Button Holed (15 page)

“I DON’T NEED IT.” I PUSHED KAZ’S HANDS—AND THE SpongeBob Band-Aid he was holding in them—away. It actually might have been a good move if Stan wasn’t leaning over from the other side of me, all set to pounce with a Spider-Man bandage.

I angled between them and got off the guest chair in front of my desk at the Button Box. “Honest, guys, I appreciate the help, but a cartoon character across the bridge of my nose . . .” I touched a tentative finger to the scrape there and winced.

“Told you you needed it!” I watched SpongeBob and Kaz come nearer and ducked out of the way just in time to avoid them both.

Thanks to Kaz and Stan, I already had Barbie on my knees, Dora the Explorer on my elbow, and Scooby-Doo on my wrist.

That’s what I got for having bandages on hand in case of any accidents when Kaz’s sister’s kids came to the shop to visit.

Kaz knew better than to push. Or at least he should have. That didn’t stop him from pulling out his cell. “If you won’t let us help, at least let me—”

“Call 911?” I plucked the phone out of his hands just as he was about to dial. “I told you when it happened, Kaz, I’m fine except for a few bumps and bruises and scrapes, so I don’t need paramedics. And I don’t need the cops, either. They’re not going to come running just because some careless teenager—”

“Is that who you think did this?” Stan hadn’t moved from his spot near the desk, but I could tell his brain was working a mile a minute. His eyes narrowed and glinting, he swung his gaze to Kaz. “Let’s go over it again. Just to see if I have all the details down pat. When you got back here, you said she walked out of that fancy brownstone and—”

“Yeah. That’s right.” Thank goodness Stan had distracted him. Kaz put SpongeBob down. “We were barely on the sidewalk. And this bike comes careening around the corner right at her and—”

“Man or woman riding it?”

Kaz didn’t spend more than a nanosecond thinking about Stan’s question. “Man,” he said. “I think. Maybe. Yeah, a man. He was wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans. And I’m pretty sure a bike helmet, too, but it’s hard to say. His sweatshirt hood was pulled up over his head.”

Stan took it all in. “And Josie was on the sidewalk? Or out in the street?”

“Sidewalk.” Kaz nodded. “Definitely.”

“She was standing . . .” Stan grabbed my hand and dragged me over to stand next to Kaz. “On your right? Or your left?”

“Left.” Kaz switched locations to be on the proper side and once he did, Stan looked over our relative positions and his eyes narrowed a little more.

He swung one arm out. “If the biker was coming from that direction like you said . . .” He pointed and arced his arm back the other way, closer and closer toward where I was standing. “You see what I’m getting at here?” he asked Kaz.

Kaz nodded. “He should have run into me, not Jo. So the guy in the sweatshirt, he was either the worst biker in the world or just plain stupid and careless or—”

“What?” Since they were talking about me like I wasn’t there, I stepped forward to remind them, ignoring the pain that shot up my hip when I did. Yes, I’d refused Kaz’s offer to call the paramedics. That’s because I knew nothing was broken. But that didn’t mean nothing hurt. Including my ribs and hip at the spot where I came down splat on that briefcase with my buttons in it. Fortunately, the briefcase was sturdy, and though one side of it was mashed in and the latch had been nearly impossible to open, I’d managed.

Thank goodness, none of the buttons had been damaged.

I couldn’t say the same for me.

I rubbed a hand on the hip I knew would be a lurid shade of purple by morning. “If you two are cooking up some kind of loony conspiracy theory . . .” I looked from Kaz to Stan. “Don’t. It was an accident. That biker was probably some mindless teenager who wasn’t watching where he was going. No doubt, by now he’s hiding out somewhere, hoping he didn’t really hurt me and he doesn’t really get in trouble.”

Stan stuck out his chin. “Loony, huh? Don’t forget, you did have that burglary here.”

“And then someone got murdered here.” Kaz put in his two cents’ worth.

“And now this?” Stan gave me that eagle-eye stare of his. If I wasn’t so busy repositioning Barbie where they’d stuck her, right on raw skin, I might have cared. “If you ask me, this is looking pretty fishy.”

“Which means someone should definitely be going home with you and staying there.”

I pretended not to hear Kaz and, instead, thought back to the split second before I realized that bike was about to slam into me. I remembered feeling the front tire graze my leg. That was right before the biker raised an arm, smashed into me, and sent me flying.

“All right. Sure. He stuck out an arm. But that was because he was trying to keep himself from falling,” I said, even though Stan and Kaz had no idea what I was thinking. “There was no way he hit me on purpose.”

Kaz wasn’t buying it. He stepped back and stared at me, his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked.

One corner of Stan’s mouth lifted in an I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that sneer.

It was bad enough to have one of them proposing a theory so preposterous. Worse to be tag teamed. Especially by these two. See, after the divorce (OK, I’ll be truthful, even before I finally got my act together and decided to end my marriage), Kaz was not on the list of Stan’s favorite people. That was because Stan is street-smart. He saw right through Kaz’s stories and his lies. He wasn’t taken in by Kaz’s charm and smokin’ grin and the whole luscious package that is Kaz.

Not like I’d been taken in.

The fact that they were thinking alike—about anything—was enough to throw me for a loop.

I walked around to the other side of my desk and flopped down in the chair.

I didn’t much care which one of them answered, so I propped my elbows on the desk and dropped my head into my hands. “Why on earth would anyone want to run me over with a bike?”

“Why would anyone want to burglarize this place?” Stan countered.

“You need protection,” Kaz said.

I groaned, and because my computer was right in front of me, I turned on the screen and clicked over to the Internet. I couldn’t get straight answers out of them, and my own brain sure wasn’t providing any. At least with the computer to distract me, I didn’t have to listen to the disturbing little voice inside my head—the one that wondered if they just might be right.

I hadn’t counted on seeing a photo of Kate the Great first thing.

“It’s got to be about her funeral.” Stan came over and leaned against the desk on my left. “They were talking about it on all the early shows this morning.”

Kaz came to stand on my right. “You know all the hoopla’s going to die down once they get the memorial service over with, Jo,” he rumbled. “You don’t want to miss your opportunity. You could be making a bundle off your involvement in all this. I think a woman with your business sense would see that.”

I saw plenty, all right. But it wasn’t what Kaz wanted me to see.

I sat up straight, barely whimpering at all. At least not too much. “It all started that day Kate came to see me for the first time,” I said, more to Stan than to Kaz since Kaz was getting on my nerves. “The burglary, the murder, and now this crazy accident. There’s got to be some connection.”

“We need a stakeout,” Stan announced.

“You need someone to keep you safe,” Kaz said.

And me? I hauled myself out of the chair and hobbled to the back room to get my purse and those photos of the mystery button. Thinking, I tapped them gently against my unscraped hand.

What I really needed was answers, and so far, I wasn’t being very successful getting them.

Good thing Kaz was right about me being smart.

I was smart enough to know exactly what I was going to do next.

And smart enough to keep my mouth shut about it, too.

THE NEXT DAY, the first thing I did was talk Stan into babysitting the shop again. And yes, I know, a retired cop in a button shop . . . not exactly a match made in heaven. I wasn’t complaining, though, mostly because Stan was doing me a huge favor, but also because (let’s face reality, here), a button shop doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic, not when it’s brand-new, anyway. The majority of my orders came in through my website and I could handle those any hour of the day or night. I vowed I’d work twice as hard when I got back to the Button Box that evening and then I spoke to Margot, and once I talked to her, I called one of those bargain-priced hotels over near the Lincoln Park Zoo, the one and only address Margot had for Wynona. Unfortunately for me, bargain-priced translated into nobody answered the phone. Even though I worried that the lowliest of the lowly assistants might have moved on once she got fired, I took a chance. And since I ached too much to hoof it from the nearest El stop, I took a cab, too.

When it came to saying whether Wynona had checked out or was still a guest, the clerk behind the front desk wouldn’t confirm or deny. But then, it was the sort of hotel where I imagined a lot of people wanted to remain anonymous. In answer to my plea, he did agree to call up to the room that “Miss Redfern
might
be staying in.”

No answer.

Since he was all set to dive into a magazine (it was out on the front desk, and just the title on the cover made me blush), I wasn’t surprised when he lost interest immediately and left it up to me to figure out if Wynona was long gone or was still in residence and just out. Or in the bathroom. Or out in the hallway hanging her “Do Not Disturb” sign.

I considered my options, decided there weren’t any, and I’d just stepped out of the building when I saw Wynona walking down the sidewalk.

When she caught sight of me, a wobbly smile lit her face. “Ms. Giancola!” She was carrying a dry-cleaning bag, and she shifted it from one arm to the other, folding it over so that she could hang on to it easier. “It’s nice to see you. I’m so sorry . . .” The kid’s cheeks flamed, and she stared down at the sidewalk. “I read all about it in the papers, of course. I’m so sorry you were the one . . . you know . . . the one who found Miss Franciscus.”

It was kind of her to mention it, and I told her so. Right before I invited her to join me for coffee.

Wynona’s cheeks reddened even more. “I don’t have very much money, and—”

“My treat.” There was a Starbucks nearby, and I stepped that way and was relieved when she followed. I waited until we’d ordered and were seated at a table near the window before I eased into the meat of the matter as gently as I could.

“You’re new in town,” I said, and when Wynona looked at me in wonder, I took pity on her. Yeah, it would have been nice for her to think of me as a genius, but I supplied the easy answer. “You’re staying in a hotel and not an apartment yet.”

“Of course.” I think she would have slapped her forehead if she didn’t think it was the wrong thing to do in public, and with a woman she barely knew. I’d bet anything she was thinking about that hotel when she wrinkled her nose. “It’s not the best in the city. But the price is right, and it will do until I can find a place that’s more permanent.”

“Actually, I thought you might not be around at all.” I drew in a breath and let it out slowly. I wasn’t sure how she’d react when I brought up what I was about to mention, but there was no way around it. “Wynona, I spoke with the other assistants. They told me about how you were let go. And why.”

Wynona grabbed on to the table and held on tight, and her voice clogged with tears. “Oh, Ms. Giancola, I didn’t do it! Miss Franciscus, she said her pearls were missing and that she was sure I was the one who’d taken them, but honest, I didn’t. I didn’t even know she had pearls, and even if I did, I’m not that kind of person. Not the kind who steals jewelry. Not from anybody. That’s not the way I was raised.”

It was hard not to believe a kid who was so darned sincere. I stirred sweetener into my coffee, grateful I’d taken the time to run out to Walgreens the night before. It was tough enough talking about robbery and trying to get to the truth behind a murder. It would have been even harder if I had to question Wynona while I was wearing cartoon-character bandages. The edge of the bandage on my wrist—a plain, old bandage in a plain, old skin tone color—had come loose, and I smoothed it with one finger. “You think someone else took the pearls?”

She shrugged. Even though it was in the nineties outside, Wynona had ordered a hot chocolate, and she sipped and then licked whipped cream off her top lip. “I would never accuse anyone of anything that terrible.”

It wasn’t what she said, it was the way she said it. I leaned forward. “But . . .”

Her lower lip trembled. “But . . . well . . . somebody must have taken those pearls. And it sure wasn’t me. I swear. If Miss Franciscus was going to call the police, I’d already decided that I’d tell them to give me a lie-detector test. Then they’d see. They’d see I didn’t do it.”

“But she didn’t call the police.”

She shook her head.

“She fired you instead.”

Now she nodded.

“Were you angry? Or grateful?”

Not questions Wynona was expecting. Her gaze darted to mine, then flashed away again. “The last thing I need is a police record. I mean, if I plan on finding another job.”

“So it’s grateful.”

“And disappointed.” Her shoulders fell. “That job . . . I thought . . . It was like a dream come true, you know?”

I sipped my coffee. “It didn’t look like a dream to me. Not with the way Kate ordered everybody around. The other assistants—”

Her top lip curled. It would have been a far more ferocious look if there wasn’t a smudge of whipped cream on her mouth. “You seem like a decent person,” she said. “I know I can be honest with you. I’ll bet you understand what it’s like to work hard and not to have people notice you, to just boss you around and expect you to do things, and then when you’re done doing what you’re supposed to do and doing it well, they just treat you like you’re invisible. I mean you must get the same sort of treatment all the time. You sell buttons.” Color shot into her cheeks.

“What you’re saying is that nobody would ever notice a button dealer.”