Panic Button

by Kylie Logan

  When we stepped under the yellow crime-scene tape that was draped across the entrance to the alleyway and on to the brick walkway that led back to the courtyard, though, it was as if we were entering another world.

  There, the music was muted and it was nearly pitch dark. Still, when we stepped from between my brownstone and the one next door and into the courtyard, and Nev felt along the back wall of my brownstone for the switch that would turn on the faux gaslight near the park bench, I stopped him.

  “We’ll have to look for the enamel button and the metal button once it’s light,” I told him. “But if we’re going to find that uranium glass button, this is the ideal time to do it. We need to do it in the dark.”

  I pulled out my keychain and switched on the light at the end of it.

  “Hey, it’s a black light.” Jason was young, but perceptive enough.

  He couldn’t see me nod, so I explained. “Uranium glass really does have uranium in it. It was added to the glass prior to melting, before the melted glass was pressed into the button molds. And when a UV light is shined on an object with uranium in it—”

  “Cool!” Jason was obviously a science nerd. “It glows. Hey,” he added for Nev’s benefit, “when it comes to buttons, she really knows her stuff.”

  Jason was right.

  But only if I found the uranium glass button.

  Keeping the thought in mind, I swept the light over the ground near our feet, and when I didn’t see a thing, I moved a couple steps and began the sweep all over again. As I mentioned before, the courtyard wasn’t big, but looking through it inch by careful inch still took time. The minutes ticked by with me, Nev, and Jason walking side by side, scanning the ground, and after a while, we were nearly to the center of the courtyard.

  Nearly at the spot where I’d found Angela’s body.

  Darn it, I tried my best to act like it was no big deal, but before I could control the reaction, my spine stiffened and my breath caught.

  He didn’t say a word, Nev just slipped his arm through mine.

  I didn’t thank him. For one thing, Jason was standing on Nev’s left, and for all I knew, he hadn’t noticed Nev’s gallant gesture. For another…well, I was afraid if I tried to speak, my voice would crack and the raw emotions I was hiding would come tumbling out.

  This wasn’t the time for that.

  Though it was most definitely the place.

  I skimmed the black light over the pavement where, hours before, Angela had been sprawled on her back, her eyes staring up into a clear morning sky she couldn’t see, her mouth gaping in an expression that was at once a sign that she’d been gasping for air and an indication of how surprised she’d been by the attack.

  Now, of course, the body had been removed, and nothing remained to show the horror that had happened at the spot the night before, nothing more than the chalk outline of Angela’s body.

  “No…” My words were tight in my throat, and I coughed. “No sign of the button here,” I said, and I kept on looking.

  Jason wasn’t convinced. Not that I could say for certain, of course, since it was nearly impossible to see his face in the dark, but I heard the little click of his tongue that told me that while he might be impressed by the mumbo-jumbo of the black light as a way to locate the uranium button, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain it was going to work.

  “If there were still buttons here, we would have found them,” he said. Jason might be enthusiastic when it came to the theories of science, but obviously he wasn’t all that thrilled about the grunt work. He was bored, and when Nev and I stepped forward, beyond the park bench and into the back part of the courtyard, he hung back. “A glass button. Isn’t that what you said it was?” Jason asked. “It was sunny this afternoon, remember. If there was a glass button out here, we would have seen it shining in the light.”

  “Not if there wasn’t much of it left to shine.” I guess Jason heard the very real relief that washed through my voice because he hurried over to stand at my side and sucked in a breath of wonder when he looked at the ground where the light was trained.

  The brick there was coated with what looked to be a dusting of particles that glowed an eerie green in the black light.

  “It got stepped on and broken!” Jason almost made this sound like a good thing, as if the fact that the button wasn’t whole—and whole buttons were what his team was looking for—actually made a difference.

  “It’s still evidence,” Nev reminded him, and though it took a couple seconds for the fact to register, the kid finally got the message. He dashed inside for another evidence bag, and the brushes and such he would need to make sure he picked up all the specks of the smashed button.

  “That…” Nev waited until Jason was gone before he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. “That was amazing.”

  I didn’t try to hide my smile. “It was pretty cool, wasn’t it?”

  “Nobody else would have known about the button glowing in the black light. Nobody!” Even through the gloom, I saw the wink of Nev’s smile. “You’re—”

  “The world’s greatest button expert?” I hitched my hands around his waist.

  “I was going to say…well, you know. But if you’d rather be known as the world’s greatest button expert…”

  “How about the world’s greatest fabulous button expert?”

  “Done.” He leaned a hairsbreadth nearer and I thought he might kiss me, but the sounds of Jason scrambling his way back down the alleyway put an end to that. I dropped my hands, and Nev backed away.

  “Can I use the black light?” Jason asked, his voice high with excitement. He swallowed down what apparently sounded even to him like too much of an unprofessional reaction. Jason cleared his throat and forced his voice down an octave. “I mean, of course, it will be easier for me to retrieve the shards of glass if I can use the UV light to find them.”

  “Of course.” I handed him the keychain and we left him to his work.

  Back inside, Nev walked right over to the desk, retrieved the photo of the uranium glass button, and plunked it down in an empty spot on the nearest table. “When Jason brings what’s left of that button in, we’re ready for it,” he said.

  He was right. “I only wish…” I strolled over to the nearest table, automatically letting my gaze roam over bag after bag after bag of buttons. “I wish we could figure out if it means anything.”

  “You mean the buttons that are missing?”

  “I mean the charm string being used as a weapon in the first place.” The thought creeped me out, and I shivered. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “Professional opinion?” Nev almost perched himself on the edge of my rosewood desk, but he stopped and reconsidered. It was a delicate antique, and he knew better than to press his luck. “My guess is the murderer didn’t come here to kill Angela. If he had—and I’m only saying he in a general sort of way, not because we know anything about the killer—if he had, he would have brought a weapon with him.”

  “So it could have been random.”

  Thinking, Nev scrunched up his nose. “Weird random. He obviously lured her into the alleyway, and what woman in her right mind would allow something like that to happen?”

  “Except Angela wasn’t in her right mind. Not last night. I told you, she was really upset.”

  “Nobody’s so upset they completely forget about safety.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you think she knew her killer.”

  “I think…” Nev pressed a hand to his stomach. “I think I didn’t have time to eat lunch today and I’m starving. After Jason gets these buttons packed and out of here, let’s get a burger.”

  I wasn’t about to argue. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t eaten lunch, either. At first, I was too upset. Then, I was just plain too busy printing out all those photos and helping the techs match them to the proper buttons. Hungry or not, though, I wasn’t done wondering. “Could it have been robbery?”

  Nev s
hrugged and I knew how much he hated to do that in answer to a question about a case. “There was no purse found with the body.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking back to the night before. “I don’t think she had one with her.”

  “And that seems odd, doesn’t it?”

  It did, and I tried again to picture everything that had happened when Angela came for the charm string. “She had her car keys in her hand,” I said.

  Nev nodded. “We found those under the body.”

  “And when I handed her the hatbox that she’d brought the charm string to me in…” I walked through the motions of all I remembered, stepping back toward the workroom, then out again into the shop, my hands out as if I were carrying the box. “I handed her the hatbox, and it wasn’t like she had to hoist her purse up on her shoulder to take it from me. Or move it from one hand to the other. She just grabbed the hatbox and got out of here. I’m pretty sure I’m right. She wasn’t carrying a purse.”

  “Which, unfortunately, doesn’t prove much of anything. Maybe Angela’s money is what our killer was after, and when he realized she didn’t have any, he got angry. Or maybe he thought there was something of some real value…OK, I’m sorry!” He rolled his eyes and groaned. “I know you think the buttons are valuable, but a street thug sure wouldn’t think that. He might have seen Angela carrying the hatbox, figured there must have been something worth stealing in it, and gotten mad when he realized there was nothing inside but buttons.”

  I shivered. “That takes a special sort of cold person, doesn’t it?”

  “Unfortunately, there are plenty of them out in the world.”

  That uncomfortable thought was interrupted by Jason arriving with the newest evidence bag. “I’ve got them all cataloged,” he said, reaching for the clipboard and the list numbered from one to nine hundred ninety-seven that he’d worked on as I matched buttons with photos. He added the uranium button to the list. “Now all I have to do is put these boxes in my truck and get them downtown.” He looked from me to Nev. “I don’t suppose you two—”

  “We’d love to help.” I was smiling when I sidled past Nev and got to work. Helping Jason with the buttons gave me one last chance to look at them, and besides, there was a burger in my future. The sooner we finished, the sooner we could eat.

  We helped Jason pack the boxes and load them into his truck, and once we were done, Nev and I returned to the Button Box to turn out the lights and lock up.

  I grabbed my purse out of the back room. “It’s been a really long day.”

  “You got that right. And if I don’t come up with some answers about this case soon, it’s only going to be the first of many. What do you think, Josie?” We already had most of the lights in the shop off, but when he stopped at my desk and picked up the two remaining photos, I looked at them, too. “If we don’t find these two buttons, does that mean someone took them?”

  I wished I had the answer to that one, and I told him that right before I added, “The metal button, no. There’s no reason anyone would want it. You saw the charm string buttons laid out on the tables. There must have been at least two hundred metal buttons. Buttons with eagles on them. Buttons with animals on them. All of them—including this one that’s missing—are pretty common late-nineteenth-century buttons. There’s nothing special about them. In fact, the artwork on the one that’s missing isn’t even particularly good. See…” Yeah, the light was bad, but I leaned over and pointed at the details on the picture as best as I was able. “It’s a town of some sort, and a building of some sort. Very uninspired, and not something a collector would find especially appealing.”

  “But the other one…”

  “Ah, the other one.” I looked at that photo, too, and I swear, even in the dim light, that enameled button just about jumped off the page and shouted its beauty to all the world. “If someone brought that button in here, I’d pay plenty for it, and I’d be glad to do it.”

  “But not everyone would know that.”

  It seemed a no-brainer. At least to me. “Anyone who saw it would know it’s beautiful.”

  Was that a pointed look I got from Nev? I used the dark as an excuse to pretend I didn’t notice. “Come on, admit it, Josie. Pretty or not pretty, ninety-nine out of a hundred people would walk by that button and not give it a second look. It’s just a button. And that’s just what they’d think. It’s just a button.”

  “So what you’re saying is that a common thief—”

  “Wouldn’t bother with the button, no matter how pretty it was. I mean, OK, even if our killer knew that buttons could be sold to collectors, wouldn’t he have grabbed more of them? Why would just these two be missing? And here’s my prediction, we’ll find that metal one tomorrow. It probably just rolled under something and the techs missed it the first time through. They were pretty overwhelmed by all those buttons.”

  I’m not exactly sure when I realized where this conversation was heading. At least I wasn’t until goose bumps prickled up my arms. I started for the door. “No,” I said.

  “I haven’t asked you to do anything.”

  “The answer’s still no.”

  “But you’re good at this, Josie.”

  “I make a great pasta sauce, too, but you don’t see me opening a restaurant.”

  Nev chuckled. “I’m not asking you to open a restaurant. I’m just asking you to help me out.” I guess he realized I was going to protest, because he sailed right on so I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

  “You can’t deny the facts,” he said, “and the first fact is that there is one valuable button missing. If that’s true—and for now, we’re going to say it is, because we don’t have anything to prove otherwise—that leads to fact number two: our killer knew that one button was valuable. Fact number three, then, is that our killer must know something about buttons. What’s that you said outside? That you’re the world’s greatest fabulous button expert?” I had just turned out the last of the lights and reached for the door handle. That didn’t keep me from seeing the gleam in Nev’s eyes.

  “Our murderer knows something about buttons,” he reminded me. “Or at least about buttons that are valuable. Josie, that means I really need your help.”

  Chapter Six

  MY DEFINITION OF HELPING DID NOT NECESSARILY MESH with Nev’s.

  Ever practical, I suggested spending the next couple days in the shop, calling button dealers throughout the country who might be approached by a person looking to sell an unusually beautiful enameled button.

  Nev, while admitting that there were benefits to this strategy, had other plans. He was sure that the only way to root out suspects—and find out which of them knew what about buttons—was to get to know the people Angela knew. There was no better way for me to do that, he insisted, than for me to attend her wake and funeral.

  This would look completely natural, he insisted, because I’d recently done business with Angela. No one would suspect that I was really trying to dig up information. No one would imagine that I had any other motive beside offering my condolences.

  No one would think I was a mole.

  Me? I wasn’t convinced. For one thing, I wasn’t sure I could blend in as completely or as inconspicuously with the other mourners as Nev assumed I would. For another…well, I admit it, attending the wake and funeral of a person I hardly knew made me feel ghoulish.

  Then again, Nev knew I felt a little responsible for what had happened to Angela and that I spent the weekend playing the ugly game of What If.

  What if I’d taken her more seriously when she talked about the curse?

  What if I’d walked her to her car that fateful night?

  Maybe aside from a little information, Nev was hoping that my involvement in the investigation would absolve my guilt.

  Maybe I was hoping for the same thing.

  The Monday after the murder, I changed my voice mail so customers who called would know it might take me a day or two to get back to them. I put up a blog post on my web
site and a note on the front door of the Button Box: I’d be open for business again in a couple days. Those details taken care of, I headed north out of Chicago.

  “You really didn’t have to do this.” We had just passed a sign that said we were four miles from the town of Ardent Lake, and I glanced toward the passenger seat of my car. “You’re going to miss your poker game tonight,” I reminded Stan.

  He shrugged away the comment as being of no consequence. “I can play poker any Monday night. But investigating a murder…” A smile on his face, he rubbed his hands together. “It’s like the old days! I can’t wait to get started.”

  “You do remember what Nev said?”

  “About being subtle? Yeah, yeah, not to worry. I’ve played this game before, remember. Besides, for all anybody knows, you’re just the button lady who was doing business with Angela, and I’m just the old friend who came along for the ride.”

  All well and good, but talk about guilt! “It’s Marty’s turn to host the poker game tonight, isn’t it? You’re going to miss his wife’s berry cobbler. It’s your favorite.”

  “Cobbler, shmobbler. I can get a piece of cobbler anytime. What I can’t get is a chance to do some official investigating.”

  “Unofficial investigating,” I reminded him. “All we’re supposed to do is talk to people and get some initial impressions.”

  “I know, I know.” Stan shifted in his seat, winced, and pressed a hand to the small of his back. We’d been in the car a little over an hour, and he wasn’t used to sitting still for so long. “Nev’s already been here interviewing people, but he knows what I know: they’re not going to open up. Not to a cop. But when we shake ’em down—”

  I laughed. “We’re not trying to shake anybody down. We’re just here to talk about buttons.”

  “Well, sure.” Stan’s smile sparkled in the spring sunshine. “I won’t forget. And I do appreciate it, Josie. I mean, you inviting me along. You could have asked Kaz.”