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As promised, LaToya showed up at Lacey’s desk in the late afternoon, wearing a sleek sleeveless linen paprika-colored dress and red heels. She was keeping warm with a patterned scarf twisted around her neck.
“Red, really?” Lacey asked. “I assumed you’d had enough of red dresses.”
“Hell yes, red. I’m seriously jangled and red is my go-to color. Burgundy, crimson, claret, scarlet. Doesn’t matter. This is my way of defying bad things. You want me, world? Bring it on, I am wearing a red dress! Besides, this one was still in my closet, untouched.”
“Fair enough. Your go-to color might make a good Fashion Bite.” Lacey filed the idea away for later.
“Bite on. I’m ready to bite the head off the wacko who burgled my place.” LaToya took a breath. “So, what did you find out about my dress?”
“Only this.” Lacey handed her the copies of the articles from the archive. “I haven’t found any connection between that woman, the red dress, and your break-in.”
“Not yet.” LaToya’s red fingernails separated the pages like small daggers.
“No, not yet.” Lacey shifted in her chair. “I can’t imagine who would dare tangle with you, LaToya.”
“Makes two of us. I get that sucker, I’m gonna tear his, or her, lungs out.”
LaToya almost sat down in the Death Chair but thought better of it. She kicked it out of the way and dragged another chair over and sat down.
“I’ll take your word for it. If that Kinetic gown is going to cause such problems, are you sure you don’t want to just take it back to the theatre? Get your money back? Get the Keaton woman off your case?”
“Smithsonian, this is no longer a matter of style. Now it’s a matter of principle.”
“Which principle is that?”
“The nobody makes LaToya Crawford back down from anything principle.”
Lacey smiled. “No wonder Broadway Lamont is afraid of you.”
“He is not afraid, he’s just shy. He’s gotta warm up to me.” LaToya stared at the old photos of Saige Russell. “Okay, listen up. I’m too close to this story, I know that. I’m willing to let you take it and run with it, write the tale of the red dress, so I can tell it to my future children. All I want is a happy ending. And that red dress. After all, this may be the thing that brings Broadway and me together.”
“So when are you going to take the dress off my hands? Soon, I hope.”
“Are you crazy? I want it, but I don’t want it till it’s been cleaned,” LaToya said. “Between you and me, Lacey, I’m not sure I really do want it anymore, but no one else is getting it.”
“Cleaned? You mean dry cleaned?”
“Don’t be coy. You know I’m talking about washing the weirdness out of that dress. That’s what I want, a dress cleansed of all that bad juju. Psychically purified. Spiritually spotless.”
“Not my specialty.”
“So you say, Smithsonian.”
“You just want it to have a story, LaToya. A great story to go with a great dress.”
“We’re reporters, Lacey. Everything is about the story. Who wouldn’t want a notorious dress? Well, a certain amount of notorious.” She read further and suddenly dropped the article on Lacey’s desk. “Oh my god, she did die in that dress!”
Across the newsroom, reporters’ heads popped up like prairie dogs.
“We don’t know she died in the dress. And keep it down,” Lacey whispered. “Don’t forget, if that dress is related to her death and your break-in, the cops might want it for evidence. It will disappear into an evidence locker and that might as well be a black hole.”
Mac materialized at Lacey’s desk and loomed over the two reporters like a storm cloud. “Someone yelling out here?”
“Not me.” Lacey glanced over at LaToya.
“I wouldn’t call that yelling,” LaToya said, turning the articles over to Mac. “You’ve heard me yelling. That was more like a startled reaction. Mild surprise.”
“I heard the words dead and dress. So there was a death associated with that crazy dress?” He raised his eyebrows at Smithsonian.
“Not necessarily,” Lacey said. “The dress may have had nothing to do with the woman’s death.”
His eyebrows gathered together to form an impressive storm front and he pointed them at LaToya. “And what about the break-in?”
“I’m waiting for Smithsonian to find a connection,” LaToya said.
“Come on, LaToya. There’s no connection! Sometimes things just happen.”
“Well, they don’t just happen to me.”
“These are a lot of articles for one show.” Mac picked up LaToya’s stack of copies and flipped through them.
“I got lucky,” Lacey said. “And it seems The Eye had more than one theatre writer back then.”
He snorted in reply. “Unless it’s murder, keep the noise level down out here. And keep me in the loop.”
Lacey and LaToya watched him make an obligatory pass over Felicity’s desk, checking for afternoon snacks. There were none. He walked away, grumbling.
“Okay, storm’s over,” LaToya said. “Did you talk to that frizzy-haired woman?”
“She hasn’t returned my calls.”
“She’s the type, all right.” LaToya glowered. “Makes you crazy, doesn’t answer your calls, won’t call you back.”
“I’ll try again. In the meantime, don’t say anything to Harlan Wiedemeyer. He loves weird death stories, he’ll want to steal this one.”
“The jinx? I’d never tell Wiedemeyer anything. That man practices some strange upside-down magic.”
“He’s not a jinx. And he’s heading this way.”
“He is a jinx. My berry-red dress better not go up in flames.” LaToya jumped up from the chair. “Gotta finish a story, I’m on deadline.” She strutted away at top speed on her dangerous red heels.
There’s got to be a name for that walk, Lacey thought Maybe the Reporter Quick Step. Lacey’s desk phone rang, and it was Tamsin Kerr returning her call. Tamsin sounded like she was still in bed. The life of a theatre critic.
“Thanks, Tamsin, I need your special knowledge. Do you know any of the actresses who have worn the red dress from Red Death?”
A pause. “Ah, the famous dress. Possibly. Let me think. One curious thing, though. No one at Kinetic ever wears it, only actresses from outside the company. Their own people seem to think it’s not a good idea, but they’re happy to loan it out. I knew a few actresses at Woolly Mammoth who wore it years ago, and that one woman at Arena Stage, but they’ve all gone to New York, I don’t even have numbers for them anymore. Oh, wait, I can think of at least two women at Source Theatre who have donned the deadly dress for special occasions. Susannah Kittredge and Noelle Pepper. One of them wore it this year to the Helen Hayes Awards and one last year, but don’t ask me which was which. I’m good, but not that good.”
“I appreciate your gift.”
“Do get something dramatic out of this, won’t you?” Tamsin yawned.
“I’ll settle for newsworthy. You have their phone numbers?”
Lacey called Susannah Kittredge, who said she’d be happy to meet her for lunch the next day at Trio’s Restaurant, and she would call Noelle Pepper, who was a friend. If that lunch, of course, was on The Eye? Lacey assured her it would be. Kittredge explained she had a daytime gig reading books for the blind through the Library of Congress, while Pepper worked in industrial films. Tomorrow though, she thought their lunchtime schedules might just possibly be free.
Of course they’re free, if there’s a free lunch. Actors!
