Button Holed (26 page)

My fingers itched. My palms were damp. I scraped them against the legs of my jeans. “Can we see them?” I asked Masie.

“Them buttons? Humph!” It was clearly a tremendous favor to ask, but at least she didn’t say no. Instead, she disappeared into the labyrinth of the living room, and it was a good thing she wasn’t gone long because I held my breath the entire time. When she came back to the door, her right hand was fisted.

I tried not to look too anxious when I held out my palm and one by one, she dropped the gorgeous hawk buttons into my hand.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

“SO THIS MEANS Lois is still alive, right? And that she killed Kate Franciscus?”

Kaz was smarter than that. He didn’t always show it, but I knew he was. I cut him some slack seeing as how his brain was still apparently mushy from what he’d been up to the night before. If I was a betting woman (and believe me, I wasn’t, but then, Kaz had always done enough of that for the both of us), I would put money on the fact that he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep.

“We don’t know that,” I said, out on the street in front of the Buck house and sliding back behind the steering wheel of the car. “We only know that one of Lois’s buttons is missing. But if you saw that house . . .”

“Creepy, huh?” A shiver snaked over Kaz’s broad shoulders. “I’m surprised she was able to find the buttons at all.”

“And I’m surprised she wasn’t willing to sell them.” Yes, I was grumbling when I said this. Like anyone could blame me! The hawk buttons in my hand and hope springing in my heart, I’d made Masie an offer that wasn’t just fair, it was generous. She’d declined. “Something tells me she’s holding out for even more money.”

Kaz chuckled. “I’m surprised you didn’t make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

“Oh, I’m planning on it,” I admitted, starting the car. “I just didn’t want to look too eager. If I call her again in a few hours, it will give me an excuse to ask about the buttons again. And about the guy who’s also asking for information about them.”

“Who do we think that is?”

I wished I knew, and I told Kaz that. “There’s Hugh, and Roland, and Mike Homolka . . . They’re all guys, obviously, and they all have a connection to the case.” I sighed with exasperation. “The real question is how anybody got as far as we did and even knows about Lois. Unless . . .” It wasn’t a new thought that hit; it was just one I hadn’t had time to worry about. I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel, following it to its logical conclusion. It went something like this . . .

Unless someone followed us.

Like it or not, I knew it was time to tell Kaz about the guy who chased me through the fair.

I did.

Predictably, he freaked.

“You should have told me, Jo. You could have been in danger. At least if I knew you were worried about that guy, I could have—”

“What? Stayed outside my room last night to make sure no one broke in?” I sounded whiny. And like I cared. I regretted it instantly. “I’m sorry. Whatever you did last night . . . Wherever you went . . . Whoever you were with . . . It’s none of my business.”

He didn’t ask how I knew. He just slid me a look. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset. Why would I be? We’re not married anymore. I have my life and you have yours.”

“Sure, and that’s great and all, but if you still care—”

I poked the car into drive and turned onto a side street I thought would take us around the Main Street festival detour. “I don’t. Not like that.”

“Then maybe like a friend would care.”

We were on a dead end street. I grumbled and turned around. I took the first left turn I came to, and we found ourselves in the parking lot of Bent Grove Elementary School.

I grumbled some more, but truth be told, deep down inside I was grateful for the diversion. Driving through an unfamiliar town was a lot like maneuvering my way through this conversation: frustrating, exasperating, maybe even dangerous if I wasn’t careful.

When we stopped at a red light, and I took the opportunity to look up and down the cross street and saw the sign for the local library, I regained some of my legendary control. I remembered seeing the library the evening before. I knew we were back on track. “It’s none of my business,” I said.

“Sure. Like that cop back in Chicago is none of mine.”

I turned to face him. Not such a good idea considering I was driving. I told myself not to forget it, got my eyes back on the road, and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “Nevin and I aren’t . . . It’s nowhere near the same.”

“Then how is it?”

“We’re working together on this case. Because of the button. That’s it.”

“Then it’s not like me and—”

“No. Not at all.” Perfect timing. I honestly didn’t want to know if Kaz was going to name Tiffany or Betty, so when we got to the library, I turned into the lot and parked.

Apparently, Kaz was relieved to get away from personal and back to business, too. He got out of the car when I did and followed me inside. “We’re here to . . . ?”

“See what we can find out about Lois Buck, of course.”

As it turned out, that wasn’t very much.

There were no yearbooks for the elementary school, so there was no finding Lois there, and though she was mentioned a couple times in the town newspaper and there should have been photos to go along with the articles—

“Somebody’s cut out every one of them.” I pointed a finger toward the hole in the newspaper and the caption that said Lois Buck was at the top of a cheerleader pyramid pictured above. “Somebody doesn’t want us to know what Lois looked like. Why?”

Kaz stuck his entire fist through the gaping hole in that newspaper page, then flipped to another edition of the newspaper, where Lois’s name was mentioned in connection with the spelling bee at Bent Grove Elementary School in 1986. According to the article, seventh-grader Lois Buck had received a ribbon for third place. Maybe she was proudly displaying that ribbon in the picture. Hard to say since all that was left of that page above the caption was a jagged edge where the paper had been ripped.

Kaz sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe we could ask her mother for a picture of Lois,” he suggested, but he knew he was barking up the wrong investigative tree even before the words were out of his mouth. He made a face. “No way that nasty woman would have kept a picture of the girl. Not with the way she feels about her own daughter. Can you imagine anyone being like that? I mean, think back to when we talked about having kids. We never would have—”

I wasn’t going there. “Lois has been missing for nearly twenty-five years,” I said, my mind on the case and not on the misguided plans I’d once had for a happily-ever-after with Kaz. Still thinking through the scenario, we left the library and went back to the car. “She’d be an adult by now. If she’s still alive. Why would it matter to anyone if we find out what she looked like?”

Good thing Kaz’s cell rang. It kept us from dwelling on the fact that neither one of us had any answers.

He brightened up as soon as he heard the voice on the other end of the phone. “Hey, Tiffany!”

Well, that answered one question.

“What’s that?” Listening, Kaz held up a finger to signal that whatever she was saying, it was something important. “Really? That’s terrific. What’s that you say? You’re off at three? Sure, we can be over there then.” A truck rumbled by, and Kaz pressed one hand to his right ear and asked, “What’s that?” He listened some more, turning his back on me. Yeah, like that could actually keep me from hearing when he said, “No, it’s her car so she’s got to come along.” When he looked back at me, his smile teetered between nervous and embarrassed. “Yeah, we’ll see you later,” he said and hung up.

“You’ve got a date with Tiffany. At three.”

“
We’ve
got a date with Tiffany at three, and that means we’ve got time for lunch first. Good thing.” He wound an arm through mine. “I’m starving.”

We’d finished breakfast not too long before, but I wasn’t about to argue. I needed a chance to sit down and process everything that had happened. We were close to Main Street, so rather than driving, we walked to the nearest greasy spoon. “So . . .” I waited until we were seated at the Formica table and had ice teas in front of us, biting my tongue to remind myself to keep on track—and off anything that even smacked of me sticking my nose into Kaz’s personal life. “We’re going to pay a call on Tiffany just to be sociable?”

“Never underestimate the power of my charm,” Kaz said. Grinning, he added sugar to his tea. “Tiffany tells me she was thinking about what we talked about at the Dew Drop last night and that got her reminiscing about the good old days. She spent some time going through her old school things this morning. She says if we’re interested, she’s got some stuff set aside for us. Including pictures of good ol’ Lois Buck.”

I LET KAZ drive, and don’t think I didn’t notice that even though he didn’t ask Tiffany for directions when they talked on the phone, he knew exactly how to get there, anyway. He took us out the same street we’d been on the night before, past the Dew Drop and onto an impossibly twisted road up an even more improbably steep mountainside.

Tiffany’s house sat at a V-shaped kink in the road, a neat, white bungalow with a long drive, a garage out back that looked big enough to hold a semi, and a brick walk up to the maroon front door. There was a well-tended plot of veggies just off the driveway to the left of where we parked, and the front walk was lined with marigolds. Tiffany did not strike me as the gardening type. Go figure.

We were only halfway up that walk when the door swung open, and Tiffany raced out. “Oh, Kaz!” She threw her arms around him. “I’m so glad you’re here. Oh, Kaz, honey . . .” She grabbed his hand, dragged him into the house—and left me standing there like the last wallflower at the high school dance.

OK, so I remembered Kaz’s bedroom technique as being stellar but not being able to wait even long enough to say hello . . . This seemed a little extreme, even to me.

“Uh, Jo!” Maybe Kaz wasn’t all excited about Tiffany getting her clutches into him and getting him all to herself. Just inside the front door, he waved me closer.

I can’t say I was all that thrilled, but I followed him into the house. The first thing I saw when I stepped into the living room was that though the outside of the house was as cute as a picture out of
Good Housekeeping
, the inside left a lot to be desired. In fact, it rivaled Masie Buck’s in the disaster category. The cushions were off the couch. The flat-screen TV was tipped. There were magazines strewn across the powder-blue carpeting, and the drawers of a nearby desk were pulled out and emptied on top of them.

“It was like this when I got home.” Tears streamed down Tiffany’s face. Funny, all that water didn’t keep her from batting her eyelashes. “Oh, Kaz, honey. I’m so scared! What if the burglar’s still in here?”

It was a good question, and I, for one, didn’t want to find out the answer. I pulled out my cell.

“Oh, I already called the sheriff,” Tiffany said. Bat, bat, bat. “I’m brave like that.”

I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.

The mantra floated through my head while I watched Kaz take a look around. “Is anything missing?” he asked Tiffany.

She shrugged. “It’s kinda hard to say. ’Cept for the stuff I had out on the table over there. You know, the stuff I told you about.”

My heart sank, and believe me, it wasn’t because Tiffany grabbed Kaz’s hand. “The photos of Lois Buck?” The words were bitter in my mouth, and I gulped them down. “They’re gone?”

Tiffany nodded. “Can’t imagine why anyone would take those silly old things.” She was a pouter of epic proportions, and she pouted for all she was worth. “There’s plenty more valuable things here. But ’cept for the mess, it looks like nothing else has been touched.”

Kaz extricated himself from Tiffany’s death grip and rubbed one hand across the back of his neck. “Well, we’ll find out more when the sheriff gets here.”

As if on cue, we heard the sound of a car in the drive.

Tiffany went to the door, and her face turned as pale as the skintight white top she was wearing with her cutoff shorts. “It ain’t the sheriff,” Tiffany wailed. “It’s Buzz. My husband!”

“Husband?” Kaz’s expression turned as sour as his voice. “You didn’t tell me you had a—”

Tiffany was not in any condition to discuss the matter. She grabbed onto Kaz and tugged him across the room. She threw open a closet door and braced her hands on Kaz’s back to shove him inside. “Oh, Kaz, honey, you better hide!”

He locked his legs. “I’m not going in there. Besides . . .” He whirled away from Tiffany and scooted to my side. “There’s no reason for me to hide. Buzz doesn’t know—”

His reasonable comment died in a groan when Tiffany nodded.

“He does.” Tiffany wrung her hands. “You see, Buzz, he wasn’t supposed to be home from his over-the-road drivin’ job for another couple days yet. And when he’s gone like that from me . . . Well, I sometimes tell him about the guys I’ve been with. You know, as a sort of way of making Buzz real anxious to get home to me. I talked to Buzz this morning and—”

“Told him everything?” Kaz’s face went green.

Another nod from Tiffany. “Includin’ a real good description of you, I’m afraid.”

The back door slammed shut, and a man’s voice called out, “Who’s that parked in our driveway, Tiffany? If it’s that no-good, wife-stealin’ city man you talked about, he better know I got my shotgun here and—”

We didn’t wait to hear any more. In seconds, Kaz and I were in the car. A quick stop at the Debonair for my suitcase, and we were on the road back to Chicago.

Chapter Seventeen