Panic Button (7 page)

“But she didn’t say what.”

Another shake of my head. “She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who would easily
share, especially with a stranger.”

“And with friends?”

“I hardly knew her.” My throat felt as if there were a hand around it. So not a pretty
thought considering the way Angela had been killed. Hoping to wash away the uncomfortable
thought, I took a sip of water, and when it hurt to swallow, I made a face.

Nev excused himself long enough to go over to the counter and put on a fresh pot of
coffee. “When that’s done brewing,” he said to the cop nearby, “how about pouring
a cup for Ms. Giancola.”

The cop nodded and dutifully went over to watch the pot drip, and Nev came back to
sit next to me. “Did she say anything about her life back in Ardent Lake?”

“She said she had a boyfriend.” I thought about the way Angela had worded it, that
they were more than friends, and my voice clogged with tears. “She was so happy about
Larry. She said he was the one good thing that had happened to her since she inherited
the charm string. He owns the hardware store in Ardent Lake. That’s what Angela told
me.” I remembered how Angela’s eyes had gleamed when she talked about Larry, and I
thought about how he was going to feel when he heard the news. “The poor man,” I said,
automatically reaching for my cell though I didn’t have a clue what Larry’s number,
or even his last name, was. “Someone needs to tell him.”

“That’s my job.” Nev made a note of this in the little leather-bound notebook he pulled
out of the breast pocket of his gray suit. “I’ll get in touch with the Ardent Lake
police and have someone there tell Larry what happened, after we check for next of
kin. Then I’ll go up there and have a talk with Larry. He’s bound to know more about
Ms. Morningside’s personal life.”

“And what about all that other stuff?” Normally, I would have shrugged it off without
another thought, but murder is serious business and Angela’s felt strangely personal.
Maybe that was because I’d grown so close to
those buttons of hers. The ones she’d now never have a chance to donate to the historical
society.

“I know you’re going to tell me I’m crazy, Nev, but she was convinced the charm string
was cursed and now—”

“You, of all people? You’re not going to tell me you believe any of that hooey, are
you?”

“No.” I didn’t. Honest. “I mean, I know inanimate objects don’t have a will of their
own, so they can’t bring bad luck to anyone. And even if they could…I mean, buttons?
Buttons are so wonderful and so interesting and so—” It wasn’t that Nev didn’t already
understand how my life and buttons were intertwined, it was just that I figured I
didn’t need to remind him. Sometimes, it was hard enough for a cop and a button nerd
to find things to talk about. There was no use pointing out the obvious differences
between us.

“I think what’s important,” I said, “isn’t if buttons can really bring bad luck but
that Angela believed they could. It’s almost like she brought the bad luck on herself,
because she saw it everywhere she looked, and she believed it could happen.”

“I’ve seen weirder things.” Still, Nev dismissed my theory with a shake of his head
that sent his shaggy, sandy-colored hair dipping into his eyes. He pushed it back
with one hand. “But I think we’ll find there’s a very human element behind this crime.”

“I didn’t see anyone hanging around when Angela walked out of here,” I said.

“Not even that guy who tried to snatch your purse the other night?”

This was a connection I’d never even considered, and I sucked in a breath. “You don’t
think—”

“You know me better than that. I don’t think anything until I have all the facts,
and right now, facts are mighty slim around here. I do know that this is usually a
pretty safe neighborhood. If it wasn’t, I’d help you pack your buttons and get you
out of here.”

The uniformed cop chose that particular moment to deliver a mug of steaming coffee.
“Cream or sugar?” he asked, and before I could answer, Nev suggested sugar and lots
of it. “It will help with the shock,” he promised.

Half a cup of coffee later, I couldn’t say if that was true, but I could say that
some of the tension inside me had eased. I wrapped my hands tighter around the red
mug with “I ♥ Buttons” in white lettering on it, savoring the warmth as it seeped
into my fingers and spread into my hands.

“Seems funny, don’t you think,” Nev said, and call me cynical, but I think he’d waited
until this very moment to bring up this theory, until he knew I was a little more
relaxed and likely to be caught off guard. “An almost crime one night, and a real
crime the next.”

A cha-cha started up inside my chest. “Then you do think the two are related?”

“I didn’t say that. But I do want you to be careful. I could come by in the evening
when it’s time for you to lock up.”

I shouldn’t have had to give him a pointed look, just like I shouldn’t have had to
say, “You’ve got a job, remember? And you can’t spend your evenings looking after
me.”

Fortunately, he didn’t get the opportunity to argue.
Before he could say a word, a crime-scene technician came into the shop and headed
for the back room, her arms stacked with small plastic evidence bags that were perched
on top of a crumpled floral hatbox. She set everything down on the table and I saw
that each bag contained a charm string button.

The woman looked at the pile of evidence bags and shook her head in wonder. “There
are an awful lot of buttons lying around out there,” she grumbled.

“One thousand, to be exact.” I wasn’t trying to show off, but I figured it was important.

“One…thousand.” I swear, the woman’s face went a little green.

Nev grinned. “Looks like you’ve got a busy day ahead of you, Kovach,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. And went back outside.

“So…” Nev fingered the nearest evidence bag. “What do you think, Josie? Do these buttons
have anything to do with Angela Morningside’s murder?”

“I wish I knew.” I looked through the bags of buttons, too, carefully setting each
one aside as I did. If this was where the techs wanted to stage their evidence, they’d
need a whole lot more room.

“You took pictures of the buttons, right?” Nev looked at the individually packaged
buttons, too. “That’s what you said the other night. You said you photographed each
of the charm string buttons.”

I nodded. “You’re welcome to look through the pictures if you like.”

Nev’s smile was sheepish. “I was kind of hoping you’d do that for me.”

I felt the familiar protest ride in my throat. “I’m not—” I was going to say
a detective,
but I swallowed the words. I might not be a trained crime fighter like Nev, but I
was a button expert. And when it came to buttons, Nev needed all the help he could
get.

“N
INE HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE, NINE HUNDRED AND
ninety-six, nine hundred and ninety-seven.”

It was the second time I’d counted—out loud—all the evidence bags and the buttons
in them, and my mouth felt as if it were filled with sand. I ducked into the workroom
to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and took a long drink before I walked
back into the shop and dared a look in Nev’s direction. He was standing near my desk,
and just as I feared, he didn’t look any happier at the end of this count than he
had the last time I finished counting.

“I told you, Nev…” I drained the last of the water out of the bottle. “There are three
buttons missing.”

“You’re sure?”

I bit my lower lip. It was the best way I could remind
myself that it had been a long day. For both of us. It was after dark, and while the
crime-scene techs had been busy working out in the courtyard, Nev had left to do whatever
it is homicide detectives do when they’re newly assigned to a case. Now he was back
from doing that whatever he’d been doing, and his white shirt was crumpled. His shirt
collar was unbuttoned. He hadn’t bothered to take off his trench coat when he walked
into the shop nearly an hour earlier, and the belt on it hung cockeyed. That little
vee between those blue eyes of his told me he thought he’d hear better news after
this count than he’d heard the first time around.

As a way of reminding him that my day hadn’t been any easier, I waved a hand around
the shop, silently indicating the folding tables the crime-scene techs had arranged
against the walls. Even before they asked (nicely) if I would help out, I’d already
decided this was the only way to make sense of the sea of buttons they’d rescued from
the courtyard. Yeah, it was a little anal. OK, so it was a lot anal. But it made sense.
And right about then—with images of Angela’s dead body etched in my mind and memories
of how, just twenty-four hours earlier, she’d stood right there in my shop talking
to me—bringing order to a world that was suddenly upside down calmed me and helped
me feel useful.

Under the watchful eye of a crime-scene tech named Jason, who was still at the shop
to assure what he called “the chain of evidence,” I’d carefully arranged each evidence
bag on top of a copy of the picture I’d taken the day before of the button inside
it. Little plastic bags
gleamed all around us and I looked over them all before I turned to Nev. “You want
to count them?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to second-guess you.” He ran a hand over
a tie that was a shade of blue too green to look good with his gray suit. “I’m just
wondering what we do next.”

Had he not been so tired, I’m sure he would have thought of this himself, but for
now, I had the chance to work a little button magic and I wasn’t above gloating about
it. I whisked three photos off my desk. “We have nine hundred and ninety-seven buttons.
Plus”—I waved the photos in his direction—“we know which buttons are missing.”

Nev’s expression brightened. It wasn’t so much a smile as it was an acknowledgment
that there might be at least a glimmer of light at the end of the investigative tunnel.
“Of course! And if we know which ones are missing—”

He expected me to supply the logical rest of the statement, but honestly, I couldn’t.
“I’m not sure what it tells us,” I admitted. “But it’s a start.”

He was hoping for more. He settled for what he got, leaning over to take a look at
the pictures that I laid out one by one on my desk.

“This is a sort of greenish button,” he said, picking up the first photo and giving
it a careful once-over. “Looks like glass.”

“You’re learning.” I leaned over his shoulder so I could tap a finger against the
button in the photo. “This button is made out of uranium glass, or what some modern
collectors call Vaseline glass. And this one…” I put the first picture back on the
desk and handed him the second.

Nev looked at it for a moment, and maybe I was tired and, thus, being fanciful, but
I liked to think that he was trying to call up any little bit of button knowledge
he’d learned from me in the past months. It was sweet of him, really. Even when he
finally pursed his lips and gave up. “It’s a button with a picture of a red fish on
it. Honest to gosh…” Shaking his head, he set the picture back where it came from.
“Before I met you, I never even imagined there were buttons as fancy as that. I mean,
who even thinks about buttons?”

He knew the answer to that question, which explains why he cringed as soon as the
words left his mouth. When he bent to retrieve the last photo, the tips of Nev’s ears
were pink. “And one more photo of a button with a picture of a…” He squinted for a
clearer look. “It looks like a metal button with a building or something on it.”

“Check, check, and check.” I laid out the pictures side by side. “Now, either these
buttons are still outside and the techs just never found them…” He was sitting in
the wing chair in the far corner of the shop reading a magazine and not paying the
least bit of attention to me, but I offered an apologetic look in Jason’s direction
anyway. “Or—”

“Or the techs couldn’t find the buttons because they’re not out there.” Head cocked,
Nev thought this over. “Are any of these buttons worth stealing?”

“Stealing? Well, yeah. I suppose so. I don’t know a button collector anywhere who
hasn’t seen that one, perfect button they need to complete a competition tray and
not thought about making off with it. Even if they’d never actually do it. Killing
for a button, that’s another matter.”
Rather than think about what sort of warped person might actually murder a fellow
human being for the sake of a button, I concentrated on the facts. I tapped a finger
against the photos, first of the uranium glass button, then of the metal button. “These,
not so much. But this one…” I moved on to the picture of the beautifully enameled
button with the fish at the center of it. “This one’s old, and valuable.”

“Valuable enough to kill for?”

I made a face. “Is anything that valuable?”

“What you think and what I think don’t really matter. You know that, Josie. It’s what
a killer thinks that counts. If we knew if these three buttons were really missing…”