Panic Button

by Kylie Logan

  That’s when I was told someone had just come into the shop out of nowhere, didn’t quibble about price the way I’d planned to, and walked out with the display case.

  Cursed?

  I didn’t think so.

  I was, however, willing to admit to being disappointed. The display case would have been perfect, and I’d already picked out a spot for it near the front window so that when I filled it with glass buttons, they’d catch the light—and customers’—eyes. But have no fear, I eased my dashed hopes by concentrating on the charm string. In fact, I didn’t even realize a couple hours had passed until I heard the chink of the small brass bell that hung just inside the front door.

  My first thought was “customer,” and grateful as I always am for people who appreciate buttons as much as I do, I turned off the high-intensity lamp and scooted to the other side of the worktable.

  That is, until a second thought hit.

  “Kaz.” I grumbled the name at the same time I stopped long enough to look over at the pile of mail and that royalty check that was right on top of it.

  When it came to money—namely, money I had and he wanted—Kaz had radar.

  “Well, not this time,” I told myself, and lifting my chin and squaring my shoulders, I quickly rehearsed all the things I would tell him—about how he couldn’t depend on me to get him out of whatever financial mess he found himself in—before I told him to get lost.

  The words died on my lips and the tight little knot of aggravation in my gut loosened when I stepped out of the back room.

  “Stan!”

  Stan Marzcak and I lived across the hall from each other, but he was more than just a neighbor. Stan was a friend, he was family, and he smiled and waved a hello from the door, shaking raindrops off the shoulders of his navy blue Windbreaker. “You look like you were expecting someone else,” he said.

  There was no use lying. Not to Stan. He’d figure out the truth sooner or later, anyway, and besides, he knew the routine. “Royalty day,” I said. “I figured Kaz had the date circled in red on his calendar and was here to tell me that some friend or relative or acquaintance of an old friend’s brother’s cousin’s mother-in-law was in some kind of terrible trouble and only an infusion of cash from me could help. Come to think of it…” I guess I hadn’t thought of it. Not until that moment. That would explain why a chill like icy fingers traced a pattern up my spine. “You know, I haven’t heard from Kaz in a while. That’s kind of strange.”

  “I figured you were going to say something more like refreshing.”

  Stan was right. I jiggled my shoulders to get rid of the odd feeling that had settled there, and laughed. “Maybe Kaz is finally growing up,” I suggested.

  “And learning to be self-sufficient,” Stan countered.

  “And taking responsibility for his own life.” It was such an odd thought, it left me speechless for a moment. “Now that,” I pointed out when I recovered, “would be refreshing.”

  Stan laughed and took a couple more steps into the store. He was carrying a white deli bag and he held it up for me to see. “Brought lunch,” he said. “Figured you’d be so busy with those buttons you’ve been telling me about, you wouldn’t have time to get anything for yourself.”

  Nice of him, and I told him so. It was also a little out of character. Not that Stan isn’t considerate. And generous. And helpful. But he doesn’t usually show up without calling first, and Stan doesn’t usually call unless something is up.

  If instincts can bristle, mine were suddenly at full attention. Especially when I realized that now that the small talk was over, Stan was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, and he refused to meet my eyes. “So you just happened to stop by, huh?”

  “Sure.” It would have been easier to believe him if Stan didn’t ignore me completely and march through the Button Box with more energy than any seventy-something-year-old guy should have. He plunked down the lunch bag on my desk. “I didn’t have anything else to do today.”

  I’d like to think I could take a friend’s word at face value. Call me suspicious. When Stan and I last talked, I clearly remembered him saying he was heading up to Evanston to see his new great-grandson that day.

  I cocked my head and gave him the kind of look I imagined he’d once used on the bad guys who’d had the misfortune to cross his path back when he was a Chicago homicide detective. Just so he knew he wasn’t pulling the wool over my eyes, I crossed my arms over my chest, too, and stepped back, my weight against one foot.

  “Uh-huh,” was all I said.

  So much for trying to make an impression; Stan barely spared me a look. Instead, he made a big show out of opening the deli bag, reaching inside, and pulling out a sandwich. “You want this in the back room?” he asked. “I know you don’t like to eat out here and take the chance that your buttons will get something spilled on them.”

  “I don’t like people who are shady, either,” I reminded him, though I shouldn’t have had to.

  Like the shady comment couldn’t possibly have been meant for him, he dropped the sandwich back where it came from, lifted the bag, and held it close to his chest, the picture of innocence. “What are you talking about, Josie?” he asked.

  Rather than screech my frustration, I led the way into the workroom and coiled up the charm string so that I could tuck it onto a nearby shelf. At the same time I pulled a second stool over to the table, I tossed a look over my shoulder at Stan. “I’m talking about you,” I said, patting the table to show him where to put the bag. “You didn’t just stop in, and don’t pretend you did. You talked to Nev, didn’t you? I mean, since I saw him last night.”

  His lips pursed, Stan looked up at the ceiling. It’s a nice ceiling. Original to the brownstone, which means late Victorian. It’s tin and is embossed with a beautiful small floral pattern and painted a bright white to make the most of the light in the windowless workroom.

  But to a man who’d seen it dozens of times, I was pretty certain it wasn’t interesting enough to warrant such a close inspection.

  “If you say ‘Nev who?’ I’m going to bonk you with this sandwich bag,” I growled.

  Stan grimaced and gave up on the ceiling, peeling out of his jacket. “Well, what do you expect the guy to do?” he asked. “First of all, he’s a cop so of course he’s going to be concerned. Second of all, the guy’s crazy about you. He cares what happens to you, and he worries about you, too. So you meet him for a drink last night and you tell him somebody tried to steal your purse and—”

  “And so he sent you over to babysit me?” I may have been annoyed, but I was also famished. I peeked in the bag, made the important decision between pastrami and corned beef, extracted the sandwich I wanted, and pushed the bag toward Stan. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told Nev. It was random. And it was my fault. As soon as I set my purse down, that creep saw his opportunity. And when he realized he was up against the mighty LaSalle, he disappeared. What do they call that, Stan? A crime of opportunity? Well, that’s exactly what it would have been if not for the dog. Which means it’s not like the scumbag is going to waltz in here and stick up the place.” My laugh was anything but funny. “He’d be plenty surprised if he did. I’ve got thirty dollars in the cash drawer and another seventeen in my purse. That’s all he would have gotten last night if he’d made off with it. Seventeen dollars. Hardly seems worth it.”

  “Our perp didn’t know that.” While I was busy lecturing him (yeah, like that was going to get me anywhere), Stan had retrieved the corned beef sandwich. He added mustard and a dollop of horseradish. “And I don’t want to worry you, Josie, but you don’t know it was random. He might have been staking out the place.”

  “A button shop?” I asked, only since my mouth was full, it came out sounding more like, “Abhtnshp?” I chewed and swallowed. “You and Nev must have been comparing notes. That’s exactly what he said.”

  “We didn’t need to compare notes. We attended the same police academy.” Stan made sure he paused h
ere, just to be sure I got the message. “You can’t be too careful, kiddo. You should know that what with that actress getting killed here, then everything that happened at that button convention of yours.”

  He didn’t need to remind me. The fact that Josie Giancola, button purveyor, would ever find herself mixed up with murder was as far-fetched as thinking that LaSalle would turn detective.

  I opened one of those little plastic packs of mustard with my teeth and coated my sandwich. “Maybe you and Nev would rest easier if you knew the whole story. Then you’d know that guy wasn’t staking out the store. He just appeared—poof! You know, because of the curse.”

  I was going for funny, but Stan wasn’t laughing. He narrowed his eyes and gave me a look designed to get the whole truth and nothing but.

  I gave it to him. At least as much as I could remember. The bit about Angela and how superstitious she was, and how she actually thought that the wonderful buttons on the wonderful charm string had some crazy power to bring bad luck.

  “See?” I asked when I was finished with the details. “Your theory about someone watching me and just waiting for me to set down my purse in a public place is as silly as Angela’s theory that bad luck follows the charm string. There’s no such thing as bad luck, I know you believe that, Stan. You’re too logical not to. And there’s no such thing as curses, either. Absolutely, positively not.”

  Brave words.

  They would have been far more effective if, at that very moment, every light in the shop didn’t go out.

  Chapter Three

  “DON’T MOVE AN INCH.”

  Honestly, I didn’t need Stan to tell me. Any other day, the lack of light wouldn’t have mattered nearly as much, but that particular afternoon, with thunder rumbling overhead and Chicago blanketed in a thick layer of black clouds, the shop was plunged into darkness.

  “I’ll go into the basement and…ow!” I heard the bang before Stan’s grunt, and I knew he’d run into the corner shelves near the back door. “I’ll check the fuse box in the basement,” he said once he’d grumbled a couple unrepeatable words, and I pictured his teeth clenched and his upper lip stiff. “If you have a flashlight.”

  “Of course I have a flashlight.” I felt my way along the worktable, took the three steps I knew separated the table from the shelves where Stan was standing, and stuck out a hand toward the shelf at nose level. My fingers closed around the cool cylinder of a small metal flashlight. “Here.” I poked it through the dark toward where I knew Stan was, and when he reached for it and I assumed he had a hold of it, it plunked to the floor.

  “Don’t move an inch,” he said again when I was just about to, but then, I guess he didn’t want to get stepped on while he scrambled around on his hands and knees. When he stood up again, he was huffing and puffing.

  I heard the click of the flashlight’s on button. Nothing happened. Another click. A third. “What’s that you said about a curse?” he grumbled. “Maybe that lady with those old buttons was right. These batteries are dead.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” It wasn’t like I didn’t trust him, but I groped through the darkness to pry the flashlight out of Stan’s hands. I tried to turn it on, and when nothing happened, I shook the flashlight, tried the button again, and groaned. “I replaced the batteries in this thing not two weeks ago. I know I did.”

  “Not to worry.” Stan’s face suddenly glowed an eerie blue in the light of his cell phone screen. “I can find my way using this.”

  He did, and less than a couple minutes later, the lights were back on.

  When Stan came back upstairs and into the workroom, his snowy brows were low over his eyes. “Breaker wasn’t tripped,” he said. “Not like there was an overload or anything.”

  “The power must have been out to the whole neighborhood,” I said.

  He shook his head. Once. When Stan does that, it’s a sure sign he’s convinced he’s right. “I don’t think so, Josie.” His polite way of saying he knew so. “Looked more like someone turned off the breaker.”

  “Emilie, I bet.” I glanced toward the tin ceiling Stan had been eying such a short time before. The travel agent who worked upstairs from me had a tendency to try and fix things she should never touch. “I bet there’s something wrong with her computer. She’s convinced that every time it hiccups, it’s because something’s wrong with the electricity in the building.”

  Stan pursed his lips. “Maybe. But if that was the case, when all the lights went kerflooey, you’d think I would have seen her down in the basement. And when I came in a while ago, her car wasn’t out on the street where she usually parks.”

  I did not dispute this last bit of information. Retired or not, cops have a gift for remembering such things.

  “Then how…” I bit off the question because I knew what Stan was going to say, and I didn’t need to get teased about Angela’s curse. “Well, it’s fixed now,” I said instead. “And I can get back to work.”

  “And I’m going to go to Walgreens and pick up some batteries for you.” Stan headed to the front of the store. “You should always have a working flashlight.”

  He was right, and I didn’t argue. I finally had the shop to myself again, and I got right down to work. I had the phone in my hand and was about to make a call to a fellow collector in Cleveland about a couple of the charm string buttons when the bell above the front door clanged.

  Customer, I hoped.

  At the same time I knew my luck wouldn’t hold.

  “Kaz,” I told myself, and in a twist of fate designed to make me believe in déjà vu if not in curses, I stepped out of the back room only to find Stan standing at the front door.

  “Forgot my wallet,” he muttered, his lips thin with disgust. “I never forget my wallet. It’s not like I’m an old man or anything.” Still mumbling, he retrieved not only his wallet but his Windbreaker, too, and went on his way.

  This time he was gone for a while.

  A really long while.

  I wrapped up the first phone call and another to a collector in Baltimore who answered the questions my Cleveland friend couldn’t. I finished the last of my pastrami sandwich. Because I couldn’t resist it, I took a few more pictures of the beautiful enameled fish button, and I even waited on a particularly picky customer who was looking for buttons for a baby’s christening gown.

  No Stan.

  I actually had the phone in my hands and was all set to call Walgreens before I came to my senses. I’d told Stan I didn’t appreciate having a babysitter, and I imagined he wouldn’t, either.

  Still…

  Stan was no spring chicken, and anything could happen between the shop and Walgreens. If he wasn’t back in ten minutes…

  When the bell above the front door rang, I breathed a sigh of relief and swore I wouldn’t let him know how worried I’d been.

  That resolve lasted about ten seconds when I walked out front and realized Stan wasn’t the only one who’d stepped into the Button Box. There was a uniformed Chicago cop there, too.

  “What happened? Are you all right? Was anybody hurt?”

  The way the questions poured out of me and the fact that my heart was suddenly beating double time and making my blood whoosh in my ears, I wouldn’t have heard even if I did give either of them a chance to answer. I raced the entire length of the shop and looked Stan over. He didn’t seem to be hurt, and if anything had happened to him, health-wise, he wouldn’t have been there, right? They would have taken him to the hospital in an ambulance.

  “So?” My throat suddenly tight, my gaze darted between Stan and the cop.

  Stan stomped past me. “That’s the last time I go to that store,” he grumbled. “There was this kid behind the counter, see, and she saw me looking at the batteries, and I guess…well, I don’t guess anything. I know she must have been high or something. Imagine her thinking that I could possibly steal anything!”

  “Shoplifting? You?” Honestly, it was so out of the realm of possibility, I almost
laughed. Except for the cop still standing near my door.

  I spun to face him. “You don’t really think—”

  “We got it all straightened out, ma’am,” the cop said. He was young, fresh-faced, and he held his hat in his hands. “There was a little mix-up and—”

  “You call that a mix-up?” Stan’s cheeks were maroon. “Back in my day—”

  “You’re right, sir.” I could tell this cop would go far in the department. He had a soothing voice, and he knew how to use it to say all the right things. “And believe me, I understand how you feel. I’m sure Detective Riley did, too.”

  My turn to interrupt. “Nevin got involved? How? He’s working the afternoon shift. He shouldn’t even be at the station yet.”

  “Not exactly involved.” Stan had never finished his corned beef sandwich, and he went into the back room to retrieve it and took a chomp. “I had the store manager call him at home. You know, to tell them who I was and how that crazy girl must have been mistaken. And Nev…” Stan chewed and swallowed. “Well, she knows he’s a nice guy,” he explained to the officer in a classic example of too much information. “They’re dating, you see. Nev…” Stan looked my way. “He vouched for me, and explained everything to Officer Ramirez here.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the officer. “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem, ma’am.” He set his hat back on his head. “Funny thing is, after I had another talk with that clerk at the store, she said she didn’t think Mr. Marzcak really took those batteries in the first place. Said she didn’t know what she was thinking when she said she did. It was like the whole situation was…I dunno…all confused or something, and then Mr. Marzcak, he told me about those old buttons of yours and the curse, and I remember what my abuela used to say about bad luck and—”