HostileMakeover
Chapter 7
She hoped that Turtledove would be willing to give her the bodyguard’s intimate perspective.
Lacey didn’t have a chance to chat with him at Snazzy Jane’s, where his job was to keep the diva in one piece. And it would be difficult to ask him right in front of Amanda whether she was a complete lunatic or if there was some truth to her fears.
However, Lacey hated the idea of calling the one person who would know how she could get ahold of the big guy. That would be his friend Damon Newhouse, editor of the dreaded Conspiracy Clearinghouse Web site, DeadFed dot com, who sensationalized everything and jumped to wacky conclusions at the drop of an e-mail. He was a cyberspace scribe, but he had the soul of a gonzo jazz-age journalist. Lacey visualized him with his press card in his porkpie hat shoved back on his hallucinating forehead. For DeadFed, it didn’t matter whether the story was true; what really mattered was the creepy way it turned your world upside down. Back at her desk, she sent him a brief e-mail. She got back an immediate phone call.
“Smithsonian, what’s up? Must be serious if you’re calling me. Dodging any more errant doughnut signs? Lightning strikes, and Smithsonian is there. That’s why I admire you so.”
“Can the flattery. About Turtledove’s phone number . . .”
“I understand you took a ride with your office jinx, guy named Wiedemeyer? I hear trouble follows him like an angry ex-wife with a bounced alimony check.”
“It hasn’t gotten him yet. And hello to you too, Damon. And before you publish that I’ve captured the beauty secrets of an alien bigfoot, let me state for the record that this call is nothing serious. Just fashion, fashion, fashion. Girly stuff.”
“It’s never just fashion with you. I grant that it doesn’t always come with dead bodies, not daily, anyway. But there’s always sub-text. What is it now and how soon can I post it on my Web site?”
Lacey groaned, put her head down on her desk, and smacked the phone three times before she protested into the receiver, “Really. It’s a fashion story, Damon.”
“Okay, sure, fashion. If you say so. But I like the beautiful-alien-bigfoot angle.”
“They’re shy because they just can’t do a thing with their fur. Trust me; there’s no story,” she said. “Just a crime of fashion.”
“Everything is a crime of fashion in this town. Did you see my piece on DeadFed about tiny microchips they’re implanting in your clothes that tell the government where you shop—”
Almost any idea, no matter how tame, could transport Damon Newhouse to a state of inspired delusion. Lacey would like to blow him off, but he was in love with her friend, Brooke Barton, also a devotee of the grand conspiracy theory. The love-struck duo knew every rumor of a conspiracy behind every bush, down every alley, and, of course, in any dimly lit parking garage in the District of Columbia. Lacey couldn’t fathom the appeal of this stuff, but it seemed to get them really hot. She cut him off.
“Focus, Damon. Your buddy, code name Turtledove? I need to get ahold of Forrest Thunderbird. Is that his real name? And before you get carried away, it’s just for background on a fashion story. He’s bodyguarding for Amanda Manville.”
“Amanda Manville, the human Barbie doll?”
“Yes, Damon, the same.”
“Is she missing? Dead? Kidnapped? A sex slave to a senator or a Saudi prince?”
“Chill, Damon. She’s alive and well.” So far.
“Have you heard she’s a guinea pig for the government? They’re turning out bionic combat superbabes under the guise of a tawdry plastic-surgery reality show, right before our very eyes. Manville is the prototype. I got an anonymous e-mail—”
“It’s a theory,” Lacey conceded. “Are you having fun?”
“I like it. There are rumors. And where there are rumors, there is some truth. So tell me what this is all about.”
“How can I talk to you seriously, Newhouse? You take my words and twist them into something completely different.”
“I improve them.”
Unrepentant idiot.
“Are you going to give me the information?” He hesitated. “I’ll call Brooke and she’ll break your resistance.”
“Indeed, I am Brooke’s love slave. And she is my blond goddess.” Damon gave Lacey a cell phone number for Turtledove. “But I get first Web links on any sensational stuff you unearth. And I’ll follow up for my readers.”
“I was afraid of that. But you get nothing until after The Eye Street Observer gets it.” She signed off and pondered where to start on the Amanda story.
Who was Amanda Manville anyway? A plastic supermodel, a butterfly caught in a net, waiting only to impaled on a spike by the media and added to their collection of beautiful dead things? It was a dismal thought, and Lacey chided herself for it. She left a voice message for Forrest, a.k.a Turtledove. As soon as she hung up, the phone rang. Wow, that didn’t take long, Lacey thought. Not expecting a call so soon from Turtledove, she was betting the call was from Brooke, and The Eye’s new caller ID confirmed it.
“Lacey, what’s the story? Damon said you called.”
“No court today?”
“Just doctoring some briefs. Boring. You’re writing about Amanda Manville?” There was an air of expectation in her voice.
Lacey started keying in her notes on her computer while listening to Brooke. “A fashion story. She’s unveiling a new line of clothing at Snazzy Jane’s in Georgetown.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve already heard the wicked rumors about her.” Brooke purred like a cat hoarding a bowl of juicy information.
“What rumors?” That she’s crazy? It’s not a rumor. “Tell me.”
“About her old boyfriend. You know, the ugly one that was on that TV show.”
“Caleb Collingwood?”
“Umm-hmmm. They say she killed him. As in murdering him, depriving him of life.”
“Oh, that rumor. Sure, but she denies everything,” Lacey said. “She says he killed himself. After meeting Amanda, I can see why he would.”
“So the notorious supermodel can torment men to their death?”
“I think he ran away from her as fast as his long, tall legs could carry him. She’s a mean girl, middle-school scary. If she’s a killer it’s in the grand tradition of Lucrezia Borgia.” Lacey leaned back in her chair, knowing it would be a few minutes before Brooke would let her get back to her keyboard.
“She probably is a killer, and I bet it had something to do with the Bionic Babe Project.”
“The Bionic Babe Project? Is this that conspiracy theory Damon was ranting about?”
“Why do you suppose she was never prosecuted for his murder?”
“Maybe because there was no body?”
“A technicality.”
“Are we in ‘Smoking Gun’ territory?” Lacey knew that Brooke was also a devoted follower of that muckraking Web site.
“I’m afraid the rumors are not that reliable. But it’s supposedly top secret.”
“How secret can it be if you’re blabbing about it to me?” Lacey had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. “And how on earth does the government have time to conduct a Bionic Babe Project and install ‘pheromone jammers’ on the roof of the Pentagon and the White House and keep track of all the other conspiracies in the world while deciding whether the alert level is Code Indigo or Code Fuchsia?”
“I love that you’re skeptical, Lacey; it keeps me on my toes. But someday you’ll believe. The truth is out there. Anyway, some say Collingwood knew too much about the project and was terminated with extreme prejudice.”
“Gosh, that is terribly entertaining, Brooke, but I need facts. My editor prefers them. Maybe the poor guy went into hiding because he was humiliated on national television. I mean, who could blame him? He’s supposed to marry his ugly duckling, but she gets turned into a swan and dumps him like dirty laundry in front of the whole world. And I’ll tell you one thing about Ms. Manville. She’s a basket case. A complete psychotic diva.”
“That or a cold-blooded bionic killer with superhuman strength. But maybe the guilt is getting to her. The diva part is a great cover. So what did she say about him?”
“That was it. She hasn’t seen him in years. And she is tired of being a suspect.”
“Exactly.”
“Ah, Brooke, if only I wrote fiction, I’d love to use this stuff. Gotta go. Gotta write about fire-breathing fashion divas and their pretty sisters who sew.”
“Okay, but keep me current. Lunch this week?”
“Sure.” Lacey checked her appointment book. “Tomorrow I’m seeing Stella for lunch.”
“Your crazed stylist? You know those salon chemicals have probably damaged her brain. Your hair looks fabulous. Don’t let her touch it.” Brooke didn’t care for Stella.
“This is not about hair.”
“Stella’s always about hair. Besides, she just gets you in trouble.”
“Sometimes she helps me out.”
“If you call taking that goofy picture for the front page of The Eye helping you out. Remember?”
Lacey remembered the picture very well and winced at the memory. She was wearing the Gloria Adams “telltale heart” gown, made especially for Lacey in morning-glory blue. She had found the original pattern in Aunt Mimi’s wonderful trunk. Lacey was wielding the sword cane at her attacker when Stella arrived with her camera. “She did help me fight for my life after she took the picture, you know.”
“A true friend would not have stopped to take a picture while you were being murdered.” Brooke sighed loudly, as if Lacey would never get this obvious point.
“And where were you when I needed you? Looking fabulous in your grandmother’s vintage gown? Flirting with Damon?”
“No fair. I had no idea you were in trouble. But I wouldn’t have stopped to take a photograph. Maybe afterward—for DeadFed—definitely not before. Anyway, how about lunch Friday?”
After setting a date with Brooke, Lacey couldn’t resist checking out the Web for gossip on the missing and presumed dead Caleb Collingwood, even though it added nothing to the story she had to write today. Maybe she could find a way to contact his family. Someone had to know if he was dead or alive. Even a guy who planned his disappearance might not be able to resist calling home to tell the folks he’s all right, she thought. Instead, she found some old articles that indicated Collingwood had no immediate family. His father was unknown, and his mother ran off when he was young. Caleb was raised by an elderly alcoholic uncle in West Virginia, one Adam Collingwood. The Internet coughed up a telephone number, but when she called it, the phone was no longer in service.
She discovered a friend of the missing man, one John Henry Tyler, who had put together a Web site that led with an essay, “The Last Time I Saw Cal.” Tyler had included a picture of Caleb and Amanda in her presurgery days, in matching denim overalls at the battered-women’s shelter. The pair looked rustic and homely, but happy. “Rustic and homely” described Tyler’s Web site too.
Following his famous dismissal on prime-time television, Amanda’s boyfriend was “lower than a whale on Prozac,” according to Tyler. He didn’t come right out and say that Amanda committed murder, but he laid the blame for Collingwood’s disappearance at her feet. Cal had told Tyler that Amanda was “killing him slowly, inch by inch.” Caleb Collingwood vanished less than a year after being dumped on national television. He was going to visit a friend in Ohio and never showed up. His rusty old Honda Civic was found by the side of a dirt road. The keys were in the ignition, a suitcase on the backseat. The paper quoted a West Virginia state patrolman who theorized that the driver stopped to answer nature’s call, but after that, no one knew. If there was a body, the elements and wild animals got to it first.
Tyler had met Caleb the summer after high school, when they were both working at a custom car shop in Winchester, Virginia, hometown of the late, great country singer Patsy Cline. They were hot-rodding and pool-shooting buddies. But then, Tyler said, Caleb decided he needed to see what life was like in the big city, and he had plans for more schooling. He went to D.C. and met Amanda.
John Henry Tyler offered a reward for information on Collingwood. And he posted an open plea to Ms. Manville: “Come Clean, Amanda Manville. Tell the World What You Know!” The site also featured a guest book where others had posted their theories. Collingwood had gotten lost, died from exposure, and been eaten by wild animals, according to one. He was a lovelorn suicide over the public humiliation of losing Amanda. He had been taken by aliens; he was apparently driving along a notorious alien abduction route. Another suggested snarkily that his disappearance was of interest only because he was a footnote to the career of the beautiful Amanda.
One popular theory was that Amanda had slipped him cyanide, then dissolved his body with quicklime at a construction site. This theory was sketchy on crucial details, like time and place. Lacey’s favorite theory by far was that he had fled the country, changed his name, and was using his famously ugly face as a character actor in the films of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Someone claimed to have spotted him in a crowd scene.
No wonder Amanda was rattled when I asked about the ex, Lacey thought. I had no idea Caleb’s disappearance was such a feeding frenzy for rumormongers. But she wondered if the suicide story was true. Was Miguel right and Caleb had been too ugly to live—and could it somehow be a true Crime of Fashion? She imagined the headline: “My Ugly Boyfriend Had to Die! He Couldn’t Match My Makeover!”
What did that say about our values in the new millennium? Lacey wondered. What if Cassandra Wentworth, The Eye’s gloomy editorial writer, had a point? Was the nation’s makeover madness a sign of the incipient fall of Western civilization? Lacey shuddered at the thought. She personally thought everyone deserved a good makeover once in a while. I could use a day at the spa right now.
Perhaps there were others who might tell her what they knew about Caleb Collingwood. Perhaps Zoe Manville. But she was veering away from the topic she had to report on: the Chrysalis Collection. And the secondary topic: Was someone really trying to kill Amanda, or just having the nasty fun of torturing an already high-strung diva to watch her go ballistic?
She suspected she could get ahold of the distinguished Dr. Gregory Spaulding. Lacey checked the paper’s electronic daybook, which posted upcoming news events around town, collected by Mac’s assistant editor from a variety of wire services and other sources, as well as by the reporters assigned to each event. They rarely had anything to do with Lacey’s beat, which she made up as she went along. However, she found that Spaulding was set to address a conference of surgeons the next morning at the tony Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle. She marked it down in her appointment book. Maybe he could spare a few words about his former paramour. In the meantime, Lacey tried to rough out a lead for her story for the next day. She was determined to give Zoe her due. “Celebrity Sisters’ Fashion Act Sizzles at Snazzy Jane’s.”
She didn’t get far before the phone rang again, interrupting the little dance with her keyboard. What now? “Fashion desk, Smithsonian speaking.”
“Hey, beautiful.” His voice was like warm honey, easing the tension in her shoulders.
“Hey, Vic,” she said, her voice softening. “What’s up?”
“Just thinking of you. When I saw you last night, you left out the part about escaping death by lightning strike and Krispy Kreme sign. Slip your mind?”
“I was too busy kissing you. It must have helped erase the painful memory.”
“Lucky for me I have the front page of your paper to consult when you leave out a few salient details. You’ve turned me into a subscriber.”
There’s a mixed blessing, she thought. The Eye needs every subscriber it can get. “Let’s not talk about lucky, okay?”
“Who is this Wiedemeyer character anyway?”
“Just a reporter. He handles what we like to call the ‘death-and-dismemberment’ beat.”
“I thought that’s what you’ve been doing.”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be saying sweet nothings to me, especially if you want to whisk me away this weekend.”
“Sweet nothings, huh? I’d practice, but somehow jeopardy always seems to come between us.”
“That’s not a sweet nothing.”
“I don’t want to sound overly macho here, but damn it, Lacey, it feels like I should be there to . . . to protect you. To be there for you. To keep you out of harm’s way.”
“If this is your idea of sweet talk, sweetheart . . .”
Trujillo walked past and stopped, riveted by the word sweetheart. He perched on a corner of her desk.
“Look, I’m not saying you can’t protect yourself.” She heard Vic sigh in frustration and she almost laughed. “God knows you’re pretty wicked with a weapon, especially blades. I’m just calling to make sure everything is okay,” he said, “that you’re not being pursued by errant lighting strikes. Or murderers. And that we’re set for this weekend.”
“So far. Lightning never strikes twice.” She had a small moment of wanting to tell him about Amanda’s lurid reputation, but she decided to let it slip by. “Where are we going, Vic?” He was silent. “Vic? Are you there?”
Vic’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “Look, I’m on the move; I’ll have to call you later. Stay out of trouble and away from falling doughnut signs.” Vic hung up, no doubt surveilling someone. Lacey sighed. At least he hadn’t quizzed her about any killers she might have brushed up against today. She turned around to find Trujillo grinning at her.
“This weekend?” Trujillo said, seizing this key nugget of information like a true reporter. “Is love finally in the air for Smithsonian?”
“You’re a hopeless snoop, Tony.”
“It’s my job.” He favored her with his lady-killer smile. She had witnessed the effect that smile had on Tony’s girlfriends. “Vic’s in town? Your voice changes when he’s around. A heightened state of arousal, I’d say.”
“Shut up.” She tried to smack him with a newspaper, but he dodged out of her way.
“The way you’re grinning tells me he is. That’s cool. Then he can worry about you for a while. I just dropped by to see if you were in one piece.”
“Would you give it a rest, Tony? Wiedemeyer is not the bad-luck charm you seem to think he is.” Keep saying it; it might be true. “There is no such thing as a jinx.”
“Right. Have you talked with him today?” He sat down again on her desk.
“No. I’ve been busy visiting boutiques, interviewing an insane supermodel.” Lacey handed him a couple of shots of Amanda from the press packet. “Ah, the glamour of dealing with a real diva. Amanda Manville. You’d like her.”
“Trying to throw me over?”
“She’s available, Tony. Between boyfriends.”
“Yeah, and we all know why. Señorita Matadora. And she’s too skinny. But a pretty face for a femme fatale, a very pretty face.” Tony shuffled through the photos. “I take it you have been staying away from Wiedemeyer like the sensible Smithsonian I know, the one who hides inside your foolhardy Lois Lane exterior.”
“Flattery from you, Tony? Well, that’s just weird, that’s what it is. And to tell you the truth, I’m not that fond of Harlan Wiedemeyer. Besides, he’s fixated on Felicity. Possibly the only lucky thing I can think of regarding him.”
“You’re a wise woman. I’m on my way out; do you need a ride home? You can tell me how Vic plans to seduce you.”
“That sounds like such fun, but I drove my car.”
“The legendary Z? Wow, you never drive.” Tony stood up and stretched. “I thought it was embalmed in the Z Museum.”
It was true she usually took the Metro to work. Driving into Washington was a complete pain, not to mention the savage search for parking, but after her experience with Wiedemeyer and the Krispy Kreme sign the previous night, Lacey had craved the sense of security that driving her own car gave her. There were a limited number of spaces in the paper’s garage, and most were reserved for the resident bigwigs, like Mac and their publisher, Claudia Darnell. But she’d arrived early and parked her vintage Nissan 280ZX in one of the few open spaces set aside for nonmanagement types. She trusted her Z to ward off another encounter with the Wiedemeyer Effect.
“I’ll walk out with you,” he said.
Tony waited for Lacey to gather her things. She was congratulating herself on having driven, but when they reached the garage, her car wasn’t there. It took Lacey a while to absorb the reality that it was gone. Really gone, not just hiding behind an SUV. She and Tony circled the garage three times, then she checked with the attendant while he circled once more. She kept hoping she’d simply forgotten where she had parked her beloved silver-and-burgundy 280ZX, that she would turn one more corner and there it would be. But it had vanished.
Someone had stolen her car right out of the newspaper’s own parking garage.
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