Button Holed (12 page)

I tamped down my irritation but only because I remembered that studio button and the job Nevin had charged me with. I ignored Hugh’s neediness for once, and concentrated on my own. I needed information. And he just might be the one who could give it to me.

My acting skills were never all that good to begin with, but I pulled out all the stops, hoping to sound more like I was making conversation than searching for clues. “I didn’t realize Kate was as much of a button collector as I am,” I said. “She brought a button to the shop with her. A really nice, handmade button. I’d love to get more of them, but I need to figure out where it came from. Did she ever show it to you?”

“Kate and buttons?” Thinking about it, he puffed out his cheeks. “Come on, Josie, you know Kate was way too chic for—”

“Something that nerdy?”

“No. That’s not what I meant. I . . .” He scrambled to save face. Not mine, his. My irritation ratcheted up a notch.

“It doesn’t matter.” I stood. “If the button didn’t belong to Kate, maybe someone else working on the movie—”

“Not likely.”

He didn’t need to elaborate. Hollywood types were too trendy, too swank, and way too in to be out of this world about buttons.

I knew a dead end when I saw it. Which didn’t mean I was ready to throw in the towel. There was more than one road to the information I was looking for, and I took a sharp turn and headed in another direction. Literally and figuratively.

I strolled over to the bar. “What did you mean, Hugh, when you said plenty of people wanted Kate dead?”

He shrugged and looked away. “Just a figure of speech.”

“No, it wasn’t. Not the way you said it. Like you really believed it. If you know something . . .”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Those assistants of hers . . .” Hugh curled a lip. “Ungrateful, every single one of them. Kate did wonderful things for them.”

“And she treated them like indentured servants.”

Obviously, the thought had never occurred to him. “The chance to live and work with Kate . . . That should have been a dream come true for every single one of them. How many girls get that kind of opportunity? All the limelight, none of the work.”

“None of the acting.” Hugh didn’t understand the subtle difference so I added, “Kate used them as her personal robots. I saw that much the day she stopped at the shop. But if any of them was unhappy, why not just quit? I can’t imagine one of them might have—”

“I don’t know. Really.” He stepped back from the accusation. “But I heard grumbling. You know, when Kate wasn’t around.”

“And when she was?”

“When she was, they did their jobs and they did them without whining. They’d better, or Kate would have had them tossed out in a heartbeat.”

“You said there were plenty of people. The assistants, they’re not the only ones.”

He didn’t even need to stop and think about it. “There’s Estelle, of course.”

“Estelle Marvin?” He nodded, confirming my thought. “Estelle told me she and Kate were friends.”

“Yeah, like oil and the Gulf of Mexico are friends.”

I pictured Estelle, always elegantly turned out. And never a wallflower. I thought about Kate, powerful and assured.

“I can see that,” I said. “Estelle and Kate were both hard-driving, successful women. Those qualities would draw them together. And their egos . . . Well, I can see how they’d butt heads.”

“It wasn’t just that. After all, Kate knew that when it came to beauty and style, nobody could compete with her. She wasn’t threatened in that way, not by Estelle. Not by anybody. But there was that silly TV show.”

“Estelle’s craft show?” I thought back to everything Estelle had told me. “She was doing a wedding segment. And Kate had agreed to—”

“Had. Had agreed.” Like it would help drive home his message, Hugh stared at me.

Maybe I’m not as perceptive as he thinks. I still wasn’t sure what he was getting at, and I felt my way through, reluctant to put words in his mouth. “So Kate agreed to be on the show, and then . . .”

“And then Estelle was so sure she had a mega-hit segment on her hands, she sunk a boatload of her own money into promoting Kate’s appearance. I’m talking scheduled print ads, TV, you know the drill. That can’t have been easy because word has it that Estelle lost a ton of money in the most recent market downturn. And what she’s got left, she spends like a drunken sailor. Estelle loves to live the good life. And Kate . . .”
Trolls
aside, Hugh knew a thing or two about drama. He leaned forward, capturing my gaze, drawing out the moment. “First she told Estelle she’d be happy to appear on the show; then Kate changed her mind and pulled out.”

This was news—and not what Estelle had told me—and I tipped back my head, considering it. Knowing Estelle, Kate’s sudden decision could only mean one thing. “Estelle was mad.”

“As a wet hen!” Hugh pushed away from the bar. “She showed up on the set last week and ranted and raved and carried on. We had to have security escort her back to her limo. I’ve never seen anybody that angry.”

“Was she mad enough to kill Kate?”

“God, I hope so!”

I looked at him in wonder. “You think Estelle killed Kate?”

“Frankly, my dear . . .” His lips thinned. “I don’t care if she did it or not. I just want the police to think she did. Then at least they won’t think it was me.”

I wasn’t surprised that Hugh was looking to save his own skin. After all, it was one of the things he did best. I was shocked to think he’d do it at any expense.

My stomach turned into a block of ice. Hugh was standing near the windows with his back to me, and slowly, I closed the distance between us. “Is there a reason they might think it’s you, Hugh? Does this have something to do with what you said on the phone? You said you’d done something stupid. You didn’t—”

“Kill Kate?” When he spun to face me, his eyes were wild. “See, even you think it’s possible. They’re going to be breathing down my neck, hounding me, taking apart my life bit by bit to try and get at what they think is the truth. They’re going to make my life a living hell, and you’ve got to do something about it, Josie.”

He caught my arm, and one finger at a time, I loosened his hold. “I can’t do anything until I know what really happened.”

He nodded like he understood, but it took him a while to pull himself together. When he did, his voice shook. “Kate and I were lovers.”

I am not a compulsive reader of the supermarket tabloids, but this I would have noticed, and I told him as much.

He flopped onto the couch. “It is amazing, isn’t it? We were actually able to keep our affair under the radar. Even I’m not sure how. It was . . .” He closed his eyes, and for a moment, his expression cleared and a smile touched his lips. “She was wonderful.”

“She was engaged to Prince Roland.”

One corner of his mouth pulled into a thin line. “Roland. Yeah. At first when I heard the news, I figured it was all just a publicity stunt. That’s how Kate was. She’d do just about anything to get her name in the headlines. She had a movie coming out, and being engaged to a prince, that’s the kind of publicity money can’t buy. So when I saw her name associated with Roland’s, well, I just assumed it was something she’d arranged to get her picture on the front page of the paper. Then about six months ago, she came back from a trip to Europe and . . . well . . .” His shrug said it all: he still didn’t understand.

“We were supposed to spend a week on Cerf Island together. You know, a sort of reunion. That’s when . . .” His voice clogged. “That’s when she told me it was all true. All those headlines. All that gossip. She said she was in love with Roland, and that . . . that it was over between us.”

I had no choice but to ask the inevitable. “You were angry?”

He closed his eyes. “Beyond angry. She breezed into the resort on Cerf, told me the news, and breezed out again. There I was, looking like a fool in the middle of the Indian Ocean with my heart in about sixty million pieces.”

Yeah, except for the Indian Ocean part, I could relate. I’d once been married to Kaz.

Rather than dwell on it and get caught up in the emotional undertow, I stuck with the facts. Something told me I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear, but I was there for information, wasn’t I? There was only one way to get it.

“What did you do?” I asked Hugh.

His words escaped on a stuttering sigh. “Called her. Hundreds of times. I tried to reason with her. I begged.” He bounded off the couch. “I would have sold my soul to the devil if I had his cell number. When none of that worked . . .” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “I hired somebody to follow Kate.”

The
stupid
part of the equation was starting to come into focus.

“What were you thinking?” I asked. “What did you hope to accomplish?”

He lifted his chin. “I was hoping to get her back, that’s what I was hoping. I was hoping she’d see that she’d made a mistake. Roland over me? I was hoping she’d come to her senses, and I thought if I kept tabs on her . . . What?” His eyes were blazing now, challenging. “You’ve never been that much in love? I was jealous, all right? I thought about her day and night, and I had to know what she was up to.”

This kind of crazy jealousy was something I didn’t understand. But then, Kaz’s only mistress had been his gambling habit.

“And that person, was he still following Kate?” I asked Hugh. “This past week?”

Instead of answering, Hugh ducked into a room on the other side of the dining room. When he came back, he was carrying a stack of photographs. He handed me the eight-by-ten pictures.

They were photographs of Kate on the set, and Kate shopping in one of the boutiques along Michigan Avenue’s the Magnificent Mile, and Kate eating at Alinea.

Tabloid stuff and not all that interesting.

Until I found the ones taken of her outside the Button Box on the day she’d originally come to see me, with the assistants, all except Winona, trailing behind her.

There were more—Kate in the shop before she instructed whatever hapless assistant was in charge of doors to close mine. Kate on the floor wearing those leather pants, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling and me staring at her, my eyes wide with terror, my mouth open in a silent scream.

My head came up. “Mike Homolka. He was the one you hired to follow Kate?”

“Mike’s always up for a little double-dipping. I paid him top dollar to keep tabs on Kate. He sold the pictures he took of her while he was following her.”

“And he followed her that night. The night she was—”

He nodded.

“Are you telling me . . ?” The words stuck in my throat. “Did he see who did it?”

“You’re not getting this, are you, Josie?” Hugh snatched the photos out of my hands. “Number one, no, Mike didn’t see who did it. That’s because I told him what time Kate was supposed to arrive at your office. I had no idea she was going to get there early, so Mike had no idea, either. He told me he was hanging around the area, but he wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. He didn’t think he needed to. In fact, he went into that little club down the street and had a beer. Leave it to Kate!” His laugh was anything but humorous. “She probably thought he was going to follow her later; that’s why she ducked out and went to your place early to begin with.” Hugh’s chest heaved. “Kate wasn’t used to going places on her own. She always had her assistants with her to take care of all the little details. Yeah, yeah . . . I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say she was spoiled. Of course she was!” He threw his hands in the air. “Kate was the most glorious woman on earth; she deserved to be spoiled. If only she didn’t insist that every little detail of that damned wedding of hers be kept a secret. Then she would have had someone with her.”

I nodded. “Our appointment was supposed to be private. But if you told Mike to go there, you knew she was coming to see me.”

Hugh’s gaze darted to mine. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“That’s not what the police are going to think, and you know it. If she knew you were having her followed, why would she tell you—” I gave myself a mental slap. “She didn’t tell you she was coming to my place. You found out. How?”

Anybody with a smidgen of a conscience would have at least blushed when he said, “I hacked her e-mail.”

“Hugh!” I groaned. “When the cops find out you were a jealous ex-lover . . .”

He nodded. “Yes, there’s that. That, and the e-mail I sent her the day she was killed.”

“And let me guess, in it, you threatened her.”

“Threatened? Don’t be ridiculous.” He waved an arm, taking in the luxurious suite. “Do I look like a guy who needs to threaten a woman to get her to come to her senses? I’m not the nobody I was when you knew me back in college, Josie. I’ve got a name, and I’ve got a reputation, and I’m not going to have it dragged through the mud if word gets out to the press about any of this. I didn’t threaten Kate.” If hard looks could have convinced me, his would have worked. “Not exactly, anyway. I just told her . . . I pointed out what she should have known. That she was never going to be happy with Roland. And that if I couldn’t have her . . .” His jaw was so tight, I waited to hear it snap. “I might have mentioned that if I couldn’t have her, I didn’t think anybody should.”

I’d heard enough. Without another word, I headed for the door.

“Josie!” Hugh rushed to follow me. “Where are you going? What are you going to do?” He grabbed my arm and spun me around. “You’re going to help me, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to search for the truth.”

“The hell with the truth. You think that’s really more important than saving my neck?”

“My guess is you should think it’s more important to find out who killed the woman you say you loved.”

“Kate’s dead, and I miss her so much, but the fact is, nothing can bring her back. Right now, I’ve got to worry about myself.”

I managed a smile. It hurt. “That shouldn’t be too hard. It’s always what you’ve done best.”

“You’re kidding me, right? Josie!” He reached for my arm, but I stepped back, away from his grasp. “Are you telling me—?”

“I’m telling you that you were right, Hugh. What you did was stupid. And I’m telling you the cops are going to find out. You know they are. About the affair, and about how you paid Mike to follow Kate. About that e-mail.”