Raiders of the Lost Corset (16 page)

“And I helped,” Brooke pleaded.

Judging from her aching muscles and sore back, Lacey figured they dragged her all the way.

“I suppose you had a good look around for this nonexistent treasure before you gallantly decided to rescue me?”

“It’s what I came for, isn’t it? Anyway, it didn’t take long to see it was just a wretched hole. Nothing valuable there. You were on the floor, half in and half out of that back room. You’ve looked better, Smithsonian.”

“You banged my head on the steps, didn’t you?” Lacey felt the back of her head gingerly and pulled cobwebs out of her hair.

“Of course not!” Brooke looked hurt. “Well, I didn’t mean to.”

“Nothing in the cellar but an empty box. So there is no Fabergé egg?” Griffin glared at her.

“Who knows? I never said there was, you idiot. Why don’t you ask your pal Kepelov,” Lacey growled at him. “You jewel thieves all seem to know each other.”

The snarl of an approaching motor scooter made them all turn.

Jean-Claude Rousseau came into view from around a bend in the narrow road. He roared past them and lurched to a stop at his farmhouse door. It was suddenly quiet. They watched Jean-Claude set his motorbike against the wall of the house and turn to them with a scowl on his face and a sack of groceries in his hands.

“What is all this? What has happened here? You took a coal bath in my cellar?”

“New French beauty treatment.” Lacey tried to wipe off her clothes.

“What did you find?” he asked. “And who is this, another American?”

“He’s English. I found nothing,” Lacey said. She was longing to sit down. She settled for leaning against the wall of the farmhouse. “Just a dirty empty room, and an empty box. And a dead dog.”

“Dead dog?” Brooke said. “I didn’t see a dead dog.”

“Very dead. Been down there a long time,” Lacey said.

Jean-Claude set the groceries down. “Dog? What dog?” He seemed about to shake Lacey, but he looked at her filthy clothes and reconsidered. “What kind of dog?”

“I don’t know. It’s mostly bones, but I think it was a dog.”

Surely he must have known
, she thought. She had assumed he must have put the dog’s body down there himself, in lieu of a burial.

Jean-Claude charged through the open cellar door and down the steps. Lacey followed him at a discreet distance, only to hear an anguished cry. The Frenchman had fallen to his knees in the coal dust.

“Pepe!
Mon petit chien!
” Jean-Claude clutched the pile of bones and sobbed. “Pepe, Pepe, Pepe.” Until that moment, Lacey wouldn’t have imagined that Jean-Claude Rousseau had any deep emotions. She realized she was wrong. She tiptoed back up the stairs. Brooke was waiting alone, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Lacey looked around for Griffin.

“Your big brave jewel thief heard the scream and took off.”

Brooke pointed to a car disappearing down the road. “What about the bones?”

“It’s his dog. Pepe. Walled up down there for years, I guess.”

Feeling weak, Lacey sat down on a small bench by the door.

“Maybe I could have been a little more subtle about the dead dog.”

“How could you know it was his dog? Don’t beat yourself up.”

Lacey felt irrationally sad about the dog. She didn’t want to think about the possibility of it starving to death in that filthy black little room. She and Brooke sat in silence. Lacey felt a little foolish, waiting for this rude, unfriendly man to finish mourning for his long-dead dog.

After some time, Jean-Claude reappeared at the cellar door. He cradled a small bundle wrapped in a towel. From his hand dangled the remains of a tattered leather dog collar with a metal tag.

“Pepe,” he said. He had been weeping. “You see, I never know what happen to him. He disappear when I was about fifteen. I think he must run away, you know, but no, he never ran away, not Pepe. It is funny, eh? Funny how much you miss a little dog like that.
Mon
Pepe.
Pauvre petit chien.
”

“How long ago was that?” Lacey asked.

He sighed. “Oh, a long time. More than thirty years. In the summer, when the strawberries were fresh. Whoever nailed the door shut, my grandfather maybe, the deaf old fool, I think he left
mon
Pepe inside. Maybe he was hiding. Playing hide and seek with me.”

“You never heard him barking?” Lacey asked him gently.

“He had a very soft bark,” Jean-Claude said. His eyes teared up again. His hand closed over the dog tag. “Such a good little dog.
Pardonnez-moi.
We will talk later. I am sorry, mademoiselle, but I have to go now and bury my dog.”

Chapter 15

Who or what the hell was “
Drosmis Berzins
”?

Lacey studied the torn slip of paper she had crammed into her jeans, which now lay in a heap on the floor of the hotel where they were staying a few miles from Jean-Claude Rousseau’s farmhouse, near the causeway to Mont-Saint-Michel.

At least she thought the signature said “Drosmis Berzins.” The note wasn’t in English or French. But it was the only thing of interest she had found in the coal room — other than Jean-Claude’s little dog — so she was holding on to it. After eradicating the cobwebs and coal dust, all she really wanted to do was to crawl into bed with the covers pulled up over her head, but duty called. She had made dinner plans with Brooke and Jean-Claude. He was still distraught over the discovery of Pepe’s bones, but not so upset that he would pass up dinner at one of Mont-Saint-Michel’s chic restaurants at the expense of
The Eye Street Observer.
She stuck the note in her passport case and took it with her into the bathroom, which she locked while she took a shower.

November and the disappointing day called for a somber palette, one with autumnal overtones. Lacey had brought a deceptively plain burgundy wool knit dress that slipped over her curves in a crimson wave with a skirt that flirted slightly below her knees. Simple elegant sleeves ended in cuffs that buttoned. Facing herself in the mirror, she had to admit she looked good. The dress was made from one of Aunt Mimi’s patterns dating from the late 1930s and it made her feel sophisticated. The color made her skin glow. She complemented it with the diamond earrings that Vic had given her.

She wrapped a heavy black shawl embroidered with red and pink flowers around her shoulders and hoped it would be warm enough for the walk across the causeway to the Mont. In the hotel lobby she met Brooke, who was bundled up in her Burberry trench coat.

“Do you think Griffin will be back?” Brooke asked.

“I don’t know, but I hope we’ve seen the last of him. If he really believes it’s a Fabergé egg and not a corset, and it’s obvious we don’t have it, maybe we’ll be rid of him.”

“Lacey, what if it isn’t a corset?” Brooke opened the front door, and they stepped into the beautiful soft twilight.

“I don’t know. Let’s look at it this way, I’m in this for a corset.

If it doesn’t exist, I may have to go buy a damn corset in Paris. And wear it to flirt with some Parisian men.”

They came around a curve in the road. The sudden breathtaking sight of the Abbey on the rock rising out of the sea in the misty dusk mesmerized them and they fell silent. Mont-Saint-Michel rose up before them beyond the sandy bay. They walked across the causeway to the little village on the rock, listening to the wind sigh and the gulls cry. Beyond the causeway and the town gates and the clumps of slow-moving tourists taking pictures, they found the restaurant Jean-Claude had recommended, tucked into a corner off the winding
Rue Principale.

Inside, the whole restaurant was suffused with a golden glow from candles, supplementing the lamplight, which created a comfortable and timeless ambience, as if they were dining in the pre-vious century. They found Jean-Claude Rousseau waiting for them with a glass of wine already in his hand.

“The wine is excellent. I put it on
l’addition
,” he announced as he greeted them both with a kiss on each cheek. Lacey caught Jean-Claude’s appreciative glance. “A beautiful dress, Mademoiselle Smithsonian.
Très belle.
Did you wear it just for me?” He turned approvingly toward Brooke, sleek in her austere black suit beneath her trench coat. “Ah,
oui,
the
très chic avocat. Très elegant,
Mademoiselle Barton.”

Lacey gazed around the dining room, holding her breath. She saw neither the omnipresent Griffin nor anyone who might be the mysterious Kepelov. She exhaled in relief. She did catch several men looking at her in frank appraisal, a dead giveaway that this wasn’t Washington, D.C. Everywhere people were doing the French double-cheek kiss, another clue. The maître d’ led them to their table, which looked out across the sands of the bay toward the causeway they had just crossed over. Lacey was briefly riveted by the view, then the maître d’ pulled out her chair for her and then Brooke’s, as Jean-Claude shambled into his chair between them.

“I’m so sorry about your dog,” Lacey said to Jean-Claude.

He grunted and made a dismissive gesture, clearly trying to be stoic and unemotional. “This is the last time I let Americans go into my cellar,” he said with a little smile.

“Very wise.”
Afraid of what else you might find buried there?

Lacey wondered. An efficient waiter wearing a black vest and a long white apron appeared and inquired in good English about their wine choices.

“Do you make a habit of letting Americans into your cellar?”

Brooke asked. She ordered a Chardonnay that made the waiter frown. Lacey asked the waiter to make a suggestion, which prompted a much happier response.

“No, no, never, but that is beside of the point,” Jean-Claude said to Brooke. He had no hesitation in ordering an expensive vintage for himself. He obviously thought all Americans had money to burn. Fortunately, Lacey thought, in Brooke’s case this was true, but it was
The Eye
that would pick up this dinner tab.

While they looked over the menu, heavy on
poisson
and
fruits
de mer
and large numbers next to euro symbols, Brooke and Lacey debated reporting the attack on her to the local police.

Lacey opposed it and Jean-Claude agreed with her vigorously.

This wasn’t Paris, he said, with its sophisticated police depart-ment, and even there, Lacey would be a foreigner, a headache from outside. Lacey pointed out that she wasn’t popular with the cops in D.C., and some of them even spoke English. She very much doubted she would find her popularity improved with their French counterparts.

“Then what about alerting the American Embassy?” Brooke had friends there.

“And turn it into an international incident?”

“It already is an international incident,” Brooke protested.

“Two Americans looking for a Romanov artifact, a Russian spy, a British jewel thief, and a violent incident on French soil. And a dead dog with a Spanish name,” she added under her breath.

“It sounds even worse when you put it that way,” Lacey said.

Besides, if Brooke brought in the police or the embassy, it would get back to the newspaper and her editor Mac, Mac with his “I told you so’s” and his spiking blood pressure, which he blamed on her.

Not to mention the specter of headlines on that accursed DeadFed dot com, which would put the entire World Wide Web on notice that a hunt for a legendary Romanov corset was underway, inviting all kinds of murderous nuts to seek out Lacey Smithsonian for details.

“No more talk of police,” Jean-Claude said. “I am trying to have a civilized dinner and you mademoiselles are ruining it. The gendarmes are the enemy of fine cuisine.” He picked up his menu and studied it intently.

“There’s always Damon’s SWAT team,” Brooke suggested, taking a piece of bread.

“Don’t even begin to go there,” Lacey whispered. The waiter arrived with their bottle and she gratefully accepted a glass of wine.

“May we stop mentioning the police,
s’il vous plaît
?” Jean-Claude set his menu down and used his wineglass for punctuation.

“It affects my digestion.” The waiter inquired about their choice of appetizers and Jean-Claude ordered for them all with great gusto.

“See?” Lacey said. “It affects Jean-Claude’s digestion.”

Brooke tossed her braid. “We’ll talk later.”

After their excellent dinner, Lacey waited until the dining room had emptied a little. Once she was sure no other patrons were watching them suspiciously, she extracted the small torn piece of paper from her passport case and handed it to Jean-Claude. “This was in the box in the coal room. Can you read it for me?”

He set his wineglass down and took the scrap of paper. “It is torn.”

“That’s the way I found it. It’s all I found in the cellar. Except for — Well, you know.”

He pulled a pair of reading glasses out of the pocket of his well-tailored but rather worn navy blazer and perched them on his nose.

He studied the paper for a moment.

“But this is not in French. This is written in Latvian.”

“Can you read it?” Brooke asked. “Your grandparents were Latvian, weren’t they?”

“
Oui,
they make us all learn
le Letton,
the Latvian, but it is a very long time. My crazy old cousin Magda, she loved it, she wanted always to speak the Latvian with me. It was very annoying.” He waved a hand. “Give me a moment.” He cleared his throat, then read halt-ingly. “ ‘Old friend, old enemy, you think you could hide this from me? Your turn. Seek, Juris, and you shall find. Genesis 3:19, Drosmis Berzins.’ There is also an address on the Rue Dauphine,” Jean-Claude said. “Paris, you know, the Rive Gauche. A line under the word ‘Rue.’ As for the Genesis —” He shrugged.

“Genesis. In the Bible,” Lacey said. “I don’t know that verse offhand.”

“Ah. This explains why I do not know it,” he laughed, lifting his wineglass in salute.

“Is that all?” Lacey pulled her little Moleskine notebook out of her purse and wrote down his translation and the address. “Torn in half. I wonder if the rest of it said anything.”

“Who knows?” Jean-Claude said, pointing out the obvious.

“We do not have the rest.”