, Lacey thought. But if she squinted just right, she could see Wiedemeyer as a romantic hero who would battle dragons for his fair Felicity. If the Wiedemeyer Jinx was real, that dragon was in big trouble.

  “Congratulations. I’m thrilled for you both. Have you two lovebirds set a date?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re thinking about September,” Felicity said. “We could have a harvest theme! Oh, there’s so much to do. So much to plan. The menu, the appetizers, the main dishes, the desserts, and of course the most important thing of all, the wedding cake.” Felicity’s skin glowed, her cheeks were brushed with color, and the look in her eye said this was what she had been waiting for all her life: planning her wedding, and planning the food. “And the main entrée! So many choices. Perhaps Cornish game hens for two hundred?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, my sweet little gherkin.” Harlan had recently taken to creative terms of endearments of the cucumber kind, a nod to Felicity’s last name, Pickles. Felicity thought this was particularly adorable. The rest of the newsroom rolled their eyes and make gagging noises. Lacey tried to keep a straight face.

  “If anyone can tackle two hundred Cornish game hens, Felicity, it’s you,” she said.

  “And not just the wedding cake! There’s the groom’s cake to plan too.”

  “The groom’s cake?” Good Lord, Lacey thought. Nobody told me about a groom’s cake.

  “Oh, it’s essential! It’s such a great old Southern wedding tradition.” Felicity nodded sagely. “The groom’s cake is supposed to reflect something personal about the groom. Well, I’ve been thinking: a tower of doughnuts! We could sprinkle it with the same color of seasonal sprinkles they use at Krispy Kreme. Or if we do a fall wedding, it’s football season! We could stack those little football-shaped doughnuts they make into a delicious and unique groom’s cake. Can’t you just see it, Lacey?”

  “Of course she can,” Harlan said. “I can see it too. We must put our own stamp on this wedding. Make it unique and individual, just like you, my little dilly pickle.”

  Lacey nodded sympathetically. It seemed the right thing to do. It was either that or roll her eyes and make gagging noises.

  “Felicity, you are a dream come true,” Harlan said. “Pickles and doughnuts, a match made in heaven.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Lacey said, getting a grip on herself. “So it’ll be a small, intimate wedding?” Lacey doubted that she’d be invited, but she secretly longed to witness this spectacle. Maybe the cake will explode.

  “Good heavens, no,” Harlan declared. “We want everyone to know how happy we are. It’s going to be big! A real mob scene.” Felicity giggled and gazed at her man in adoration.

  Lacey tried to imagine this one-of-a-kind wedding. Felicity’s all-encompassing love of seasonally themed sweaters was well known in the newsroom; Lacey visualized the bridesmaids wearing matching fall sweaters in autumnal shades, decorated with knitted apples and pumpkins. Or little red schoolhouses and autumn leaves, another staple of Felicity’s fall collection, perhaps worn over matching plaid skirts. The groomsmen would all wear matching plaid ties and cummerbunds, the best man would produce the ring from a Krispy Kreme doughnut box. And then they would all dance. Lacey had to pinch herself to keep from laughing. She tried coughing instead.

  “We’d better go tell Mac now,” Harlan Wiedemeyer said. “He’ll want to know.”

  Lacey watched Wiedemeyer and Pickles skip away happily, hand in hand. This time she did laugh. Those crazy kids. Exploding cupids in love!

  Chapter 21

  Lacey mentally shifted gears and picked up the phone to call the man who predicted to Brooke and Damon that he would soon be framed for the death of Cecily Ashton.

  Hadley answered on the third ring and told Lacey he worked just off K Street, in Washington’s legal and financial district. His office was only a few blocks away from The Eye. He preferred not to talk about his personal business on the phone, he said, and he refused to meet her at the newspaper offices. Everybody knows the government tracks journalists, he told Lacey. Hadley conceded that perhaps the government might not track every fashion reporter, but he still refused to be seen inside her newsroom.

  Lacey pointed out there weren’t enough G-Men in the country to track all the journalists in Washington, D.C. Personally, she could hardly imagine anything more dreary than listening to thousands of reporters’ know-it-all conversations, and most reporters had too many opinions on nearly everything. Except fashion.

  “And what about the voices,” she asked, “won’t they know where you are anyway? So what does it matter where we meet?”

  “They don’t need any extra help from me,” Hadley said. “I like to keep them guessing. I try to baffle them. They can’t read my thoughts, you know. Their transmission channel seems to be unidirectional. But of course, they can draw conclusions from what I do and say, and they have microphones and cameras everywhere.”

  Some reporters wondered how Lacey could keep a straight face when she talked with people like Hadley, but she was willing to listen to nearly anyone with a good story. And he wasn’t the craziest person in Washington by a long shot. She recalled a man who used to ride the Metro wearing a contraption on his head made from a wooden box and a full-face motorcycle helmet, all stuck together with duct tape. He wore it strapped to his body with an elaborately belted duct-tape harness. She never learned what Boxhead Man’s story was, but she wondered if he might be a friend of Martin Hadley.

  She met Hadley at the statue in Farragut Square, across the street from The Eye, and then went for coffee. As they approached one particular park bench in the square, Lacey recognized the occupant as Quentin, a homeless man she knew. This was one of “his” benches. He put down his newspaper and grinned at Lacey. She waved back.

  �
��Smithsonian! You lookin’ good today. How you been? How’s Mac’s two little girls doin’?” Lacey said they were just fine and she slipped a few dollars into his cup. Hadley added a dollar of his own. He and Quentin exchanged a look.

  “You say hello to Edgar for me now.” Quentin pointed to his temple, and Hadley nodded. Quentin tipped his hat formally and resumed reading The New York Times. Lacey and Hadley crossed Seventeenth Street to the Firehook Bakery.

  “The newspaper is out, but the bakery is okay?” Lacey asked, after they found a table with their lattes. “The voices don’t reach inside bakeries?”

  “Bakeries aren’t too bad. Perhaps they don’t want to torture the bakers,” Hadley said. “Everybody’s got to eat.”

  “Can’t argue with that. And who’s Edgar?”

  They would get around to Edgar, Hadley promised her. It turned out Hadley was a lobbyist for a K Street law firm, but while he had a law degree, he said, he wasn’t a lawyer. He considered himself a “citizen advocate.” It gave him a fresh insight into the legislative process, he said. Lacey had her own suspicions about lobbyists. Hearing voices might explain some of them.

  “What do you lobby about? Or for? Or against?”

  “Oh, patent law, copyright, intellectual property, various other nebulous subjects,” he said vaguely. “We have a lot of clients. This job gives you a real insight into how the government works, how laws really happen. Laws and sausage, you know that old saying? Two things you never want to watch being made? I get to watch.”

  Hadley removed his dark navy topcoat and draped it carefully over the back of the wooden chair, careful to avoid letting it touch the floor. He looked like any well-dressed Washington lobbyist. His dark gray pin-striped suit was well tailored, his pale blue shirt was crisp, and he wore an attractive and neatly knotted dark blue tie with regimental stripes. He noticed her analytical gaze and smiled sadly.