Button Holed

by Kylie Logan

  “Maybe she was just embarrassed at having been caught,” I suggested. “Or grateful? After all, Kate apparently just fired her; she didn’t have her arrested.”

  “Or maybe she was mad enough to kill her!” This from Blake, whose eyes shone with excitement.

  I wasn’t so sure she was on the right track. “Wynona doesn’t exactly strike me as the murderous type.”

  “And she hadn’t even started yet when Kate did all that stuff with security.”

  I turned to Blake who’d dropped that bombshell. “Security? Like . . . ?”

  Blake glanced at Margot, who gave her the go-ahead with a gesture that pretty much said it didn’t matter anymore what anyone knew. “A month or so ago,” she said. “Of course, Kate has always had security, but she hired another couple guys. And she had us screen her calls more thoroughly. Margot, you asked—”

  “What was up, that’s right.” Margot nodded. “And Kate told me that with the wedding coming up, she couldn’t be too careful.”

  “She was afraid of someone,” I said. “Who? Was there anyone who didn’t like Kate?”

  Blake laughed. “What you should be asking is if there was anyone who liked her. It would be a hell of a lot easier to find that out, and your list would be a lot shorter.”

  It reminded me of what Hugh had said: plenty of people wanted Kate dead.

  I asked them what I’d asked him. “Who?”

  “Who hated Kate?” Margot looked at her coworkers. “Well, all of us, for starters, but then, that’s no big surprise. You don’t get bossed around day and night by a woman who thinks she’s God’s gift to the world and not get just the teeniest bit resentful. But like I told that cute cop, that doesn’t mean any of us killed her.”

  “What you mean to say is that it doesn’t mean any of us . . .” Sloan pointed a finger between Blake and herself. “Neither of us killed her. What about you, Margot?” Her smile was as brittle as ice. “Were you still pissed at Kate because you wanted time off to go visit that boy toy of yours in San Diego and Kate said—”

  “That was business, and once she explained to me how she couldn’t spare me before the wedding, I understood. It was nothing to get mad about.” Margot’s words were convincing enough, but the muscle that jumped at the base of her jaw said otherwise. “The way I remember it, Sloan, you were a little miffed at Kate yourself. You were the one—”

  “I didn’t use her stupid lipstick.” Sloan’s smile dissolved in an instant, and she booted the garbage bag just for good measure. “And even if I did, she didn’t have to mention it in front of Hugh and the rest of the production staff. You know she only did it because she’d heard that I was thinking of applying for that administrative job Hugh has available. Kate wanted to make sure I couldn’t leave, and she figured if she made me look incompetent, Hugh wouldn’t touch me. Right in front of all of them . . .” She turned my way to explain. “Right in front of everybody, Kate said I was lucky to be working for her, because I was so untrustworthy, anybody else would have canned me on the spot. How ridiculous is that? If she was looking to fire anybody . . .” Her gaze swung to Blake, who instantly turned the color of the ashen walls.

  “I told you, it wasn’t my fault,” she said. “Kate shouldn’t have blamed me for Wynona.”

  “But she did, didn’t she?” Margot leaned in close, challenging Blake. “Did she threaten to fire you, too, Blake? Is that why you were grumbling about her that morning and saying how much you would like to see her—”

  “I never said dead.” Blake popped out of her chair. She was a hair shorter than Margot, and when she folded her arms across her chest and tipped her chin up, her eyes spit fire. “I said I couldn’t believe how narrow-minded she was.”

  “And Kate heard you and reamed you out.” Sloan joined in the fray. “And you just got madder and madder at her. When I saw you at lunchtime that day—”

  “I said I was thinking about quitting.”

  “Maybe you decided quitting wasn’t a good-enough revenge.”

  “That’s just crazy.” Blake stomped away. “It’s all just crazy.” She poked a thumb into her chest. “I sure didn’t kill her. I don’t know about you two.”

  “Well, I didn’t, either,” Sloan huffed.

  Margot pulled herself up to her full height. “I’m not even going to say it. I shouldn’t have to.”

  I was feeling a bit like a preschool teacher caught in the middle of toddlers in tantrums. Bad enough these three were going at it; worse, if they were so busy sniping at each other, they couldn’t give me any useful information.

  “I’m sure you told the police all that.” Yeah, that was me, sounding a little too chipper and so worried this was going to turn into a full-scale melee, I didn’t care. “They must have asked you.”

  “The cute cop did.” First Margot, now Sloan. What cop needs social skills when he can get by on his looks? If we ever had another semi-civilized conversation, I’d be sure to mention it to Nevin. “He asked about alibis, too.” Her smile inched up a notch. “I have one. I was at dinner with my cousin who lives here in town. What about you, Margot? Blake? Were you able to tell him you had an alibi?”

  Margot’s cheeks turned pink. “I was at the hotel. Alone.”

  “I went to dinner,” Blake grumbled. “And I was alone, too, which pretty much proves I didn’t do it, because if I did, I would have come up with a better alibi than that.” She swung her gaze to me. “Right?”

  I couldn’t say. But then, with my ears ringing and my head spinning, it was kind of hard to get a grip. Instead, I hung on tight to the briefcase with my buttons in it and headed for the stairs. If the assistants wanted to eat each other alive, at least I wouldn’t have to watch.

  I was back in the glorious marble foyer when Kaz walked out of a back room.

  “No luck,” he said.

  So maybe my head was still spinning from all the infighting upstairs. I gave him a questioning look.

  “With security,” he explained. “You heard what that one assistant said—”

  “What surprises me is that you heard.”

  “Does it?” He grinned. “You didn’t think I was going to miss out on something like that, did you? I was on the stairs, listening, only then that one chick said something about security, and I figured I’d help you out. You know, to show you what a great guy I am.” He winked.

  I stayed strong. “And you found out . . .”

  Kaz held the front door open for me. “Pretty much nothing. Kate Franciscus added some extra people to her security staff. That part was true. But nobody knows why and there was never any trouble. So . . .” We were on the stoop in the punishing sunlight. I slipped my sunglasses out of my purse and put them on just as Mike Homolka dashed to the bottom of the steps and snapped a few shots.

  Kaz took my arm, and we walked to the sidewalk. “Told you you needed protection.”

  “I really don’t,” I said, and in my head, I had all the reasons why I didn’t lined up. I was going to tell him that I was a big girl and I could take care of myself. I was going to point out that Kate was the one who’d obviously been in danger and there was no reason for me to worry about my safety. And if Kaz didn’t back off even then, I was all set to mention that a woman who’s been betrayed by the man she thought she could depend on has got to learn to fend for herself.

  Too bad I never had the chance.

  But then, that was because a twelve-speed mountain bike careened around the corner and headed right for me.

  “Watch out!” Kaz yelled and pushed me out of the way, and it was a good thing he did. Instead of slamming right into me, the bike swerved. The front tire grazed my right leg, and the driver threw out an arm.

  The last thing I remembered was bouncing off the curb and landing in the street.

  Chapter Nine

  “I DON��T NEED IT.” I PUSHED KAZ’S HANDS—AND THE SpongeBob Band-Aid he was holding in them—away. It actually might have been a good move if Stan wasn’t leaning over f
rom the other side of me, all set to pounce with a Spider-Man bandage.

  I angled between them and got off the guest chair in front of my desk at the Button Box. “Honest, guys, I appreciate the help, but a cartoon character across the bridge of my nose . . .” I touched a tentative finger to the scrape there and winced.

  “Told you you needed it!” I watched SpongeBob and Kaz come nearer and ducked out of the way just in time to avoid them both.

  Thanks to Kaz and Stan, I already had Barbie on my knees, Dora the Explorer on my elbow, and Scooby-Doo on my wrist.

  That’s what I got for having bandages on hand in case of any accidents when Kaz’s sister’s kids came to the shop to visit.

  Kaz knew better than to push. Or at least he should have. That didn’t stop him from pulling out his cell. “If you won’t let us help, at least let me—”

  “Call 911?” I plucked the phone out of his hands just as he was about to dial. “I told you when it happened, Kaz, I’m fine except for a few bumps and bruises and scrapes, so I don’t need paramedics. And I don’t need the cops, either. They’re not going to come running just because some careless teenager—”

  “Is that who you think did this?” Stan hadn’t moved from his spot near the desk, but I could tell his brain was working a mile a minute. His eyes narrowed and glinting, he swung his gaze to Kaz. “Let’s go over it again. Just to see if I have all the details down pat. When you got back here, you said she walked out of that fancy brownstone and—”

  “Yeah. That’s right.” Thank goodness Stan had distracted him. Kaz put SpongeBob down. “We were barely on the sidewalk. And this bike comes careening around the corner right at her and—”

  “Man or woman riding it?”

  Kaz didn’t spend more than a nanosecond thinking about Stan’s question. “Man,” he said. “I think. Maybe. Yeah, a man. He was wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans. And I’m pretty sure a bike helmet, too, but it’s hard to say. His sweatshirt hood was pulled up over his head.”

  Stan took it all in. “And Josie was on the sidewalk? Or out in the street?”

  “Sidewalk.” Kaz nodded. “Definitely.”

  “She was standing . . .” Stan grabbed my hand and dragged me over to stand next to Kaz. “On your right? Or your left?”

  “Left.” Kaz switched locations to be on the proper side and once he did, Stan looked over our relative positions and his eyes narrowed a little more.

  He swung one arm out. “If the biker was coming from that direction like you said . . .” He pointed and arced his arm back the other way, closer and closer toward where I was standing. “You see what I’m getting at here?” he asked Kaz.

  Kaz nodded. “He should have run into me, not Jo. So the guy in the sweatshirt, he was either the worst biker in the world or just plain stupid and careless or—”

  “What?” Since they were talking about me like I wasn’t there, I stepped forward to remind them, ignoring the pain that shot up my hip when I did. Yes, I’d refused Kaz’s offer to call the paramedics. That’s because I knew nothing was broken. But that didn’t mean nothing hurt. Including my ribs and hip at the spot where I came down splat on that briefcase with my buttons in it. Fortunately, the briefcase was sturdy, and though one side of it was mashed in and the latch had been nearly impossible to open, I’d managed.

  Thank goodness, none of the buttons had been damaged.

  I couldn’t say the same for me.

  I rubbed a hand on the hip I knew would be a lurid shade of purple by morning. “If you two are cooking up some kind of loony conspiracy theory . . .” I looked from Kaz to Stan. “Don’t. It was an accident. That biker was probably some mindless teenager who wasn’t watching where he was going. No doubt, by now he’s hiding out somewhere, hoping he didn’t really hurt me and he doesn’t really get in trouble.”

  Stan stuck out his chin. “Loony, huh? Don’t forget, you did have that burglary here.”

  “And then someone got murdered here.” Kaz put in his two cents’ worth.

  “And now this?” Stan gave me that eagle-eye stare of his. If I wasn’t so busy repositioning Barbie where they’d stuck her, right on raw skin, I might have cared. “If you ask me, this is looking pretty fishy.”

  “Which means someone should definitely be going home with you and staying there.”

  I pretended not to hear Kaz and, instead, thought back to the split second before I realized that bike was about to slam into me. I remembered feeling the front tire graze my leg. That was right before the biker raised an arm, smashed into me, and sent me flying.

  “All right. Sure. He stuck out an arm. But that was because he was trying to keep himself from falling,” I said, even though Stan and Kaz had no idea what I was thinking. “There was no way he hit me on purpose.”

  Kaz wasn’t buying it. He stepped back and stared at me, his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked.

  One corner of Stan’s mouth lifted in an I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that sneer.

  It was bad enough to have one of them proposing a theory so preposterous. Worse to be tag teamed. Especially by these two. See, after the divorce (OK, I’ll be truthful, even before I finally got my act together and decided to end my marriage), Kaz was not on the list of Stan’s favorite people. That was because Stan is street-smart. He saw right through Kaz’s stories and his lies. He wasn’t taken in by Kaz’s charm and smokin’ grin and the whole luscious package that is Kaz.

  Not like I’d been taken in.

  The fact that they were thinking alike—about anything—was enough to throw me for a loop.

  I walked around to the other side of my desk and flopped down in the chair.

  I didn’t much care which one of them answered, so I propped my elbows on the desk and dropped my head into my hands. “Why on earth would anyone want to run me over with a bike?”

  “Why would anyone want to burglarize this place?” Stan countered.

  “You need protection,” Kaz said.

  I groaned, and because my computer was right in front of me, I turned on the screen and clicked over to the Internet. I couldn’t get straight answers out of them, and my own brain sure wasn’t providing any. At least with the computer to distract me, I didn’t have to listen to the disturbing little voice inside my head—the one that wondered if they just might be right.

  I hadn’t counted on seeing a photo of Kate the Great first thing.

  “It’s got to be about her funeral.” Stan came over and leaned against the desk on my left. “They were talking about it on all the early shows this morning.”

  Kaz came to stand on my right. “You know all the hoopla’s going to die down once they get the memorial service over with, Jo,” he rumbled. “You don’t want to miss your opportunity. You could be making a bundle off your involvement in all this. I think a woman with your business sense would see that.”

  I saw plenty, all right. But it wasn’t what Kaz wanted me to see.

  I sat up straight, barely whimpering at all. At least not too much. “It all started that day Kate came to see me for the first time,” I said, more to Stan than to Kaz since Kaz was getting on my nerves. “The burglary, the murder, and now this crazy accident. There’s got to be some connection.”

  “We need a stakeout,” Stan announced.

  “You need someone to keep you safe,” Kaz said.

  And me? I hauled myself out of the chair and hobbled to the back room to get my purse and those photos of the mystery button. Thinking, I tapped them gently against my unscraped hand.

  What I really needed was answers, and so far, I wasn’t being very successful getting them.

  Good thing Kaz was right about me being smart.

  I was smart enough to know exactly what I was going to do next.

  And smart enough to keep my mouth shut about it, too.

  THE NEXT DAY, the first thing I did was talk Stan into babysitting the shop again. And yes, I know, a retired cop in a button shop . . . not exactly a match made in he
aven. I wasn’t complaining, though, mostly because Stan was doing me a huge favor, but also because (let’s face reality, here), a button shop doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic, not when it’s brand-new, anyway. The majority of my orders came in through my website and I could handle those any hour of the day or night. I vowed I’d work twice as hard when I got back to the Button Box that evening and then I spoke to Margot, and once I talked to her, I called one of those bargain-priced hotels over near the Lincoln Park Zoo, the one and only address Margot had for Wynona. Unfortunately for me, bargain-priced translated into nobody answered the phone. Even though I worried that the lowliest of the lowly assistants might have moved on once she got fired, I took a chance. And since I ached too much to hoof it from the nearest El stop, I took a cab, too.

  When it came to saying whether Wynona had checked out or was still a guest, the clerk behind the front desk wouldn’t confirm or deny. But then, it was the sort of hotel where I imagined a lot of people wanted to remain anonymous. In answer to my plea, he did agree to call up to the room that “Miss Redfern might be staying in.”

  No answer.

  Since he was all set to dive into a magazine (it was out on the front desk, and just the title on the cover made me blush), I wasn’t surprised when he lost interest immediately and left it up to me to figure out if Wynona was long gone or was still in residence and just out. Or in the bathroom. Or out in the hallway hanging her “Do Not Disturb” sign.

  I considered my options, decided there weren’t any, and I’d just stepped out of the building when I saw Wynona walking down the sidewalk.

  When she caught sight of me, a wobbly smile lit her face. “Ms. Giancola!” She was carrying a dry-cleaning bag, and she shifted it from one arm to the other, folding it over so that she could hang on to it easier. “It’s nice to see you. I’m so sorry . . .” The kid’s cheeks flamed, and she stared down at the sidewalk. “I read all about it in the papers, of course. I’m so sorry you were the one . . . you know . . . the one who found Miss Franciscus.”