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with shoes.” His brows knit dangerously.
    “I do write about shoes,” she protested. “If you read my column you’d know that. Remember, Mac, you stuck me with this fashion beat. Besides, I never get to go anywhere good. Other fashion reporters get to go to Paris, Milan, New York. I go nowhere. This time I’m going to Paris.” She locked eyes with him like a laser beam, daring Mac to look away first.
    Tony Trujillo, the cops reporter, stuck his nose through the door. “Lost another source, Lacey? Rumor says you called in the murder and a force of nature no smaller than Broadway Lamont is on the job. So what’s really up?”
    “Drive-by poisoning. Go away. We’re talking about shoes.”
    Mac leaned back in his chair, setting his feet on his desk, looking like the school principal.
    “What about the knife that was stuck in her?” Tony inquired.
    “You didn’t mention a knife,” Mac growled.
    Lacey looked from Tony to Mac. “I did too. It wasn’t in very deep. It actually looked like a prop knife. The handle was covered with jewels.”
    “Jewels?” Tony said. “A jewel-handled dagger? Cool.” She could see him turning the phrase around in his head as if it were the lead in the story. His story. Good God , Lacey thought, this whole story is slipping right through my fingers.
    “Fake jewels, obviously. If they were real, the killer wouldn’t have left it. Besides, she told me she was poisoned,” Lacey said.
    “Kind of a dying declaration, you know?”
    “Yeah.” Trujillo smirked. “I hear that’s becoming a real trend in D.C.”
    “Trujillo, go back to your beat.” Mac drummed his fingers on his desk.
    “I don’t know, man, this is just beginning to get good. And this is my beat. My beat is cops, remember? Dead bodies? Poison?
    Jewel-encrusted daggers? My turf, Mac. I need to know.” The handsome, black-haired Trujillo flashed his lady-killer smile, slid into the room, and shut the door. “Lacey’s obviously trying to spin her way out of a hot spot. And onto my beat.”
    Lacey tensed for combat. “I resent that editorial comment, Trujillo. And it’s my story. I was there, at the crime scene. Getting Magda’s last words. Trying to save her life. Where were you? Getting your snakeskin boots polished?”
    Tony’s smile faded. “I’d have been there too — if you’d called me before it was all over.”
    Mac eyed Trujillo. “Don’t you have some mayhem of your own to write about?”
    “Not when her beat gets this good. All the mayhem is happen-ing right here. So Mac, what’s going on with Smithsonian? Why all the closed doors?”
    “Hey! I’m in the room too, Tony.” She shot him an icy look, but he shrugged it off. “Afraid I’ve got another scoop?”
    “Not afraid, just interested. Tell me a story, Brenda Starr. You know we work better together than when we dance on each other’s toes.” He moved a stack of papers and sat down in the chair next to her. Mac sighed. Lacey waited on pins and needles. Spill my big secret, Mac, and I’m telling Claudia. You’ll be sorry.
    Mac weighed his words carefully. He and Lacey both knew how much their publisher disliked having her orders short-circuited by anyone. “You know Smithsonian was doing a fashion story with the old seamstress dame in France. Corsets in haute couture, past and present, something like that. Now the old lady’s dead.” Mac shrugged elaborately. “End of story.”
    “Ha. Somebody is dead and Smithsonian is involved? That is never the end of the story,” Tony asserted, “only the beginning.”
    “Not this time. Smithsonian is not going to France now. No old lady, no source, no story. The old lady’s death is just another D.C. murder story. You two split the byline. We’re done here.”
    Lacey cleared her throat. “I am going to France. I am writing the story. And Magda Rousseau — um — wasn’t that old.” Lacey folded her arms to keep her fists from creating an incident that would be written up for her