Raiders of the Lost Corset (25 page)

“I’m a Southern boy, honey. New Orleans at Mardi Gras time is practically a required course. And I will have a girl there. If you and I go there together.” He propped himself up to look at her. He brushed the hair from her face.

“Drosmis Berzins died in Mississippi. Just up the river.” She kissed him. “I’ve never been to New Orleans.”

“It’s a great place to visit. Long as you’re not alone.”

“Better than Paris?” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Paris has proven to be far better than I ever could have hoped.”

He lay back and drew her down for another kiss. She lay on top of him and looked into his deep green eyes.

“Vic, will you take me to New Orleans?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” He kissed her behind her ear and followed it with kisses down her neck and a little farther. It made it hard for her to concentrate on travel plans.

“Next week, after we get back home?”

“Wild-goose chase? With you? Wouldn’t miss it.” He stroked her neck.

“You do think there’s something there.”

“No, I think you need to get the legend of the lost corset out of your system.”

“Think so? You got anything you need to get out of your system?” He laughed and kissed her. She returned his kisses and raised him, double or nothing.

Eventually, they slept a little. When Lacey woke up, the curtains were still, the last of the daylight was fading, and the sky was a deep azure. Vic had showered and dressed.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” He sat down on the bed and gently smoothed her face. “We have reservations for dinner. You getting up?”

“Who made reservations? Is it morning yet?” She stretched luxuriously.

“I did, for the four of us. And it’s dinner time. Well, dinner time in Paris.”

“The four — You mean Brooke and Damon too?” Lacey pulled the covers up and snuggled under them. “Call room service. I want to stay here forever.”

“There is no room service. You’ll get bored without me.” He pulled the covers down to reveal her face. “And hungry. You don’t want to miss the dynamic duo, do you?” He grinned his leprechaun smile. “Damon wants the whole story. Come on, open your eyes, Sleeping Beauty. The restaurant should amuse you.”

“Amuse me?”

He nodded. “It’s close by, and, rumor has it, was a haunt of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.”

“Oh, darling! So it’s a moveable feast?”

“If you get up and start moving, it is. By the way, dinner’s on me.”

“That could be very dangerous, Vic. I could get used to that I think.”

“That’s the idea.” He kissed her. “I want you to get used to me.”

Not such a bad idea.
She slowly rose to her knees on the bed and dropped the covers. She held out her arms to him and smiled.

“But I don’t know what to wear.”

“I think you look great just the way you are, sweetheart, but you’ll get cold. And everyone will be able to tell your temperature.” He kissed her again and let his fingers trail down her back, giving her fresh chills. He checked his watch. “We’re meeting them at the restaurant in thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes!” She jumped out of bed. “Are you crazy? I have to shower and dress!” She looked in the mirror. “And put on makeup. And do something with my hair.” Lacey ran into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Vic laughed and followed her. “Shall I wash your back?” He looked dangerously handsome, dressed or undressed, and more than half ready to jump back in the shower with her.

“Go away! Shut the door!” He backed out of the bathroom

laughing and let her shower by herself. It was her quickest shower on record. She returned to the room with a fluffy white bath towel wrapped around her.

“I like it. Let’s go! You’ll stop traffic on the boulevard in that outfit.” He turned back to the mirror and started putting a knot in his tie. The crisp white shirt and patterned blue tie made him look elegantly sexy, and she briefly wondered why she rarely paid attention to what most men wore. Probably because most men didn’t look like Vic.

She would have loved to stop and simply stare at him, at the wonder of having him there in her room. But she didn’t have time. She dashed to the tiny closet. “How fancy is this place we’re going to?”

“Not too fancy. It’s a place to see and be seen. You’ll think of something. After all, you’re the queen of the style page.”

She selected the burgundy dress that she’d worn in Mont-Saint-Michel. “I’m not the queen here in Paris, darling, but maybe this will do.” She was glad she had brought it with her.

He stopped tying his tie and turned to look at her. “That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me.”

“Said what? ‘This will do’?”

He put his arms around her. “ ‘Darling.’ I like the sound of it.”

She kissed him quickly and smiled up at him as she put on her diamond earrings, the ones he had given her, only a couple of months and a lifetime ago. She tried to concentrate on getting dressed. With Vic’s eyes on her it would be far too easy to get undressed and end up back in bed. But then they’d starve.

“ ‘Darling.’ Isn’t that a French word?” she said. “I’ve been taking lessons,
chéri.
”

Chapter 24

Dinner was lovely, until the shooting. But of course that didn’t happen until after dessert.

The restaurant that Vic had chosen, La Something or Other on the Boulevard du Montparnasse — Lacey missed the name in the excitement — was very ooh la la in that dazzling French art deco way, from the huge glass dome over the dining room to its tall painted pillars, their murals painted by artists like Chagall in the Twenties, Vic said, in exchange for drinks. Mosaic tiles covered the floor in intricate patterns. The aroma of fresh bread filled the air. After that amazing afternoon with Vic and a nap in his arms, it seemed to her like a dream, as if they had walked into a French movie set where Cary Grant was about to romance Audrey Hepburn over an elegant dinner.

Vic and Lacey arrived first and were ushered to their table by a very severe maître d’ who pulled out Lacey’s brown velvet chair with mathematical precision. He handed them menus and disappeared with a curt nod of his head. In an instant the busy man was back with their dining companions. “Isn’t this nice,” Brooke gushed as she was seated. “I read Josephine Baker used to hold court here.” She looked flushed and happy. Damon was glowing. Lacey didn’t have to ask how her friend had spent the afternoon, and she hoped Brooke would show the same restraint, despite her glow.
Come to think of it,
Lacey thought,
Vic and I are probably glowing too.

For dinner, Brooke had chosen a snug black sweater and skirt, and in honor of Damon’s arrival, she wore her thick blond hair down and tousled, a seductive right-out-of-the-bedroom look.

Damon matched her black-on-black look in his formal cyberpunk journalist mode, jet-black suit and charcoal silk turtleneck sweater, and his trademark tiny black-framed glasses tried vainly to add a mature air to his boyishly handsome face with its trim little black goatee. But to Lacey he still resembled a baby beatnik looking for the Lost Generation. The thin and pale Damon Newhouse was cute and au courant, but he was no match for Vic Donovan. Lacey found it very hard to stop staring at Vic. His midnight-blue be-spoke suit fit him like a glove and made her want to reach out and touch him. She bit her lip and kept her hands to herself.

Her own burgundy dress with its snugly fitted curves and flowing skirt netted admiring glances from men in the room, and Vic reached over and touched the diamond earrings. “Very pretty. I’m glad you still like them.”

“I like them even better now that you’re here to see them,”

Lacey smiled back.

“Lacey,” Damon said, “so good to see you in one piece.” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

One glance at Damon and she knew that Brooke had spilled the entire story. Lacey gave her friend a look.
Maybe she didn’t tell
him about the corset,
Lacey hoped.
The corset is the best part.

“How did it feel to be chloroformed and dumped on a dirt floor in a cellar full of spiders?” Damon continued. Vic looked on with bemused interest.

She hated those journalistic “how did it feel” questions. “How do you think it felt, Damon? If you want a firsthand example, I’m sure it could be arranged.”

“If I were you, Damon, I’d take her word for it,” Vic counseled.

“Lacey, chill! Please, just a question,” Damon said. “No need to go all radical on me.”

“Sounds like everyone’s hungry,” Vic said. “Why don’t we order before we bite each other’s heads off?” Everyone dutifully picked up their menus.

“I had to tell him, Lacey. About the
egg,
you know?” Brooke said, giving Lacey a look.

“Ah, yes, the Fabergé egg,” Damon said. “Do you happen to know which one of the missing imperial eggs it’s supposed to be? It doesn’t really matter—in the long run, any one of them would be worth millions. But it would help my story. Authenticating detail.”

“To help
your
story, Damon, I would never tell you. But off the record, I have no idea which egg it might be.” Lacey had seen pictures of the Fabergé eggs that had been auctioned off several years before. They were gorgeous and absurd objects, preposterously delicate yet intricately bejeweled. “Brooke told you we didn’t find it, right? We hit a dead end?”

“Yes,” he said soberly. “Of course. I was just asking. I thought perhaps you would have been curious enough to ask Magda Rousseau what she was sending you chasing after.”

Brooke touched Damon’s hand. “To be fair, Damon, it’s been a nerve-racking couple of days. I’m just glad we remember our own names.”

He looked at her fondly. “I’m just glad it wasn’t you in that cellar.”

While Brooke, Damon, and Lacey bantered, Vic consulted with the smartly dressed waiter, whose air of superiority went well with his starched white shirt, many-pocketed black vest, and long white apron. During a pause, Vic broke into the conversation. “I took the liberty of ordering appetizers and wine. Escargot and pâté. Is that all right?”

Lacey shot him a grateful look and squeezed his hand. “I have to freshen up. Brooke, are you coming?”

Damon looked over at her. “You look fine.” But Lacey was up already and Brooke was following. “It’s a girl thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is,” Lacey stage-whispered in his ear. “The secret world of women behind the pink doors of the ladies’ room. Don’t you wish you knew what it was all about, Damon? The clandestine rit-uals? The secret ceremonies? It’s a conspiracy.”

“We’ll be right back,” Brooke announced brightly. She kissed Damon on the head and whispered, “Don’t worry.”

Vic patted Damon on the back. “It’s a girl thing. Have some hot bread, Newhouse.”

As she and Brooke passed through the doors, Lacey thought,
Thank heavens for ladies’ rooms and their secrets.
Entire dark conspiracies of deep global import were conducted in ladies’ rooms every day.

“Can you believe our guys came all the way to Paris just to see us?” Brooke said, staring at herself dreamily in the mirror. She fingered her hair and sighed happily. “And how did
you
spend your afternoon, Lacey?” She winked.

“We’d both better plead the Fifth. And did you tell Damon the whole story?”

Brooke snapped to attention. “Lacey, I wouldn’t! I couldn’t. Attorney–client privilege. But I could tell him what’s been happen-ing here, because I didn’t say I wouldn’t, and besides, those other creepy characters were all talking about Fabergé eggs. You notice Damon didn’t say ‘Romanov corset,’ did he? And for all we know, it might really
be
a Fabergé egg. I figured I could tell him anything
they
said. And who knows what blabbermouths they might be?”

Lacey had to admit Brooke was right. What other people said was fair game. At the moment she didn’t care if the Fabergé egg story got out. In fact, it might take the heat off the corset story, at least until she had a chance to check out the Rue Dauphine in New Orleans. Assuming Mac would let her go. But she decided not to tell Brooke about the Louisiana connection yet. The French Quarter might be another dead end, and Damon with his keen ears and the fastest keyboard on the Internet was always listening in and getting the story wrong. He was sure to expand on the facts, blow them all out of proportion, and add equal parts nonsense. And Brooke looked so happy it seemed cruel to dangle another likely disappointment in front of her.

“You’re not mad, are you, Lacey? Damon is my soul mate.”

“But he’s so not your type: He’s not a gray-flannel trust-fund attorney.”

“That’s why I love him.”

Lacey drew a comb through her hair. “I understand how you feel, so I guess as long as nothing about the corset slips out, it’s okay. But for heaven’s sake, don’t make me sound so pathetic!

Knocked out cold in the coal room? Spiders and dirt? Yuck.”

Lacey washed her hands again to wipe away the feel of the cobwebs.

“You told Vic, didn’t you?” Brooke sniffed.

“Vic can keep his mouth shut. But Damon and you and I are going to have to come to an understanding about whose story this really is.”

“No problem. He adores you. You’re his hero!”

“Now that’s scary.” Lacey rolled her eyes and opened the ladies’ room door.

The pâté and escargot arrived just as they returned to the table.

Between bites, Lacey gazed around the room. Her attention was caught by a woman wearing a houndstooth suit that made Lacey’s eyes hurt. The suit had a peplum set off by a shocking-pink ribbon and a ruffled skirt. Apparently not content with this outrageous abuse of houndstooth, the woman wore a pair of matching houndstooth stilettos. Even Brooke and Vic looked over with amusement.

Lacey forced her attention back to the table as the remains of the appetizers were whisked off and replaced by salads and later by their entrées. Vic had the curried lamb, while she had the beef in a wine sauce. Brooke and Damon indulged in the salmon with some sort of cream sauce.

Finally Damon and Lacey hammered out an agreement. She would write her story about Magda and the spies who loved her, or at least coveted her alleged treasure, whatever it was. Newhouse would link Conspiracy Clearinghouse to her story and provide his own crackpot commentary, claiming freedom of the press. But he swore he wouldn’t step on her story or write anything on it at all until he returned to D.C.