Raiders of the Lost Corset by Ellen Byerrum Page A

Pickles made Wiedemeyer lose the ability to speak coherently.
    They were driving her crazy. Much to her own surprise, she had recently reached a breaking point and brazenly put the two of them together, face-to-face, hand in hand, brownie to doughnut, blowing the cover on their secret crushes on each other. Wiedemeyer thanked Lacey profusely nearly every time he saw her.
    Lacey did not believe that Harlan was a jinx, exactly. However, as Mac had observed, “Bad things happen when Harlan’s around.” To blame the exploding toads of Germany on Harlan Wiedemeyer was probably going too far, but Felicity’s minivan had been blown up outside the office by someone who mistook her for Smithsonian, and Felicity decided that having lost her transportation, there was nothing more to lose if she dared to date Harlan. Putting the two of them together had seemed to lift a mysterious cloud of misfortune from Lacey’s shoulders. Coincidence?
    Lacey didn’t think so.
    Felicity politely offered a gingerbread man to Lacey. It looked delicious. Alas, Lacey had to be thin to enter France; it was a matter of French law. So she resisted. But Wiedemeyer dug in with gusto, gingerbread lighting up his pleasure centers. He and Felicity made little “um-um” noises at each other. Lacey had to turn away to keep her stomach from turning, only to see the gloomy visage of the paper’s editorial writer, Cassandra Wentworth, mo-rosely making her way from the staff kitchen. Cassandra held a steaming mug of herbal tea that smelled like swamp sludge. The terribly thin and careworn Cassandra said a world-weary hello to Felicity, then desolately lifted a fat piece of gingerbread onto a napkin to nibble on later at her desk. She eyed Lacey with reproof.
    “I read ‘Crimes of Fashion’ this week, Smithsonian,” she moaned. “All the misery in the world and you scribble on about clothes, clothes, clothes.”
    “That’s my job,” Lacey said, laughing. “Misery is your beat. But Harlan’s got a great story about exploding toads. You’ll love it.”
    “Exploding toads are an early warning sign of grim environmental disasters about to engulf the earth. Everyone knows this.
    You think everything’s funny, don’t you, Smithsonian?”
    “Everything but pointed shoes. Nothing funny there. I think they’re a travesty, a health hazard, and they’re ugly.” Lacey looked down at Cassandra’s feet, encased in thick gray wool socks and Birkenstocks. “However, your shoes are eminently, um, sensible. No laughing matter there, either.” The woman was also wearing rumpled mud-brown pants and a pilled pavement-gray sweater several sizes too large. Lacey refrained from commenting on the mismatch, or on the way the dreary, soul-destroying colors sucked the life out of Cassandra’s face.
    “You just don’t get it, do you?” Cassandra’s murky brown eyes almost seemed to gleam with a passion for disaster. “People are hungry. People are dying. Toads are exploding.”
    “Then I suggest you eat that gingerbread right now, before chunks of exploding toad come flying through the windows.”
    Cassandra averted her eyes in disgust. “Laugh while you can.”
    “And look on the bright side, Cassandra,” Lacey said. “Maybe we’ll all be wearing chic new toad-skin pumps. How big are those toads, Harlan? Big enough to make a ladies’ size six sandal?”
    “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Giant exploding toads, Lacey! Ribbit! Kaboom!” he said with an explosive gesture. Cassandra was not amused.
    “Writing about fashion is just a drain on humanity in these times of dire emergency. Clothes should be functional and protect us against the elements. And against deadly solar radiation from the hole in the ozone layer created by Western civilization’s short-sighted reliance on fossil fuels. That’s all.”
    “Sounds like an editorial to me.” Lacey yawned extravagantly.
    “Will we see that in the paper tomorrow?”
    “Being flippant. That’s your