Shot Through Velvet Chapter 1 page 2

     "My tone? Are you telling me this is one of your infamous crimes of fashion?"
     "Just what would you call it? He is tied to a spool of velvet. He is blue. Do the math."
     "It's a workplace homicide," he said. "Just so happens the workplace is a velvet factory. Besides, I didn't mean this was your fault. I meant mine."

     Lacey raised an eyebrow in response. "Your fault? How do you figure that?"
     "I should have started this job yesterday. Then this wouldn't have happened."
     "The company set the timetable, not you. The client is always right. Right?"
     "Yeah. That was my first mistake. The client is usually wrong."

A handful of other witnesses were sharing this spectacle. Vic and Lacey's tour had picked up a few hangers-on, employees who trailed along in a kind of melancholy parade, not knowing what to do to fill their time on their last day on the job. They collected their personal mementos and cleaned out their lockers, but they had nowhere else to go. It didn't feel like a brand-new day waiting around the corner for the factory, as Rod Gibbs had promised. It felt like a heartbroken good-bye. A deep blue good-bye.

This is what happens when people lose their jobs. The irony didn't escape Lacey. She was writing about job loss at a time when newspapers were closing all over the country and her own newspaper was in trouble. She could lose her own position just when the job horizon for reporters was rapidly dimming. Lacey had expected her journalism career to move from paper to paper, onward and upward, with better positions at every step along the way. But what if The Eye Street Observer was the end of the road for her? Newspapers were threatened daily by the Internet and twenty-four-hour broadcast news. Lacey shook her head to clear her thoughts. This wasn't about her. This story was about Black Martin, Virginia.

The group had turned a corner, from the velvet-shearing operations on the main floor to the white-tiled room that was called the dye house. Six large gray steel vats sat in a row, partly sunken in the floor. Five of them were empty. Each vat was seven feet deep to accommodate the heavy steel spools of fabric six-and-a-half feet wide. Nicholson, their tour guide, had been surprised to see there was a problem with the sixth. The spool of velvet seemed to be stuck half in and half out of the vat. When the spool was slowly lifted by the heavy machinery, the blue corpse came up with it.

In the ensuing confusion and gasps of disbelief, Lacey felt Vic's hand on her shoulder. His face was stern and his jaw was set. She'd seen that look before. She whispered, "I do not have a murder mojo."

Donovan snorted. "I didn't say that. Today."

"You're the one who gave me the tip the factory was closing."

     "I should have my head examined."
     "It's a good story, Vic. Factory closing, workers out of jobs, American industries killed by cheap foreign imports."
     He nodded toward the body. "But it's a better story now, right? With Blue Boy hanging there?"

"It's a more complicated story now." Lacey was beginning to regret not bringing a photographer, but she didn't mention that to Vic. He had his own problems. She would have to make do with her small digital camera. She took a few quick photos, but she put it away after being glared at by Vic.

Lacey whispered as they moved a few yards away. "Vic, you know that old song, 'Blue Velvet'? It keeps running through my brain. And I still can see blue velvet—"

"—through my screams. Thanks, darling. Now it's running through my brain." "You're the one who gave me the tip the factory was closing."

Tom Nicholson stood next to the spool, shaking his head and staring.

"Do you know who it is?" Vic asked.

"Well—" Nicholson began. "It's a little hard to say." [cont.]

Shot Through Velvet, Chapter 1, continued

     Things had gone wrong from the start that morning. Vic and Lacey were supposed to meet with Vic's contact, a company official named Rod Gibbs. But Gibbs hadn't shown up, so general manager Tom Nicholson had filled in. He was giving them what he called the five-cent tour.
     Rod Gibbs was also the company official Lacey had intended to interview. He promised her on the phone that the shutdown would be temporary and he would give her details of "an exciting new plan" for the factory's future.
     At the moment, Vic was taking a deep breath, no doubt trying to control his emotions.

     "This is a disaster," he whispered and shook his head.
     "This is not my fault, Vic Donovan," Lacey whispered back.
     "I know that, Lacey."
     "That's not what your tone says."

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