Hot Button

by Kylie Logan

  “You’re right, Josie.” She looked at my shoes instead of my face. “I was buyer number one. You heard Brad say that yourself—”

  “Room 842 tonight at eleven.” Brad’s words from the night of the cruise washed over me like ice water. “He wasn’t just making casual conversation; he was telling you where to meet him to get the button. And you…” I would allow myself a good swift kick in the pants later. For now, I needed to sound as confident as I could. “You weren’t drinking that night. That’s not why you were all hopped up. You were excited about getting your hands on the button.”

  “And that next evening, when I saw the man I thought was Thad come through the lobby, and then Chase follow him—”

  “You figured something was up.”

  Helen nodded. “I followed Chase down to the laundry room, and I slipped into that room across the hallway from the one Brad and Chase were in. I heard them talking. I heard Brad tell Chase that he was selling him the real Geronimo button, and I thought… My goodness!” Helen pressed a hand to her heart. “I thought it was impossible. How could Brad sell the button to Chase when he’d already sold it to me? And that’s when I figured out what he was doing. I assumed all the buttons were fakes, and I knew he was playing us for suckers. I was so angry…”

  Helen’s hands curled into fists. “I waited for Chase to leave and then… Then I went into that linen room and I confronted Brad. When I first walked in, well, he was startled. He pulled that beautiful awl out of his pocket, like he thought he had to defend himself or something. But then he saw it was me, and he put it down there on a pile of towels. I told him he was a bad person and that I was going to tell everyone at the conference what he was up to. And he…”

  Helen wiped a tear from her cheek. “He laughed at me, Josie. The man I thought was Thad Wyant, the greatest Western button expert on the planet, laughed in my face. He told me he knew I’d never tell anyone what he was up to because if I did, he said it would be like admitting that I was a fool. An old fool, that’s what he said, an old fool who didn’t know her buttons anymore. I don’t know what happened, not exactly. I only know I was so angry, I couldn’t see straight. I grabbed the awl—” Reliving the scene, Helen clutched an imaginary awl in one trembling hand. “And I lashed out at Thad. It wasn’t until…” She looked down at her empty hands, and her shoulders bent beneath the weight of the truth. “When I finally realized what I’d done, he was already dead. You don’t think I’m an old fool, do you, Josie?” Helen held out a hand to me. “You believe me when I say I was out of my mind, that I didn’t know what I was doing?”

  The pull of friendship is strong, especially when a friend is in trouble. I could no more have resisted taking Helen’s hand than I could not take my next breath.

  She timed it perfectly.

  As soon as Helen had ahold of my hand, she pulled me close, then shoved me as hard as she could. I hit the nearest vendor table with a bang. The table skidded and tipped, I slammed into Nev, and we both hit the floor. Buttons flew everywhere. In the chaos, Helen took off running.

  But remember what I said about Stan and backup.

  He had her by the shoulders before she ever made it to the door. A second later, Nev was up off the floor. He put his handcuffs on her and led Helen away.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH BEING A BUTTON COLLECTOR?”

  On the giant movie screen at the front of the theater, the woman with the chestnut hair and bowed lips—me—lifted her head and stuck out her chin.

  “Defensive,” I whispered to Nev, who was seated next to me and not listening to a word I said. “I was getting way too defensive.”

  He shushed me by patting my arm.

  “Some of my best friends are button collectors,” I said on-screen. “I’m a button collector.”

  Terrified that someone might recognize me, I glanced from left to right. No worries. It wasn’t like Buttoned Up, Donovan Tucker’s latest opus, was attracting crowds, in spite of the fact that it was billed as the unlikely convergence of buttons and murder. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances; I sank down in my seat.

  “As a whole, button collectors are educated, interesting, well read, and a heck of a lot better company than a lot of the non–button collectors I’ve met. If you think being a button collector means being boring—”

  “Doesn’t it?” That was Donovan’s voice, and I pictured that day in the coffee shop and the way he’d leaned closer to me, eager to catch everything I had to say on video.

  On-screen, the camera zoomed in on my face.

  I put my head in my hands and groaned.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into this.” Since we were just about the only people in the theater, I didn’t feel bad about saying this out loud. “I don’t think I can take another minute.”

  “Really?” Nev had just finished the buttered popcorn he was munching, and he brushed his hands together and took my arm. “Then let’s get out of here.”

  Outside the Landmark Century Centre Cinema, he looped an arm around my shoulders. “We always had fun seeing movies before.”

  “Yeah, but not movies that I’m in.”

  He gave me a squeeze. “They’re my favorites.”

  OK, yes, I admit it, the smile he gave me made me forget how mortified I was to see my face on the big screen. Almost.

  “So…” He glanced up and down North Clark. “It’s early. You want to go for dinner?”

  I said I did, and we headed for the nearest burger joint. We were almost there when Nev glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “So, you heard from Kaz?”

  “No.” It wasn’t like I was trying to spare his feelings or anything; it was just the truth. “Ever since Amber went back to wherever Amber came from, Kaz doesn’t need me anymore. He doesn’t need to hide out.”

  “At least not for now.”

  “Look…” I stopped, and because the sidewalk was crowded, I stepped closer to the front display window of a men’s clothing store. “I think we need to talk.”

  Nev made a face. “Not about Kaz, I hope. You don’t think I think—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is what’s real. And what’s real is that I’m over him. He’s over me. He only comes around when he needs something.”

  “Yeah, but he keeps coming around.”

  It wasn’t jealousy. Not exactly. It was more like Nev was just stating the truth, and that meant I couldn’t deny it.

  “No doubt, the next time he needs to hide or he’s low on money… Yeah, he’ll show up again,” I said. “But even if he does…”

  “Even if he does?” Nev asked.

  And honestly, I couldn’t think of the right words to explain.

  Instead, I showed him. I kissed him.

  Right there.

  Right on the sidewalk.

  Right on the lips.

  “Wow!” When I was finished, Nev said what I was thinking. “So now it looks like we have something else to talk about right? First it was murder, then Kaz, now—”

  I wasn’t ready for the L word, so I didn’t let him say it. Instead, I slipped my arm around Nev’s waist. “Not to worry. If we run out of things to say, we can always talk about buttons!”

  MOTHER OF PEARL BUTTONS

  Billions of mother of pearl (MOP) buttons were manufactured in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them stamped from the shells of mussels taken from the Mississippi River. In fact, Muscatine, Iowa, once reigned as Pearl Button Capital of the World.

  Of course, since they were so common, MOP buttons are not especially valuable. They are, though, quite pretty, with a nice shine and a shimmer of color.

  To determine if a button is made of shell, hold it to your cheek. Mother of pearl is cooler than plastic. You can also look for striations on the back of the button.

  For more information on vintage buttons and button collecting, contact the National Button Society at www.nationalbuttonsociety.org.
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  Kylie Logan’s next Button Box Mystery…

  Panic Button

  Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

  “DO YOU BELIEVE IN CURSES?”

  I was so intent on studying the glorious buttons on the worktable in front of me, I only half heard Angela Morningside’s question. So who can blame me! Naturally, I blinked, looked up, forced the pleasant whirr of button daydreams out of my head so I could focus on my customer, and said, “Huh?”

  Angela did not seem to hold my inability to concentrate against me. Then again, we’d been working together on this particular project for about six weeks. No doubt, she already knew that antique buttons are to me what Hershey bars are to a chocoholic.

  When she repeated herself, her expression wasn’t exactly as kind as it was patient. And a little pained, too. “I asked you, Josie, do you believe in curses?”

  Anyone who’s ever met me knows that I am infinitely practical. Which means my first inclination was to laugh. I controlled myself. After all, Angela was the one who’d cancelled each of our first three appointments and made no apology about the reason—her horoscope, she told me, had informed her that making the one-hour trip south from Ardent Lake to Chicago on those days was not a good idea.

  If she took horoscopes that seriously, it wasn’t much of a stretch to think curses might not be far behind.

  I flicked off the high-intensity lamp I’d had trained on the string of buttons spread over my worktable and slid off the stool where I’d been perched, the better to walk around to the front of the table and look Angela in the eye. This was not exactly as simple as it sounds, since Angela was a full eight inches taller than me and broader by a mile. Still, I am all about making a valiant effort. I lifted my chin, the better to meet her question head-on. “You’re serious?”

  Angela’s shoulders dropped. Her chin quivered.

  Hey, I might be practical, but I am not heartless. I grabbed her elbow, piloted her to the nearest stool, and eased her onto it.

  “You are serious.” Understatement. I knew that as soon as Angela was seated and I could get a good look at her eyes—and the fear that shimmered in them, as razor-sharp as sunlight sparking off ice. “Angela, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I will. At least, I’ll try.” We were in the back room of my shop, the Button Box, and Angela’s gaze jumped from the antique buttons on the charm string to the floor and stayed there. “No doubt you think I’m nothing but a crazy old lady. Postmenopausal delusions. That’s what some of my friends have told me.” Her gaze snapped to mine. “As if my age has anything to do with it. I’m not imagining any of this, Josie. And I’m not making it up.”

  In the six weeks since Angela had first called and told me about the charm string she’d inherited from her great-aunt, I’d come to learn that she was usually as serious as a heart attack and as levelheaded about her successful medical transcription firm back in Ardent Lake as I was about my shop where I sold antique and collectible buttons to dealers, hobbyists, and discerning sewers and crafters. Sure, the woman not only read her horoscope each day, but actually remembered it and acted on its advice. That didn’t mean she was crazy, did it? Out of the ordinary. Sure, I’d go along with that. But ruddy-cheeked, well-dressed, understated Angela never struck me as crazy.

  “Of course you’re not making any of it up,” I said, because really, a woman like me found it impossible to even imagine that a woman like her could. “You’re obviously upset. What’s going on, Angela? And what does it have to do with the charm string?”

  She tried for a smile, but it wavered around the edges. “I’m not surprised you figured out it’s all about those damned buttons. I heard you were smart. That’s one of the reasons I chose you when I looked for someone to put a value on that… thing.”

  Again, her gaze landed on the charm string. But only for a second. Angela might be trying to put on a brave face, but her body language spoke volumes. She sat up a little straighter and angled her spine back, putting as much distance as possible between herself, my worktable, and the charm string on it. A skitter shook her shoulders. “You knew, and I didn’t even have to tell you. Can you feel the psychic vibrations, too?” Her palm flat, she put a hand over the buttons that many years ago, her great-great-grandmother had painstakingly slipped onto a heavy piece of string, the way so many girls had in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Making charm strings had been something of a fad back then. Girls collected and strung buttons, and the tradition was that each button had to be different. Buttons were traded, given as gifts, and brought back as souvenirs from places like Niagara Falls and New York City, and legend said that when button number one thousand came into a girl’s life, so would her Prince Charming.

  I can’t say if that last bit about happily-ever-after held true for every charm string maker, but I do know that strings with all one thousand buttons on them are rare enough to make any button collector salivate.

  Angela’s charm string had exactly one thousand buttons on it, and I had been salivating over it since the day she called and asked me to take a look at the photos she’d taken of the buttons so that I could value the charm string for tax purposes before she donated it to her local historical society. Of course, I’d been trying to get her to sell it to me since that day, too.

  So far, no dice.

  Which, to me, was my own version of a curse.

  I snapped out of the thought to find Angela still with her hand poised over the buttons. “I can practically feel the bad luck bubbling off this thing,” she said.

  This was the point at which I seriously began re-assessing my opinion of Angela.

  Not that I could let on. I wasn’t about to honk off a customer who was willing to pay for an appraisal just because she was a little… er… eccentric. Especially not when six weeks after she’d sent my button mania into overdrive by sending me the photos, she’d finally brought me the genuine article to study, admire, and yes, covet anew.

  I scraped my palms against the black pants I was wearing with a spring-green cotton sweater. “You keep looking at the buttons as if they’re going to ignite and take the whole shop with them.”

  Angela glanced from side to side before she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “So you really do think the buttons are going to bring you bad luck?”

  “No, no, Josie. They’re not going to bring me bad luck. They have brought me bad luck. Ever since the day I inherited them. And funny you should mention fire. I had a fire at home. Not two weeks after I brought these buttons into my house.”

  Before I’d followed my dream and opened the Button Box, I’d once worked as an administrative assistant at an insurance agency. I knew the statistics. “Home fires are not all that uncommon,” I said, and believe me, I tried to put a kind spin on it. “As a matter of fact, every year—”

  “Yes, yes. I know all that.” Angela hopped off the stool and paced the length of my workroom, from the counter where I have one of those mini-refrigerators, a microwave, and a coffeemaker, to the far wall, and back again. “Don’t think other people haven’t tried to tell me things like that. It was an accident, Angela. It was unfortunate. It happens all the time.” Her voice singsonged over the false comfort the way I’m sure her friends’ had when they offered it. “But don’t you see, Josie? This is different!” She pulled to a stop directly in front of me and, fists on hips, looked down her long, slim nose.

  “The fire came after the attempted break-in. And the attempted break-in just so happened to come the day after I got the charm string out of Aunt Evelyn’s safe-deposit box and brought it home. That…” She stopped here like she expected me to interrupt, and with a glance, dared me to even think about it. “That was the same day the brakes went on my car. While I was on the freeway.” The way her voice trembled said volumes about how terrifying the incident must have been.

  “As far as that fire,” she went on
, “maybe the whole thing won’t sound like just another statistic when I tell you that not four months earlier, there was a fire at my great-aunt’s house, too.”

  “Aunt Evelyn? You mean the one who—”

  “The one who left me the charm string in her will. Yes, that’s the one.” Angela’s smile was gotcha! sleek. But only for a heartbeat. The next second, she was right back to looking upset. And pacing again.

  “Don’t you see, Josie, when Aunt Evelyn was still alive and was the one who owned the charm string, there was a fire in her kitchen, and nobody, not even the Ardent Lake Fire Department, has been able to figure out how it started. Luckily, I just happened to stop in that afternoon to drop off some cookies I’d baked for Evelyn. Good gracious, the woman was eighty-three. If she’d been there alone…” Angela didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to. The way her shoulders shook told me she knew exactly what would have happened to Aunt Evelyn if she hadn’t shown up.

  “And the fire at your house?” I asked.

  “Same scenario.” As if she’d been over it a thousand times and was no closer to finding an answer now than she had been all those other times, Angela shook her head. She had a head of curls that were far too dark for a woman her age. “A fire in the middle of the kitchen table? Come on, that doesn’t just happen. I certainly didn’t leave a pile of newspapers there, and that’s what caught on fire. And no one else was in the house. I live alone. I can’t even sleep at night, thinking about how bad things might have gotten. At Aunt Evelyn’s, you see, I jumped right into action as if I’d been trained. I grabbed a pitcher of water and put that fire right out. At my own house…” Though we’d only just met, I knew instinctively that Angela was not the kind of person who liked admitting to weakness. No woman who wore a crisp navy business suit and starched white blouse to what was, essentially, a casual meeting, could possibly be. She glanced away. “I smelled the smoke, I raced into the kitchen, and then… I froze.” Her shrug told me she still didn’t understand. “I stood there like a zombie watching my kitchen go up in smoke and I couldn’t move a muscle. Things would have gotten really ugly if not for Larry.”