Button Holed

by Kylie Logan

  “I don’t want to be hot. Not because of a murder.”

  “Of course you do. Everybody wants to be famous and successful. It doesn’t matter how you get there; what matters is making it to the top. If that’s not what you want, why are you in business?”

  She was right. Of course, she was. But . . .

  I braced myself for the fight I knew was coming. “You know I’d be happy to do it, Estelle. I’ve told you that before. If we could just rework your concept for the segment and . . . and find another name for it.”

  I pictured her words whooshing out of her along with a stream of smoke. “What’s wrong with the Button Babe? My God, Josie, it’s not like anybody takes any of this life-can-be-beautiful shit seriously.”

  “I take my buttons seriously. And my business.” I’d told her this before; maybe that’s why I thought I shouldn’t have had to mention it again. Why I sounded tentative and intimidated. “I want to be thought of as an authority, not as a babe. And that whole idea of yours, about having a sort of cabana boy bring out the trays of buttons, and about me lounging there, sipping a drink and talking about buttons . . .” Just thinking about it made my knees weak. If there was a chair around not piled with buttons, I would have flopped into it.

  “Oh, come on! You’re young. You’ve got nice hair, decent skin, that adorable little bowed mouth. You’re cute.” Facts were facts. At least that’s what Estelle’s tone of voice said. “As cute as a button. And I’ve told you before, the whole setup is perfect. People will love the idea of a nerdy little button babe being waited on hand and foot by a handsome hunk. Let’s face it, most people hear button collector and they think old fuddy-duddy. We could give buttons a whole new image!”

  We certainly could. And I was 100 percent certain it wasn’t the one I wanted to present to my fellow collectors or my customers. Rather than argue a point I knew she’d never understand, I went for the obvious. “I’ve told you, Estelle, just thinking about getting in front of the cameras makes me stutter and stammer. Add a hunky guy in a loincloth and—”

  “Ooh, loincloth! I hadn’t thought of that. We could give it a sort of ancient empire theme. I’m making a note of that now. Loincloth—you’re a genius!”

  “No, I’m not. I’m an introvert.”

  “Yeah, me too.” She didn’t give me a chance to respond to this barefaced lie; she stormed right on. “A little coaching from our producer, and you’ll sound like a pro. A little makeup will work wonders, too.”

  Oh yeah, that was plenty encouraging.

  “My customers won’t like it if I don’t come across as studious and serious.”

  “Overrated.” I couldn’t help but picture her flicking one perfectly manicured hand in my direction. “We’ll make it fun. Hey, I hear there are actually old buttons that show pornographic scenes. We could—”

  “No. Really, Estelle, you know I’d be thrilled. You know I’ll think about it. But not until we can handle the segment with style and class. And this is really coming at a bad time, anyway, what with Kate—”

  “Hell, half of what I know about publicity, I learned from Kate. She was a good friend of mine, you know, God rest her soul. In fact, we’re doing a show on the perfect wedding, and she was going to be my guest.”

  This was news, but Estelle didn’t give me the opportunity to stop and think about it.

  “Good God!” she roared. “Nobody was more uppity than Kate, and even she recognized the value of cutting loose and having some fun on my show.”

  “Was there a cabana boy involved?”

  Estelle thought this was very funny. It took a minute or more for her to stop laughing and hacking. “You’ll think about it, won’t you?” she asked, and before I could respond, she answered herself. “Of course you will. You’re a smart cookie, and you’ve got a good business head on your shoulders. You’re not going to pass up an opportunity this juicy.” She didn’t wait for me to answer. Before I knew it, I was listening to the buzz of a dial tone in my ear.

  I hung up. “I’m turning off the phone,” I told Stan, and I did just that. “If anyone needs to say something to me, they can leave a message. At least this way I can have a little peace and quiet and get this place back in shape.”

  Yeah. Right. For about three seconds.

  That would have been right about when Nevin Riley plowed through the door.

  He was wearing the same suit he’d had on the night before, and by the looks of its wrinkles, the same shirt, too. That, along with the smudges of sleeplessness under his eyes and the way his hair hung over his forehead, convinced me he hadn’t had a moment’s rest since he’d gotten the call about the murder.

  I knew how he felt. But even my own weariness wasn’t enough to make me forget that the night before, he’d just about come out and apologized for abandoning me on our first date. Maybe that’s why a little ribbon of warmth curled around my heart.

  That is, until I saw that he was carrying the morning’s newspaper rolled up in his left hand. He slapped it into his right palm. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” he demanded. Nevin’s just about the least intimidating looking guy I’ve ever met, but there was steel in his voice, and I knew in that moment that, like me, plenty of bad guys had been fooled by his little-boy good looks. I bet plenty of them felt like I did right about then, too. Like my stomach had jumped up into my throat.

  “About . . .” It took a moment for my brain to catch up with what was going on and another few seconds for my tongue to coherently form the words. “Oh, you mean about the photograph.”

  “I mean about the photographer.”

  There was no use offering him any excuses. He wasn’t in the mood, and I shouldn’t have had to justify my actions by reminding him that I was not exactly myself the night before. Dead bodies will do that to a girl. Instead, I went into the back room, grabbed for my purse, took Homolka’s card out of it, and came back into the shop to hand it to Nevin. “He was outside when I got here yesterday evening,” I told him.

  He snapped the card out of my hands and turned to the door. “Next time, don’t keep important information from me.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time.” I guess it was a little confrontational to come back at him like that, but hey, I was exhausted and out of sorts myself. “And I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you. The last thing I was thinking of last night was paparazzi.”

  “Right.” He slipped the card into his breast pocket. “That’s the sort of flimsy excuse that’s going to make my superiors very happy.”

  Just that fast, he was gone.

  And just like that, I was fuming.

  “Son of a—” I forgot Stan was even there until he cleared his throat. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  He sloughed off the apology. “Don’t hold it against the kid. He’s getting it from all sides. Guaranteed, his lieutenant is all over him, the top brass are hounding him, and the press is after him like dogs with the scent of a raccoon in their noses.”

  “Yeah, well, he doesn’t need to take it out on me.” My insides were roiling, and it was either work and get rid of the feeling or race down the street to a nearby fabric shop, buy the supplies, and make a Nevin Riley voodoo doll. Sanity prevailed, and I stooped to retrieve the nearest buttons. It wasn’t until I did that I realized I was standing at the spot where Kate had been killed. Right about then, even that wasn’t going to stop me.

  “You know,” I told Stan, “the first time I met him, I thought Nevin was a real loser. Then last night . . .” I deposited a small mountain of buttons on the nearest display case, then bent to pick up more. At least if I concentrated on buttons, I wouldn’t be tempted to think about how the night before, I’d found myself thinking Nevin wasn’t so bad after all. “Last night he seemed like a regular guy. Now today . . .” More buttons, and I set them down and went after another cache. “I’ll tell you what, Stan, overworked or not, that doesn’t excuse how he just treated me. I don’t care if I ever talk to the man again for as long as
I—”

  I stopped, my hand poised over one of the buttons on the floor. It was what we in the business call a medium. That is, it was about an inch from side to side, and from what I could tell, made of boxwood. The carving on it was exquisite. It was an owl . . . No, I told myself, tipping my head and examining the button from a different perspective. It was a hawk, each detail of the bird’s feathers carefully rendered, its eyes bits of onyx.

  My hand frozen, I looked over my shoulder at Stan. “Get Nevin on the phone for me,” I said.

  He wrinkled his nose. “But you just said—”

  “I know what I said. And I meant it. But . . .” My hand was trembling, and I pulled it to my side and wiped my suddenly damp palm on the leg of my jeans. “He left a stack of his cards here last night. They’re on my desk. Get him on the phone, will you, Stan? He just left; he can’t have gotten far. Get him back here, ASAP.”

  “Sure, Josie. Anything you say. Only I wish I knew what was going through your head.”

  “That’s easy enough.” By now, I was down on my knees, my nose close to the button I didn’t dare touch. “I think he needs to see this button. Because, Stan, it’s a real beauty. And it isn’t one of mine.”

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOXWOOD BUTTONS I’d ever seen. I was itching to take a soft cloth and a little mineral oil to it, to clean it and polish it, and drink in the wonderful fragrance of the wood. I was itching to touch the button, too, but . . . Well, the Chicago police had other ideas.

  Waiting for Nevin to arrive for this appointment he’d called to schedule, I looked longingly at the plastic evidence bag sitting on his desk, and the gorgeous button inside.

  “Sorry I’m late.” I’d been so focused on the button, I didn’t notice he’d finally showed up until he was all set to sit down. It was the day after I found the button, and he was wearing a freshly pressed shirt and a brown tie that didn’t exactly go with his navy wool suit. His eyes were alert. His hair was still mussed. “Sorry about yesterday, too,” he said, taking his seat. “I was���”

  “Rude and abrupt?” Oh, sure, I could have cut him a break. But why? If there was one thing I’d learned from Kaz (OK, so I’d learned a lot of things from Kaz, but this was one of them), it was that guys who act like jerks don’t deserve my understanding. Or my forgiveness. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re sorry a lot.”

  He made a face. “I screw up a lot. Personally, I mean. Not professionally. Professionally, I’m a damn good cop.”

  “And a lousy person?” I made sure I kept my words light. There was no use hitting him over the head with the message.

  He winced as if I had, and scratched a finger behind his ear. “I’m not a lousy person. Not all the time, anyway. At least I don’t like to think so. You just keep catching me at bad times.”

  “Apparently.” I hoped the small talk was over, and sat up a little straighter, a signal that I was ready to get to the meat of this meeting, whatever it was.

  Nevin apparently didn’t share my desire to get it over and get it over quickly. He shuffled a stack of papers on his desk, tapped them into a neat pile, and set them back exactly where they’d come from. When he was done, he sat back and cleared his throat. “I thought we could try again,” he said.

  “You mean like a date?” The words whooshed out of me a little too loudly, I guess, because a couple of the cops at their desks in the bullpen-like office looked over and grinned. I lowered my voice. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not really.” One corner of his mouth pulled into a wry grin. “Unless you want me to be.”

  The ball was in my court, and I guess I wasn’t willing to play, because even before I knew it, I found myself with my arms crossed over my chest. Defensive? Oh yeah. And when I realized it, my embarrassment morphed into full-blown mortification. It was déjà vu all over again, and I had an ugly flashback to that night at the pizza place. There was Nevin, trying to make conversation. And there I was, rambling like a lunatic. Only this time when I started rambling, it wasn’t about buttons. “I sure hope you didn’t ask me to come all the way down here just to talk about going out again,” I snapped.

  “Of course not.”

  “Because if you felt bad about what happened yesterday and the way you burst into the shop and how you didn’t even stop to say hello to Stan or to ask how I was doing or to think that the reason I didn’t tell you about Mike Homolka in the first place was that some of us aren’t used to finding dead bodies and some of us aren’t immune to the blood and the gore and some of us . . .” I stopped for air. But not for long. “Some of us were just a tad upset the night of the murder and not exactly thinking straight, and if you thought of any of that, then maybe rather than making me close the shop early today and schlep over to the El and come all the way down here, you could have just called and maybe apologized and explained why you acted like such a jerk in the first place and then you could have just asked me out on the phone.”

  OK, so now I did sound like a full-blown lunatic, and I didn’t even regret it. I’d said what he needed to hear, and I guess he got the message; the tips of his ears got pink.

  “Sorry!” he said. “Again.”

  While I struggled to settle my heartbeat and the breaths that were coming too hard and too fast, Nevin reached for the evidence bag.

  “Actually what I called about was this.” He lifted the bag, the better to show off the button inside. “Thank you for calling me when you found it.”

  I forced myself to sound like the reasonable woman I usually am. “You’re welcome. I thought it might be important.”

  “And thank you for having the sense not to touch it. Unfortunately—”

  “No fingerprints?” Like I might actually see them if I looked closely enough, I peered through the plastic at the button. “That’s too bad.”

  “It is.” He set the button on the desk. “It’s left us at a dead end.”

  He didn’t have to elaborate. When he said us, he was talking about the police in general. But I knew what he really meant to say was me. It’s left me at a dead end.

  “Buttons are your business.” He jumped in with an argument so smooth, I knew he must have practiced it before I got there. I wondered if that’s why he’d come to our meeting late. Was he standing in the men’s room, reciting this speech in front of the mirror? I’d never know, and he’d never admit it, but the visual was enough to relieve some of the tension wound inside me. “From what I’ve been told,” he said, “you’re one of the country’s most-respected experts on buttons.”

  “Yes.” Admitting it, I felt more like myself and less like the crazy woman who’d just taken him to task. “I am.”

  Nevin’s smile lasted as long as it took for him to set the bag back where it came from. He folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “That’s why I asked you to come down here today. Josie, I need your help. To solve this murder.”

  I WAS ON my way back from the El to my apartment when I ran into Stan, just coming out of the grocery store. Maybe it was a mistake to mention my meeting with Nevin and the not-so-small fact that he wanted me to help out with the investigation. Stan pounced right on it.

  “So I’m thinking a stakeout,” he said, shifting the reusable grocery bag he refused to let me carry for him from his left hand to his right. “We can follow each of the suspects. You know, for a week or two. What do you think?”

  “I think . . .” It was late in the afternoon, and my head was swimming. As I’ve already admitted, my wildest dreams usually center on Kaz. Or buttons. I never thought they’d include murder, or me helping to find a killer. “I really don’t think that’s the kind of help Nevin was talking about,” I said. “He wants me to do some research. And talk to my contacts in the button-collecting world. He wants to know more about the button and where it came from and how it got to my shop. He doesn’t need help with the actual police work.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Stan kept walking, even though when
we rounded the corner, we saw there was some commotion going on a little farther up the street. A crowd of thirty or so people was gathered on the sidewalk, and the commotion looked to be happening near our building. He narrowed his eyes and tipped his head, walking a little slower, sizing up the situation.

  I slowed my pace, too. I’m not nearly as tall as Stan, and I had to crane my neck. Whatever was happening, it looked to be peaceful enough. “I’m going to investigate,” I said, telling him exactly what I’d told Nevin. “In books. I’m going to make phone calls. To button people. No stakeouts. And what do you mean, anyway?” Now that I had time to process it, what he said struck me as more than a little odd. “What are you talking about when you say suspects? We have suspects?”

  “There are always suspects. You’ll learn that fast enough.”

  “But I don’t want to learn that. I don’t need to learn it.” Nevin had given me close-up and detailed photographs of the button. He’d had an evidence technician join us who slid the button out of its protective bag and made all the measurements I asked for. I patted my purse where I had all the information safely stored away. “All I need to do is tell Nevin everything I find out about the button.”

  We were closer to the crowd now and I stopped to try and get some sense of what was happening. “So . . .” I dangled the word like a fat worm on the end of a hook. “Our suspects are . . .”

  Stan chuckled. “Think about it.”

  “I have.” Not technically true since I was pretty sure this part of the investigation wasn’t any of my business and I hadn’t spent even a moment considering it. “Kate was alone in the shop and—”