Panic Button (16 page)

“And the other one?”

Larry pursed his lips, apparently trying to decide if he should toe the line or dish
the dirt. “Run by sort of a scatterbrained woman. You know the type, all enthusiastic
and wide-eyed, but not exactly sure how to make their big plans work. When the curator
of the Big Museum left a few years ago, she applied for that job. She didn’t get it,
and I suppose that’s what made her decide she could do a better job on her own. She
bought a house and opened a museum in it. Around here, we call
that one the Little Museum. Who does that?” he asked himself more than me. “Who just
starts a museum? Not that I’m saying it’s a bad little place.” I couldn’t fault Larry
for covering his bases. He didn’t know me, and as a business owner, he couldn’t afford
to alienate anyone.

“It’s in a house she bought for a song when the original owner got foreclosed. There
isn’t much in that Little Museum,” he added, “but I hear the collection’s growing.
If you decide to check it out, tell Marci over there that I sent you.”

“Marci Steiner?”

Like anybody could blame me for being surprised? For all her talk about Susan, Marci
had never bothered to mention that she was something of a rival, museum-wise. Or that
she had once applied for the job Susan ended up getting.

I guess my astonishment showed, because Larry’s mouth pursed, and his eyebrows did
a slow slide upward. “I see you know Marci.”

“We’ve met.” I didn’t bother to add the bit about how Marci dissed Susan and gave
me the dirt on Susan and Larry. “I’ll be sure to stop into the Little Museum,” I said
instead, and added the visit to my to-do list.

Oh yeah, Marci and I had a few things to talk about.

For now…

There was a display of palm-sized flashlights on the counter and I picked through
the various colors. After our mishap with the fuse box at the store, I knew Stan would
be happy to have a few more flashlights around.
I chose a blue one to go in the top drawer of my desk in the shop and a yellow one
for the back workroom. I set them on the counter.

“It’s too bad when history gets lost,” I said, sticking to the subject at the same
time I did my best to nudge it in a slightly different direction. “As time passes,
so many stories get lost. Or somehow turned around. You know, so that people think
one thing is true when it’s really not.”

Larry was still hanging on to the broom, and he leaned it against the wall behind
the counter. “We’re not talking about Ardent anymore, are we?”

I smiled in a way that told him he just might be right. “I’m Josie,” I explained.
“I’m the button dealer from Chicago who—”

“Was helping Angela out with the charm string.”

I can honestly say I’d never seen anyone’s expression fall quite so quickly or so
far. Larry twined his fingers together, his left thumb playing over his right hand.
“Have the police found anything?” he asked. “Do they know who…” There was a bottle
of water sitting nearby and he uncapped it and took a swig. “I’m sorry. It’s hard
for me to talk about her. Maybe…maybe you understand.”

“I do. The day Angela dropped off the charm string, she talked about you. I know you
two were close.”

Larry was wearing a white golf shirt with the words
Larry’s Hardware
embroidered over the heart in red, and against the pale color, his skin looked ashy.
“I lost my wife four years ago,” he said. “And I had pretty much come to grips with
the fact that I was going to grow old all by myself. Old and lonely. Then Angela came
along.”

“But not until after Susan did.”

The softness vanished from his expression and he grabbed the broom so fast, I thought
he might use it to shoo me out the front door. Instead, he got to work, sweeping behind
the counter. “Who told you that? And what do you care about Susan, anyway?” he asked.

“I’m just trying to understand, that’s all.”

“Why?” Both his hands clutching the broom handle, he sent a laser look across the
counter. “You’re just the button lady who helped Angela with her charm string. Why?
Why do you care what goes on here in Ardent Lake?”

“I suppose I shouldn’t. I don’t. Not really.” There was something about Larry’s very
blue and very direct gaze that made my knees quiver, and rather than take the chance
of letting him know, I strolled over to the nearest display rack. It featured maps
of the area, gum and mints, and a free Ardent Lake Chamber of Commerce publication.

I grabbed one of those along with a pack of Juicy Fruit and set them down near the
flashlights. “I just wondered…you know, if once you left Susan for Angela, if Susan
might have been angry enough to—”

“You’re kidding me, right?” The tone of Larry’s voice had nothing to do with kidding.
In fact, it was positively icy. “You think Susan might have killed Angela? You obviously
don’t know Susan.”

“We’ve met. And she never bothered to mention her relationship with you.”

“Maybe that’s because it’s none of your business.”

Technically, he was right.

And I was out of my league.

I thought about the times I’d seen Nev interview people—suspects and victims alike—and
I hoped that, like I’d seen him do so many times, I could defuse the anger that would
stop Larry from talking.

“Angela was such a nice woman,” I said.

“You think by trying to shmooze me, it will make me think you’re not being nosy?”

Big points for Larry, he knew how to lay things on the line.

And I knew better than to try and get away with anything.

“You’re absolutely right.” I unzipped my purse and pulled out my wallet, shoving the
few items I’d taken from Larry’s shelves closer to him and getting out a ten-dollar
bill. “It’s none of my business, and I’m being nosy, and you know what? I just can’t
seem to help myself. I talked to Angela two days in a row, you see, and I knew she
was so worried about that curse she believed in. But I didn’t take her seriously.
And when she left my shop the night of the murder and we heard that dog howling…”

“Angela and her superstitions.” Larry barked out a laugh. “I hope you’re not on some
holy mission to find out who murdered her because you feel like you should have done
something to help her.”

“Of course not.” I was getting pretty good at lying, so I barely batted an eye. I
wasn’t about to bare my soul—and my guilt—to Larry. “I know the curse wasn’t real.
But I was so close, Larry.” Even the best liar can’t be completely unemotional. I
sucked in a breath. “I feel as
if I’ve got a stake in finding out what happened to Angela. That’s why when I heard
that you and Susan once dated, I wondered if maybe the fact that you broke up with
her had anything to do with Angela’s murder. Then I heard…” I took the plunge. “Then
I heard that maybe it didn’t matter that you broke up with Susan to date Angela. Because
I heard that you and Angela were finished.”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him. “That’s crazy.”

“But you did have a fight the afternoon Angela was killed.”

Larry had been about to take the money out of my hand and he froze. “Who told you
that?” he asked.

“Then it’s true. What did you fight about?”

He pounded the keys of the cash register, and when it popped open, he snapped the
money out of my hand. “Angela should have known better. She’d listened to some gossip
she never should have listened to.”

“Gossip about…”

“The fact that I said it was gossip should make it clear that it’s not worth repeating.”
He counted out my change. “You heard all this from that busybody, Mary Lou, didn’t
you? She was in here that afternoon. She must have been the one who told you. See
what I mean about gossip? Serves no purpose. None at all. And more often than not,
it leads people to the wrong conclusions. Just like what’s happened to you.”

Larry slapped my change into my hand and reached below the counter for a bag. “What
Mary Lou didn’t hear was the whole part about how Angela and I talked things out,
and we realized that the whole thing was nothing more
than a misunderstanding. When Angela left here, she was happy, she was smiling, and
we were back to where we were to begin with. Angela and I, we were solid.”

I thought about the way Angela looked when she arrived at the Button Box the night
of the murder. “But she wasn’t happy when she came to Chicago that evening.”

Larry slammed the cash register drawer shut and scooped my purchases into the bag.
“I don’t know about that. I can’t say. Maybe there was a lot of traffic between here
and Chicago. Maybe she got a speeding ticket. Maybe she ate something for lunch that
didn’t agree with her.

“All I know is that day was the last time I saw Angela. The last…” His voice broke.
“The last time I talked to her. Ever.”

“I’m sorry.” I was. Honest. I was sorry I’d upset Larry. I was sorry I wasn’t better
at this whole investigating thing, because if I was, I wouldn’t have simply grabbed
the bag Larry handed me and hightailed it out of his store as fast as I did.

I was sorry I’d blown the whole thing and I hadn’t been smarter and found out what
Larry and Angela were fighting about.

I was sorry Angela was dead.

When I got into the car, locked the doors, and was finally able to take a deep breath,
I realized that, really, that was the only thing that mattered.

Angela was dead, and someone had to work to find out who murdered her and bring her
justice. Nev was doing that through legitimate means, and he’d asked me to help more
casually.

If I upset Larry in the process, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

I started up the car and wheeled out of the parking lot, heading in that vague direction
where Larry indicated the Little Museum was located and telling myself that the morning
hadn’t been a total loss.

After all, I knew Larry was lying. I mean, about Angela being happy and them being
a couple again after their little tiff.

I knew this because of the way Angela acted when she came to the Button Box to see
me that evening. And because of the way she looked. As a woman who’d once been done
wrong by the man she loved, I also knew that she wouldn’t have taken down his pictures
from her wall—and kept them down—if they had made their peace.

I also knew that Marci hadn’t told me the whole story about how Susan had gotten the
job Marci wanted and how that might affect how she felt—and what she said—about Susan.

I wheeled down a street of attractive homes and realized I knew one more thing, too.

The pristine facade of Ardent Lake was nothing more than fiction, one that hid a whole
lot of secrets.

OK,
SO
M
ARCI HADN’T EXACTLY LIED TO ME
. B
UT SHE
had left out a big chunk of the truth.

Don’t think I wasn’t going to check into it.

I followed my nose, and that gesture Larry used to indicate the other side of town.
Luckily, Ardent Lake isn’t all that big and I didn’t have far to drive. Not three
blocks away from Larry’s Hardware, I found a pale gray Victorian with purple trim
and a sign out front that announced that within its walls was a history of Ardent
Lake along with
curiosities and items of local historical importance.

The Little Museum.

There were no cars in the tiny parking lot, and from what I could see when I pressed
my nose to the glass on
the front door and knocked, no one was around. I was about to declare my mission a
complete and total failure when a black BMW wheeled into the lot and Marci got out.

I guess when you run your own museum, you have the luxury of making your own hours.
(And just for the record, this perk does not translate to the button business.)

Marci seemed honestly surprised to see me. Then again, from what Larry said, I guess
it was to be expected. It wasn’t like the Little Museum was exactly on the hot list
of local tourist attractions.

“I’m headed back to Chicago,” I told Marci once we’d exchanged all the usual greetings
and small talk and I turned away to get a breath of air that wasn’t tainted by the
pall of cigarette smoke that hung over her. “But I didn’t want to leave until I stopped
by to see your museum. The other day when we met at the park, you forgot to mention
that you had a museum that was in direct competition with Susan’s.”

She’d been punching in the code on the security system just inside the front door,
and Marci’s hand froze over the panel. She snapped herself out of her daze just in
time to keep the alarm from sounding, touched the rest of the numbers, and closed
the door behind us.

“As I recall, we weren’t talking about museums.” She swung her Coach bag onto a chair
behind an oak rolltop desk that sat against the wall in what used to be the parlor
of the house. “I’m glad you stopped in,” she chirped in what I imagined was her best
tour guide voice. “There’s a lot to see here. And a lot to learn. More than at that
snooty museum across town where everything’s treated
like it’s gold. Here…” She gestured to indicate the entire room.