Panic Button (19 page)

“Very odd,” I told myself, plunking down on the couch and taking another look around
the room. While I was at it, I wished Kaz had a landline instead of just a cell. That
way, at least I might be able to check his messages. I was just about to throw in
the towel when I noticed a couple pieces of mail on the coffee table. The postmarks
showed they’d been sent nearly two weeks before, and that told me that nearly two
weeks ago, Kaz had been home.

Also on the table was a pile of charge receipts and I shuffled through them:

Dinner at the local greasy spoon.

Jeans and sweatshirts from a nearby emporium.

And a receipt from a sporting goods store that showed the purchase of one waterproof
tent, a metal detector, and a sleeping bag.

Camping? Not exactly a pastime I’d ever associated with Kaz, and as befuddled as ever,
I left the apartment, locking up behind me.

“Camping, huh?” I grumbled once I was outside, huddled in the folds of my raincoat,
my shivers keeping tempo with the rain that pinged against the sidewalk. “Well, at
least that explains where Kaz is. Maybe.”

I’m pretty sure I was still grumbling like this when I got off the El at the stop
nearest to the Button Box and approached the shop. I already had the key to my front
door in my hand before I noticed the car parked in front of the shop. And the slightly
disheveled guy behind the steering wheel watching my every move.

“Hey.” Nev, man of many words. He walked around the unmarked police car and joined
me on the sidewalk, apparently oblivious to the rain that was soaking his sandy-colored
hair and turning it to a shade that reminded me of honey. “I was surprised the shop
wasn’t open when I got here.”

“I had an errand to run.” I guess I didn’t have all that many words to offer, either.
Besides, I was wet and cold and anxious to get inside, and this seemed a simpler explanation
than the whole bit about Kaz and how I wasn’t missing him.

I opened the shop, discarded my wet coat in the back room, and went through my morning
routine, turning on spotlights over the display cases, flicking on my computer and
the stained glass lamp that sat atop my desk, putting on a pot of coffee.

“What’s up?” I asked Nev when I was done.

He’d slipped off his trench coat and hung it over the back of the chair next to my
rosewood desk. “I just wondered what you found out in Ardent Lake yesterday.”

Where to begin?

I told him about Marci and made sure to add that she’d promised to return everything
to Angela’s. That way, it was up to him to decide if the Ardent Lake police should
get involved. I also told him Larry and Susan were a couple again, though since he
didn’t react, I guess he didn’t think it was relevant. Maybe he was right.

“What I really don’t understand,” I admitted, “was why Angela promised the charm string
to the Little Museum, then gave it to the Big Museum.”

“You think it matters?”

I glanced his way. That morning, Nev was wearing a gray suit, a cream-colored shirt,
and a green plaid tie. He hurt my eyes. “Do you think it matters?” I echoed back.
“I’m just the button expert here, remember. You’re the professional.”

“If only that meant I had all the answers!” The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee filled
the Button Box, and Nev went into the back room. When he returned, he had a mug in
each hand and he set one down on the desk in front of me.

“That Marci, the first museum curator, she might have been mad at Angela for changing
her mind about the charm string,” he said, falling into professional mode and walking
us both through the case. “Or from what you’ve said about her stealing, she might
have been worried that Angela knew what she was up to. That gives her motive, too.”

“It does.” I took a sip of coffee, enjoying the heat against the back of my throat.

“The second museum curator was jealous that Angela stole her man from her. And now
that Angela’s out of the way, they’re back together. Which pretty much proves that
Angela was the one keeping them apart. That looks like pretty good motive for her.”

“And the man in question…” I was just about to take another drink of coffee and I
paused, the cup near my lips and the aroma tickling my nose. “He and Angela had a
fight. The afternoon of the day she was killed. He says they were golden again by
the time she left the hardware store, but there’s no way to prove that. So that might
give him motive, too. And all we need to do is figure out which motive is the motive
that’s the motive for murder.”

Big points for Nev, he did not mention how nearly incomprehensible my last comment
was. In fact, all he did was shiver. “I can’t get warm today,” he admitted. “It’s
like the cold goes right through you out there.”

“Which means it would be terrible weather for camping.”

Blank stare.

Well, what did I expect?

Fortunately, I didn’t have to explain. The phone rang, and I spent a pleasant fifteen
minutes talking button gossip with a collector from Saint Louis who was interested
in some of the moonglow buttons featured on my website. We came to an agreeable price,
she gave me her credit card number, and I promised to ship the buttons that day and
send her an e-mail receipt.

“Receipt.” I hung up, mumbling the word and drumming my fingers against the phone.
“There were receipts,” I said, and no, I didn’t add
at Kaz’s
. Like I said, all that was too complicated to explain to a cop on a rainy morning.
“Receipts at Angela’s,” I said. I dug through my purse to look for them, and when
I fished them out, I was sure to mention that Charles had given me permission to take
them. Just so Nev didn’t get any ideas about me having a felonious side.

When I set them on the desk, he nodded. “They were in her home office. I looked through
them when I was there the day after the murder. As far as I remember, there was nothing
promising. Or even anything interesting.”

Just as a way of having something to do, I looked through them, too. Though there
were more of them, Angela’s receipts weren’t any more interesting than Kaz’s.

“Restaurants.” I set those receipts on one pile. “Clothing stores.” They went in their
own little stack. “Hairdresser, nail salon.” I started a third stack. “Groceries.”
These, too, were set aside. It took me only a couple minutes to finish, and when I
was done, I was left holding only two receipts. Neither of them fit neatly into any
of the categories.

“A fishing charter,” I said. “Scheduled on a Monday…” I held up first one receipt,
then the other. “And canceled on a Wednesday.”

“Hmmm…” Nev scanned the piles of receipts. “Do you have a pile for recreation?”

Honestly, sometimes even the brightest cop can be dense. I look at him hard when I
asked, “Did Angela
seem like the kind of woman who would fish for recreation?”

He pursed his lips. “Can’t say. I didn’t know her. What do you think?”

“I think she wore tailored business suits and got her nails done.” I pointed to each
appropriate pile in turn. “I think her house was full of expensive antiques, and in
the one photo I saw of her and Larry in the great outdoors, I think she looked cold
and uncomfortable. Call me crazy…” I gave him a chance, but like I said, Nev is pretty
bright; he knew better than to take me up on the offer. “Angela on a fishing charter
seems odd to me. So does scheduling a boat and then canceling it so soon after. So
does…”

I took another careful look at the receipts. Something about them jogged a memory,
and I tapped my finger against them.

“The dates,” I said, thinking back to my meeting with Marci at the Little Museum.
“I knew they looked familiar. That Monday, that was the day Angela called Marci and
offered the charm string to her.”

Nev came around to the other side of the desk and leaned over my shoulder for a look
at the receipts. “And the day she canceled the charter?”

“That…” Just to be sure I took another gander. “That was the day after she told Marci
she’d changed her mind, the day after she offered the charm string to Susan.”

Nev didn’t say if he thought this was significant or not. Then again, cops are a closemouthed
bunch. Especially when it comes to offering an opinion before they have all the facts.
What he did instead was slip the
receipts off my desk and get out his cell. He made a call, and while he waited for
the person on the other end of the phone to answer, he said, “Maybe the weather forecast
was bad for the day the boat was scheduled. Maybe that’s why she canceled.”

I was already one step ahead of him. Except for that day with the rain pelting down
and the one morning when I had the charm string in my possession to photograph, it
had been a mild and mostly sunny spring, but just to be sure I hadn’t forgotten any
particularly nasty weather, I looked online and saw that the weather the day of the
scheduled fishing excursion had been ideal.

While I pointed to the computer screen, Nev nodded and started talking to the person
on the other end of the phone. He identified himself and asked about the receipts
in question.

“So was she excited? I mean when she hired the boat in the first place?” Nev asked.
“Did she say she was interested in doing a little fishing?”

He paused and listened, then thanked the person and hung up.

“That was the charter company,” he explained. “The lady who schedules the excursions
says she remembers Angela because Angela told her she wasn’t going out on the lake
to fish. When she chartered the boat, Angela said she didn’t want to bring anything
back, she was going out on the water to get rid of something.”

“The charm string?” The very thought of all those wonderful old buttons lying at the
bottom of Lake Michigan made me so queasy, it took me a minute to wrap my head around
it.

“It actually makes sense,” I concluded, controlling my gut-wrenching reaction to such
a loss. “Because Angela really believed the charm string was cursed. She might have
figured dumping the buttons in the lake was the only way to get rid of them. But then…then
she changed her mind.” I almost added
thank goodness
, then decided it made me sound like too much of a button nerd. Nev already knew that
about me, I didn’t need to hit him over the head with it. “And that’s when she decided
to donate the charm string to the museum.”

“The first museum. Then she changed her mind about that—”

“And offered it to the second museum.”

Maybe it was too early in the morning. Or maybe I just hadn’t had enough coffee. All
this speculation was making my head pound. I took another sip of my coffee and I can’t
say if it was the warmth or the caffeine that jump-started my brain.

“Maybe…” Just so I didn’t lose the thought, I took another sip. “Maybe Angela’s murder
wasn’t about her dating Larry or about Marci stealing from the museum. Maybe it really
was all about that enameled button. Maybe someone knew how valuable it was. And maybe
that same someone heard Angela talking about how she was going to get rid of the fish
button and all the other buttons by tossing the charm string in Lake Michigan.”

“That same someone might have talked her out of the fishing charter and into donating
the buttons.” Nev liked where this idea was going; his blue eyes gleamed.

“And the reason that someone wanted Angela to donate the buttons was so that person
had more time to
get his—or her—hands on the enameled button. Obviously, that was never going to happen
if the button was in the lake. And that—” Another idea jolted through me and I sat
back, my hands clutching the edge of my desk. “That would explain the attempted break-in
at her house that Angela told me about. And that fire in her kitchen. Maybe someone
was really trying to get her out of the house so she—or he—could get into the house
and take the charm string.”

Another thought struck and I sucked in a breath. “Oh my gosh, Nev, Angela said there
was a small fire at Aunt Evelyn’s, too. Angela’s the one who put it out. She just
assumed it all happened because of the curse, but—”

“The person who was after the button could have engineered the whole thing.”

“And…” In spite of the coffee, my throat went dry. I grabbed my mug and took another
drink, but thanks to the idea that just popped into my head, it didn’t exactly help.
“Maybe that’s why someone tried to steal my purse. To get my keys and get into the
shop. The charm string spent the night here. It’s the same reason the lights went
out here at the shop the day I had the charm string.” I would have slapped my forehead
if I didn’t have both hands wrapped around my coffee mug. “Stan said the fuse wasn’t
blown. He said it looked as if the breaker had been tripped. Maybe someone thought
that if the lights went out, I’d leave the shop for a while. Or maybe that person
thought I’d be the one who went into the basement to see what was wrong, and I’d be
easy to overpower. He didn’t count on Stan being here with me. We didn’t leave.
Nev, that could mean the killer was here. In the building.”

Even though it had all happened more than a week before, that didn’t stop my heart
from starting up a rumba rhythm inside my chest. I looked over my shoulder toward
the workroom. “If I’d been here by myself…”

“We’re not going to worry about that.” Nev put a hand on my shoulder. “Nothing happened,
and we’re not sure about any of this, anyway. But if it is true—”

“Then somebody really wanted that button. Enough to kill for it. We need to figure
out who that could be.”

“You said the cousin—”

I nodded. “Charles. He’s pretty up on the value of things. He would have known how
much that charm string was worth. Maybe…” I didn’t like to think about Angela’s last
moments, but I forced the words out, anyway. “Maybe he meant to steal the entire charm
string and never counted on it breaking when he strangled her.”

“And the rest of our suspects?” Nev asked.

“Susan and Marci certainly know what’s what when it comes to antiques,” I said. “They’ve
got museums full of them. Larry, I’m not so sure about. I can’t imagine a guy who
owns a hardware store knows a whole bunch about buttons.”