Panic Button (22 page)

“The buttons weren’t.” I said this more to Nev than to Charles because I figured Charles
was in no condition to listen, anyway.

“Aunt Evelyn’s collection.” Charles pushed himself upright and whirled around, taking
it all in. “I wonder. Did she know? I didn’t. I swear, I didn’t.” He looked at Nev,
his eyes pleading. “If I did, I never would have asked all those people to come over
and have a look. I never would have…” His jaw went slack, and his face, already pale,
turned the bloodless color of the marble Greek god statue behind him. “Oh my God,”
Charles wailed, covering his face with his hands. “What have I done?”

There wasn’t much room to move, but Nev managed to step forward. “Are you talking
about your reputation in Ardent Lake?” he asked. “Or what happened to Angela?”

Charles ran his tongue over his lips. “I didn’t want it all. I never said I did. I
just thought that she shouldn’t hog everything for herself. She’d gotten more than
her fair share from Aunt Evelyn. That’s why I did what I did. No one can blame me!”

My voice was breathy when I asked, “You killed Angela?”

All the color came back into Charles’s face in a rush. His knees knocked. “Killed
her? No! I never did. I just wanted…I just wanted to scare her. I just wanted to make
her think that life is short and it doesn’t pay to hoard all the good stuff for yourself.”
He swallowed hard, and when he looked at Nev, his eyes were wide and filled with tears.
“That’s why I did it. That’s why I cut the brake lines on Angela’s car.”

B
Y THE TIME
I
RECOVERED FROM THE SURPRISE OF THE
unexpected confession, we were on the front porch of Angela’s house, waiting for
the police to come and take Charles’s statement. Since he had messed with the brake
lines in Angela’s garage right there in Ardent Lake, it was a problem for the locals,
Nev said. I knew he was right, but since there was a connection to our case—and it
might be a pretty darned big one—I had every right to be curious.

“So it wasn’t bad luck?” I asked Charles, eager to see if he’d recant now that he’d
had time to compose himself. “It wasn’t the curse that caused Angela’s brake lines
to pop?”

With what he’d done, Charles could have caused a serious accident. Or worse. Still,
I couldn’t help feeling
a little sorry for him. He sat on the front steps with his head bowed and tears streaming
down his cheeks.

“No, of course not. It was me. Just me,” he sobbed. “I never meant to hurt her. You
have to believe me. I wanted her to realize that life was short, and she should be
generous. And I thought…all right, I admit it! She was already talking about that
silly curse, and I thought if she figured this was another piece of bad luck thanks
to those buttons, she might give the charm string to me. At least then I would have
gotten something of value out of this whole mess. Besides, she didn’t…” The thought
struck and Charles lifted his head and actually managed a watery smile. “Angela didn’t
get hurt, did she? In spite of what I did, nothing happened to her. So it’s not like
I actually did anything wrong.”

If he was hoping for sympathy from Nev, he didn’t get it. “We’ll let the police decide,”
he said. “For now, you can help yourself by telling the truth.”

Charles raised his chin and tried for a bravado that wasn’t quite convincing. “As
sure as the sky is blue, it was all I did. I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re
thinking. Sure, I wanted my share of Aunt Evelyn’s fortune.” His face fell. “Well,
what I thought was Aunt Evelyn’s fortune. I wanted a fair cut. But I didn’t want it
so bad that I would strangle Angela. That’s…” He jiggled his shoulders. “That’s creepy.”

“And you never broke into Angela’s house?” Nev asked.

Charles shook his head.

It was my turn. “You never started that fire in her kitchen?”

Again, he denied it.

“You never talked Angela into canceling the charter boat so she wouldn’t dump the
charm string in the lake?”

That was me again, and Charles looked at me in wonder. “Why would she want to dump
the silly thing in the lake?” The truth dawned and his jaw dropped. “The curse, of
course! She was going to dump the buttons in the lake? The woman was as crazy as a
loon. Not that it matters now. Besides, even if she did want to get rid of the buttons,
why would I want to talk her out of it? Well…” He thought about it for a couple seconds.
“I guess I would seeing as how those buttons are the only genuine things in Aunt Evelyn’s
whole collection.” He sniffled.

“Then what about the donation?” Nev had been leaning against the front railing and
he pushed off and stalked down the steps. He stood on the front walk, his arms crossed
over his chest, and looked up at Charles. “Are you the one who suggested Angela give
the buttons to Marci’s museum?”

“And then,” I put in, sitting down next to Charles, “did you talk her out of that
and tell her to give the charm string to Susan instead?”

He was the one who’d just confessed to cutting the brake lines on his cousin’s car,
so he shouldn’t have looked at me as if I was the crazy person. “The first I ever
heard about that charm string was when Angela told me about the curse. Of course I
ignored her. Who wouldn’t? She mentioned it every time I saw her and I was more and
more convinced that she’d gone off the deep end. Then the next thing I knew, she called
to invite me to a tea the Big Museum was having in her honor. She said it was because
she was giving the charm string to them. Before that, I can’t tell you what happened
or what she did with the silly thing or what her plans were. You say she was going
to give it to Marci? Then she actually gave it to Susan?”

“Well, she never got to the point of actually giving it to Susan,” I reminded him.

“Susan! Did I hear you talking about Susan?”

Since we hadn’t seen Larry come around from the back of the house, I think his question
startled us all. I jumped. Charles pulled in a breath. I’m sure Nev was just as surprised,
too, but he never moved a muscle, just looked over to where Larry hurried around the
rhododendrons.

“We’re supposed to be going to lunch,” Larry said, dapper that day in dark pants and
a purple golf shirt. “And I can’t find her.”

Instantly, I felt guilty, even though I knew I shouldn’t. “I was supposed to tell
you, but I never had the opportunity. We didn’t run into each other in the house,”
I said to Larry as if that in itself was enough of an explanation. “Susan forgot her
purse, you see. She didn’t want to be without her cell phone. She went back to the
museum to get it.”

He glanced at his watch. “Just now?”

“Well, no.” I thought about when we’d run into Susan—it was right after Nev had tossed
out that bone-melting comment about us staying at the B and B together—and all that
had happened since. “Come to think of it,” I said, “it was quite a long while ago.”

Larry looked around. There was a late-model blue Ford Focus parked a couple houses
down the street. “That’s her car,” he said. “Which means she hasn’t come back. No
doubt she got distracted by some project or another. I
swear, that woman lives and breathes for that museum.” Maybe he’d been upstairs when
the announcement came down about the fake antiques and Charles’s disgrace. With a
look, Larry included me, Nev, and yes, Charles and I guess he forgave me for what
I’d said to him that day at his store because he said, “Join us for lunch, why don’t
you. We’re meeting over at the Bayside. Charming little place, usually right on the
water. Now, we’ll get a look at what’s going on at the reservoir.”

“We can meet you there,” Nev told him. “As soon as we’re done with the local police.
Charles has some things he needs to talk to them about.”

“Yes. Of course.” Larry got his car keys out of his pocket. “But just so you know,
I heard sirens a little while ago from over near the Parkway.” He waved in some indeterminate
direction. It was, apparently, how Larry gave directions. “No doubt, there was an
accident of some sort. It’s Sunday and I guarantee you that Jimmy Carns is the only
officer on duty. If you’re waiting for him, chances are you’re going to be waiting
for a long time. You could go over to the Bayside now—”

“Or we could come with you to pick up Susan, then we could all leave from there.”
I stood and marched down the steps. Yeah, I was being a little pushy, but let’s face
it, love of buttons goes right along with love of old things. The chance to get a
peek behind the scenes before the museum opened was too tempting to pass up.

“All right.” Larry put his keys back in his pocket. “We can all walk over there. Charles,
are you coming?”

“Am I?” Charles asked Nev.

Rather than risk having Charles run off, Nev said yes.

The four of us walked the short distance between Angela’s house and the museum. Because
the Big Museum wasn’t scheduled to open for another hour, the front door was locked.

“Not to worry.” Larry led us around the side of the building. “On the days Susan is
the first one here, she always leaves this door open so the docents don’t have to
wait for her to unlock the front door.”

He opened the door he indicated, and we stepped inside.

As I suspected, the Big Museum was quiet, and after the commotion over at Angela’s,
it was a welcome relief. I drew in a breath of air faintly scented with the comforting
aroma of old things, and followed Larry down a short corridor that led us up three
steps, through a door, and into that main entryway just inside the museum’s front
door.

“Her office is this way,” Larry said, heading straight down the hallway. “I’ll go
get her and tell her you’re waiting. That will light a fire under her.”

While he was gone, it gave me the perfect chance to wander, and I intended to make
the most of it. While Charles and Nev waited in the hallway, I strolled into the room
that featured all those wonderful old photographs of Ardent, intending to take another
look so I could compare what used to be with what we were going to see down at the
reservoir.

I never had the chance.

Just inside the doorway, I stopped cold, and my voice wobbling, I called for Nev.

He is, after all, the professional. With any luck, he
wouldn’t be stunned and frightened out of his gourd by the scene that met our eyes.
Not like I was.

My heart in my throat, my blood hammering in my temples, I stared at Susan, lying
on the floor just inside the doorway. She was on her back in a pool of blood, her
arms splayed at her sides, one leg cocked at an unnatural angle. One of the photos
of old Ardent had been taken down off the wall and used to batter her over the head
and shards of glass glittered in her ashen hair.

I didn’t need to wait to see Nev kneel down beside her, feel for a pulse, and shake
his head.

One look, and I knew Susan wouldn’t be joining us for lunch.

J
IMMY
C
ARNS MIGHT
have been taking that accident report up on the Parkway, but he hotfooted it right
over when Nev called the station and the dispatcher relayed a message that included
the word
murder
. Within fifteen minutes, Jimmy’s boss and the mayor had arrived at the Big Museum,
too, and with the Ardent photo room packed, I’d been asked to step out into the hallway
and stay out of the way.

I was only too happy to oblige. Finding two bodies in the space of two weeks does
not do good things to a girl.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one reeling. Charles had gotten a glimpse of the carnage
and that was all it took for his already-shaky composure to dissolve completely. Sobbing,
he flopped into a delicate-looking wing chair just inside the front door. When he
heard me call for Nev,
Larry had hurried out of Susan’s office and had found us bent over her body. Now,
pasty and trembling, he paced the hallway.

“It can’t be true. It can’t be happening. Not again.” Larry’s voice jumped to the
same restless beat as his footsteps. “We just found each other again. To think that
Susan’s gone, too. Just like…” His voice broke. “Just like Angela.”

“Yeah, Angela.” Since I, too, was too worked up to keep still, Larry and I were at
opposite ends of the hallway from each other, and it was just as well. I was trying
to make sense of a situation that was messed up to the extreme. First Angela. Now
Susan. Angela who’d owned the charm string. Susan who was supposed to be receiving
it as a donation. Both murdered.

No way it was a coincidence.

I closed the distance between me and Larry. “When was the last time you saw Susan?”
I asked him.

Under any other circumstances, I was sure he wouldn’t have had to stop and think about
it. But stress does strange things. To our brains and to our bodies. Larry’s breaths
were coming hard and fast, and when I spotted a water fountain near the entrance,
I went over there, took one of the little paper cups from a dispenser on the wall
and filled it, and brought it back to him.

He drank down the water in one gulp. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re very kind.”