The Masque of the Red Dress

by Ellen Byerrum

  “I’m willing to bet that there are more people in the government who want to see the truth out there, than those who want to suppress it.”

  “I hope you’re right. But I’m a little concerned that our main Russian source appears to be risking his life for this story.”

  “Don’t worry, the Moscow Cowboy lives for the thrills. He’s pretty tough, you know. And Lacey, we’re going to chat about Pretty Boy and his wild tale of that night at the theatre, but later, in a quieter setting.”

  “You say the sweetest things.”

  They talked no more of spies for fear of being overheard, though that would be unlikely, with the Mexican music, the clatter of plates and clinking of drinks. The host showed them to a cozy table by an open window, where it was like being on the patio but better, and they ordered dinner.

  “What do you want to do after this?” Vic asked.

  “Besides our private chat? I know a party full of Russians we could crash. Then of course there are thousands of fireflies dancing down the river. But how about a stroll through the Bishop’s Garden? It’s just around the corner, and the flowers are glorious.”

  Later, in the rose-scented garden, they found a secluded bench in the stone gazebo, away from prying eyes, just as the sun was setting. Lacey pulled the photos out of her bag. To anyone watching, they could be any couple discussing wedding plans in a beautiful garden. Or making out.

  “Photos?” Vic picked up one of the prints.

  “From last Saturday. The theatre sale.”

  “Where this whole thing started? And you’re just looking at them now?”

  “It’s been a busy week. Hansen only gave them to me this morning. I just enlarged this series. Besides, they were taken for Tamsin’s story, and they might not tell us anything.” She turned around and scoped out their surroundings.

  “You’re afraid Kepelov is hiding around the corner, aren’t you?”

  “It would be the frosting on a perfect day.”

  Vic laughed and hugged her. “I can think of better things to do myself. Wanna make out?”

  “I’d love to.” She laid her head against his shoulder. “After dark.”

  The shadows were long, but it would be light for another half an hour or so. Lacey spread the photos out on the stone bench, in sequence, from the first to the last. There were more than a dozen of them. The clothing rack full of costumes was in a slightly different position in each. She was puzzled. Besides the fact that she didn’t know what she was looking for, she didn’t know whether what was in the picture was more important than what was missing.

  “What do we have?” Vic asked.

  “Racks of costumes, which include the ones from Kinetic. Right after Amy Keaton left for some reason, but before LaToya and I arrived.”

  Lacey recognized a few actors she knew, pawing through the rack. And just before Lacey and LaToya showed up, one shot clearly showed the red dress hanging on the rack. It had suddenly appeared, as if by magic.

  She backed up. In several of the previous photos, a spot of red caught her eye, progressively getting closer to the rack as people moved in and out of Hansen’s frames.

  “See here, Vic.” She couldn’t be sure, but it appeared someone had that flash of red tucked under an arm.

  “That’s the dress?”

  “Maybe. It’s the right color.” The figure was indistinct and remained in the background. She flipped the photos back and forth. “It is the dress. And here. And now it’s hanging on the rack. Someone deliberately hung it there after the sale started. That’s why it wasn’t in the inventory. It wasn’t supposed to be there, just like Amy Keaton kept saying.”

  “But who put it there? And why?”

  Lacey concentrated on the figure carrying the slash of scarlet. It looked male, but the enlargement was grainy, and in the shape-shifting theatre world, she couldn’t be certain. There were also a lot of other people in the frame, partially obscuring the figure with the red dress. Lacey examined the photos one after another, tracing the figure’s progress.

  “I think it’s a man.”

  She could make out a black shirt and blue jeans and a cap, pulled down to shade his eyes. There was something familiar about the shape of the shoulders. Compact, tightly wound, with an air of belligerence.

  “We’ve seen that guy,” Vic said. “I recognize that stance. At the theatre.”

  “Yuri Volkov.”

  “Volkov? The artistic director?”

  Lacey checked her watch. It was the last night of previews. He’d be at the theatre, going over everything to make sure tomorrow night’s opening night gala was perfect. Not expecting anything, she called the theatre and left a message for Volkov to call her. She tucked the photos away and leaned on Vic.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Amy Keaton. No one loved her, but no one hated her either. Volkov complained about her, but not the way they all did about Saige Russell. Amy was efficient, hardworking, and maybe a little obsessive, the way they like it at Kinetic. Not at all like Parsnips, who looked like a star but couldn’t learn her lines and infuriated everyone. Everyone but Nicky Sokolov, who loved her. The only thing the two women had in common was that red dress.”

  “Amy was willing to fight LaToya for that dress,” Vic pointed out. “And that tells us she was more afraid of losing the dress than facing off with your intimidating coworker. I’d think twice myself about tackling LaToya.”

  “Did she know about the medals in the hem? Or did she just know the dress mattered to someone at the theatre? For whatever weird reason?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Vic said. “She knew there would be hell to pay if it went missing, or got itself sold.”

  “Either way, she knew who it mattered to. She knew her killer.”

  THEY WERE IN VIC’S Jeep heading back to Virginia when Yuri Volkov returned her call. Lacey was surprised. It must be intermission. Vic turned the radio off, and she put the phone on speaker so he could hear.

  “Smithsonian! Now what do you want?” Volkov sounded annoyed, yet he was curious enough to call her back. “No time for long chat. Act Two in two minutes.” In the background, people were chattering but she couldn’t make out the words. It sounded like Russian. He was in the theatre lobby.

  Go big, go bold. “You put the red dress on the sales rack, Yuri. There are photos. I know it was you.”

  He might dispute the fact, demand to see the photos, deny it was him. Let him, she thought, whatever he says is more information. There was a long pause. Lacey looked at her phone, afraid he might have hung up.

  “So what. You want a big Pulitzer Prize for this daring revelation, Smithsonian?”

  “You told me you didn’t care, it was just an old dress, things happen. Why did you want it sold? And why keep it a secret?”

  “Didn’t I say the costume was bad luck? Like an albatross. Time to get rid of it. Why should I tell anyone? My theatre, my costume, my decision.”

  “Did that include getting rid of Amy?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Nobody kills a stage manager! Too important. Keaton was a good stage manager. I could use her now. This is a very technical show. And don’t forget, it was a tragic accident, according to D.C. police.”

  Lacey could hear him move from the intermission crowd into another, quieter space. “Why was the dress bad luck?”

  “Because of Saige Russell, of course.” He said it as if she was mentally deficient not to understand the obvious. “Bad luck, curse, whatever.”

  “Yet the theatre lent it out every year. Helped turn it into a legend.”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Who did, then? What is the costume’s secret, Yuri?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But let me tell you this, Smithsonian. Forget this story, it will only bring you grief. And I am telling you this as a friend.” He hung up.

  “These Russian theatre people.” Vic gave her a quick glance as he drove. “They are a frien
dly lot.”

  “If that’s how he treats his friends, I’d hate to see how he treats his enemies. He knows something.”

  “He does, and so does Pretty Boy Pushkin.”

  “You heard the interview?”

  “I did.”

  Vic swung onto the George Washington Parkway. Lacey’s window was open and honeysuckle perfumed the air. The moon was tantalizingly large and gold, low on the horizon, not yet full. It would be so easy to be distracted by the beauty of this summer evening.

  “What do you make of Pushkin’s story?” she asked Vic. “Being on stage hiding when she died? Did he make it up to trap me into reporting something that wasn’t true? Warning me off to set the hook, make me eager to run with it?”

  “Either way, I don’t like it. If he’s lying, he’s probably covering up a crime. If he’s telling the truth, and most likely not the whole truth, he’s a coward. He’s an earwitness, he says, if not an eyewitness, but he left her lying there on the floor and went to the cast party, and he never called the cops, never told anyone. She might have still been alive, she might have been saved. If it’s the truth.”

  “The way he warned me off made me think he does know who was there with Saige. He may be afraid of them. All that ‘dangerous to know too much in this town’ stuff. And to cover this up, he’d deny every word.”

  “He’s a lawyer,” Vic pointed out. “Brooke would say he’s an agent in place. I can think of another possibility.”

  “That is?”

  “Try this on. He’s a killer. He killed Saige. He didn’t need an alibi or a cover story at the time. It got ruled an accident, so he got away with it. But now there’s a reporter poking into it. So he hands you this long-lost cover story, full of emotion. He’s an actor, remember, and not just an actor: a lawyer. He tries to play you like a jury. ‘Oh Lacey, I was there! I’ve never told anyone the awful truth! I feel so haunted by shame and regret!’ Blah, blah, blah. And then he begs you to drop the story for your own safety, like he’s on your side.”

  “Yeah, I like that one,” Lacey said. “That’s a really good take on Pushkin. But is he the Centipede?”

  “Or maybe he was the killer’s lookout, an accomplice. Same story.”

  “You’re saying more than one of them decided to kill Saige?”

  “Just a possibility.”

  “That’s so comforting. This is a small thing, but I wish I could see the mask from The Masque. In a way, it should be the crowning glory of the costume. It feels incomplete without it.”

  “Any luck there?”

  “No. Sokolov said it went missing when the theatre moved to its present location. He blamed the volunteers.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Blaming the volunteers is like blaming the intern. I don’t believe anybody. Somebody’s got that mask.”

  Lacey gazed out the window at the passing lights of D.C. and the outlines of boats on the Potomac River.

  “I have a totally different question for you, sweetheart. When are you going to tell your family about our engagement?” Vic reached over and squeezed her left hand. He brought it to his lips and kissed it.

  Not that question again.

  “It’s complicated. My mother will want to be involved. She’ll want to run everything. She’ll want to serve pigs in a blanket and Jell-O salad at the reception.” Lacey shuddered at the thought of her mother’s weird food choices. “Perhaps individual meat loaf skewers. A tofu wedding cake. And your mother will want lobster.”

  “Nadine? No, she’s more of a filet mignon gal.”

  “Me too. I’d prefer the filet myself.”

  “You really should tell Rose soon.” He pulled into the exit lane for Old Town Alexandria.

  “Why?”

  “It’s the expected thing to do before the wedding. Unless you’d like to elope? I’m down with that, lady. But you’re the one who wanted a church wedding.”

  “Tempting. But it’s the coward’s way out and I do want to show you off. And if we eloped, not only would my mother be mad at me, but Brooke, and Stella too. And Nadine. I couldn’t live with all of that.”

  “Lacey, sweetheart, I’d like to get married before I have to walk you down the aisle with a cane.”

  “You’d be fetching with a cane. And a top hat. That would be wonderful. Puttin’ on the Ritz!”

  “No top hats for me. Not after Nigel and Stella’s wedding. I felt like an extra in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.”

  The men at that wedding wore morning suits with striped pants and top hats. Stella’s idea. Nigel, the English ambassador’s wayward son, had been game, but Vic, who wound up as Nigel’s best man in spite of his best efforts, was mortified.

  Lacey was laughing. “You were the handsomest man there, Vic, and you’ll always be the star of my show.”

  “And what about all the tourists who were taking pictures of us, as if the circus had come to town?”

  “Let ’em. It was a beautiful wedding, in spite of everything.” Lacey smiled at the memory. It was touch and go whether Stella would indeed go through with the nuptials after her first wedding gown was shredded by a maniac.

  “You were beautiful,” Vic said. “You pulled the whole thing together, as well as pulling Stella together. I’d say she owes you big time.”

  Ultimately, Stella’s wedding became a rhapsody in pink. From the cherry blossoms in full bloom to the bridesmaids in their summer dresses, to Stella in a last-minute rose-colored wedding gown and veil. Topping it all off, Stella was chauffeured by Vic’s mother Nadine, in her famous bubblegum pink Cadillac Biarritz.

  “That was quite the wedding.”

  “Sweetheart, there’s another reason you’ve got to tell Rose about us. Nadine wants to help with our wedding. She says time is of the essence.”

  Despite the steamy evening air, a chill raced down Lacey’s spine. Nadine Donovan was as overpowering in her way as Rose Smithsonian.

  “Nadine? Wow. That’s, um, stressful.”

  Lacey had envisioned a wedding that was small, affordable, yet chic and elegant. The money they saved on a big, extravagant wedding they could spend on their honeymoon. In Paris. Just for example. Most of all, she wanted to develop her own vision of this wedding, hers and Vic’s. Letting the families into the works would be introducing a battering ram at the castle door.

  “First of all, where do you want to get married?” he asked. “Here or in Colorado?”

  “Here, of course. This is my home now, not Colorado. And Washington and Virginia are so beautiful, why would I want to get married anyplace else?”

  “Here, then,” Vic said. “Exact location to be determined. And in church, or romping naked in a field of daisies?”

  “Daisies are nice, but I want a church wedding,” she said. “You’ve never had one, and neither have I. Maybe St. Matthew’s Cathedral in the District? People who don’t like it, don’t have to come.”

  “Good, a cathedral will please Nadine. Me too. When?”

  “Spring or fall. I haven’t decided.”

  “This fall, then?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, this fall? That’s only a couple of months away! That’s too soon!”

  He howled with laughter. “You should see your face. Lacey, marriage is not exactly the guillotine.”

  “My freedom is a big deal for me.”

  “As long as you’re marrying me, you’ll always have your freedom. And you’ll have me too. As long as you don’t skip town, like you did with that cowboy.”

  “I’m not skipping town. I love Virginia. And I love you, Vic. Always.”

  UPSTAIRS IN LACEY’S apartment, her shabby shelter in the sky, Vic swept the place for electronic bugs and double-checked all the locks before turning out the lights.

  “My own resident bug exterminator. That’s so romantic,” Lacey said. “Makes my heart skip a beat.”

  He swept her into his arms.

  “I’ll show you romantic, lady.” And he did.

&nb
sp; When he was ready to leave early the next morning, Vic urged her to stay safe and call him if she planned on talking to anyone at Kinetic Theatre.

  She promised.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Hello, darling, this is a courtesy call.” Lacey contacted Vic late Saturday morning, as prearranged. “I’m heading over to Kinetic Theatre.”

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “It appears that the long-lost mask has resurfaced. The one from The Masque of the Red Death.”

  “I remember.” He sounded skeptical. “And why does it materialize now? Merely because Lacey Smithsonian inquires?”

  “I could say because it’s time and the universe wants to bring it forth, but I just got a message from DeeDee Adler. Apparently, Sokolov went searching and found it in some obscure corner of the costume shop and left it for me to examine.”

  More silence on the other end. “I don’t like it.”

  “I get that. Me neither. Although he did tell me he’d look for it. You heard him say that.” It was Lacey’s turn to pause.

  “Convenient. He’s on your list, you know.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m calling you. You can turn on the microphone, but I haven’t left yet. I’ll be singing along to the radio. Fair warning.”

  “I like your singing, Lacey.”

  “Flatterer. Anyway, DeeDee told me Sokolov is traveling to Richmond for something today, but he’ll be back tonight for the big donor event. Opening night reception. She said he could give it to me personally tonight if I want, but I’m welcome to pick it up sooner.” She mimicked a Russian accent, “and contemplate mask with my amazing EFP brain.”

  “What if she’s lying? Isn’t she on your list too?”

  “Yeah, but I’m sure I could take her in a fair fight.”

  “She might not fight fair. Don’t be a target.”

  “I will be on my guard, Vic. And honestly, I’d prefer to pick up the mask now, without Sokolov around.”

  “If there really is a mask.”

  “Apparently it should be quiet at the theatre until later this afternoon.”