Raiders of the Lost Corset (13 page)

“I can’t be responsible for what he might actually think,”

Brooke said. “This was rather a sudden decision, you know, you running off to Paris just to get over a man. It’s a stretch.”

“I still can’t believe you told Damon that I was heartbroken over Vic.”

“Oh, he does believe that part. I had to make it good enough to convince him.”

“But I’m not heartbroken. Exactly. I’m feeling more — liberated. That’s it. Liberated.”

“Whatever. Do you think there’s any chance we’re being followed?” Brooke looked furtively around over her dark glasses.

“Knock it off, spy girl. I want to get through security without a strip search.” Brooke was unloading her laptop and related electronics to pile them on the conveyor belt. Lacey had her ticket and passport ready and she removed her boots to have them irradiated by the X-ray machine, while the surly TSA screeners were no doubt being irradiated in the process. She hated this part of airline travel. She consoled herself that beyond this point their fellow travelers were unlikely to be armed with so much as a sharp pair of tweezers, though she was less confident the TSA could keep something like a rocket launcher off the plane.

Brooke and Lacey both wore black slacks and sweaters.

Brooke, because black made her feel like a secret agent, and Lacey, because they were flattering and comfortable. At least half of their fellow passengers were dressed similarly, or else in the bland beige and gray D.C. uniform. Brooke carried her Burberry trench coat and tote bag with all her electronic toys. Lacey carried a smaller tote bag and a dark red leather jacket, purchased under duress on a recent shopping trip with Stella. Its sleek lines emphasized her small waist and the buttery smooth leather was pure lux-ury. The jacket was beautiful, but way too expensive. Lacey had decided she should never go shopping with Stella again. She had no idea how many times she’d promised herself that in the last few months following the baby-blue custom-made corset episode.

Ahead of Lacey in the security line, a large man stood out in the crowd, wearing a straw cowboy hat jammed down on his head and a turquoise-and-pink Hawaiian shirt, his fleece-lined jean jacket folded atop his briefcase, which bore a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

bumper sticker. Lacey mentally dubbed him “Tex.” With his well-muscled rodeo cowboy body and his handlebar mustache, Tex looked like he broke broncos. Except for the shirt; the shirt didn’t go with the rest of the picture. She’d never seen a cowboy in a Hawaiian shirt.
Maybe a cowboy on vacation?
Lacey decided Tex, with his showy handlebar mustache, was just too flashy and obvious. He didn’t even try to blend in; bad form for a spy or a jewel thief.
Probably a Washington lobbyist for Texas cattlemen
, Lacey concluded,
off on a taxpayer-supported spree in Paris.

Retrieving her bag and boots from the conveyor belt, Lacey grabbed Brooke and they finally made it to their gate. Brooke confided that Dulles was positively the most irritating airport on earth.

They took their seats at the gate with a view of the ugly Dulles tar-mac and waited.

A large blond woman sat down next to them. Brooke eyed her warily. The woman’s florid complexion clashed with her brassy hair in a puffy suburban mom style. Lacey named her “Madge.”

She was dressed in jeans and white sneakers and a blue-and-white striped top, eschewing the conventional wisdom about weight and horizontal stripes not being a good mix. She pulled out a
National
Enquirer
and started reading.
Definitely not a spy,
Lacey thought.

Several groggy barely-twenty-somethings with greasy black hair cut into outdated shags with a punky edge stood around complaining.

They looked too young to be flying to Europe on their own. Lacey called them “Winken, Blinken, and Nod.” But they swore with real bravado, creating their own foul-mouthed protective shield. Other travelers kept their distance. Probably not spies; probably never even heard of Fabergé eggs, Lacey mused.
They’d think it was the breakfast special: You want those eggs scrambled, fried, or Fabergé?

Lacey told herself to stop this nonsense. Simply sharing Brooke’s air-space, she decided, could really ratchet up the paranoia.

As they boarded, her attention was caught by a group of inter-changeable middle-aged businessmen sauntering on to first class.

These forgettable guys in their gray suits and white shirts were by far the most likely candidates to be secret agents, she thought, but they seemed to be together and they didn’t even toss a glance her way.
But then, would a real spy wink and wave at his target?
She sighed. Rounding off the group of passengers were several older women and men who looked like ordinary, everyday grade-A American tourists with their eye-popping neon Day-Glo running suits and gaudy tote bags. They were complaining loudly about the exchange rate of the euro.
If these people are spies,
Lacey thought,
my mother is a spy.

Brooke darted suspicious glances at her fellow passengers, then she opened her laptop and settled down to a flurry of e-mailing until takeoff. Lacey reassured herself that Nigel Griffin wasn’t on the plane. And although she had no idea what Kepelov might look like, she didn’t have a good candidate for an ex-KGB agent on board.

Once the flight got underway, they each settled in for the seven-hour-plus journey across the Atlantic. Brooke devoured an autobi-ography by a former master of disguise for the CIA. Lacey listened to her French language instructional CDs until she fell asleep during the lesson on how to order a meal in a French brasserie. She dreamed she was in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and she was ordering the Fabergé eggs for breakfast, pleased that this would solve the whole mystery. They arrived at her table looking like hard-boiled eggs wearing little jeweled corsets, and then the orchestra began to play and the eggs all danced in a chorus line.

When she woke up her back was stiff from the cramped airplane seat, and they were still hours away from Paris.

*
* *

The green-and-white-shuttered Hotel Mouton Vert was located in a quiet neighborhood in Montparnasse in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris. It was a quaint little two-star hotel.

Lacey thought it was adorable. Brooke sniffed. Two-star accommodations were beneath her status as a Washington lawyer, but she was willing to camp out there and rough it for the sake of the mission. She and Lacey had rooms across the hall from each other on the fifth floor, accessed by a narrow winding staircase or a minuscule elevator that barely held two people and their suitcases.

It was already early evening in Paris. They planned to settle into the hotel for the first night and sleep through their jet lag and stiff muscles before picking up the rental car the next day. Although Lacey was willing to take the bus to Mont-Saint-Michel, as Magda had planned to do, Brooke insisted on the car. She pointed out that the farmhouse they were looking for was unlikely to have a bus stop nearby. Lacey gave mass transit one last push as they rode up in the dark, creaky elevator.

“Wouldn’t the bus be easier? And safer? Driving here is suicidal.” They were to pick up the car at the rental office near the Arc de Triomphe, and Lacey had seen pictures of the traffic there. It looked completely insane.

“Do you know how many hours the bus takes to get to Mont-Saint-Michel? We’d be sitting ducks. And Paris traffic is really no worse than Washington. I’ve driven here before.”

“But won’t we be sitting ducks in a car?”

“Ha! Not the way I drive. I drive like a Frenchman. I take no prisoners. Off with their heads!”

“I’m keeping my eyes closed.”

“You’ll see. We’ll leave spies and jewel thieves and government agents in our dust.”

“You love making this stuff up, don’t you, Brooke? Helps the day go by in your gray-flannel offices, is that it? Thinking you’re at the mercy of some mad conspiracy? Not me. I like to think that I’m safe. That I live in a benevolent universe.” She leaned against the elevator wall.

“But we’re not safe. We don’t know how many people are involved in Magda Rousseau’s murder. We don’t know if they know what we know. Or more. They could be all around us.”

“Magda was not a foreign agent. She was a seamstress. Last month you were convinced a supermodel was killed by the ‘Government Repossessors.’ Logo the Grim Reaper, code name GR, government assassins on the prowl to repossess rogue agents and bionic women gone bad.”

“Just because Damon hasn’t proven it yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t so.”

“You know not every single word on DeadFed is true,” Lacey insisted. “Don’t you?”

Slamming Damon’s pet Conspiracy Clearinghouse came dan-

gerously close to fighting words, but Brooke took it in stride.

“We’re going after the prize, Lacey. Imagine the headlines when we find the truth. MYSTERY HIDDEN FOR CENTURY UNCOVERED IN BLOODY CORSET OF ROMANOVS.”

“I’m imagining the headline in
The Eye Street Observer.
SMITHSONIAN FALLS ON FACE. AGAIN.”

The elevator door opened and they got out, bumping their suitcases together. A middle-aged woman burdened with a heavy-looking bag was trudging slowly toward them down the narrow hall. They made room for her and Brooke eyed the woman. As the older woman boarded the elevator and the doors closed behind her, Lacey whispered, “Don’t worry, I’m sure spies only stay at three-star hotels or higher. They have a union.”

Brooke rolled her eyes. She opened the door to her room and they both peered inside. “Lacey, my closet at home is bigger than this. So you’re probably right. No one could hide in here. I think we’re safe for now.” Brooke opened the closet wide and checked under the bed.

“I’ll see you at breakfast, then,” Lacey said.

“No, I preordered
petit déjeuner
delivered to my room. What the heck — it’s included in the price. Must account for the second star.
Bonne nuit.
” Brooke smiled and shut the door, and Lacey heard the locks click into place.

She opened the door to her own room and clicked on the light.

The room, in shades of rose and burgundy, was adorable, though also quite small, with just enough space to walk around the bed. It had two great features, a bathroom with a decent-sized tub and shower, and tall windows with a southern exposure, letting her gaze down on the Montparnasse street scene below or into the quaint apartments across the road. She flung open the windows and leaned out.

“My God, there are no screens!” she said aloud, shocked that the de rigueur American safety features she expected were missing. A small ledge ran outside, but it would never break a fall to the street below. She had visions of French children hurling themselves out of open hotel windows. More alarmingly, she wondered if anyone could crawl in. She calmed those thoughts with a silent command to appreciate her view of Paris. Paris! She had finally made it.

The street was a charming scene from a foreign movie as it curved gently through a neighborhood of five- and six-storied buildings. They were painted white with soft pastel accent colors and featured shallow-pitched roofs and small gardens. Tiny French cars lined the sidewalk, parked bumper to bumper. The air was crisp with a hint of bread baking and garlic permeating the air from a nearby café.

Lacey backed into the room and flopped onto the double bed, which faced a pretty wood armoire, its mirrored doors hiding a television set. She should be exhilarated, she thought, but she felt slightly deflated. Maybe it was the jet lag. Or the anticlimax. “Here it is, Lacey,” she said aloud. “Travel, adventure, Paris, romance. Well, maybe not romance.”

The curtains fluttered slightly and the bathroom light flicked on and off. It figured she would get a room with electrical problems.

But after that endless plane flight, at least she could look forward to sleeping in a bed.
A bed in Paris.

The next morning Brooke followed the little woman who delivered the coffee and croissants right into Lacey’s room, carrying her own breakfast tray. She set it down, helped herself to coffee, and poured a cup for Lacey, who slipped on a robe.

“Morning, sunshine. I forgot to ask. What do I wear today? And pack for tomorrow?”

“Just because I write a fashion column, Brooke, it doesn’t mean I am a fashion expert,” Lacey said, picking up the coffee and appreciating the rich aroma. “Haven’t you learned by now that I make it all up?”

“But you do it so well.” Brooke winked.

Lacey groaned. “We’re going to be in a coal room — that is, a room in which coal was stored for a furnace or a stove. It may or may not still have coal in it. And we may or may not find this coal room. For that matter, it may or may not still even exist.”

“Right. Sounds dirty. What are you wearing?”

“Jeans, black knit top, sneakers.” Lacey had also stocked her purse with a reporter’s absolute essentials: pen, notebook, flashlight, camera, plus one of Brooke’s international cell phones. She hoped that would be enough. “I don’t think you’ll need the bulletproof Kevlar vest.”

Brooke sighed. “Good. I hate wearing Kevlar; hides a girl’s figure.”

Brooke had promised to drive. And she had happily covered the rental car costs. But Lacey was unprepared for the transformation.

Once she was behind the wheel, Brooke turned into a road-enraged Parisian, honking the horn to a musical beat and using rude French finger language like a native. It was true that everyone else on the rain-slick streets around the Arc de Triomphe seemed to be driving exactly the same way, but Lacey was terrified.

“You’ll get us both killed,” Lacey complained. “Or guillotined.”

“
Mais non
, Lacey. Hold on for dear life,” Brooke yelled and floored it, nosing their little rented Citroën into a millimeter of space between a tiny Renault and an even smaller Peugeot.

It was better once they were on the autoroute beyond the Périphérique, which circled Paris much as the Beltway circled Washington, D.C. Once Lacey was sure they had survived the trip across Paris and she was safe, as the lovely green countryside of Normandy passed by her window with Brooke at the wheel, she finally relaxed. And she had other things to think about. She wondered if Magda’s cousin would actually allow them into the farmhouse. Magda had overruled Lacey’s suggestion to call or write ahead. Magda didn’t want anyone to have time to prepare for their arrival, perhaps by poking into long-sealed coal rooms.