Grave Apparel (27 page)

Vic
and
Lacey
picked
up their
tickets
and
wandered
through
the
exhibition
hall
outside
the
theatre.
Their
fellow
post
Elizabethans
were
gathered
there
for
a
glass
of
wine
before
the
event.
The hall was long and formal, with high ceilings
and
dark
woodpaneled
walls,
tapestrycovered
armchairs, and
ex
hibits of
texts
from the
Shakespearean
research collection and historical vignettes of
famous
Elizabethans.

“Now
this is what a library should look
like,”
Lacey
said.

“Like
Shakespeare’s
own
branch
library.
No bookmobiles for Our
Will.”

“Exactly! I
love
it.”
She feasted her
eyes
on the sumptuous decor of the hall. It
was
her
first
visit to the
Folger
and
Lacey
was
looking
forward
to an
evening
where she could indulge in a little style
surveillance
out of her normal sphere. An
evening
where
she
wouldn’t
have
to
discuss
Sweatergate
or
the
incident
in the
alley
or the
relative
merits of Cassandra vs.
Felicity.

She surveyed the crowd for style notes. This crowd
con
trasted nicely with
The
Eye
’s
Christmas party
crowd
the night before. Men in distinguishedlooking beards and sweater
vests
with tweed
jackets,
women
in tasteful
woolens
and muted knits that could only
have
come from the Outer Hebrides.
They
wore
an academic patina of intelligence, composure, and comfort, at least on the outside.
This
is
what
my
university
faculty
lounge
should
have
looked like,
Lacey
thought.
And
never
did.

She
saw
a number of subdued holiday sweaters in tasteful
green
and
red,
but
no
gaudy
seasonal
prints
or
elf
ears
or
Santa
caps. No flashing Christmas lights or antlers playing “Jingle
Bells.”
A young blonde in a
fitted
black satin suit with a
bur
gundy
velvet
scarf at her throat
wore
the flashiest
outfit
on dis
play,
and
Lacey
assumed she
was
showing
off
for her date, a dull Hill
staffertype
in a black suit and tie.
Lacey
noticed a
family
of three
women
all wearing pale pink sweaters. Nothing here for a column, at least not yet. No crimes of
fashion
at the
Folger.
Hmmm,
she mused,
maybe
that
is
the
column?
shake
speare
library
declared
fashioncrimefree
zone.

Lacey
decided
she
fit
right
in
with
this
very
tweedily
elegant
crowd,
in
her
long
brown
wool
skirt
and
gold
blouse
with
a
wraparound
collar.
And
to
avoid
getting
a
chill
in
this
chilly
marble
building,
she
wore
a
shawl
in
shades
of
brown,
cream,
and
burgundy.
One
of
the
drawbacks
to
being
a
fashion
re
porter,
she
discovered,
was
that
people
expected
her
to
look
perpetually
sharp
and
pulled
together.
Lacey
had
always
loved
clothes and had a
certain talent with
them, but ever since
she’d
been
shanghaied
to
the
fashion
beat,
her
wardrobe
decisions
played
a
much
larger
role
in
her
daily
life.
There
were
days
she
thought
her
wardrobe
was
her
life.
Those
were
days
she
wished
she
could just stay in bed in her jammies and not have
to
make
one
more
fashion
decision.
But
tonight
everything
seemed
to
be
coming
together.
Especially
with
Vic.

She took a moment to admire
Vic
in his gray slacks, dark blue turtleneck, and blue
blazer.
He ran his
fingers
back through his
hair,
but
the dark curl that fell
over
his forehead
was
as re bellious as
ever.
She thought she might need to help him with that one little curl. She
would
run her
fingers
through it all night if she had to, and she
was
just reaching out to
begin
when
Vic
took her hand.

“Don’t look
now,”
he whispered in her
ear.
“Here
comes
trouble.”
Lacey
frowned,
but
Vic
was
smiling.
She
turned
around to witness his parents sail grandly through the doors of the
Folger.

Nadine
Donovan
was
a
very
wellpreserved
woman
in her early sixties. She spied her son and his date and descended on
them
with
open
arms
and
a
milewide
smile.
Looking
elegant
in
a silk tunic with a subtle blueandgreen pattern
over
black
vel
vet
slacks, Nadine
wasn’t
just a breath of fresh
air,
she was
more
like
a
gale
force
wind.
Nadine
originally
hailed
from
Nevada
and her
voice
still carried more than a trace of a broad
Western
accent.
Lacey,
coming
from
Colorado,
thought
she
talked
just
like regular
folks.

Growing
up on a ranch in the
West,
Nadine learned to rope and ride practically before she could
walk.
However,
Nadine
Donovan
could play the lady as easily as she could the
cowgirl.
She had acquired all the glossy patina of the wellbred, well groomed
Washington
woman.
Her soft
brown
hair
was
worn
in a standard
pageboy.
Her
makeup
was
flattering and natural. She
was
medium height with a slim
build
and her
wardrobe,
Lacey
had already
discovered,
ran to Brooks Brothers, St. John knits, and the occasional pair of perfectly
fitted
blue jeans. She
was
a snob about her jeans.
They
had to be authentic
Levi’s,
Lees, or
Wrangler,
not
designer.
“I
have
my
standards,”
Nadine said.

Vic’s
dad,
Danny
Donovan,
had a full head of white hair and the bearing of a general. He
was
a Southern gentleman with a military background, and he
owned
a
thriving
corporate secu
rity
and
private
investigation
company.
The
firm
also
had
con
tracts with Homeland
Security,
contracts that often took
Vic
to undisclosed locations to do classified things he couldn’t
tell
Lacey
about.
Danny
was
tall, as tall as
Vic,
Lacey
noticed, and his
eyes
were the same green as
Vic’s.
Despite his toughguy credentials,
Vic
had told
Lacey,
he had long ago surrendered all domestic
sovereignty
to his wife. He
couldn’t
control her and
didn’t
try.
Danny
let Nadine
take
center stage.
Vic
told
Lacey
she
would
just
take
it
anyway,
whether you let her or not.

“Your
dad and Nadine must
have
been quite a pair in their
day,”
Lacey
whispered.

“Don’t
kid
yourself.
They
still
are.
That’s
why
we
try
to
take
them in small doses. ”

“Lacey!
Vic!”
Nadine
gave
them
each
a
kiss
on
the
cheek.
“Isn’t
my son handsome?”

“Oh, is this your son, Nadine?”
Lacey
said. “This handsome guy I
picked
up on the street?”

“And
she’s
smart too,
Vic.”
She grinned and hugged
Lacey.
“Don’t
fuss
over
them,
Nadine,”
his dad said.

“Hello,
Mother.”
Vic
kissed her on the cheek, with a wink at
Lacey.

“I
saw
that.”
Nadine said.
“Now,
Lacey,
you’re
coming for Christmas
dinner.”
That
was
already settled. “So I’m not going to beat around the
bush
or drop subtle hints, your dessert at
Thanksgiving
was
out of this
world.
Would
you mind bringing
something
for
Christmas?
It’ll
be
easier
than
Thanksgiving,
there’ll
only be
twelve.”

Lacey
was
dumbstruck,
remembering
the
madness
that
overcame
her at
Thanksgiving.
She had insisted on bringing a homemade dessert to dinner at
Vic’s
parents’ house. She and
Vic
had spent untold hours in her
tiny
kitchen making the most preposterously
laborintensive
dessert, just as a trial run. And then
they’d
made it
again.
Only
better.
She
was
glad Damon
Newhouse
knew
nothing about this episode. He
would
find
in it proof that an alien force
was
in control of
Lacey’s
brain.