by Kylie Logan
“Not what I was talking about.” I leaned in close. “I meant that poor Amber is a sucker to believe a word you say.”
And with that, I spun around—and realized I was facing the wrong way. So much for all that twirling and whirling. I turned again and marched to the door.
“He’s a sweetheart.” Helen was waiting for me, raffle tickets in hand. She was dressed in pink, of course, a tailored dress with a matching hat. She was wearing little wrist-length white gloves, too, and I noticed they were adorned at the wrist with tiny MOP buttons. Authentic vintage gloves. Leave it to Helen. “He was a great help to me today.”
“I appreciate you keeping him busy. That way, he stays out of trouble.”
“Oh, you can’t be serious. He’s such a sweet boy.”
Kaz was a lot of things. A sweet boy wasn’t one of them.
Rather than get involved in a debate I knew I wouldn’t win, I asked about raffle-ticket sales. I was one of the retailers who’d donated buttons for prizes, and it was nice to hear sales were brisk.
My good mood was dashed when a lady walked by holding a bowl overflowing with ice cream and hot fudge. “Not exactly the same as a milkshake,” she mumbled, loud enough for me to hear and quiet enough that if I’d confronted her about it, I was sure she would have said I heard wrong.
I never had a chance to find out. That was because my cell phone rang.
This time, Nev didn’t even bother with an opening “Hey.” He launched right in with “I’m up in Wyant’s room, and I think there’s something here you should see.”
“Now?” Truth be told, I couldn’t decide what would be worse, ducking out of another button conference function or letting Nev see me in my 1950s throwback outfit.
“Now or later, it doesn’t really make much difference.” Nobody could be as matter-of-fact as a cop. “But it is pretty interesting. I think you’re going to want to come now.”
I guess he knew me better than I thought he did. There was no way I was going to miss out on a suggestion that tantalizing.
As casually as I could—maybe my fellow sock hoppers would just think I was headed to the ladies’ room and not abandoning ship again—I sidled toward the door, and once I was out in the hallway, I hurried to the elevator. A couple minutes later, I was up in Thad’s suite.
A smile sparkled across Nev’s face when he looked me over. “You look like Olivia Newton-John. You know, in Grease.”
Now that he mentioned it, I guess I did. Except she is a blonde, and my hair is chestnut brown. “Maybe at the beginning of the movie, but remember, John Travolta liked her better at the end, when she put on that bad-girl outfit. You know, black leather, tight pants.”
As if he was picturing me dressed like that, he cocked his head and pursed his lips. “Yeah, that would be all right. But really…” His cheeks got rosy. And I knew he would have come out with a compliment if we hadn’t heard a bump from the bathroom.
Nev cleared his throat and explained. “Crime-scene team. Here to do one final sweep.”
I suppose that made sense. Nev being here? Not so much. “What about you? Last I saw you—”
“The station. Yeah.” He scraped a hand through his hair. “Didn’t think I’d get back here today, but the techs called me a little while ago. They were being a little more thorough this time. And they found something very interesting.”
Nev led the way over to the far end of the room and pointed toward the heating-and-cooling vent up where the ceiling met the wall. “The stuff was in there,” he said, pointing to the opening and the slatted vent cover, which had been removed and put into an evidence bag and propped against the wall. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at where people hide things.” He waved me over to the dining area.
There were five plastic evidence bags on the table. Four of them contained white, business-size envelopes. “You can look them over,” Nev said.
I did, picking up the first bag. “There’s something in the envelope,” I said, running my fingers along the length of it. “Paper, maybe. At least that’s what it feels like. And on the front…” I took a close look. The envelope I was holding had words scrawled across the front of it. “Number one,” I read out loud. “Sunday after the cruise.”
When my inquiring look at Nev got me no answer, I picked up the second bag. It felt as soft and as squishy as the first. “Number two,” it said in a loose, scrawling hand. “Tuesday morning. Hotel workout room.” I set this bag down, too, and reached for the next ones. “Number three. Hotel bar, after banquet. Number four. Laundry room. Before the banquet.”
My head came up. “The laundry room before the banquet. That’s where—”
“Yeah, apparently Wyant had a date to meet his killer.”
“And that last envelope?”
Nev picked up the bag and handed it to me. “Take a look.”
I did, and saw that it contained a ticket to Fresno with Thad Wyant’s name on it. The plane was scheduled to leave Tuesday afternoon.
“He was leaving? The conference?” I didn’t believe my eyes, so I took another look. “But Thad was supposed to show off the Geronimo button all week. He was going to be on a Western button panel on Wednesday and…” One more look, and I finally admitted to myself that the ticket was real. “I bought him a ticket to leave Chicago late Sunday. But he wasn’t going to use it. He was all set to leave on Tuesday.”
“WHAT’S IN THERE might help explain why he was so anxious to get out of town.” Nev stepped nearer and picked up one of the evidence bags with an envelope in it. “Ten thousand in each one,” he said. “Cash.”
“Wow.” There was a chair nearby, and I dropped into it. “So he met four different people and was giving each one of them ten thousand dollars?”
“Or he got ten thousand from each of them. And he marked each of the envelopes with a note about when he was supposed to see them again.”
I wrinkled my nose, thinking this over. “But how do we know that? Maybe he just met them and got the money and—oh.” I felt my cheeks get hot. “If he was meeting with them once and getting the money then, the money from Monday night wouldn’t be here.”
Nev nodded. “Because that was the night he was killed, and he would have had the money with him when we found his body. Or the killer would have snatched it back after Wyant was dead. That seems more likely.”
“So he got money from four different people.” I dangled the idea like a worm on a hook, and when Nev didn’t tell me I was wrong, I ran with it. “And then he met with each of these people and, apparently, sold them something. I mean, why else would he have received ten thousand dollars from each one of them? And he did this on Sunday night. And he did this on Monday morning. And he was supposed to do it Monday evening, too, but—” The full meaning of what I was saying sunk in and my heart thumped. “Number four is our killer,” I said, breathless.
Nev sat in the chair across the table from mine. “Looks that way.”
“And the Geronimo button?” I did my best to think through the scenario to its logical conclusion, but rather than making more sense, it only made less. “Do you think Thad sold the Geronimo button to one of these people? Is that what the ten thousand was for? But if you paid ten thousand dollars for a button—”
“Why turn around and throw it away?” Nev didn’t sound any more sure of any of this than I felt, and I have to admit, that discouraged me. If he knew where we were headed with these questions, it would have made me feel like we were on more solid footing. He crossed his arms over his chest and the cream-colored shirt, which looked as droopy as the curl of hair that fell over his forehead.
“And if Wyant sold the Geronimo button to one of these people, what was he selling to the others?” Nev asked, thinking out loud. “You’re the expert. What kind of button could possibly be worth that kind of money?”
It was my turn to be completely baffled, and I admitted as much. “The Geronimo button has historic value, and I can see that certain collectors might be attracte
d to it for that reason alone.”
“But ten thousand bucks? For a button?”
Nev didn’t mean this to be patronizing, and I knew it. Which is why I didn’t take offense. “It is hard for a noncollector to understand. As for a collector…” I was talking about myself now, and I took a few seconds to think through the problem. “I’ve been reading Thad Wyant’s articles about Western buttons ever since I started collecting,” I said. “He loved that button. He loved the lore. He loved the history. He loved talking about it and writing about it. If he was willing to sell it, he must have been awfully hard up.”
“Would you?”
“Sell a button with that sort of historical significance?” Nev nodded, and again, I paused to think over the question. “If the Button Box was about to go under and that money was the only thing that could save it. Or if some friend or relative was in need of an operation or something. Yeah, maybe. Who knows?” I lifted my shoulders. “Maybe something like that was going on. Maybe Thad was desperate. I just can’t imagine it though…” Not that they would tell me anything, but I lifted the evidence bags, one after the other, feeling the heft of the ten thousand dollars inside each.
“I can’t imagine he’d have anything else of this kind of value to sell. I mean, other than big chunks of his button collection, and if that was the case, we would have found buttons here in his room. I can’t imagine there is much of anything else worth that much. Certainly not cavalry buttons, and that was one of Thad’s specialties. Unless he had a button personally worn by Custer at the Little Big Horn or something.” I dismissed the very idea with a shake of my head. “There would be no way to prove it, no way to authenticate a button like that.” I dropped the bag I was holding back on the table. “Maybe we’ve got this all wrong. Maybe Wyant was a drug dealer. Or a money launderer. Or—”
“We’re checking into every possibility,” Nev assured me. “But buttons make the most sense.”
Thinking, I tapped my fingers on the table. “It would explain why he suddenly showed up at a button conference when he’s never come to one before. If Thad had something to sell—”
“And he knew button collectors were the only ones who’d be interested enough to buy—”
“He might make an exception and come to a conference. It would be worth coming out of his hermit shell if there was enough money to be made.”
“And forty thousand bucks isn’t exactly chump change.”
“But why…” We’d been going along pretty well, and I hated to interrupt the flow, but really, we had to consider all the possibilities and all the pitfalls. This was a pretty big pitfall.
“But if the killer bought something from Thad and already gave Thad his money, why kill him?” I asked.
“Buyer’s remorse?” Nev was guessing and he knew it, but he threw out possibilities. “The buyer found out Thad had something even more valuable and was going to sell it to someone else? The Geronimo button was a fake?”
“It didn’t look like one.”
“I know. I know.” I guess my jumpiness was contagious, because Nev rapped the table with his knuckles. “I’m grasping at straws, but hey, brainstorming is a tried-and-true method for thinking through a problem. Maybe we’ll hit on something that actually makes sense.”
“OK, so let’s walk through it again.” I pulled in a breath. “Thad Wyant has something to sell. He contacts collectors he knows might be interested, gets ten thousand bucks from each of them, then arranges a meet. I think we can safely say that at the meet, that’s where the buyer is supposed to get the product.”
Nev didn’t say I was right. He didn’t say I was wrong, either, so I went on.
“Apparently, the meet on Sunday night goes well. So does the one on Monday morning. So whatever Thad was selling, the buyers must have been pleased. Unless, of course, one of those buyers bought the Geronimo button and then, for some weird reason, decided he—or she—didn’t want it anymore. Then it’s time for the meet on Monday evening, right before the banquet.”
“And something goes terribly wrong.” Nev took over the conjecture. “Langston Whitman says that the murder weapon is the awl Thad took from his booth in the vendor room, so we can assume that Thad had it with him. Maybe in his pocket or something. Or maybe he took it along for protection because he wasn’t sure about this particular buyer and he didn’t feel comfortable. They make the exchange—”
“And we know that, because we know there weren’t any buttons found with Thad’s body. Whatever he was selling, the killer took it with him. Or her.”
“Exactly.” Nev pursed his lips, thinking through the rest of the puzzle. “They make the exchange and something goes wrong. The buyer questions Thad. They argue.”
“Thad pulls out the awl.”
“And somehow, our killer gets ahold of it.”
“The rest…” The rest made my stomach queasy, so I didn’t want to spell it out. “It makes sense,” I said.
“It does.”
“But it still doesn’t explain who killed Thad Wyant.”
Understatement, but before Nev could point it out, his cell rang. From what he said by way of greeting, I figured out he was talking to the police in Santa Fe, and I figured they’d tell him what they’d been telling him for the last twenty-four hours: that they hadn’t had any luck locating Thad’s brother.
Which was why my heart bumped to a stop when Nev’s eyes popped open. “What?” he asked into the phone.
I couldn’t hear a word the person on the other end of it said, but that wasn’t from lack of trying. I leaned nearer.
“Of course,” Nev told the caller. “I understand this changes everything. We’ve got a lot to discuss, Detective Martinez. Yes.” Nev listened for a moment. “Yeah, let’s say tomorrow morning, eleven my time. That will give you time to get the scene secured and looked over. Yeah. Right. Until then.”
Like a guy who’d just been whacked over the head with a baseball bat, Nev’s eyes were fixed, and his expression was dumbfounded. He set his phone on the table, shook himself out of the stupor, and looked at me.
“Well, that settles that,” he said. Only not in a way that said anything was settled. “We don’t have to worry if someone killed Thad Wyant because of buttons.”
This sounded like good news to me. “We don’t? Does that mean—”
Nev’s face was pale. His sandy brows were low over his eyes. “The Santa Fe police just found Thad Wyant’s body,” he said. “It was in the basement of his home, stuffed in the freezer.”
Chapter Twelve
LIKE ANYONE COULD BLAME ME FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO get a wink of sleep that night?
Thad Wyant was dead.
Only Thad Wyant wasn’t Thad Wyant.
Because Thad Wyant was dead.
See what I’m getting at here? It was enough to make anyone’s head spin!
And the next morning, it was enough to make me station myself at the door to the room where the panel on molded-glass buttons was taking place, just so I could keep an eye on the hotel lobby. The second I saw Nev walk in, I ducked out of what was an interesting conversation about the differences between the glass buttons made in Czechoslovakia in the 1940s and those made today and intercepted Nev outside the dealer room.
“So?”
He gave me a quick look out of the corner of his eye. “So what?”
“So who is he? Or I should say, who was he? If Thad Wyant wasn’t Thad Wyant—”
“We really shouldn’t talk here.” With a quick look around to make sure we hadn’t been overheard, he took my arm and steered me away from the lobby and into a quiet corridor. “The longer we can keep this under wraps, the better.”
He was right. And I was embarrassed. By now, I should have known enough about murder investigations to keep my mouth shut. What I was not, however, was sorry when Nev kept his hand on my arm—even after we were tucked between a vending machine that featured plastic bottles of Coke and Mountain Dew for two dollars each and an ice maker.
<
br /> When Nev realized he still had ahold of my arm, he stepped back, but he didn’t let go.
“It was Brad,” he said.
“Brad?” I didn’t think something as small as the touch of Nev’s hand could throw my equilibrium completely off balance, but it must have because I wasn’t exactly following. I raised my voice over the chunky, clunky sound of the ice machine doing its thing. “Brad who?”
“Brad Wyant.”
“No, Thad. Thad Wyant. He’s the button expert.”
“He is.” Nev nodded. “But he’s not our dead guy. Well…” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “He is our dead guy. Only he’s our dead guy out in Santa Fe. Our dead guy here is—”
“Brad Wyant.” It was starting to make sense. A little. The ice machine finished replenishing its supply, and we were suddenly hemmed in by a silence punctuated by the hum of the vending machine and the thump of my heart. “And Brad is—”
“Thad’s brother. You know, the actor.”
“Which explains…” I shuffled through what I remembered, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds. If there was one thing I’d found out in the course of the murder investigation I’d been part of earlier that summer, it was that the information just keeps on comin’. There are times it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys without a scorecard, and times when the info piles up and my brain feels like it’s in overdrive.
“That explains why you couldn’t get in touch with Brad to tell him Thad was dead,” I said to Nev. “Because Brad was dead here in Chicago, and Thad was—”
“According to the Santa Fe police, the real Thad Wyant’s been dead at least a couple of months. It’s kind of hard to tell because of—”
“The freezer. Yeah.” Guilt by association. I stepped away from the ice machine. It was horrible to think of Thad Wyant—the real Thad Wyant—stuffed in there and… I gulped. “Please tell me he was dead before he was put in that freezer.”
