Panic Button

by Kylie Logan

  Grumbling, I stepped back so that Nev and Jimmy could pry the schoolhouse door open.

  Good thing I did, or like poor Nev and Jimmy, I would have been swamped with the sea of mud that poured out of the school.

  “Oh, yuck!” Nev has quick reflexes. The mud flowed up and out, as high as his knees, and he snatched his camera out of his pocket and tossed it to me to be sure it stayed clean and safe.

  Good thing I have quick reflexes, too. I caught the camera with one hand and darted back and out of the way of the mudflow that would have easily come up over the tops of my boots.

  It wasn’t until after I was sure I was out of harm’s way that I bent forward and peered into the building. Once upon a time, it had been a one-room schoolhouse, and now, except for what had rolled out the door, that one room was pretty much filled top to bottom with gunk.

  “I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re not going to find any treasure in there,” I commented.

  Nev didn’t answer. But then, he was still pretty busy scraping spatters of mud off his jacket.

  That left the cemetery, and in the blasted landscape, it was difficult to tell exactly how far away it was. I tried to stand on tiptoe to see a little better, slipped, and would have gone down if Nev hadn’t looped one arm around my waist. Great plan. Or at least it would have been if he wasn’t covered with mud.

  Cringing, I refused to worry about how I’d ever get my jacket clean, and followed my police escort, and after another couple slip-slidey minutes of walking, we caught a glimpse of the first headstones sticking up through the mud like rotted teeth.

  A shiver snaked over my shoulders. “Oh, that’s just positively creepy!”

  “Not to worry.” Jimmy laughed. “The bodies aren’t here anymore. They were all removed. You know, before the reservoir was filled. All the dead folks are up at Elm Lawn in town now, and this place is just empty.

  “Empty and creepy,” I said, hoping Nev would take pity on me and stay close, but it seemed even the mud hadn’t soured his opinion of how interesting the drowned town was. He motioned for his camera, I relinquished it, and he darted ahead.

  I wiped a dot of mud off the photo of the button and studied the picture again before I realized that what looked like a little building beyond the headstones in the photograph was in reality an elaborate mausoleum.

  “Nev.” I closed in on him where he was crouched in front of a gravestone that had been completely coated with moss. “Nev, if you were a pirate and eager to hide your treasure, would you take a chance of burying it?”

  He got to his feet. “You mean here in the cemetery? I guess no one would notice that the ground had been disturbed, but heck, the whole point of being a pirate is avoiding hard work whenever possible. If I was a pirate, I wouldn’t want to put in the sweat equity. Besides, you heard what Jimmy said. This whole place was dug up before the town was flooded so they could retrieve the bodies and bury them in the new town. If there was treasure in any one of these graves—”

  “Somebody would have found it.”

  We finished the thought together.

  Rather than allow myself to get discouraged again, I glommed on to an earlier thought and followed it to its logical conclusion. “But what if you were that same pirate and there was a better place to hide something. Like, say in some little building?” I asked Nev. “That would be easier.”

  “Way easier.” He swung his gaze where I was looking, at that mausoleum. “If it’s not filled with junk like the schoolhouse was…”

  He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to. Moving faster than either of us should have been able to with the ground slipping out from under our feet, we hurried over to the mausoleum.

  This close, I could see that the tomb was constructed of gray and pink granite and that it must have been gorgeous—and expensive—in its day. There were carved angels standing guard on either side of the door, and I suspected that what was now a hole in the side wall had once contained a stained glass window. These days, there was greenery sprouting from the gutters and the skeleton of a fish lay on the doorstep. None of that was especially surprising, of course.

  The name carved over the doorway…

  That was another thing altogether.

  “Moran.” Out loud, Jimmy Carns read the name carved above the door from right behind us, and yes, I squealed and flinched. But then, it was that kind of place. “Family’s been around here for years and all of them were buried here. Not Ben, of course. Story has it he died in Chicago and was buried there somewhere. But here, this is where Thunderin’ Ben’s parents were supposed to spend eternity resting in peace.”

  I hadn’t expected that obvious a connection to Thunderin’ Ben, and my spirits soared.

  Jimmy didn’t look nearly as pleased. In fact, he shook his head, downright disgusted. “All these years, and you think this is where the treasure might be? Hell, when we were kids, we’d listen to the stories about Ben and then we’d grab our shovels and go running around the woods outside of town and dig up place after place. And if all this time, it was really here…”

  “If.”

  Nev didn’t need to remind me. I was being practical. Honest. I was prepared to be let down—again—by a clue that led nowhere. Of course, that didn’t mean I was prepared to give up.

  Again, I went over the theory Nev and I had just about talked to death over breakfast that morning. “If the button showed the way to the treasure…”

  “That would mean that button was worth stealing, and maybe our killer thought it was worth killing for, too,” he said. “But I can’t help but think about what you said earlier, Josie. Why did the killer need the button? The killer must have known that the button showed old Ardent, the cabin and the school and the cemetery. But for some reason, that wasn’t good enough. He needed the actual physical button. Why?”

  “Maybe there was something you had to do with the button,” I proposed, sounding as unsure of this theory as I felt and like I was coming up with a plot idea for a new Indiana Jones movie. “Like the button is some kind of key or something. And maybe Ben talked about how it worked in his diary. Maybe that’s why the killer needed both the button and the diary.”

  “Maybe.” Nev didn’t sound any more sure of this than I felt, and before I could convince myself that we were wasting our time, I inched closer to the mausoleum.

  I made sure to stay well out of the way of whatever might rush out when Nev pulled open the mausoleum door. “Not a lot of mud,” I commented to him, and of course, he was one step ahead of me. He simply nodded and gestured to Jimmy to have a look at a mushy pile of mud just to the right of the front door. I knew where his thoughts were running. “You think that little mud pile looks awfully neat. Like maybe someone shoveled mud out of the mausoleum and threw it over there.”

  He didn’t agree or disagree. “Let’s go inside,” Nev said, “and find out.”

  If what was left of Ardent out under the wide, blue sky was creepy, the inside of a mausoleum which had until just very recently been filled with water and left, silent and abandoned, all these years, was off the scale in the scare-me-to-death department.

  “Good thing I brought a flashlight.”

  People had to stop standing right behind me and talking. This time Nev was the guilty party and I was so immersed in the mood of the place that I clapped a hand to my hip-hopping heart and watched as he flicked on the flashlight and arced its light around the inside of the tomb. Apparently, the Moran family’s remains had once been laid to rest in niches carved into the granite walls. Those spots were empty now, with decades of accumulated mud and debris on the shelves that had once contained their caskets.

  “What do you think?” Nev picked up a stick lying nearby and poked it into the gunk that coated the nearest shelf. “If the treasure was with one of the bodies, it’s gone.”

  “I don’t know.” I whirled around, taking in the devastation and the grime that showed everywhere Nev’s light hit. “For a minute there, my cr
azy theory about the button being some kind of key or talisman actually made sense to me. But now…” His light flashed across the far wall and I pulled in a breath. “Nev?” He was standing next to me, and even though it was coated with mud, I grabbed his sleeve and tugged. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” His light had already moved on, and Nev froze with it trained on the floor. “What did I miss?”

  “There. Over there.” I pointed straight ahead toward the far wall, but since it was as gloomy in there as the inside of a thundercloud, I was sure Nev had no idea what I was indicating. To help out, I clamped my hand over his—and his flashlight—and slid the light over to the left.

  “There,” I said, and since Nev is a smart guy, he saw exactly what I saw and stepped forward.

  “No mud.” Nev knelt down for a better look at an area of the wall that had obviously been recently wiped clean. “There’s some kind of carving here.” He leaned nearer for a better look, his light aimed at the wall right in front of him. “It’s like a little miniature picture of the town, only it doesn’t look like that button of yours. It looks like—”

  “A perfect mirror image.” OK, so button dealers aren’t all that fond of mud, but a little more dirt and grime (OK, a lot of dirt and grime) at this point wasn’t going to make any difference, and it wasn’t going to keep me from seeing what he was seeing. I knelt down next to Nev and held the photo of the metal button up next to the carving in the mausoleum wall. “If we had the real button…” I pretended I did, and held it by its imaginary shank. “It would fit into the wall carving perfectly! So the button was the key!” I said, so pleased and stunned that I’d already sat back on my heels before I realized that now, I could add the seat of my pants to the list of my muddy-beyond-repair clothing. “The killer needed the button in order to fit it into the carving. And once that was done—”

  “This little door popped open.” Nev had been fiddling at the wall below the carving and found the little door in the wall that had been kept hidden and secret all these years. He bent even closer to the ground to shine his light inside and, just to make sure, stuck his hand into the black hole, too.

  “Empty,” he grumbled. He called Jimmy over to tell him to get some techs in there to seal off the mausoleum and collect whatever evidence they were likely to find. “The killer had to wait until the reservoir was empty,” he said once Jimmy was outside and on the phone. “And once he had the diary and the button and the water was all gone—”

  “He came and got the treasure. If there really was a treasure.”

  Nev held up his hand. It was cleaner than it should have been considering he’d just poked it into that filthy hole. “Oh, there was a treasure, all right,” he said. “That would explain the lack of mud in there.”

  “Because something else was in there, something like a treasure chest. That’s why the mud couldn’t accumulate.” I nodded, following his theory.

  And technically, all of this should have made us pretty pleased with ourselves. After all, we’d followed a pirate’s clues all the way to X Marks the Spot. Trouble is, the killer had gotten there before us.

  I’m sure Nev was just as disappointed as I was, but it didn’t keep him from pulling out his camera and snapping a few more pictures.

  Pictures.

  “Oh, for the love of buttons!” I would have slapped my forehead if I wasn’t afraid of getting mud all over my face. “Nev, it’s been staring at us all along. From the pictures.”

  He didn’t question this curious statement. But then, like I said, he’s that kind of guy.

  Chapter Eighteen

  JUST FOR THE RECORD, THE LADIES’ ROOM AT THE ARDENT Lake police station is not the most comfortable place to get cleaned up, but it served its purpose. Before we headed over to Angela’s, I was presentable, if not spic-and-span.

  Once there, we found two things. Or should I say we found one thing and found the other missing.

  Yes, the Sherlock Holmes book was gone.

  And the other thing?

  With Nev’s blessing, I took that with me, and when I changed for the cocktail party that evening, I made sure I brought along a big enough purse to stash it in.

  Call Mary Lou Baldwin a hopeless romantic; even though I’d reserved it for only one night, she’d kept my room for me, and I was grateful. I took a very long, very hot shower, put on black pants, sensible pumps, and a lightweight sweater the color of the darkest grapes on that purloined punch bowl of Marci’s, and when I walked out of my room at the B and B, Nev was waiting downstairs. He took one look at me and smiled. “You should wear purple more often. It looks good on you.”

  He wasn’t much for compliments. Not like Kaz, who threw them around like confetti at a ticker-tape parade. I suppose that’s what made this one more special.

  In fact, he looked pretty darned special, too—in a very Nevin Riley way—and I found out that was thanks to Mary Lou, too, who’d let him use her own private suite in the B and B to get clean and gussied up. Black pants, gray shirt. So far, so good. It was the cantaloupe-colored tie and the khaki jacket that threw Nev’s outfit for a loop.

  Not to worry. I made a couple gentle suggestions about how warm the evening was and how he might want to carry his jacket rather than wear it.

  Feeling as confident as a woman can who’s just come out of an abandoned graveyard, I hoisted my purse up on my shoulder and we walked to the Big Museum together.

  Just inside the front door, we were greeted by a huge photo of Susan on an easel, along with a book where visitors could write their condolences and a box for donations for those wishing to contribute to the Big Museum in Susan’s name. We did both, and we moved out of the hallway and into the room across from the photo room, where a long table had been set up and heaped with appetizers of all shapes and sizes. Nev reached for the clear plastic plates set out near one of those giant flower arrangements I’d seen the day before. He took a dish for himself and handed one to me.

  “How can you eat?” I held the plate close to my jumping heart. “I’m so nervous, I don’t think I can get a bite down.”

  “There’s another thing you need to learn about police work.” He filled his plate with tiny pieces of pizza, stuffed mushrooms, and cheese and crackers. “When you’re waiting like this, you’ve got to keep your strength up,” he said, adding two kinds of bruschetta to the top of the pile. “Besides, if you don’t eat…” He glanced toward the door, where I saw Marci chatting with Larry and beyond them to where Charles had just walked in. “It’s going to look weird, and somebody’s going to ask you what’s wrong. What are you going to tell them?”

  “That I’m here to catch a murderer?”

  He showed his appreciation for my sense of humor by popping down a stuffed mushroom, and since I knew he was right, I chose a small assortment of finger foods and accepted red wine in a teeny plastic glass from the server stationed at the end of the table. Thus fortified, we chitchatted our way through the room, biding our time.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised you’re here.”

  It wasn’t the most cordial of greetings from Larry, but then, the way I remember it, the last time we’d been together was the day Susan died, and neither of us was at our best. He sipped his wine. “Any luck?” The question was clearly intended for Nev. “With your investigation?”

  “We’ve uncovered a thing or two.” How he did it so quickly, I wasn’t sure, but Nev was down to his last bite of bruschetta. He snapped it up. “We should know more soon.”

  “I hope so.” Larry walked away, his words trailing behind him like a shadow. “I certainly hope so.”

  I had anticipated a long, tense evening, but though the tense part was true, the hours went by remarkably quickly. Then again, we had the run of the museum, and I kept my mind busy—and off the subject of murder—by strolling through the displays, while Nev took care of the rest. I’m not sure how he managed, but by ten when the cocktail party was set to end and I walked into the pirate room, all my susp
ects were in there, too.

  I wasn’t planning on this taking long, so we hadn’t bothered to ask the staff to bring in chairs. When I set my purse on top of the Thunderin’ Ben display case with its displaced toy buoy inside, Larry was standing on my left, Marci was directly in front of me, and Charles was hanging around near the door, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but.

  I didn’t say a word. But remember, I was once a theater major, and though I’m still not much of an actor, I do appreciate a sense of drama. I held my breath, and waited for my cue.

  God bless Jimmy Carns, it came just as the floor clock in the hallway stopped chiming the hour.

  The clear, distant sound of a ringing bell.

  Marci flinched and red wine slopped over the edge of her tiny glass and dotted her white blouse like blood spatter. “That’s not—”

  “It can’t be.” Brave words from Charles, but he ran his tongue over his lips. “The schoolhouse bell. They say you can hear it ring, if there’s going to be a…you know…if someone’s going to die.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Larry was wearing a navy suit and a blindingly white shirt, and he looked more like a power broker than a hardware store owner. Feet slightly apart, chin high, his top lip rose. “You’re imagining it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” This was me, of course, sounding as placid as the waters of the reservoir usually are. But then, I’d arranged for the bell to ring so it hadn’t taken me by surprise. In fact, it had done exactly what I intended it to do, set the tone for a conversation that was as serious as…well, as serious as two homicides.

  “Don’t worry,” I added, because I couldn’t bear to watch Charles suffer and the poor man looked like he was going to pass out. “Nobody’s going to die. At least I hope not. Of course…” I glanced around at the semicircle of faces. “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to talk about murder.”