Panic Button (18 page)

I confess, it was a bit of a letdown. After seeing the fictionalized version of the
town in all its color-coordinated glory, I expected more. More spectacular. More charming.
More interesting.

In fact, Ardent wasn’t all that different from thousands of other small towns. One
picture showed a main street with a pizza place, a gas station, and a convenience
store flanking the police station and a firehouse. Another picture showed an old-fashioned
railroad. A third must have been taken on the Fourth of July, because there was red,
white, and blue bunting on the gazebo in the town square, and flocks of people in
summer clothes were eating ice cream cones and listening to a band whose members had
shaggy hair and wore leisure suits.

The room beyond that one had a small crowd of senior citizens in it, all of them jockeying
for position around a poster with big, thick lettering: “Thunderin’ Ben Moran,” it
said. “Ardent’s Own Pirate.”

Years of button collecting had taught me never to try and get ahead of a senior citizen
in any line. I politely
waited my turn, but I had just stepped up to the front of the line for a chance to
read the poster when I heard Susan call my name.

In a gray suit and crisp pink blouse, she looked trim and as orderly as her museum.

“I’m glad you stopped by,” she said, extending her hand and shaking mine. “I knew
you’d enjoy yourself here. There’s so much to see.”

“And learn.” I gestured toward the poster I hadn’t had time to read. “You weren’t
kidding when you told me about the pirate at the wake. There really were pirates.
In Illinois!”

Susan laughed. “Well, not too many of them. In fact, we like to think of old Thunderin’
Ben as the one and only. That’s what makes him so fascinating. He was born in Ardent,
you know. Did you have a chance to look at the exhibit?”

I told her I hadn’t and she waited until the senior citizens had moved on to the next
room and ushered me closer so that I could get a good look at the grainy black-and-white
photograph of an old lake schooner, sails unfurled, cutting through the water.

“That was Thunderin’ Ben’s ship,” Susan explained. “The
Annie Darling
. He captained that ship for nearly fifty years, and wreaked havoc up and down the
shoreline of Lake Michigan.” She smiled. “These days, it all sounds like something
out of a screwball comedy, but I suppose back in the early 1920s—that’s when Ben was
at his thunderin’ best—well, it was serious business.”

Inside the glass display case in front of the picture was a replica of a buoy bobbing
in the southern end of a
painted Lake Michigan, and Susan pointed to it. “One of the things Ben was famous
for is what’s called mooncussing,” she said. “Don’t ask me where the word comes from!
I only know what it means and that was that pirates like Ben would move the buoy markers
and that would cause ships to go aground. Then once the crew abandoned ship, Ben and
his crew of bandits would board the vessels and steal everything they could. They
used to do the same sort of thing with the
Annie Darling
, sneak into a port at night when no one was around, and dock the ship long enough
to steal anything that wasn’t nailed down.”

I couldn’t help it. In my own imagination, I wondered if someday there would be a
display about Marci Steiner in the Big Museum.

“Of course, what Ben is really famous for around here…” Susan snapped me out of the
thought with a wave toward a book with a tattered brown cover inside the display case.
“His diary,” she said, her eyes lighting. “And though I’ve read it cover to cover
and never found a thing, there are supposedly clues inside. You know, about the treasure.”

Aha! Now all the interest in Thunderin’ Ben was starting to make sense.

“Let me guess,” I said, “Caribbean islands, sandy beaches.”

“No such thing.” Susan laughed. “The legend says that the treasure is buried nearby.”
Still smiling, she turned from the display. “Every once in a while, someone gets it
into their head to try and find it, but so far, no one’s had any luck. Personally,
I think old Thunderin’
Ben made it all up. He was as big a storyteller as he was a pirate.”

“You mean no pieces of eight and gold doubloons?”

Susan’s shrug said it didn’t matter. “Never that,” she said. “The story says that
on one of those midnight raids of his, Ben ended up with the chest full of money that
was headed up to the mining camps along Lake Superior. Thousands and thousands of
dollars. Who knows if that’s true! All I know is that the more interest there is in
Ben and his treasure, the more people come to visit the museum. And really, that’s
all I care about.”

“Which is exactly why you were so happy to get the charm string, right?”

It seemed the most natural question in the world to me, yet something about it must
have signaled to Susan that the topic of our conversation had shifted. Just a tad.
She gave me a quick, sidelong look. “Would you like to see the spot we had picked
out for it?” she asked, and without waiting for me to answer, she led the way.

We crossed the wide entranceway to the other side of the building and a room that
reminded me a whole lot of the parlor at the Little Museum. Victorian bric-a-brac,
flamboyant furniture, elaborate paintings. Like the Little Museum but not. Susan’s
palatial to Marci’s homespun. If she was trying to compete, I could understand why
Marci had turned to a life of crime.

“There.” Susan waved her hand toward a wide—and very bare—expanse of wall. “We were
going to install it starting there.” She swung around to her left, then did a slow
arc in the other direction. “All the way to there.
One thousand buttons. The charm string was going to take up a lot of room.”

“It would have looked great. And to think, you almost didn’t get the charm string
at all.”

Have I mentioned that I’m getting really good at sounding casual when I’m actually
digging for information?

Maybe not as good as I thought, though, because Susan glared at me, her eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about?”

“Angela,” I said, still oh so casual. “You know, she originally offered the charm
string to Marci.”

Susan flinched. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Heard it from Marci.”

“Well, consider the source.”

“Let’s pretend she is telling the truth.” I dangled the possibility in front of Susan.
“That would leave us with two questions. Number one, why would Angela offer the charm
string to Marci in the first place? And number two, why would she change her mind
within just a couple days and call you?”

“Is that what happened? Who knows why? I told you before, Angela was crazy.”

“That actually might explain it,” I conceded, but I didn’t add that it wasn’t likely.
In my experience, there were far more complicated and sinister reasons for murder
than simple craziness. “But what if it wasn’t because she was crazy? Why would Angela
want the charm string to go to the Little Museum?”

“Well, that seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?” As if
the thought sat uncomfortably, Susan twitched her shoulders. “Angela and I weren’t
exactly best friends.”

“Because of Larry.”

I wasn’t imagining it—a small smile touched the corners of her mouth.

“But if that’s true, why would Angela change her mind?” I ask.

That smile froze in place and Susan’s shoulders shot back. “Maybe Angela realized
Marci was just as nuts as she was. Imagine, anyone taking that tacky little museum
of hers seriously! And the woman is so enamored of herself, she’s even had a state-of-the-art
security system installed. Honestly, Marci Steiner’s ego could float a boat.”

“So Angela withdrew her offer because of Marci’s ego?”

“Well, Angela had something of an ego of her own, you know. She’s the one who insisted
we put on that tea party in her honor. You know, as a thank-you to her for donating
the buttons. We’ve never done anything like that for any other donor. But Angela said,
no party, no charm string.”

“And you caved.”

“I cooperated.” Susan stepped away from me and I knew what it meant. Marci might be
uppity and think more of herself than any museum curator should, but Susan was important
and had things to do. “I did what was good for my museum,” she pointed out. “In the
end, that was all that mattered anyway.”

“So you’re willing to believe that Angela simply
changed her mind. Kind of like Larry changed his mind when he dumped you for her.”

Her chin came up a fraction of an inch, and that tiny smile was back.

“Ancient history,” Susan said. “And it doesn’t matter now, anyway. Larry realizes
he made a mistake. He freely admits it. And in case you don’t know what I’m getting
at here, Ms. Giancola, let me be perfectly clear: it doesn’t matter what Angela did
or said. Angela is dead. And Larry and I? We’re a couple again.”

A
S FASCINATING AS ALL THIS WAS—
M
ARCI BEING A
Thief, Susan and Larry together again, motives piling up for Angela’s murder like
the slush piles along Chicago’s curbs in January—I did have a real life to live. And
a real business to run.

I intended to do both the next day.

As soon as I made one quick stop.

A note here, and it’s an important one:

It wasn’t like I was missing Kaz. Honest. But when it came to Kaz, something strange
was going on, no doubt about that. There had been a major change in the routine he’d
followed in all the time we’d been divorced, the one that had Kaz coming around to
see me at least once a week to ask for money.

Which, naturally, meant there had been a change in
my routine, too—the one where I roll my eyes when he shows up and firmly tell him
no.

I didn’t have to be pining for my ex to be curious. And believe me, I wasn’t pining
for my ex.

But I was plenty curious.

Hence my detour on the way to the Button Box that morning.

After our divorce, when I stayed in the apartment where I’d dreamed we’d have our
happily-ever-after and Kaz went on (or so he claimed) to build a new life for himself,
he’d rented a place above a storefront in a Chicago neighborhood known as Bucktown,
and in spite of my objections, he’d insisted I keep a key. “Just in case,” he said.

I was reasonably sure that
just in case
should actually have been
when hell freezes over
, but to shut him up, I took the key. It hung on a hook inside my kitchen door, and
it had remained untouched—and pretty much forgotten—for more than a year.

But sometimes life holds surprises, and truth be told, this was one of them.

When I arrived at Pelogia’s Perogi Palace and went around to the back entrance reserved
for the tenants who lived above the take-away Polish food joint, the rain that pelted
down from thick gray clouds was icy cold.

Hell, it seemed, was about to freeze over.

I let myself into the building and climbed the steps to the third floor. From what
Kaz had told me, I knew his apartment was up front and to the left.

Yeah, that one.

The one with at least a week’s worth of newspapers piled in front of the door like
Lincoln Logs.

It’s embarrassing to admit, what with me actually being a button seller and all, but
I immediately slipped into detective mode.

No sign of forced entry.

No sounds of distress—or anything else—from inside the apartment.

Nothing that indicated anything was wrong.

That didn’t keep me from slipping my key in the lock as quietly as I could. Just as
carefully, I pushed open the door.

“Kaz?” Well, he was never going to hear me if I sounded like a squeaky little mouse.
I told myself not to forget it, and tried again with a little more oomph. “Hey, Kaz.
It’s Josie. Are you home?”

No answer.

Since it was gloomy outside and gloomier in, I felt along the living room wall for
the switch that operated the ceiling fan and overhead light and flicked it on. Kaz’s
apartment is a lot like Kaz himself. That is, pretty basic. He isn’t Mr. Neatnik,
but he’s not a slob, either, and from the look of the issues of
ESPN, The Magazine
scattered over the coffee table and the beer bottle (empty) on the floor next to
the couch, it was impossible to determine when he’d last been in the room.

The kitchen proved no more helpful.

Which only left his bedroom.

I remembered Stan’s theory about Kaz shacking up with some buxom blonde and knew (thank
goodness!) that if it was happening, it wasn’t happening here. There was no sign of
a woman’s presence, no whiff of perfume, no sound of a throaty, satisfied laugh coming
from the
bedroom. And no sign of Kaz, either, when I peeked in there and in the bathroom.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and it wasn’t because I feared I’d find Kaz with some
cutie. That might have been embarrassing—not to mention awkward—but it wouldn’t have
broken my heart. Kaz had done that long before and for all different reasons.

No, truth be told, I knew there was always the possibility of Kaz getting on someone’s
bad side. Someone he’d borrowed money from. Someone he’d lost to in a poker game.
Someone he’d beat in a poker game (hey, it actually happened once in a while) who
was a sore loser. At least I could put that image to rest, the one of Kaz lying by
the side of his bed, kneecapped and bloody.