Veiled Revenge (28 page)

Another vehicle pulled up outside.
Is that Vic? Or Turtledove? Or just a neighbor?
She heard a car door slam, and Natalija heard it too. Her head twitched toward it ever so slightly.

With a huge effort, Lacey swung the T-square like a baseball bat, making sure she followed through. One point of the heavy steel head hit Natalija square in the throat and her knife clattered to the floor. She staggered back from the blow, choking and gasping for air. She bent down to retrieve her blade, reached too far, and staggered.

Lacey scrambled around behind the wall-sized Peg-Board and pushed hard. The whole thing toppled, tumbled, and crashed, as Alma often threatened it would. Threads, scissors, ribbons, and more fell in a terrible clatter on top of Natalija, pinning her facedown beneath it. Lacey landed on top of it. Natalija screamed in fury. She struggled to get to her knees and buck the board off her, but Lacey rode the board, holding it down. She had trapped Natalija.

Her heart beating furiously, sweat streaming down her face, Lacey sat on the tilting and wiggling Peg-Board and tried to gather her wits. Everything was still for a moment. Then Natalija let loose a bloodthirsty scream.

“OFF! You are crushing me! Get off!”

“No.”

“I’ll die! You’re killing me.”

“Die then!” Lacey sat still, panting. Then slowly, unbelievably, the board beneath her began to move, like a snake trying to slither across the ground under a newspaper, carrying it along on its back. Natalija pushed up with all her might. The board bounced and threatened to throw Lacey off, but she held on tight. “You’re not dying. Now how can I ever trust you, Natalija? You always lie to me.”

“It’s what I do,” Natalija responded in grunts. She panted heavily and Lacey prayed the woman really was worn out this time. The board stilled, the panting and grunting continued, and Lacey held on. Natalija kicked the board with her heels in frustration. “How long are you going to crush me?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

Footsteps outside the door gave Lacey hope that this wild ride might soon be over.

“Lacey? Where are you?” It was Vic.

“In here.” The door opened and she lifted her head. She realized she wasn’t in the most flattering of positions, spread-eagled on the back of the big Peg-Board. “I can’t get up. I’m riding a tiger.”

Vic entered, pistol drawn. He was followed by Turtledove and two other guys, all with pistols drawn. They stared at the sight of Lacey on the bouncing board, like Aladdin sprawled on a bucking magic carpet.

“What the hell?”

“It’s a new carnival ride I invented. I call it Spy Surfing.”

“What’s under there?”

“
Who
. It’s who’s under there. And the answer is—”

“Get me out of here, she is killing me, she is a murderer!” Natalija screamed.

Vic signaled Turtledove to cover him as he reached for Lacey’s hand. “Natalija Krumina. We missed you at the rendezvous,” Vic said.

“She misdirected you,” Lacey said.

“We gathered that when she didn’t show up to meet Rene. And then I got your messages.”

“Point one way, go the other. Oldest trick in the world,” Natalija spat, her voice muffled by the Peg-Board and scraps of wedding dress. “Fools! Fools, fools, fools!”

“My God, Lacey, you’re bleeding,” Vic said.

She hadn’t realized how bad the knife slash on her arm looked. Blood was dripping from her arm. She had left a scarlet trail on the floor and the board on top of Natalija. Lacey was shaking as Vic pulled her up off the board. Her arms ached with tension and fatigue. She wanted to cry, but that wasn’t behavior befitting a member of the Fourth Estate. Vic picked up a scrap of the wedding dress to wrap around her arm.

“Oh, don’t use that, Vic. That was part of Stella’s wedding gown,” Lacey said.

The woman under the board started to laugh. “Not now. She’ll never wear that dress.”

With a final burst of strength, Natalija bucked the board off her back and staggered up, scrambling for the fallen knife, but Lacey kicked it out of her reach. Natalija grabbed one of the many pairs of scissors that lay scattered on the floor. She twisted around and was met with the business end of Turtledove’s Glock. Three more pistols were pointed in the same direction. She arched her upper body as if to lunge with her scissors, then she thought again and exhaled. Four men with guns against one exhausted woman with a pair of pinking shears. Her head rolled to one side. The fight went out of her.

“Why don’t you kill me?” she asked, her voice flat.

“That’s not how we roll,” Turtledove said. “But don’t expect any special treatment. Now shut up.”

Turtledove pulled the scissors from her limp hand. With the other guys covering him, Turtledove holstered his gun, effortlessly lifted Natalija off the floor, pulled her arms behind her gracefully and cuffed her. He shoved her face-first against the wall.

Lacey surveyed her own damage. She saw scrapes and cuts on her arms where the scissors and sewing tools had landed on her, and blood was seeping through the improvised wedding-dress bandage.

Natalija smiled and looked over her shoulder at Turtledove seductively. Her lips parted, her tongue flicked over her lips—she was about to say something.

Lacey watched, amazed.
Is she really going to try to sweet-talk Turtledove? This woman is relentless!
Then Natalija looked around at her captors and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. The fire went out of her eyes and she shut her mouth. Her head dropped in defeat.

Turtledove kept watch over Natalija while Vic called the police. Vic’s two security guys surveyed the studio and shook their heads in disbelief at the mess. Lacey looked around too and thought,
Something’s missing. What is it?
Her eyes opened wide.

“Alma! Oh, my God!” She’d almost forgotten. She waded through the remains of Stella’s wedding gown and the wreckage of Alma’s sewing studio and threw open the double closet doors, to find one furious and frightened seamstress on the floor, bound and gagged. Lacey loosened the gag while Vic cut the fabric ties that held her.

“Just what kind of maniacs do you people hang around with?!” Alma shouted.

Olga Kepelova arrived at the emergency room waiting area, grim-faced and dressed in black. Lacey decided she resembled an undertaker, or possibly a Russian angel of death.

“This is becoming bad habit,” Olga told Lacey calmly. “First, Gregor. Now you.”

“Sorry to trouble you.” Lacey wondered what on earth Kepelov’s sister was doing here. Her arm throbbed while she waited for a doctor to stitch it up. Apparently bleeding wasn’t the most impressive injury in the ER that day. Vic held her arm gently and kept pressure on her wound. She didn’t think it was that bad, but Vic had insisted on taking her to the hospital anyway.

Olga briefly inspected the arm. “I have seen worse,” she informed everyone within hearing distance.

“Is that why you are here?” Lacey inquired. “To inspect the injury?”
And add a little insult while you’re at it?

“I understand you captured Natalija Krumina, who tried to kill my brother Gregor on several occasions, including last night.”

“Don’t forget Lacey,” Vic said. “She tried to kill Lacey too.”

“I wish I could have seen it,” Olga replied.

“Luckily, there are no photos.” Lacey was grateful for that at least. She could imagine how ridiculous a photo of her wild ride on top of Alma’s giant Peg-Board would look. These nonexistent photos would fortunately
not
be making the front page of
The Eye Street Observer
.

“A pity.”

“How did you know I was here?” Lacey asked.

“Marie said cloud of revenge had reached you, and you were in mortal danger.” Olga seemed quite cheerful. “She is getting more comfortable with her gifts. She did not faint. I am very proud. I am to be congratulated, of course. For teaching her how to breathe, how to focus, how to fight the fear.”

“She told you where I was?”

“No, I called around. Checked police radio. Gregor suggested I come here. So here I am.”

Olga took something out of her pocket and placed it in Lacey’s hand. It was a small oval-shaped box, lacquered in black with brilliantly colored figures and flowers. Lacey inspected the petite piece. The pattern was inlaid in mother-of-pearl and gold leaf.

“It’s lovely.”

“Is Russian. Is token of my gratitude for watching out for little brother Gregor and catching crazy Natalija Krumina, madwoman who kills for revenge and pleasure. So wasteful. You are to be congratulated too.”

The box might have great sentimental value for Olga, despite her unsentimental manner. Another thought struck Lacey. “It’s not haunted, is it, Olga?”

“Haunted?” Olga laughed. “No, it’s not big enough to hold a human soul. In that case, I would sell it to a Russian collector.”

“But it must be valuable. A lacquered box with inlays like this one.” Lacey showed it to Vic. “Some can take up to a year to make. This is too much, Olga.”

“What is too much for a life? It is a simple thank-you. Of course, it is Russian, so there is also a legend that comes with it. It is said that if a woman knows her true love, when she opens the little box, she will smell roses.”

“This has a legend of its very own? Like the shawl?”

“What can I say? Russian people are hopeless romantics. And Russian nights are so long.”

Lacey turned it over and over, admiring it, and then she opened it—and sniffed. Vic was watching her, smiling a little. She detected a faint aroma of roses.
The legend? Or just an antique box made of rosewood?

“Thank you, Olga. I will treasure it always. And the legend too.”

Chapter 32

The dress was in tatters and Stella was in tears.

On Friday morning, Lacey Smithsonian did her best to explain to the bride-to-be how her wedding gown wound up shredded like a classified document. She was between a rock and a hard place. She’d gotten the wedding back on track—and lost the dress. She was trying to accentuate the positive, as the old song says, but nothing seemed to help.

“We caught the woman who was trying to kill all of us.” Lacey gazed at the bandage on her arm. Fifteen stitches, not quite as fine as Alma’s, but they would do. “It started in New Orleans and it ended here. Natalija Krumina will never hurt us now.”

“But why did she have to murder my dress? I’m not
blaming
you, exactly,” Stella said. “I’m not blaming you at all, Lace. I mean no one’s going to die now. What am I going to do? I should just cancel the wedding. Again.” She choked on a sob. Her mascara was running.

As tempting as that sounded, Lacey hadn’t risked her life for Stella to back out now. “Something can be done. It was only a dress.”

“Only a dress?! That was my wedding dress! And my corset! Magda’s corset! And Magda was the one who sent us off on that wild chase for the lost corset that took us all to New Orleans, wasn’t she? Maybe it’s all Magda’s fault!”

Lacey threw up her hands. It was Miguel’s turn. He made another stab at making things better. “Stella, sweetie, it’s not like it was the dress of your dreams. You hated that thing. Remember? Loathed it, despised it—”

That might have been the truth, but dissing the dead dress was the wrong thing to do. Stella cried even harder.

“I know!” she wailed. “But it was still my wedding gown! And now it’s just rags! And besides that, it was getting fixed! With my favorite pink corset. Which is now rags!”

Like Cinderella in reverse
, Lacey thought.
We need a fairy godmother.

“I know it’s late,” Miguel said. “But we can find a dress. I can call around. Remember, Stella, I am the Wizard of Oohs and Aahs and I will mobilize all my loyal Munchkins—”

“Dress or Munchkins or not, I’m not getting married to Nigel. That’s final.”

“What?” Lacey and Miguel said at the same time.

Stella sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes. “The signs are clear. It’s been a disaster from start to finish.” She started a fresh round of wailing. “If I walk down that aisle, we’re all doomed!”

“Not going to happen, Stel.” Lacey couldn’t take much more of Stella’s misery, it was too raw. “Marie didn’t see any bad signs for you either. She says it’ll be happily-ever-after.”

“Hon, it’s only a dress,” Miguel said. “You just need a new dress.”

“The wedding is tomorrow! Except it isn’t anymore. It’s never. And I spent almost a thousand dollars on that dress. Sure, it was a super sale, seventy-five percent off, and I had to go mano a mano with another bride over it, but it was
my wedding dress
.” Stella gulped back a sob. “And Lacey almost got killed for that stupid dress! Where am I supposed to get another one?”

She sat on the red leather sofa and sobbed. Miguel fetched a cold wet towel to soothe her eyes. Stella took it and wept into it. Miguel, on the verge of throwing in the towel, took the other end of the sofa and waved at Lacey.

“Maid of Honor? Wake me up when the Titanic hits the iceberg.”

As God is my witness, I will never be a maid of honor again
.

Lacey was on the verge of offering Stella her own Morning Glory Blue Gloria Adams original that Miguel had created for her. Miguel could fit it for Stella. But a blue gown wouldn’t work with Stella’s cherry blossom theme. A tiny pink lightbulb flickered on in Lacey’s brain.

“Stella. Listen to me. You might have something else you could wear,” Lacey said. “In your closet.”

“What?” Stella lifted her head. “This is my wedding we’re talking about.”

“You want a pink wedding, right, Stella?”

“Since I was like, eleven, or something.”

“Then think pink.”

“What are you getting at, Lacey? I mean, you are getting at something, right?” She sniffled.

Miguel opened his eyes and sat up straight. “Enlighten us, please, Smithsonian. I can’t take any more tears. The Tin Man will rust.”

“Remember New Orleans, Stella? The good parts, I mean.”

Stella used the cloth to wipe her eyes and squinted at Lacey. “I fell in love with Nigel in New Orleans.” Her lips quivered.

“And you bought a dress there. Remember?”

Lacey was referring to the preposterously un-Stella-like dress the stylist had fallen in love with at first sight at a little boutique in the French Quarter. It was a rose-colored confection of organdy and lace with a romantic late-Twenties vibe, a dropped waist and a full skirt that fell almost to the ankles. The three-quarter sleeves were transparent and floated dreamily around the arms. Stella had told everyone there that day that she imagined herself wearing it to a fantasy wedding in Great Gatsby Land. It was wildly different from anything Stella had ever owned, but somehow it had wrapped itself around her heartstrings. How could it have been forgotten?

Easy, it’s not a wedding dress. But it’s pink and it’s lovely and it would do beautifully.

“That dress? I never wore it. I don’t even know if it fits anymore. I’ve never had an occasion worthy of that dress,” Stella said, sounding mournful. “It’s too special.”

“Too special for your wedding? Now you have the occasion,” Lacey said.

“Where is this dress?” Miguel asked. “What does it look like? Does it even look remotely like a wedding dress? And who cares anyway, where is it?”

“It’s pink. It could easily be a wedding dress. In fact, it’s beautiful and different and appropriate for a wedding under cherry blossoms,” Lacey said. “What more does it need to be?”

“O.M.G.!” Stella’s eyes lit up. “It
could
be a pink wedding dress! I love that dress. I never thought I’d actually wear it. Where the heck did I put it?”

Miguel was on his feet. “Stella, there is a dress in your life that I haven’t personally seen and approved?”

“Only one!” Stella ran for her bedroom closet and emerged a few moments later with a dusty garment bag.

“Oh, Stel. You know you shouldn’t ever leave clothes hanging in plastic. They can’t breathe, and they—” Miguel stopped talking when the layers of rose organdy emerged.

“I fell for Nigel and this dress in New Orleans. Almost the same day, I think.” Stella was in a dream. “You think I should get married in this?” She held it up and stared in the mirror at her reflection in pink.

“Do
you
think you should get married in this?” Lacey asked. “Oh, but wait. Then it would be a completely pink wedding. Pink bride. Pink bridesmaids too. Too much pink. And I know how
iffy
you are about pink.”

Miguel took the dress and examined it. “It could work, Stella. It’s really something. Try it on, let us see you in it.”

“Okay.” Stella smiled again and Lacey felt a ray of hope. “It would be a perfectly pink wedding, perfectly romantic, perfectly me.” But then her face fell.

“What’s wrong?” Lacey asked.

“But the veil and my shoes! They’re white!”

“The tiara is pink,” Lacey said, hoping against hope.

“Good. We can salvage this thing yet,” Miguel said. “We’ve got a park permit, a reception site, flowers, and a pink castle cake. And a pink Caddy. And me, you have
me
. The Wizard. Just ignore the little man behind the curtain. Now Stella, honey, try on the dress. Lacey, dear, find me the veil and the shoes.”

Stella retreated to her bedroom while Lacey flew into action. She presented the veil to Miguel, along with the Victorian high-heeled lace-up shoes that Stella had special-ordered to support the ankle she’d broken.

“What are you thinking, Miguel?” Lacey said. “Is it possible?”

“I know a guy. Well, I know lots of guys.”

“Of course you do.” Miguel seemed to have a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend or a future boyfriend in any number of fashion and clothing-related fields.

“This particular guy is great with dyes.”

“He can match them?”

“Please. With my guidance? I am the master magician.”

Stella emerged from her bedroom, a vision in pink. The dress fit her body like it was custom made. It floated delicately around her, and the color made her skin glow and echo the pink highlights. She looked like a delicate pink china doll (with swollen red eyes). This pink frock was much more suited to her than the white puffball of a dress that had been the victim of Natalija’s revenge.

“It’s beautiful,” Lacey said. “Even prettier than I remember.”

“It’s genius,” Miguel said. “I couldn’t have done better myself. And that’s saying something.”

“I love it. This is it!” Stella was back. “This is the dress I’m getting married in.”