Panic Button

by Kylie Logan

  “The lady you told me about the other night.” Nev pulled another stool up to my worktable and perched on the edge of it. He was a tad over six feet tall, and even seated on the tool, his feet touched the floor. Not mine. Mine dangled. “I remember what you said when we had that drink the other night. You said Ms. Morningside, she was the one who believed in—”

  “Curses. Yeah.” It didn’t seem so funny now. In fact, just thinking about Angela’s fear and the warnings she’d seen in the crows and the howling dog made a shiver skitter up my back. I wrapped my arms around myself and the gold cardigan I’d worn that day with blue jeans. “Angela came in last night to pick up the charm string. There was supposed to be a tea today at the Ardent Lake Historical Society. Oh, really, someone needs to call and tell them,” I added and I suppose, in some way, thinking about the tea satisfied the need in me to concentrate on the mundane, even in the face of murder. “They’re going to make tea and bake cookies and before they do all that—”

  “Not to worry.” Without even checking to see if the other cop was watching, Nev patted my hand. “We’ll take care of the phone calls.”

  The reassurance satisfied my need for structure, even in a situation that was all about chaos. “Angela…” I sniffled. “She was so excited about presenting them the charm string, and so happy to be getting it out of her life.”

  I hadn’t even realized I’d started to cry until Nev handed me a white cotton handkerchief. I dabbed it to my eyes. “She showed up here a little after six last night,” I told him because I knew he was bound to ask sooner or later and I figured we might as well get it over with just in case I fell to pieces. “She picked up the charm string and left. She went…” I thought back to all I remembered about the night before. “When she left the store, she turned to her right, in the direction of the alleyway. Stan and I left just a couple minutes later, and we went to our left. If we’d gone the other way…”

  There was no way I wanted to think about how things might have been different. If I did, I’d only feel worse.

  Nev understood. “It’s not your fault,” he said.

  I shrugged. “I know. It’s just that—”

  “That it’s not your fault.”

  He was right, and I admitted it with a fleeting smile. It was the first I’d smiled since I walked into the courtyard and found Angela’s body, and the muscles in my face felt stiff and uncomfortable, but even that felt better than the painful knot wedged between my heart and my stomach.

  Maybe Nev realized how close I was to falling to pieces. That would explain why he kept things professional and to the point. I didn’t hold it against him. But then, I knew what he knew: if he was going to find out who murdered Angela, he had to get on the trail of the killer, and fast. At this point in his investigation, I was the one best able to help.

  “Did she say anything to you?” he asked. “About anyone following her? Or about anyone who might have been angry at her? Anyone she might have been afraid of? Did she act peculiar in any way?”

  I’d already shaken my head before I stopped to reconsider. “She didn’t call to tell me she was on her way here, and the day before, she told me she would. I know that seems like a small thing, but I don’t think Angela was the type who made promises she didn’t intend to keep. And then when she did get to the shop last night…well, it was pretty obvious that she was upset,” I told Nev. “Her eyes were swollen like she’d been crying, but when I asked her about it, she said it was because of her allergies. She was a mess, too. It’s hard to believe seeing her the way she’s dressed now, but the first time I met Angela, she looked like the poster girl for how women should dress for success. Something was definitely wrong.”

  “But she didn’t say what.”

  Another shake of my head. “She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who would easily share, especially with a stranger.”

  “And with friends?”

  “I hardly knew her.” My throat felt as if there were a hand around it. So not a pretty thought considering the way Angela had been killed. Hoping to wash away the uncomfortable thought, I took a sip of water, and when it hurt to swallow, I made a face.

  Nev excused himself long enough to go over to the counter and put on a fresh pot of coffee. “When that’s done brewing,” he said to the cop nearby, “how about pouring a cup for Ms. Giancola.”

  The cop nodded and dutifully went over to watch the pot drip, and Nev came back to sit next to me. “Did she say anything about her life back in Ardent Lake?”

  “She said she had a boyfriend.” I thought about the way Angela had worded it, that they were more than friends, and my voice clogged with tears. “She was so happy about Larry. She said he was the one good thing that had happened to her since she inherited the charm string. He owns the hardware store in Ardent Lake. That’s what Angela told me.” I remembered how Angela’s eyes had gleamed when she talked about Larry, and I thought about how he was going to feel when he heard the news. “The poor man,” I said, automatically reaching for my cell though I didn’t have a clue what Larry’s number, or even his last name, was. “Someone needs to tell him.”

  “That’s my job.” Nev made a note of this in the little leather-bound notebook he pulled out of the breast pocket of his gray suit. “I’ll get in touch with the Ardent Lake police and have someone there tell Larry what happened, after we check for next of kin. Then I’ll go up there and have a talk with Larry. He’s bound to know more about Ms. Morningside’s personal life.”

  “And what about all that other stuff?” Normally, I would have shrugged it off without another thought, but murder is serious business and Angela’s felt strangely personal. Maybe that was because I’d grown so close to those buttons of hers. The ones she’d now never have a chance to donate to the historical society.

  “I know you’re going to tell me I’m crazy, Nev, but she was convinced the charm string was cursed and now—”

  “You, of all people? You’re not going to tell me you believe any of that hooey, are you?”

  “No.” I didn’t. Honest. “I mean, I know inanimate objects don’t have a will of their own, so they can’t bring bad luck to anyone. And even if they could…I mean, buttons? Buttons are so wonderful and so interesting and so—” It wasn’t that Nev didn’t already understand how my life and buttons were intertwined, it was just that I figured I didn’t need to remind him. Sometimes, it was hard enough for a cop and a button nerd to find things to talk about. There was no use pointing out the obvious differences between us.

  “I think what’s important,” I said, “isn’t if buttons can really bring bad luck but that Angela believed they could. It’s almost like she brought the bad luck on herself, because she saw it everywhere she looked, and she believed it could happen.”

  “I’ve seen weirder things.” Still, Nev dismissed my theory with a shake of his head that sent his shaggy, sandy-colored hair dipping into his eyes. He pushed it back with one hand. “But I think we’ll find there’s a very human element behind this crime.”

  “I didn’t see anyone hanging around when Angela walked out of here,” I said.

  “Not even that guy who tried to snatch your purse the other night?”

  This was a connection I’d never even considered, and I sucked in a breath. “You don’t think—”

  “You know me better than that. I don’t think anything until I have all the facts, and right now, facts are mighty slim around here. I do know that this is usually a pretty safe neighborhood. If it wasn’t, I’d help you pack your buttons and get you out of here.”

  The uniformed cop chose that particular moment to deliver a mug of steaming coffee. “Cream or sugar?” he asked, and before I could answer, Nev suggested sugar and lots of it. “It will help with the shock,” he promised.

  Half a cup of coffee later, I couldn’t say if that was true, but I could say that some of the tension inside me had eased. I wrapped my hands tighter around the red mug with “I ♥ Buttons” in white letterin
g on it, savoring the warmth as it seeped into my fingers and spread into my hands.

  “Seems funny, don’t you think,” Nev said, and call me cynical, but I think he’d waited until this very moment to bring up this theory, until he knew I was a little more relaxed and likely to be caught off guard. “An almost crime one night, and a real crime the next.”

  A cha-cha started up inside my chest. “Then you do think the two are related?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I do want you to be careful. I could come by in the evening when it’s time for you to lock up.”

  I shouldn’t have had to give him a pointed look, just like I shouldn’t have had to say, “You’ve got a job, remember? And you can’t spend your evenings looking after me.”

  Fortunately, he didn’t get the opportunity to argue. Before he could say a word, a crime-scene technician came into the shop and headed for the back room, her arms stacked with small plastic evidence bags that were perched on top of a crumpled floral hatbox. She set everything down on the table and I saw that each bag contained a charm string button.

  The woman looked at the pile of evidence bags and shook her head in wonder. “There are an awful lot of buttons lying around out there,” she grumbled.

  “One thousand, to be exact.” I wasn’t trying to show off, but I figured it was important.

  “One…thousand.” I swear, the woman’s face went a little green.

  Nev grinned. “Looks like you’ve got a busy day ahead of you, Kovach,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. And went back outside.

  “So…” Nev fingered the nearest evidence bag. “What do you think, Josie? Do these buttons have anything to do with Angela Morningside’s murder?”

  “I wish I knew.” I looked through the bags of buttons, too, carefully setting each one aside as I did. If this was where the techs wanted to stage their evidence, they’d need a whole lot more room.

  “You took pictures of the buttons, right?” Nev looked at the individually packaged buttons, too. “That’s what you said the other night. You said you photographed each of the charm string buttons.”

  I nodded. “You’re welcome to look through the pictures if you like.”

  Nev’s smile was sheepish. “I was kind of hoping you’d do that for me.”

  I felt the familiar protest ride in my throat. “I’m not—” I was going to say a detective, but I swallowed the words. I might not be a trained crime fighter like Nev, but I was a button expert. And when it came to buttons, Nev needed all the help he could get.

  Chapter Five

  “NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE, NINE HUNDRED AND ninety-six, nine hundred and ninety-seven.”

  It was the second time I’d counted—out loud—all the evidence bags and the buttons in them, and my mouth felt as if it were filled with sand. I ducked into the workroom to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and took a long drink before I walked back into the shop and dared a look in Nev’s direction. He was standing near my desk, and just as I feared, he didn’t look any happier at the end of this count than he had the last time I finished counting.

  “I told you, Nev…” I drained the last of the water out of the bottle. “There are three buttons missing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I bit my lower lip. It was the best way I could remind myself that it had been a long day. For both of us. It was after dark, and while the crime-scene techs had been busy working out in the courtyard, Nev had left to do whatever it is homicide detectives do when they’re newly assigned to a case. Now he was back from doing that whatever he’d been doing, and his white shirt was crumpled. His shirt collar was unbuttoned. He hadn’t bothered to take off his trench coat when he walked into the shop nearly an hour earlier, and the belt on it hung cockeyed. That little vee between those blue eyes of his told me he thought he’d hear better news after this count than he’d heard the first time around.

  As a way of reminding him that my day hadn’t been any easier, I waved a hand around the shop, silently indicating the folding tables the crime-scene techs had arranged against the walls. Even before they asked (nicely) if I would help out, I’d already decided this was the only way to make sense of the sea of buttons they’d rescued from the courtyard. Yeah, it was a little anal. OK, so it was a lot anal. But it made sense. And right about then—with images of Angela’s dead body etched in my mind and memories of how, just twenty-four hours earlier, she’d stood right there in my shop talking to me—bringing order to a world that was suddenly upside down calmed me and helped me feel useful.

  Under the watchful eye of a crime-scene tech named Jason, who was still at the shop to assure what he called “the chain of evidence,” I’d carefully arranged each evidence bag on top of a copy of the picture I’d taken the day before of the button inside it. Little plastic bags gleamed all around us and I looked over them all before I turned to Nev. “You want to count them?”

  “Of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to second-guess you.” He ran a hand over a tie that was a shade of blue too green to look good with his gray suit. “I’m just wondering what we do next.”

  Had he not been so tired, I’m sure he would have thought of this himself, but for now, I had the chance to work a little button magic and I wasn’t above gloating about it. I whisked three photos off my desk. “We have nine hundred and ninety-seven buttons. Plus”—I waved the photos in his direction—“we know which buttons are missing.”

  Nev’s expression brightened. It wasn’t so much a smile as it was an acknowledgment that there might be at least a glimmer of light at the end of the investigative tunnel. “Of course! And if we know which ones are missing—”

  He expected me to supply the logical rest of the statement, but honestly, I couldn’t. “I’m not sure what it tells us,” I admitted. “But it’s a start.”

  He was hoping for more. He settled for what he got, leaning over to take a look at the pictures that I laid out one by one on my desk.

  “This is a sort of greenish button,” he said, picking up the first photo and giving it a careful once-over. “Looks like glass.”

  “You’re learning.” I leaned over his shoulder so I could tap a finger against the button in the photo. “This button is made out of uranium glass, or what some modern collectors call Vaseline glass. And this one…” I put the first picture back on the desk and handed him the second.

  Nev looked at it for a moment, and maybe I was tired and, thus, being fanciful, but I liked to think that he was trying to call up any little bit of button knowledge he’d learned from me in the past months. It was sweet of him, really. Even when he finally pursed his lips and gave up. “It’s a button with a picture of a red fish on it. Honest to gosh…” Shaking his head, he set the picture back where it came from. “Before I met you, I never even imagined there were buttons as fancy as that. I mean, who even thinks about buttons?”

  He knew the answer to that question, which explains why he cringed as soon as the words left his mouth. When he bent to retrieve the last photo, the tips of Nev’s ears were pink. “And one more photo of a button with a picture of a…” He squinted for a clearer look. “It looks like a metal button with a building or something on it.”

  “Check, check, and check.” I laid out the pictures side by side. “Now, either these buttons are still outside and the techs just never found them…” He was sitting in the wing chair in the far corner of the shop reading a magazine and not paying the least bit of attention to me, but I offered an apologetic look in Jason’s direction anyway. “Or—”

  “Or the techs couldn’t find the buttons because they’re not out there.” Head cocked, Nev thought this over. “Are any of these buttons worth stealing?”

  “Stealing? Well, yeah. I suppose so. I don’t know a button collector anywhere who hasn’t seen that one, perfect button they need to complete a competition tray and not thought about making off with it. Even if they’d never actually do it. Killing for a button, that’s another matter.” Rather t
han think about what sort of warped person might actually murder a fellow human being for the sake of a button, I concentrated on the facts. I tapped a finger against the photos, first of the uranium glass button, then of the metal button. “These, not so much. But this one…” I moved on to the picture of the beautifully enameled button with the fish at the center of it. “This one’s old, and valuable.”

  “Valuable enough to kill for?”

  I made a face. “Is anything that valuable?”

  “What you think and what I think don’t really matter. You know that, Josie. It’s what a killer thinks that counts. If we knew if these three buttons were really missing…”

  I’d been waiting for the opening. Yeah, it was kind of shallow of me, showing off like this, but let’s face it, I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to impress Nev. Besides, I had a very real skill I could offer at this point in the investigation and I could guarantee that neither Nev nor Jason could hold a candle to it. It would have been careless of me not to step forward and use my expertise.

  I ducked into the back room, got a special keychain from the drawer in the worktable, and breezed back into the shop. “Come with me,” I said, including both Nev and Jason in the invitation, and together, the three of us stepped outside.

  There’s always something happening on Thursday night in Old Town, and that night was no exception. The music was cranked at the bar down the street, its deep bass line punctuating our steps and vibrating my bones. Lights sparkled from the display window of the interior design studio that had opened almost directly across from the Button Box only a couple weeks earlier, and tourists scrambled all around us, heading for nearby clubs and restaurants. The scene was just as lively and interesting as our merchants and residents association promised tourists it would be on our website and in our e-mail newsletter.