Armed and Glamorous

by Ellen Byerrum

  Their elevator arrived and LaToya pushed the button for their floor.

  “I don’t know,” Lacey said innocently. “Could be any handsome fella, probably. There are so many.” LaToya snorted. Lacey buried her face in the bouquet and inhaled the sweet scent of the blush-colored roses until the doors opened again. She raced LaToya to her desk, set down the vase, and ripped open the card.

  “Well?” the city reporter demanded. “Is it who I think it is?”

  “They are from a certain Victor Donovan. You may vaguely recall the name.”

  “Oh, that handsome man! The one you brought to the Christmas party? He’s a fine specimen as I recall, extra fine. You let me know if you ever break up with him.”

  “You bet. Don’t hold your breath.”

  “What does the note say?”

  “We’re awfully nosy today.” Lacey smiled at her.

  "Reporter here.” LaToya pointed to herself.

  Lacey read the note again. Darling, please wait to pick up the permit paperwork. Home soon. Love, Vic. He meant the concealed carry permit, of course. How romantic. Was he afraid she’d go off on a shooting spree without him?

  LaToya was still trying to read over her shoulder. “Well? What’s it say?”

  “It says, ‘Love, Vic.’ ”

  “Ah, that’s so sweet. I wish I had me a sweet man who’d send me flowers for everyone in the whole damn office to see. With a mushy little love note. Hold my calls, girls, I’ll be working on that.” LaToya flounced away to do a story on her city beat, or as she said, “something about the silly mayor.”

  Wait on the gun permit? Lacey glanced at the card again and sniffed the flowers. Like I’ve got time right now to pick up the paperwork. She understood Vic Donovan was the kind of guy who demonstrated his love and concern for her comfort and safety in practical items, like providing the BMW, and wanting to work on the self-defense thing together. Like a guy. He had offered her a gun in the past. He seemed a little more cautious now, maybe because she’d been in so many scrapes. The flowers were definitely a nice touch. He was learning. She especially appreciated that they were sent to the newsroom, as LaToya had pointed out, for everyone in the whole darn office to see.

  She picked up the morning newspaper that was left on her desk. Lacey’s update on Cecily’s couture collection at the Fashion Museum was featured on the inside of the front section. It was in a box, near the other Cecily Ashton stories.

  Tony Trujillo’s piece quoted a police spokesman as saying the Arlington detectives, who were helping the Falls Church Police Department, were still running down leads in the Ashton murder. Which probably meant they were out of good leads and they were running the bad ones. Having been a cop, Vic had told her often enough how cops thought. There’s typically an “obvious person of interest” or two in any murder, he said. If the obvious suspects have solid alibis, it’s back to square one, and after forty-eight hours the odds against closing a case grow longer every hour. Forty-eight hours had passed.

  Another Trujillo brief said Philip Clark Ashton was offering a $100,000 reward for any information on the murder of his ex-wife. Just pocket change for him, but good public relations? Priceless.

  She searched the article for any hint of skepticism. There was none. Tony had written it straight. Lacey wondered how she would have written the story. COPS CLUELESS! EX REMORSELESS! ODDS—HOPELESS?

  You’re a fashion reporter, for crying out loud! It wasn’t her job to solve the murder, she lectured herself. Mac just wanted a follow-up story with some fashion angle, any fashion angle. He wasn’t asking her to bring in the killer. He was always telling her not to try to bring in the killer. Lacey could write her little follow-up story and reassure herself that poor Cecily hadn’t gone looking for her the day she died. She could take her beautiful bouquet and go home. And be stuck on the fashion beat forever.

  If this isn’t the kind of story I was longing for when I signed up for that wacky PI school, she thought bitterly, an awful story, but a story that practically fell into my lap— then what the hell am I looking for?

  Where to begin? Lacey decided to listen to her Cecily Ashton interview tape again. Maybe she’d missed something subtle, something that might resonate differently now that she was dead. Maybe Lacey had forgotten something that sounded irrelevant at the time, like any mention of Simon Edison’s exotic fabric or Edison himself.

  Lacey didn’t own a high-tech digital recorder, the kind other reporters were beginning to use. Her tape recorder was pure analog, an obsolete last-generation cassette recorder. It was noisy but serviceable. She popped in the tape and pressed the button and cringed. The tape was full of the usual hisses and pops and clicks. Lacey had never gotten used to the sound of her own voice on tape. Her voice sounded low and breathy and intimate, not crisp and impersonal and businesslike. Hearing the dead woman’s well modulated and pleasant voice felt odd too. Cecily might have been the hostess of her own TV show, giving a tour of her fabulous home for the cameras.

  “This is the largest closet, which was designed around my morning routine. The Aubusson carpet is antique, the crystal chandeliers are by Swarovski . . . ”

  We should all have such closets, Lacey thought. Her own morning routine depended so much on having an outfit ready and set out to wear the night before. If she neglected this vital step, she would spend precious minutes tearing apart her tiny closet and trying on and rejecting outfits and running late and generally driving herself nuts. Today, she wore the outfit she had selected the previous evening, a snowy white blouse with flared sleeves gathered tightly at the wrist, a vintage black wool vest fitted snugly at the waist, a green and blue plaid skirt, and medium-heeled black patent leather Mary Janes. Lacey thought it looked businesslike and scholarly, and it was comfortable enough to wear all day and to PI class that evening.

  Unfortunately, Lacey’s headphones didn’t give her any privacy. Wearing them didn’t stop people from trying to talk to her and ask her about the flowers or inquire about her follow-up story or a dozen other distractions. Her fellow journalists paid no attention to her frantic hand signals telling them to go away, she was listening to something important. Among these oblivious souls was the senior police reporter.

  Tony Trujillo was nosing around Felicity’s desk across from hers, looking for crumbs of whatever the butcher-and-bakery beat might offer today. It was nine-thirty in the morning, time for a police reporter’s breakfast. He was wearing blue jeans and a blue turtleneck with a Brooks Brothers blazer. Lacey looked at his feet. Today’s cowboy boots were black snakeskin with scuffed toes.

  “Aha, cherry Danish! Score! Felicity comes through!” He picked up a slice of pastry oozing with a white glaze of frosting. “Whatcha’ doing, Smithsonian?” Scrounging for food and reading over other reporters’ shoulders were two of his favorite things.

  Lacey gave him her Go-Away Look, but he sat down on the edge of her desk anyway. She removed the headphones and switched off the recorder. “What?”

  “You’re not working, are you?” He turned on the hundred-watt smile. She frowned.

  “No, I never work. I’m a fashion reporter. I just—”

  “You just what?”

  He waited. Lacey almost said, I just solve murders, but that would smack of hubris. Saying that would guarantee she would never solve another murder. And at the moment she was not, in fact, solving a murder. She was hunting for a clue, perhaps a chance comment or nuance that would send her in a new direction.

  “I’m just trying to find a quiet Zen-like moment. If you see one, it’s mine. I keep losing it.”

  “Good luck with that. But you may like what I’ve found. I know everything the cops know about Cecily Ashton’s murder. Every last thing. I know when she died she had in her fancy purse a copy of that weird little drawing you just wrote about, for what it’s worth. I even know the caliber of the murder weapon.” He seemed very proud of himself.

  “Could it have been a twenty-two?” She looked for her coffee cup
. Cecily had a copy of the drawing with her? Why?

  “Curses, Lois Lane, what fiend leaked that information? You’re not the police reporter. They’re not supposed to tell you cool police-reporter stuff like that!”

  She smiled. “I have my ways.”

  He folded his arms and scowled. “What kind of ways?”

  “I annoyed Detective Jance. He had to say something to get me off the phone.”

  “Annoying people: Your secret weapon. What else aren’t you telling me?”

  “Why, Tony Trujillo, I always tell you everything.” She batted her eyelashes. “Honest. The whole truth, and”— Lacey crossed her fingers—“nothing but the truth.”

  “Hey, aren’t we a team?”

  “Only when you want to steal my story,” Lacey said, replacing her headphones on her ears. “We’re a team like you and that stolen pastry are a team.”

  “Share, Lacey,” he corrected. “Not steal. I want us to share the story.”

  “I’m working on a fashion story. About fabric. A total snooze. Wanna share that?”

  Tony narrowed his eyes. “Likely story.” He lifted another gooey pastry from Felicity’s desk, and he and his snakeskin boots made their escape. “I’ll be back.”

  The taped interview offered nothing new—until Cecily’s cell phone rang on the tape and interrupted their conversation. She had excused herself to take the call in the room next door, a room full of shoes, Lacey remembered. Her muffled voice could still be heard faintly in the background. Lacey had let the tape run on, recording a brief conversation with Hansen, whose voice was loud and clear.

  “Do you believe this place?” He was referring to the labyrinth of closets. “I feel like I’m in some kind of crazy department store in The Twilight Zone. Behind the scenes, where it’s just racks of clothes going on forever.”

  Lacey heard herself agreeing with him. “I know. It would be like living all alone in a Neiman-Marcus store or something. ” There was a rustling noise. Hansen was moving around the room, looking at the clothes.

  “Some of these dresses still have tags on them, did you notice?” Hansen’s voice was incredulous. “Who needs this many clothes anyway? It’s weirding me out, man, like she’s some creepy department store mannequin come to life, with a whole store full of clothes to wear? And then she freezes us into mannequins, right, and she makes us replace her in the window display, so no one figures out she’s escaped, and then—”

  “You’ve been watching too much science fiction, Hansen.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right, man. But really, Smithsonian, this place isn’t natural. The woman must have a thousand pairs of shoes in there. Are you sure she’s human? Does she have more than two feet?”

  It was another world to Hansen. The photographer’s entire wardrobe consisted, as near as Lacey could tell, of about five pairs of blue jeans and khakis, a few long-sleeved shirts, a few T-shirts, and a handful of ratty sweaters. He wore the same fluffy overstuffed down ski parka whenever it was cold. He wore one worn navy sport coat, if absolutely necessary, for formal occasions. He had one tie. It was probably wadded up in his camera bag for emergencies. His fashion accessories consisted of half a dozen press badges for access to various government buildings, including one for Congress and one for the White House. Hansen was not exactly a fashion plate, but the long tall shaggy blond photographer never seemed to notice or care. If anything, it seemed to make him more attractive to women. He was no shallow metrosexual fashion plate. If you loved Hansen, it wasn’t for his wardrobe, it was for the inner Hansen.

  “I tell you, Lacey, if Cecily Ashton starts to freeze back into a department store dummy, I am out of here.” Both of them laughed at this. It overloaded the mike and made a horrible racket on the tape. Lacey had to pause the tape and rub her ears.

  “But don’t you think Cecily is pretty?” The tape continued with Lacey’s question.

  “Yeah, she’s a babe, but she’s plastic-looking. All that work she’s had done? A mannequin. I like my ladies a little more natural, you know? I like women who can move their faces.”

  There was a commotion in the background on the tape, and Hansen and Lacey shut up. Cecily’s voice rose to an audible level through the wall.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Who is this? What about him? What about Philadelphia?”

  Lacey wrote down what Cecily said, but it didn’t enlighten her in any way. Who is he? And what about Philadelphia? Cecily soon returned to the room, apologized for the interruption, and continued the interview. She seemed somewhat more distracted than before. She repeated herself a couple of times, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. And Lacey now remembered that Cecily had once more picked up the 1942 photograph of Rita Hayworth and turned it over and over again in her hands, gazing at the pencil drawing on the back. Was the caller who upset Cecily her ex-husband, Philip Ashton, the man who had given her the photo?

  Lacey stopped the tape and rang Hansen’s desk, half expecting him to be out on assignment. She was surprised when he picked up his phone.

  “Yo, Lacey, what’s up?”

  “I’m just listening to that interview with Cecily Ashton again.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering when you’d start doing your thing on that.”

  “My thing? What thing?”

  “You know, the old ‘Smithsonian’s going to get to the bottom of this case if it’s the last thing she ever does’ kind of thing.”

  “Hansen, I do not do that.” She tapped her pen on the desk.

  “Sure you don’t,” he snorted. “So what can I do you for?”

  “I wanted to know—and I’m not necessarily doing that thing, I’m just curious. Do you remember anything about that day at Cecily’s house that struck you as odd?”

  “Jeez, Lacey, everything struck me as odd! I don’t remember anything that didn’t strike me odd. First we go to the faux French château like beggars at the freaking castle gate, we meet the amazing plastic Barbie doll princess who lives all alone in this place the size of a hotel, well, all alone with her servants. And her clothes. And then we spend an hour or two, or ten maybe, wandering around lost in her closets, her crazy multiple freaking interconnecting closets, like a carnival funhouse full of clothes, if you call that fun. And, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was coming on to me.”

  “She was coming on to you, Hansen, and that was the strangest thing of all, dude. She totally dug your wardrobe.” Hansen laughed on the other end of the line. “But anything particularly strange, other than all of that?”

  “I don’t know.” Hansen fell silent. “You sure she really died? Like, she wasn’t an android or something? I mean, did you really see blood?” His words brought back to Lacey the image of the delicate tracery of blood sprayed on the inside of the car window.

  “I saw blood. Trust me.” Lacey shivered as a sudden chill coursed down her spine. “You remember when she got a phone call?”

  “Phone call? I guess. Seemed to freak her out a little.”

  “Did that old photograph of Rita Hayworth mean anything to you?”

  “The one the burglar left behind? Not really. But if you’re gonna break in, why not take that too? Weird.” There was a loud noise on his end of the phone, as if Hansen had sprung up from his chair. “Oh crap, I’m late! I gotta go to the Hill. Later, Lacey.”

  Mac strolled past her desk, one hand holding a cup of coffee, the other balancing a piece of Felicity’s popular cherry Danish. A copy of today’s Eye Street Observer was tucked under his arm.

  “Smithsonian, come talk with me.” Mac gestured to follow him to his office.

  At this rate, she’d never finish listening to the tape, let alone write a story. Lacey entered Mac’s palace of newsprint, papers perched precariously on every surface. She noticed a wood-framed picture on the credenza behind him. It was one of those department store specials, a package deal, a few eight-by-tens and sheets of wallet-sized pictures of the entire family in several poses. The package deal
price didn’t really matter. The content was priceless.

  It was a bright color photograph of Mac’s recently expanded family. It didn’t seem possible to Lacey, but Mac had obviously agreed to sit for a photo session with Kim, Jasmine, and Lily Rose. They were all grinning like mad. Almost thirteen-year-old Jasmine wore a blue turtleneck sweater and her little sister, ten-year-old Lily Rose, was in a matching pink one. Their lustrous black curls were carefully arranged over their shoulders. Almond-shaped eyes and dusky skin glowed in the photograph. There was no trace of the sad wariness Lacey had seen in the children’s eyes when she first met them.

  Lacey sat down in one of two chairs, after removing a stack of file folders from the seat. She sighed.

  “It’s not that bad,” he said.

  “I’m just weary. What’s up, Mac?”

  He pressed his fingers together. His eyebrows leaned in toward each other. Lacey knew that look. It was his Wise Leader of the Newsroom Tribe look, his I Have Been to the Mountaintop look. Lord, she thought, he probably wants me to do some sort of special report on top of all my regular work. She could hardly wait. What is it this time?

  “I was pondering what you were doing on a Saturday morning. At an office building in Falls Church. Where Cecily Ashton’s body was found.”

  There was no reason for Mac to know about her personal business, not on weekends. Weekends were hers. Damn it, why did Cecily Ashton have to die while I was there? Why did she have to die at all? Lacey said nothing.

  “Across the street from the Falls Church Police Department, come to find out,” he continued. “Do you really want to be a private investigator?”

  “Who told you that?” She sat up in her chair, indignant.

  Mac managed to looked both smug and concerned at the same time. “Trujillo made some calls.”

  “He’s such a jerk. He is such a No Girls Allowed in Our Boys’ Club kind of—boy.” Lacey shifted in her seat and narrowed her eyes.