Chapter 1
The body was blue.
Not merely wearing blue, he was blueโand 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 Laceyโs 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.
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