Veiled Revenge (15 page)

“That is true too.” Olga dried her hands on a paper towel. “Many jealous nieces, jealous sisters, many other enemies as well. We have a long history. Big family. Very popular.”

“Would someone kill for the shawl?”

“Why not? People kill for many reasons. Why not a valuable antique shawl?”

“
True
.
” A teenager in Washington had recently been killed for a pair of shoes, such things as Air Jordan 11 Concords. And people were regularly mugged for leather and down jackets.

“Gregor also told me Russians love telling tales because the winters are so long. It keeps them occupied on long frozen nights.”

“Also true.” Olga laughed for the first time. She had large sharp teeth that made her look rather wolfish. “Lacey Smithsonian, Gregor is my brother. I do not want him to die.”

“Who is after him? After us?”

“Sadly, I do not know, or I would not ask your help. In his life and work, Gregor has made enemies. We all have. Occupational hazard.”

“Occupational hazard?”

“Is nothing.” End of explanation.

“Why tell me?”

“Gregor says you are most resourceful in times of danger. And lucky. It is good to be around people with luck.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me yesterday, about to be run down by that speeding car. Nigel Griffin threw me into a boxwood bush and saved my life.”

“You see? You are lucky once again.”

“My boyfriend just hired a bodyguard to follow me around!”

“Excellent luck,” said Olga. “I saw the man. He is very big. You will be safe now. So talk to Gregor. I say, please. For his safety. For Marie and the future Kepelov babies.”

“How? What should I tell him?”
I really just don’t have enough to do this week
.

“I leave it up to you. May be difficult, more than just talk. May be dangerous. If necessary, I will help.”

“What are you really asking me to do?” Lacey felt herself shiver in apprehension.

“You will know when time comes.”

Olga marched away from the mirrors and out of the ladies’ room, leaving Lacey all alone.

And this little chat was going so well.

Chapter 17

A bodyguard: The perfect fashion accessory for spring!

Lacey’s arrival at
The Eye
with Turtledove in tow caused a stir. She knew it would. It was hard to hide a man of his large size and alluring looks in the city, let alone in a newsroom filled with a hundred pairs of prying eyes—and questions.

Turtledove parked himself by her desk in the infamous Death Chair, so named because Lacey’s predecessor, the previous fashion editor known as “Mariah the Pariah,” had died there. By the time anyone in the newsroom had noticed, Mariah was in full rigor mortis and had to be wheeled out in a sitting position. In the old-fashioned wooden Death Chair. Some anonymous artist at
The Eye
later decorated it with a smiling death’s head, partly in honor of Mariah’s death in that very chair and partly, Lacey suspected, in honor of
her
—and the dead bodies she’d tripped over on the fashion beat.

Lacey refused to use it, but it was always floating around the newsroom, the Flying Dutchman of desk chairs. No matter how many times she tried to get rid of that ancient wooden contraption on wheels, it always reappeared, usually somewhere in the vicinity of her desk. She suspected the sportswriters were responsible.

No death’s head could faze the unflappable Turtledove. He thumbed through a well-loved copy of
The Odyssey
while she tried to finish up some work. He told her Homer’s epic of resourceful Odysseus had inspired him as a child to fight monsters.

Lacey raised an eyebrow. She thought Odysseus was a dope, leaving his wife to go off to war, sleeping with Circe, recklessly taunting that Cyclops, and irritating every second or third Greek god on Mount Olympus. Just a few of his many other epically not-so-brilliant moves, but, she figured, to each his or her own.

Midway through the afternoon, Turtledove stretched and told Lacey, with a wink, that if she could stay out of trouble for five minutes he would take a break and go mix himself a protein drink in the pantry. He barely cleared the newsroom door before LaToya Crawford was looming over Lacey’s desk.

“Lacey! My goodness, girl! I couldn’t help but notice Mr. Tall, Dark, and Delicious hanging around your desk. Inquiring minds want to know: Who is that beautiful man?!” LaToya was
The
Eye
’s head Metro reporter, African-American, tall, pretty, and polished in her severe black suit with hot-pink blouse and purple sky-high platform heels. She wore her hair today in a glossy black bulletproof pageboy. Bright pink lipstick matched the blouse and highlighted her generous mouth.

“Covering City Hall today?” Lacey asked.

“Evading my question, but how’d you guess?”

“Guess? You’re wearing your City Hall suit,” Lacey said. “Though for budget meetings, you usually choose the chocolate brown pantsuit with the turquoise shell.”

“Huh? I do? I had no idea. Guess that city budget crap is so boring I need a big shot of chocolate. Anyway, enough about me. My question is, who is
he
? Tall, dark, and milk chocolate there is not your regular Joe, the divine Mr. Donovan. So what gives, girlfriend? New flame? And if he’s not
your
new flame, can I have his number?” LaToya loved to ask questions and sometimes even left a little room for the answers. She was bubbly and curious, always on the lookout for Mr. Tantalizing. “How available is he?”

Before Lacey could fumble for a noncommittal answer, Turtledove returned with his protein. He nodded to LaToya.

“Ma’am.”

“I am not a ma’am, I’m LaToya Crawford.” She held out her hand. “And you are?”

“As of today, I’m Lacey’s personal protection agent. Forrest Thunderbird. At your service.” He took her hand, and LaToya held his for a few beats past necessary.

“Forrest Thunderbird! Handsome name. Very, um, ecological. And you’re her bodyguard? Smithsonian, girl, what the heck you need a bodyguard for? Death threats on the dress beat? Never mind, I get it, if anybody hereabouts needs a bodyguard, girl, it’s you. Or maybe me. Definitely me. I could use one.” She turned back to Turtledove with her most dazzling smile. “Welcome to the neighborhood, Forrest. You need anything Lacey here can’t provide, you just call on me.” Turtledove nodded.

“Crawford, don’t you have a city council story to pound out?” Mac Jones approached, bushy eyebrows on the warpath, in his best snarling-editor-on-deadline mode.

“I’m on it.” LaToya winked at Turtledove. “Just waiting on a callback from the mayor’s office.”

“And you forwarded your calls to Smithsonian’s desk?”

“I’m all over it, Mac.” LaToya rolled her eyes at Lacey and silently mouthed,
Call me!
She put her thumb and little finger to her ear, mimicking the phone, winked at Turtledove again, spun on her purple high heels, and swiveled her hips provocatively as she strolled away.

“Smithsonian,” Mac barked, “if you’re finished doing whatever you’re doing, why don’t you go and do, uh, whatever you need to do. I got a paper to put out and you’re disturbing the peace. No offense, Forrest.”

“None taken.” Turtledove grinned and stood up.

“Thanks, Mac.” Lacey didn’t need any more encouragement to turn off her computer and grab her purse.

“The sooner you clear your schedule of all this wedding business, the sooner you can get back to
Terror at Timberline.
Tony and I are calling it
TOT
. For short.”

“Everyone loves a book with an acronym. We could do a sequel:
TOT2
.”

Mac clearly wasn’t sure if she was kidding. “I sent you a file with a whole roster of questions. Maybe you can work on it tonight? Fill in the answers. Easy.”

“Nothing here is ever easy, Mac.”

“Ain’t it the truth.” He leaned over Felicity’s desk and lifted the last biscotti before trudging away.

“Nice of him to let you leave early,” Turtledove remarked.

“Nothing to do with me and nothing to do with nice,” Lacey said. “You’re what’s known as an attractive nuisance.”

Turtledove graced her with his broad smile. “No kidding. That’s what Vic calls
you
.”

Chapter 18

Lacey had never seen Stella looking quite so lost and forlorn. The bride-
not
-to-be answered her door with red eyes and no makeup. Even her pink-tipped hair seemed to droop in defeat, lank and sad. Lacey could have made a joke about hair product: After all, Stella would have, if she’d been in Lacey’s shoes. But Lacey didn’t have the heart.

“Oh, Stel. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not getting married.” Stella threw her arms around her
un
–maid of honor and sobbed.

Miguel squeezed out of the apartment door past Stella and Lacey like a man escaping the flames of a fire. He shook his shoulders and straightened his black jacket. He looked up to see Turtledove standing impassively behind Lacey and he froze. Turtledove smiled.

“Miguel, what are you doing here?” Lacey said. “Oh. You remember our friend Turtledove?”

They shook hands politely, but Lacey thought she’d never seen Miguel so flustered. He smoothed his dark glossy hair back with both hands and fished his sunglasses out of his jacket pocket. He jerked his head urgently away from the door, signaling for Lacey to follow him out of earshot of Stella. He spoke under his breath.

“I’ve been consoling the bride! Who keeps insisting she can’t get married or she will die, or Nigel will die, or they’ll both die.” Miguel had clearly had quite enough of Stella’s histrionics. “And possibly
you
will die too. Maybe
everyone
will die. It’s the end of the world.”

“Miguel’s been an angel,” Stella said morosely, shuffling back into the darkened apartment. Turtledove stood watching.

“Do something,” Miguel whispered to Lacey. “I love her to death, but she’s in such a state I am ready to jump off the roof of this building onto Connecticut Avenue into the traffic. Frankly, doll, we don’t have time for this drama. In the event this wedding takes place as scheduled on Saturday—did I mention, in four days’ time—there is a cake to be baked. And it is going to be baked, wedding or not, because my dear friend, Bruce the baker boy
extraordinaire,
has already started mixing pounds and pounds of flour and sugar. There is no going back now. And what about the wedding dress? Last I heard, the bride still hates it. Over and above how we will all
die
if she and Nigel get married Saturday.”

Lacey looked back at Stella, who had gotten stuck in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, with neither the strength to go forward nor turn around. She wasn’t listening.

“About the cake, Miguel—” Lacey began.

“Cake happens. What I need to know is whether to have it delivered to the Arts Club, or to a homeless shelter that needs a four-foot-high, utterly fabulous, pink-and-white castle cake.”

“Maybe some kind of children’s facility,” Lacey suggested lamely.

“Whichever,” Miguel said. “I am going to make sure it is the best damn castle cake there ever was. I don’t know how to deal with Stella and the rest of the nightmare in there, but I do know how to ride herd on a baker.”

“And the dress?” Lacey asked.

He made a face. “For once, the dress is not my responsibility, Maid of Honor.”

“The dress doesn’t matter,” Stella yelled. “I’m not getting married. Besides, I hate the dress!”

A woman at the end of the hall poked her head out of her apartment and stared. Turtledove gently herded everyone into Stella’s apartment. But Miguel took his stand in the foyer, like a prisoner caught at the gate, risking the firing squad.

“You’re in charge now, Lacey. I’m cake-and-baker-bound.”

“All right, Miguel, relax,” Lacey said. “I’m your relief. Go play patty-cake, baker’s man.” Miguel kissed her cheek gratefully and bolted for the stairs, with one last admiring glance at Turtledove.

“Things will turn out. One way or another,” Turtledove said to Lacey, like a Zen master. After checking the hallway, the perimeter, and the stairwell, Turtledove was the last one in. He turned the three bolts and put the chain on Stella’s door.

Lacey groped her way through the gloom of Stella’s living room and opened the dark brown drapes left over from Stella’s Goth phase, letting the sunshine pour in through the tall windows facing Connecticut Avenue. The apartment was in an older building in the corridor of buildings that lined Connecticut above Dupont Circle, as it climbed the hill toward the National Zoo. Stella’s place had good bones, Lacey thought, but it was buried under too many layers of paint. Most of the furniture was secondhand and well-worn, except for the bright red leather sofa Stella and Nigel had bought together. Lacey cranked the window open, letting the sweet-scented April air into the stuffy room. Below the window, on the avenue, a single late magnolia was hanging on to its waxy pink petals, the picture of optimism.

“Air! That’s better.”

“Much better,” said Turtledove. Grabbing a chair, he posted himself by the window with a view of the door. “I’ll stay out of your way. Anything you need me to do, Lacey, say the word.”

Stella’s wedding gown hung from the center of the curtain rod, looking fluffy and ethereal, rather like an exotic window treatment in a designer show home. The perfumed breeze through the windows made it rustle and dance. Lacey stared at it, hands on her hips. Behind her, Stella choked on a sob.

“Be honest, Stella. Is there even the slightest chance you’ll be getting married to Nigel on Saturday?”

“Lacey, how can you even ask? How can I get married now?”

“Simple. One step after another, down the aisle, under the cherry blossoms,” Lacey said. “Marie says it will be a perfect day for a wedding.”

“I know. It’s what I wanted all my life. But, Lacey. No. I can’t.”

“You’re sure? Absolutely, positively sure?”

“Irretrievably sure!” Stella flung herself down on the red leather sofa in her best Camille pose, wrist pressed to her forehead, as if about to expire from sheer
malaise.
She moaned delicately. “Never say never, I guess. I mean, if there was even
remotely
the
slightest
chance that the Curse of the Killer Shawl might
possibly
pass us by . . .”

“There’s no curse.”

“I know what Marie said, but she didn’t sound totally and completely sure. And sometimes, Lacey, you just can’t outrun fate. The signs have been there all along.” She rubbed her barely healed leg. “My love is doomed.”

Stella’s mother, Retta, emerged from the kitchen, carrying a pot of hot herbal tea. It smelled awful.

“I hope you’re here to support my Stella in her hour of need,” Retta said sourly.

“Of course I am.” Lacey bristled. She told herself the edge in the woman’s voice didn’t
necessarily
mean she was perpetually angry at the world. Even if she sounded that way.

“She’s not getting married. Stella’s right—it’s a bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea.”

Lacey wondered whose side Retta was on. “Where’s Nigel? Surely he should be here right now.”

“I told him not to come,” Stella said. “If I see him, I know he’d make me change my mind. I can’t resist him, and I gotta be strong, for the both of us.”

“It’s for the best,” Retta declared. She set a cup down and poured the foul brew into it.

“Nigel’s not afraid,” Lacey ventured. “Is he?”

“Are you kidding me? He’d brave bullets for me.” Stella burst into fresh tears. “He keeps calling.”

“I turned off her phone, it just upsets her.” Retta set the wet teapot on a copy of
Modern
Bride
, spoiling the cover with a wet ring. “Besides, how could this possibly work? He’s English, from a totally different world. His father’s an ambassador, for crying out loud.”

“Retired ambassador,” Stella corrected.

“And Bugsy’s a Jersey girl. Like me. Salt of the earth. Oil and water. Blood is thicker than—”

Lacey didn’t often feel like springing to Nigel’s defense, but Retta’s Earth Mother routine was getting under her skin.

“Shouldn’t your fiancé be part of this conversation, Stella? Isn’t it Nigel’s life too that we’re talking about?” There was more sobbing from the red sofa. “What would make you change your mind?”

“If we could find out! Find out who or what’s trying to kill Nigel and me! And get him or it locked up, or something.”

“Before the wedding?”
And hey, what about whoever tried to kill me?
“That’s kind of a tall order, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t mean
you
should find out, Lace, but now that you mention it—”

Turtledove interrupted. “Lacey may have been a target too, Stella. That’s why I’m here. My job is to keep her safe, not to throw her in harm’s way.”

“Is this your boyfriend?” Retta indicated Turtledove.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Personal protection agent for Ms. Smithsonian.”

“What? You gotta have a bodyguard? Was this Vic’s idea?” Stella propped herself up on one elbow. “Lacey, I’m so sorry! Jeez, I keep forgetting you were there too.”

Maid of honor
,
Lacey thought.
All nursemaid, no honor.
“He’s keeping me safe from oncoming cars,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Retta said. “Not now.”

“Meaning what?” Turtledove stood up and towered over them, before Lacey could ask the same question.

Retta handed the mug of tea to Stella. “Meaning if my little Bugsy doesn’t marry this silly Brit, her spell of bad luck is broken. Frankly, this frilly wedding has been nothing but trouble since day one. Drink this, Bugsy, it will give you strength.”

“It tastes like moldy hay,” Stella said. “And don’t call me Bugsy.”

“No, it doesn’t. Add some honey.”

As if on cue, Stella’s cousin Rosalie emerged from the kitchen with a squeeze bear of honey and a plate of cookies. She’d obviously been listening to their conversation. And just as obviously, she had not gone to Stylettos to have her hair styled and straightened. It was as out of control as ever.

Passive aggression runs like a racehorse in this family
, Lacey thought.

“I got your honey right here,” Rosalie said, with the same cadence Lacey detected in Retta’s voice. She turned the honey bear upside down and squeezed its plastic belly.

Lacey tried to figure out what these women had in common.

Retta wore a filing-cabinet-gray caftan blouse over gray leggings. The gray on gray brought out the steel gray in her frizzy hair and aged her twenty years. Rosalie had on a two-sizes-too-big mustard-colored sweatshirt over saggy, faded jeans, managing to look like a wayward orphan. Her pale skin was ruddy and broken out, her hair tangled.
Did they own a comb between them?
They were a sight. With Stella down in the dumps, the three looked like the Weird Sisters in a modern-dress Jersey Girl version of “The Scottish Play.”

There was in fact a vague family resemblance among the three women, which Lacey now glimpsed for the first time. Perhaps because Stella was looking her very worst. On her worst day, she slightly resembled her mother and her cousin on their best. And this was definitely Stella’s worst. Some women could happily go all day without touching a comb or a mascara brush, but for Stella to face the world bed-headed and sans makeup? In a dingy brown T-shirt cut raggedly at the neckline and a pair of torn black leggings, an outfit that screamed I-don’t-care-I’m-wallowing-in-depression-don’t-bother-me? This indicated a mood so blue, so deep indigo, that Lacey knew she needed to take action.

“I thought you went back to New Jersey,” Lacey said to Rosalie.

“This is a family emergency, so I’m helping out Cousin Stel and Aunt Retta,” Rosalie said.

“And Mom just stopped by to give me a little gift.” Stella reached for a big flat box on the coffee table. She lifted something out of it and handed it to Lacey. “Be careful. There’s nails. Don’t prick a finger on it. You might go to sleep for a hundred years.”

Gingerly examining the thing, Lacey decided it
might
be a necklace, made out of rusted iron nails, fanning out in a prickly circle from a heavy iron chain. It looked like something the Inquisition might make a medieval witch wear to her execution.
Stylish
. Lacey tried to keep her eyebrows from hitting her hairline. This work of the jewelry-maker’s art was awful even by Retta Lake Sloan’s high standards of awfulness.

“Wow,” she said.

“I knew you’d appreciate it,” Retta said. “You being a writer and all. I collected these nails myself last year, just outside of Sedona, Arizona. Just for my little Bugsy. They got all that Sedona earth energy in them. And iron is like a major protection against bad luck, you know.”

A mother’s love is inscrutable. But does iron beat a Killer Shawl?

“What about tetanus?”

“No problem,” said the proud artist. “They’re treated. I cleaned them and polyurethaned them myself.”

“And I’ve had all my shots,” Stella said. “I knew Ma was coming.”

“Ha. That’s a joke,” Retta said, but Lacey thought
some
kind of medication was certainly called for. Clearly Retta thought Stella was pleased with her gift. And just as clearly, Stella thought her mother was nuts.

“She says I’m making the right decision.” Stella teared up again. “Not getting married, that is.”

“But you love Nigel,” Lacey said.

“Course I love him. I love him so much my guts hurt. That’s why I can’t marry him.”

“He loves you too.” Lacey surprised herself by standing up for Nigel Griffin, decidedly not her favorite person in the world. And yet he’d saved her life. It was confusing.
Something I’d rather not have hanging over my head the rest of my life.

“I don’t want him to die, Lace! You know better than anyone that bad luck’s been dogging us ever since we met. We went over a cliff, we nearly got killed, I broke my leg.”

“But that’s all healed now.”

“And then here comes the Limo of Death and some maniac tries to run us down. Before we even get married! You don’t have to be psychic to see this is some bad juju. And then there’s the shawl killing Leonardo.”

“The shawl did not kill Leo and Marie sees a happy life for you. Not only that, you will have a mother-in-law who adores you,” Lacey added. Retta made a sort of gurgling noise behind her, but said nothing.