Designer Knockoff (19 page)
He paused in his narrative. Lacey took another bite and swallowed. “Okay, go on. I’m listening. You’re at the church. You’re inside the door. Then what?”
“That’s all for now.” Jeffrey leaned back and sighed.
“No, wait a minute. I’m a Catholic. I can take it. I really want to know what happened.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then I have something to tell you next time.”
“Next time? No fair!”
He laughed out loud. “You should see your face.”
She grabbed her napkin, making a show of wiping her mouth, hoping to hide her expression.
“Next time, Lacey. Have some patience. I know, I know, you’re a reporter. But you have to wait. Besides, I can’t stand talking ancient Bentley history all night. I want to know about you.”
No matter how she tried he wouldn’t budge. He was good at it, very good. The evening wound down and Jeffrey proved to be the perfect gentleman. He escorted her to the parking lot where she’d left her Z, and he left her with a dazzling smile.
There were too many contradictory thoughts scrambling around in her head as she navigated the Fourteenth Street Bridge back to the George Washington Parkway.
Could there really be one white sheep in the Bentley wolf pack? And when the wolves find out, will they fire him—or eat him?
Could there really be one white sheep in the Bentley wolf pack? And when the wolves find out, will they fire him—or eat him?
chapter 12
Saturday’s weather was jewel-like in its perfection, the azure horizon punctuated with cotton clouds as Lacey drove up to meet Frank Duffy. It was warm, with the slightest hint of coolness in the breeze. The trees still wore their deepest summer green, though a red leaf or two peeked out now in anticipation of fall. The Z was in prime shape, and the sixty or so miles between Old Town Alexandria and Frederick, Maryland, slipped away pleasantly, without much traffic. Everyone in Washington was searching for Esme Fairchild, and Tony Trujillo knew everything about Esme that Lacey knew. She felt free to pursue her own story: the common thread between Esme and Gloria—the Bentleys.
She was early to meet Duffy. Lacey parked the Z on North Market and ducked into Venus on the Half Shell, one of her favorite vintage clothing stores. A pair of platform pumps in alligator, enclosed in a glass case, called to her, but the very thought of buying more shoes made her shudder. Peering between two mannequins dressed in Twenties flapper garb in the front window, Lacey suddenly caught a glimpse of Duffy passing by on the sidewalk, smiling, as usual.
Younger than Mimi by ten years, Frank Duffy was now a spry seventy-something with soulful blue eyes. He was still fit and trim. He and Lacey had planned to meet at a little café on Market Street, just down the block, from the vintage store. Lacey had dressed casually and comfortably in black jeans and a violet V-necked sweater to prepare for the sinful dessert that Duffy would no doubt talk her into. When she darted out of the shop to meet him, he greeted her with a big grin and a question.
“Lacey, my pet, it’s wonderful to see you, but what’s up? You drove all the way up here for lunch with an old rogue like me?”
“You’re not that old, but you are a rogue. And yes, I would like a little information. I want to pick your brains.”
“Good for you. Still a reporter, aren’t you? I’ve been following your latest exploits up on Capitol Hill. And if you keep stabbing those bastards, they’ll give you a real beat yet.” He took her arm and patted her hand gently. Duffy had been a reporter himself for a few years before law school and a long career as a trial attorney. It seemed to Lacey that nearly everyone she met had put in time on a newspaper somewhere in America; Duffy had been a city beat reporter at
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
They decided to stroll down the street window-shopping and select a restaurant on whim.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
They decided to stroll down the street window-shopping and select a restaurant on whim.
“So you met That Bastard Bentley in the flesh,” Duffy said. “And you’ve come to ask me what I know.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t want to interrogate every possible witness. And you’d better hurry; your witnesses are getting a little long in the tooth, like me.”
“So what can you tell me, Methuselah?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. Mimi held her cards very close to the vest. When it came to That Bastard Bentley, she didn’t dwell in the past. It was one of her charms. Did they have an affair? Maybe, but she never told me.” Duffy paused and shot Lacey a knowing look. “You were going to ask me, weren’t you?”
“I was going to be subtle.”
“A reporter, subtle? Never.”
They selected an inviting restaurant decorated with dark wood and shades of green. The sandwich board on the sidewalk trumpeted fresh fish and chips and Killian’s Irish Red on tap, and those were the exact words Duffy said to the waitress after they were seated in their booth near the window. Lacey ordered the soup-and-sandwich special, and if she ordered a Killian’s, she told Duffy, she would have to sleep it off before heading home.
“Did she ever explain why Hugh was officially Hugh ‘That Bastard’?”
He shook his head. “Mimi only said Bentley took what didn’t belong to him.”
“Like someone else’s designs?”
“She never did say, just changed the subject.” Duffy had heard a little about Gloria, and he thought he remembered seeing the Three Musketeers photo, or one like it, but not many details. “She called it all ancient history. Our own history started when we met.”
Lacey asked if he ever heard about Gloria Adams’s disappearance.
“Yes, but I wouldn’t have known about her at all, except that one day about ten years ago Mimi announced that we were going to a funeral in Falls Church. It turned out to be Gloria Adams’s sister. Mimi saw the obituary in the paper and we went. It had been years, but the family welcomed Mimi like some long-lost relative. We met the woman’s daughter—that would be Gloria’s niece. The niece told us her mother never got over losing Gloria, and Mimi said neither had she. I was a little surprised because before that day I had never heard of Gloria Adams.”
“What were they like, Duffy? Her relatives.”
“I have only the vaguest memory of the woman and her daughter, who was a teenager at the time. They were timid, colorless women. I wouldn’t recognize them if I passed them on the street.” The waitress delivered their drinks, iced tea for Lacey and the Killian’s Irish Red for Duffy. “After the funeral, Mimi and I went to lunch and hoisted a few stiff ones. Mimi was of the mind that Bentley had used Miss Adams quite shabbily. Mimi had barely escaped his amorous advances herself, and she stopped just short of accusing him of having something to do with the girl’s disappearance. Mimi tried to find out what happened, and I gathered she nearly lost her job with the Feds over it.”
“Really? What exactly was her job?”
“Until the war ended she worked for the Office of Price Administration, which investigated, among other things, black marketeering. She had their investigators crawling all over Bentley’s factory.” Duffy chuckled. “Mimi could get people moving.” He reached for his plate as the waitress reappeared.
“Don’t leave me in suspense, Duffy. What did they find?”
“Not Gloria. But they did find a truckload of contraband nylon stockings and silk and other fabrics.”
“That doesn’t sound like much.”
“It was another age.” He winked at Lacey. “Those things were worth their weight in gold. All production of nylons had supposedly ceased. No one knew it at the time, but the U.S. government secretly reopened a factory and was making nylons exclusively for espionage purposes.”
She looked up at Duffy, puzzled. “Girl spies just gotta have their nylons?”
Duffy laughed. “And male spies too. For use as currency. Better than cash. Nylons would buy you a lot during the war.”
“Did Bentley manufacture them?”
“No, but he must have known about them. Shipments occasionally were hijacked. OPA managed to nail only a couple of Bentley’s drivers, but they never nailed the big fish. And Hugh Bentley finally filed a formal complaint against Mimi for harrassment. She managed to keep her job, but his complaint just convinced her even more strongly that he had something to hide.”
“Hugh Bentley looked me in the face and told me he didn’t remember Mimi Smith.”
Duffy laughed again. “Oh, I doubt that very sincerely. There was a lot of bad blood between them.”
“But she really managed to shut down some of his profiteering?”
“She made it a lot harder for him, anyway.”
“Good for her!” Lacey took a moment to digest the information and play with her food. Hugh hadn’t forgotten Mimi. He wanted her suit back. It was personal for him. Lacey realized she shouldn’t underestimate any of the Bentleys, including the charming Jeffrey.
“Now, Lacey, darlin’, I have to say this because I’m an old man and it’s the kind of thing an old man says, and because I care about you. Don’t be playing games with Hugh Bentley. If he’s the snake that Mimi thought him to be, he’s only more poisonous now. He may be old, but he has his own little empire, and no doubt he has others to do his dirty business for him.”
Lacey stood up and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re a sweetheart and I will be careful.”
“Sit down and order dessert.”
He ordered the cheesecake and she restrained herself to the sorbet. “And Gloria’s family, where are they?” Lacey asked. “Maybe they would have some more information.”
“I believe they were still in Falls Church, where Gloria was from,” he said. “Perhaps they’re still around.”
“Wait a minute, what was their name?”
“I can’t remember, Lacey.”
“What about the sister who died?”
“Mosby, like the highway.”
Over dessert Lacey tried to extract a little information about their romantic life and why they never married. Duffy found this amusing. “I adored her. I asked her many times to marry me. She loved me, but she was almost fifty when we met and she said it wasn’t important, that there wouldn’t be any children. She said I’d get tired of her.” His eyes misted over. “Silly, that was. I was afraid she’d get tired of me.”
“Oh, Duffy, how could you think that?”
After Lacey got home, she powered up her new-slash-old computer, Trujillo’s old laptop, her reluctant concession to the information age and getting e-mails from people who refused to write letters or pick up their phones or cell phones. It was parked in the small second bedroom that she planned to someday turn into a guest room. She didn’t like Googling at home or tying up her phone line, but it beat going into the office, and the Alexandria library closed at five on Saturday.
She found some information about black-market silk and nylons, but nothing useful about Bentley Industries, as it was called during World War II. The Internet eventually, after much searching, offered up a
Washington Post
obituary of one Gladys Mosby. She was survived by her daughter, a Mrs. Wilhelmina Tremain, and a granddaughter, Annette Tremain, both of Falls Church, Virginia. She found the phone number on the Web.
So much for privacy.
Her first call was a success, and Mrs. Tremain agreed to talk on Sunday after church. She was a Presbyterian. Her daughter, Annette, preferred to stay home. Lacey made plans to visit about two o’clock.
Washington Post
obituary of one Gladys Mosby. She was survived by her daughter, a Mrs. Wilhelmina Tremain, and a granddaughter, Annette Tremain, both of Falls Church, Virginia. She found the phone number on the Web.
So much for privacy.
Her first call was a success, and Mrs. Tremain agreed to talk on Sunday after church. She was a Presbyterian. Her daughter, Annette, preferred to stay home. Lacey made plans to visit about two o’clock.
Before she went to bed, the new Scarpabella shoes caught her eye. “Okay! Monday! You go back on Monday!” she said out loud. She wished she had tried on the vintage alligator pumps in Frederick: sixty years old, like new, and only a hundred bucks.
Beat that, Scarpabella.
Beat that, Scarpabella.
chapter 13
Damn. It’s too early for telemarketers.
Lacey picked up the receiver of her faux vintage phone on the nightstand. The glow of her digital clock informed her that it was six A.M.
It’s too early for emergencies, too.
Lacey picked up the receiver of her faux vintage phone on the nightstand. The glow of her digital clock informed her that it was six A.M.
It’s too early for emergencies, too.
“Hello?” She was too groggy to say anything clever.
“Hey, Lacey, do you know where Huntley Meadows is?”
“What? Trujillo, is that you?”
“Yeah, so, Huntley Meadows? Supposed to be a nature preserve? Near Route One?”
“Sort of. But do you know what time it is?” She lifted her foot out of bed to move the drapes. It was still dark.
“News time, Smithsonian. Focus. Huntley Meadows?”
“Okay, yes, I’ve been there. It’s not far from here, and what the hell—”
“Cool. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Get dressed.”
“What!” She sat bolt upright in her bed. “Why?”
“You are alone, right? I mean, it’s cool if you’re not, but—”
“Tony, what is going on?”
“They found Esme there.”
“Esme! Esme Fairchild?”
“So you’re up now? At least they think it’s Esme; you know they’re not saying. We’ve got to get there before the scene is disturbed, and while the local cops still might talk. I never heard of a nature preserve off Route One. Is it in a strip mall or what? I need a guide. You’re it. Meet me out front.” He hung up without waiting for a response.
“Good-bye to you too,” she said to the dial tone.
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