Raiders of the Lost Corset Read Online Free PDF Page A

a class merely tolerated if not downright despised by police and politicians alike in the Nation’s Capital.
    “Natalija Krumina. I live upstairs,” she said with a tremor in her voice. She spoke with a slightly musical accent. “I was going to invite Magda over for some fresh herb and olive bread I just baked. She loves it.” She approached Magda’s still body and her eyes filled up with tears.
    Natalija was probably Lacey’s age, her early thirties, with chestnut brown hair that fell below her shoulders in one dark, silky wave. Her features were even and pleasing. She had large almond eyes in a distinctive shade of golden brown, now wet and glistening.
    Oh, yeah. Lamont is no doubt a big sucker for tears, Lacey thought, running her fingers through her own hair, wondering what she looked like after the shock of finding Magda dying. Finding a dead body, no doubt, would be hard on the complexion, as well as the blood pressure.
    The big detective asked Natalija a few questions, whether she remembered seeing anyone visiting Magda earlier, whether she had heard anything. Natalija swore she knew nothing, heard nothing, and had seen nothing.
    “What about her favorite pin?” Lamont asked. “Seems to be missing.”
    Natalija went blank for a minute, gazing at the puddle of fake jewels on the carpet. The detective gestured to Lacey, who dutifully described it. Natalija grimaced. “That old thing? I don’t know. Maybe she lost it.” She looked over at Magda again and shook her head. “She’s really dead, isn’t she?”
    Detective Lamont looked grim and Natalija burst into fresh tears. “Miss Krumina, do you happen to remember a theatre expression Magda Rousseau used to say? A good luck thing?”
    “Why? Does it mean something?” She gazed up at him. “Ah, yes, you mean, ‘Bloody dress, get good press’? She said that whenever she pricked her finger. She was funny that way.”
    Lamont lifted an eyebrow at Lacey. She shrugged back. It was yet another variant of the same phrase. Magda seemed to have more than one version of every story. Lacey wondered how many different versions of the corset legend she might have told as well.
    “Maybe you should go back to your apartment, ma’am,” he said to Natalija. “There’s nothing you can do here.”
    She nodded, not moving, until Lamont pointed the way and a policeman ushered her out to the stairway to the third floor apartments.
    “Should I leave too?” Lacey asked hopefully, edging toward the front door.
    “Not so fast, Smithsonian. You and I are going to finish that chat. You can start with everything you know about Magda Rousseau, in that clear, concise journalistic manner that I know you’re capable of.”
    Lacey took a breath and brushed the hair out of her face. She gave him a brief rundown, leaving out a few tiny details that would just muddy the situation, she thought, like the corset.
    “Magda was French and Latvian and grew up in France. She came here years ago, never lost her thick French accent, particularly when she was excited. Even Analiza, her Latvian business partner, had trouble understanding her sometimes. Magda insisted that she always spoke perfect English with no accent at all.”
    “Do you know any reason anyone would want Magda Rousseau dead?”
    Possibly. But there was no way Lacey was going to tell Broadway Lamont, the Metropolitan P.D.’s King of Scorn, the story that Magda had told her in confidence. Magda Rousseau was engaged in a long on-again-off-again search for a legendary jewel-filled corset worn by one of the Russian imperial princesses during the execution of the entire Romanov family in a dark basement in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in July 1917. A bulletproof corset that saved the princess from the initial volleys of gunfire. A blood-stained corset stripped from the princess’s body by one of the Latvian guards who had refused to shoot the children of the Czar. The official accounts said that the jewels found hidden in the