Excerpt of Shot Through Velvet by Ellen Byerrum

Chapter 1 The body was blue. Not merely wearing blue, he was blue—and not the blue pallor of death. He was sapphire from head to toe, a deep shade of mood indigo. Oh, that's taking the matchy-match thing way too far, thought Lacey Smithsonian, fashion reporter for The Eye Street Observer. No, Lacey, she told herself.This is not What Not to Wear. This is how not to be caught dead. The corpse was lashed to the bottom of a giant spool of velvet, fastened with strips of the same velvet, as blue as his skin. He rose dripping from a vat of blue dye, splashing inky blue liquid on the factory's cement floor. Everywhere Lacey looked there was a serene shade of blue made obscene by death.

The dead man's head was swollen, his hair matted blue- black, his lips and tongue a royal blue, his protruding eyeballs a lighter shade, perhaps cerulean. A human gargoyle in death, he was a sight both horrible and fascinating. A song played unbidden in Lacey’s mind. He wore bluuuue VELLLL-vet . . . Lacey, stop! NOW! How long would his blue skin last? Lacey wondered. Through all eternity? Or just through decomposition? With Valentine's Day less than two weeks away, maybe he should have been dyed red instead of blue. Then again, maybe not. Although the man had been completely submerged in the tint, the spool of velvet was only half dyed, the unsubmerged part still cream-colored. It was a sodden mess hanging from a long heavy chain attached to the overhead machinery of the dye house. Lacey had been touring Dominion Velvet, the last velvet factory in Virginia, on its final full day of operations, for a special report for her newspaper on the vanishing U.S. textile industry. She was planning to write a fashion-related feature article, one with more substance than style. Her agenda for the day was not supposed to include murder. Murder was never on Lacey's game plan, and yet here it was. Again. This time death wore blue velvet. Lacey spared a sigh for the velvet, the deceased, and the factory workers. And herself. She wondered how the man's demise would affect her feature story. There were days Lacey detested being a fashion scribe. Today might be one of them. I can't believe this is happening. Standing next to Lacey and also witnessing the royal blue debacle was Dominion Velvet's newly hired security consultant, Vic Donovan, her boyfriend. He was supposed to start working up a security plan the next day and have new guards and a new security system on-site within a week. He was there to get a look around, but he was getting far more than he'd anticipated. Vic was dressed in his professional attire, a close- fitting black turtleneck that showed off his muscles, a black leather jacket, black boots, and gray slacks instead of his usual jeans. One pesky dark curl fell over his forehead. Lacey restrained the urge to push it back and gaze into his green eyes.