by Kylie Logan
I opened the door and stepped back so Officer Ramirez could leave. Don’t worry, I was polite. After all, I didn’t point out that he and his abuela were both nuts if they thought I put any stock in superstition.
I didn’t mention it to Stan, either, after the cop was gone. I didn’t need to. By the time I was heading back into the workroom, he was wiping a dab of mustard off his chin.
“I dunno, Josie,” was all he said. “You know I don’t believe in curses, either, but it’s pretty hard to ignore facts.”
Somehow, I managed.
“HEY, LISTEN TO this.”
Stan was sitting across my desk from me, reading the newspaper, and when he spoke, I looked up from the book I’d been paging through. It was nearly six that evening, and though I’d completed all the real research I had to do in regards to the charm string buttons, that didn’t stop me. I was happily perusing button book after button book, looking for examples of buttons that were similar to the ones on the string and making notes. Button collecting, see, isn’t all about the thrill of the hunt, though that’s certainly part of the mania. I always feel a rush of adrenaline when I walk into the vendor room of a button show or through the front door of an antique shop because I never know what treasure I’ll find—that little button that’s been ignored for years, or even decades, and is just what I need to complete one of my collections or cater to a customer.
But there’s a research component to button collecting, too, and I’ll be the first to admit that I love it. Looking through books, sketching timelines, digging into history…thanks to a hobby that had turned into a life’s work, I often felt as if I was the luckiest woman in the world.
Well, except for the couple murders that had dogged me in the last year.
I shrugged away the uncomfortable feeling that snaked over my shoulders, concentrating instead on the positives. Like the fact that Angela had yet to call so I had some extra time with the charm string. And Stan had (finally!) calmed down. While I’d taken a few more pictures and consulted a few more reference books, making the last of my notations on the spreadsheet I’d print out for Angela, he’d been looking through the day’s Tribune.
Yes, he could just as easily have read the newspaper at home.
No, I couldn’t convince him I didn’t need a bodyguard and he could leave. At this point, it was so late in the evening, he had announced that the only proper thing for us to do was to have dinner together. Remember what Angela said about me being smart? I was smart enough not to be fooled; Stan didn’t want me to leave the shop alone, just in case that purse thief was lurking somewhere in the ever-deepening shadows outside.
“They’re draining an entire reservoir in some little town north of here to do repairs on it,” Stan said, scanning the newspaper and interrupting my thoughts. “They flooded over the old town when the reservoir was built. Ardent, it was called.”
“Hmmm.” I stopped to consider. “Angela lives in Ardent Lake. I wonder if they’re close to each other.”
Stan read some more. “Doesn’t say,” he finally commented. “But it does say that they’re anxious to see what’s left of the old town. Been under water since back in the seventies. And then there’s this article.” He ran a finger the length of the page and poked it against a photo of a man in a dark suit and top hat. “There’s this guy over in Elmhurst who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Harry Houdini. Even says he can do magic tricks and he’s never taken a lesson.”
Stan was obviously reading the odd news of the day.
I gave him a quick smile before I set aside my book and got up to walk over to one of the glass display cases near the wall. “Maybe that magician can explain how curses work.”
Stan crossed his arms over his chest and plunked back in the chair. “I never said I believed any of that stuff about the curse, Josie. I just said it’s best to keep the facts in mind. You can’t dispute facts. As a detective, you know that.”
“Except I’m not. A detective, that is.” There was a feather duster nearby and I grabbed it and whooshed it over the top of the case, then moved from there to the case closer to the front window. “All I want to do is sell buttons,” I told Stan and reminded myself.
“Maybe, but you’ve solved a couple murders, and that’s one of those facts that can’t be denied. Don’t worry.” He got up from his chair and stretched. “I’m not going to talk you into admitting that bad luck exists. In my experience, bad luck happens because people make it happen to other people. The stars or the planets or those buttons of yours, they don’t really have anything to do with it.”
“Exactly.” I kept on dusting, working my way around the perimeter of the shop to the front door, and when I got there, I flipped over the sign in the window to tell those passing by that the store was now officially closed. I did not, though, turn off the lights as I usually did that time of night. When she showed up, I didn’t want Angela to think I’d forgotten about her.
“Except she said she’d call when she was leaving home,” I mumbled to myself, strolling back toward my desk. “Don’t you think it’s odd? She definitely needs the charm string back today. That tea at the historical society is tomorrow afternoon.”
Stan shrugged. “You need to look at the problem from all the angles,” he said. “Maybe her cell phone ran out of juice. Or maybe she forgot she was supposed to call.”
“Angela doesn’t strike me as the type of woman who forgets anything.”
Stan narrowed his eyes the way he always does when he’s thinking. “An organized, methodical woman, and yet she believes in curses.”
Obviously, the only answer I had to that was a shrug. “Angela’s very matter of fact. Very even keel. I mean, except for the stuff about the curses. In fact, if it wasn’t for that and her reading her horoscope every day, I’d say Angela was the most levelheaded person I’ve ever met.”
I stand by this description of Angela. At least I did until I heard a furious pounding on the front door and hurried over there to find Angela on the other side of the display window, her hair standing up as if she’d been pulling on it and her face puffy. She was wearing green sweatpants, a hot pink T-shirt, no socks, and a pair of Crocs that looked like they’d last been worn in a muddy garden.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open, looking in wonder at the woman who had been so well put together the last time I saw her. “Angela! I’ve been waiting for your call. What happened?”
She pushed past me and into the Button Box. “Just get me those damned buttons,” she growled. “Now. I can’t wait to get them out of my life forever.”
It didn’t take any magical powers to know something had gone haywire in Angela’s life, or that whatever it was, she was bound to blame it on the charm string. If her wardrobe wasn’t a giveaway, the dark smudges under Angela’s eyes were. So was her red nose. “Are you all right?”
Her jaw stiff, she sniffled. “I’m fine. It’s just…allergies. My miserable allergies. I need to get home and take some medication and get to bed. I feel miserable, and I don’t want to feel miserable and look miserable tomorrow at the tea. I need my rest. That means I don’t have time to stand here and chitchat.”
I got the message and went into the back room for the floral hatbox Angela had used to bring me the charm string. I’m not saying I was a convert to the believe-in-curses camp, but I do admit to peeking inside the box, just to make sure the charm string was in there where I’d put it along with a copy of the spreadsheet I’d prepared.
“You know, Angela,” I said, walking back to the front of the shop, my hands tight around the box that contained the precious cargo, “it’s not too late to change your mind. I’m still interested in buying.”
Her shoulders shot back. Her chins quivered. “No. I like you, Josie. I can’t let anything happen to you. Besides…” She was as reluctant to take the box out of my hands as I was to let it go, but after a couple seconds of awkward tug-of-war, I relinquished my hold. “Maybe once this thing is safely in the museum, I can
break the curse. Once and for all. Maybe I can even…” Her voice clogged. “Maybe there’s a way to reverse some of the bad things that have already happened. Do you think so?” Her eyes snapped to mine, suddenly so full of desperate hope, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.
My voice was wistful when I looked at the hatbox. “I guess the only way to find out is to give away the charm string.”
“Yes.” Angela was convinced. She held the hatbox close to her chest. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Hear that, Universe?” Like she actually expected some unseen force to answer, she looked up and all around, and when the only response she heard was silence, her shoulders fell.
“I’ve got to get home,” she said. “Back to Ardent Lake. One more night to have this wretched thing in my possession. Then…” Angela breathed in deep and let the breath out slowly. “Then maybe I’ll have some peace.”
“I hope that’s true.” It was a noncommittal sort of thing to say, but I was sincere enough. For all her quirks, Angela seemed a nice enough person. If donating the charm string eased her mind, so be it.
Even if it did just about kill me to think of how I’d cherish the charm string if it were ever mine.
I walked her to the front door.
“Oh, here.” Before she walked outside, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a check made out to me. It was for a sum considerably larger than the one we’d agreed on for the appraisal. “Not a word of complaint,” she said, when I opened my mouth to do just that. “You did a lot of work, and you did it in record time. I’m going to get a chunk of money off my taxes when I donate this thing, and I wouldn’t have known its real value if it wasn’t for you. The least I can do is share the wealth.”
I thanked her, and opened the door.
We were just in time to hear a dog bark.
“LaSalle,” I explained even though I was pretty sure Angela didn’t care. She turned to head off down the street to the right and stopped in her tracks when the dog’s bark turned into a long, mournful howl.
Angela swallowed hard. “Dog howling in the dark of night,” she whispered, “howl for death before daylight.”
And with that, she walked away.
I didn’t wait to watch her go. Instead, I went into the shop, turned off the lights, and told Stan it was time to get a move on.
“Let’s go get Swiss steak at that diner I like so much,” he suggested when we stepped out of the shop and headed to the left. “It’s Wednesday. They’ve got rice pudding for dessert on Wednesdays.”
I like rice pudding.
And no one tried to steal my purse once we were outside.
All in all, things were looking up.
Maybe Angela was right about the charm string all along. Now that it was out of my life, maybe my bad luck would evaporate.
As if.
Chapter Four
THE NEXT MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT AND SUNNY, AND I was grateful. I’d had enough thinking about doom and gloom and bad luck. With the help of a little sunshine, I could forget about curses and get my life back to the way it was supposed to be—calm and button-filled.
I was humming a little tune when I got off the El, made my way to the shop, and stuck my key in the door.
The song evaporated when I noticed a button lying on the sidewalk.
Remember what I said about the thrill of the button hunt? My head knew this was probably nothing more than just a plastic button that had fallen off someone’s raincoat, and still, my button-loving heart couldn’t resist. My fingers suddenly itching the way they always did when I was closing in on a new button discovery, I picked up the button and turned it over.
The button was what we in the button biz call a small, that is, between three-eighths and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and it was made of black glass. There was a flower pattern etched into the glass and it was accented with gold paint.
These kinds of button were common enough back in the days when Queen Victoria was mourning her Prince Albert. She wore buttons made out of jet, an organic mineral that was expensive even back then, and the masses, eager to follow her fashion, copied her by making buttons out of black glass. The glass was far less expensive than jet and some would say just as pretty, though as a purist, I wasn’t convinced.
There had been a number of these small black glass buttons on Angela’s charm string.
Weird, and the weird got weirder when I realized there was another button lying on the pavement not far away.
This one was a man’s shirt button and it wasn’t plastic, but mother of pearl. I knew this for a fact because I automatically held the button to my cheek and it felt cool in a way plastic never does. That meant the button was old, and an old button lying on the sidewalk outside my shop—
I would like to say I stayed calm, but let’s face it, my life’s work—and my life—was contained within the walls of the Button Box. I flashed back to the break-in I’d had soon after I opened the shop and how the goons who’d engineered it had left my inventory in shambles. All those happy thoughts I’d had earlier vanished and my stomach soured. I raced to the door, tried the handle, and—
Locked.
My heartbeat ratcheted back, my breathing slowed.
“Security system,” I reminded myself. “You installed a security system after the last break-in. Everything inside is safe and sound. Your buttons are fine.”
But that, of course, didn’t explain the old buttons on the sidewalk.
My eyes narrowed against the morning sunlight, I scanned the area in front of the shop. Old Town is a popular tourist destination and usually bustling, but it was early, and the other merchants who were my neighbors had yet to open for business. There was no foot traffic, either, not yet, anyway, and I was grateful. That meant I could be pretty sure that nothing had been disturbed. The black glass button had been on the sidewalk to my left at about nine o’clock, the mother of pearl button had been in the twelve o’clock position. Now, I realized there was a button at one o’clock, too, and one at two, and another at three.
I hurried over to pick up those three buttons—two more mother of pearls and a brass button with an eagle on it—glancing around as I did and realizing with a jolt to my midsection that a trail of buttons caught the morning sunlight, a trail that led to the alley that ran between my brownstone and the one next door.
Black glass, clear glass, steel, bone…
As much as I was tempted to bring order to the chaos and rescue the buttons from the pavement, at this point, I didn’t bother to stop. I was too busy following the brick walkway and the buttons scattered on it that led into the courtyard we local merchants maintained as our private spot to have lunch and take a breather. There was a park bench in the middle of the tiny courtyard, and in a few more weeks when the days were longer and the temperatures were a little warmer, each of us would contribute a potted plant and our little oasis would be complete with color and greenery.
Of course, we’d have to get rid of the body first.
The thought struck like so many out-of-the-blue revelations do, but then, it was a scenario no sane person expects to encounter first thing in the morning, or any other time of the day.
I froze in my tracks, doing as quick and thorough an inventory of the scene as I was able before the panic and horror set in as I knew they would.
Muddy Crocs.
Green sweatpants.
Pink tee. Even before I’d scanned my way from the feet of the still form up to the head, I knew I was looking at Angela. I suppose it was a good thing I recognized the clothes she’d worn the night before, because her face was so blue and bloated, I might not have known it was her otherwise.
Then again, I never would have mistaken the charm string. Or at least what was left of it.
A good portion of the string was still wound like a python around Angela’s neck, tight enough to leave bruised impressions of the buttons on her skin, snap the old string, scatter buttons all around, and choke Angela to death.
&nbs
p; I swallowed down the sudden sour taste in my mouth and reached for my cell phone, another revelation pounding its way through the fog of horror in my brain.
It looked like Angela was right about the bad luck after all.
“YOU KNEW THE victim.”
I’d been so busy staring into the depths of the glass of water a uniformed cop had given me as soon as he walked me into the workroom of the Button Box and sat me down, I didn’t even realize anyone had come to stand next to me.
When I looked up and saw it was Nev, I couldn’t have been more relieved. I resisted the urge to jump up and throw myself into his arms.
Partly because that uniformed cop was still there, and I didn’t need to start a host of rumors running rampant through the department.
Mostly because we weren’t at the throw-myself-into-his-arms stage of what we had of a relationship.
Nev was the consummate professional, and something of a Type A personality. I did not hold this against him. When it came to my work, I was a Type A, too.
“I thought you were working afternoons.” While that cop standing in the doorway between the workroom and the shop made a phone call, I took the chance and touched a hand to Nev’s. His smile was warm when he briefly closed his fingers over mine.
“I am,” he said. “But when the desk sergeant heard where the body was found, she remembered that I’d worked the case here when that actress was murdered, and she gave me a call.”
“I’m glad.” The cop was done with his call, and I dropped my hand into my lap and Nev backed away. I wished he didn’t have to. There was something about his calm, reassuring presence that helped thaw the ice in my veins. “She was…” I couldn’t see the courtyard from there, even if my back door was open, but I looked that way, anyway, closing my eyes against the memory of Angela’s swollen face. “She was a customer of mine,” I told Nev. “The one with the…” My words choked against the painful ball of emotion in my throat. “She’s the one who brought me the charm string.”