Shot Through Velvet Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mac. My laptop is in the car, I’m sequestered awaiting questioning, and the cops might come back at any moment and tell me not to talk to you. And there’s a local reporter who might be writing something for the neighborhood rag right now. But he wasn’t lucky enough to be a witness, like me.”
    “Great. That’s just great,” he snarled. “Give me the facts. I’ll write a brief. We’ll have something on the Web in twenty minutes, nothing razzle-dazzle, just a brief. And remember, Smithsonian, this murder, as rainbow-hued as it is, is not a big story, not in D.C. You are a long way from the District. But we can’t ignore it either, not while you’re there working on the human-interest side of fashion. Human interest, not homicide,” Mac reiterated for her benefit. “And what about your column?”
    Officer York entered the corner of her vision, pacing the factory floor, followed by a newcomer. Lacey assumed he was from the state police.
    “Ma’am, you better not be talking on that phone,” York warned her. The newcomer scowled at her.
    “I gotta go, Mom,” she said into the phone. She smiled at York. “Calling my mom.”
    “Okay,” Mac continued, “you figure out how the blue guy fits into your factory closing story. I’ll write a brief and talk to Claudia. Stay out of trouble. I mean it.” Mac hung up.
    “I’ll call you back, Mom—” Lacey said to dead air. She made a show of putting the phone away for Officer York.
    “You flouting the law, Miss Washington Reporter?”
    “No, sir. Just checking the weather. Cloudy, continued cold. According to my mom. She’s a weather nut. Besides, no one told me not to use the phone.”
    “Consider yourself told as of right now,” York said.
    Surely, this cop would understand that she couldn’t be scooped by a small-town Podunkville reporter. York was just snarling at her for the benefit of his colleague. On second thought, perhaps he wouldn’t understand.
    The state cop looked tightly wound. The newcomer wore a short dark haircut and was dressed in a navy sports jacket, white shirt, conservative tie, and khaki slacks, neat and sharply pressed. Like his attitude. He carried a badge. His face was all hard angles, which seemed at odds with his soft, southern Virginia accent. He asked her who she was and what business she had there. He curled his lip at the mention of The Eye Street Observer . Lacey knew this was just pro forma for some cops whenever they met a member of the press. Or the contempt might be meant for Claudia. Lacey ignored it.
    “And you are?” she asked politely.
    “Special Agent Mordecai Caine, Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations. Lead agent on this crime scene. Don’t go anywhere. And no calls.” He spun on his heel and marched off. Lacey thought he had something very stiff up his backside.
    From her lonely perch, Lacey had a view of velvets spread out on long tables. She could see hundreds of rolls of the shimmering fabric, stacked high, ready for shipping, in a cavalcade of colors, blues, yellows, greens, pinks, and purples. Staring at the material, she had the urge to sink her fingers into it.
    The cloth made her think of a blue velvet dress from the 1940s that her great-aunt Mimi had left her. She’d worn it at Christmastime. At times like these Lacey’s first instinct was to run home to Aunt Mimi’s trunk, her personal antidote to a stressful day. She might find a perfect pattern for another evening gown, something that would make her forget the dead man and the ruined spool of velvet.
    Leafing through the patterns and pictures and vintage fabrics in the trunk always calmed her and made her think of women who had lived through worse troubles than she. Women who worked in factories converted for war production, who built weapons and airplanes while their men went to war. Back then, a velvet factory might have switched to producing wool and cotton for soldiers’ uniforms.
    Unfortunately, Mimi’s trunk was in