by Jo Macgregor
“Come on. Let’s do this,” I told my mother.
As we walked, she marveled over the goods on sale while I checked the faces and lanyards, dismissing all the women, and any man who was too young or too old to be Larry. I soon grew frustrated with our slow progression, however. My mother wanted to stop and check out every other display, while I was a woman on a mission.
“Let’s split up so we can each do our own thing,” I suggested. “I’ll call you later, and we can meet up for lunch.”
“I didn’t bring my phone, dear, so we’ll have to agree on a time and place,” she said.
“One thirty at the entrance to this hall. We’ll go for lunch together,” I said. “I saw a hotdog vendor back there somewhere.”
“Have fun,” she said and happily made her way back down the aisle to a stall specializing in applique kits.
I forged ahead, weaving between booths selling supplies for mysterious things like tatting and lucet and crewelwork and stopped at a stall manned by someone who fit my criteria: male, middle-aged, dark hair. He wore a cardigan with a colorful parrot patch and large silver buttons.
“Hi! What is, um” — I stepped back to read the sign on the front of his stall — “stumpwork?”
While he raved about the unparalleled loveliness of raised embroidery and 3D effects, I examined him closely, noting that he wore a wedding ring and seemed to use his left and right hands equally. From my vision, I was pretty sure the killer was left-handed. I sensed no darkness or danger from this man, but then I hadn’t touched him yet.
“Fascinating! Especially the bit about padding and puffing,” I said. “So, have you been in this business long, Mr.” — I checked his lanyard — “Schmidt?”
Ruth from the diner had thought Larry’s name was something common like Smith or Jones; Schmidt wasn’t that far off.
“Oh yes, for the last twenty years! But I’m not really in the business. I’m just the chairman of the local chapter of the United States of Stumpwork. Would you like to join?”
“Uh, not just yet.” I was trying to think of a way to touch his hands and perhaps the buttons on his cardigan too. In the end, I just clasped my own hands around his and squeezed, saying, “But it’s been great meeting you. Oh, look at these lovely old buttons. May I?”
I grazed my fingers over several of the buttons, but as when I’d grasped his hands, I felt and saw nothing extraordinary.
“If it’s buttons you’re after, check aisle H,” he said helpfully. “Got every kind you could want there.”
I threaded my way through the room, dutifully giving every stall the once-over even though I itched for Aisle H. Perhaps it was just the power of suggestion, but I felt a tug toward the center of the hall, as if my extra sense had already detected something there and wanted me to close in on it. I took a deep breath as I turned into the top end of the aisle. The pull was stronger now. I felt it as a vibration, like a plucked violin string inside me. I tried to walk slowly, to check each booth methodically, but my feet picked up speed and hurried me over to a double-width stand where a cluster of shoppers were bent over a magnificent display of buttons.
Peering between the women grouped in front of me, I studied what I could see of the man behind the stall. He was middle-aged, of average height and build, and the hair peeking out from under his cap was dark brown. When he gave a shopper her change, he used his left hand. My breathing quickened.
The customers moved off, and I stepped up to the table, glancing down at where the man was fiddling with a framed display of embossed brass buttons that might have come from a military uniform. Both his hands were as unmarked and undistinctive as the hands in my visions. He wore no wedding ring, but rings could be removed, and besides, I’d “seen” the killer’s left hand both with and without a ring. He was wearing smart black pants and a blue-and-black plaid button-down shirt and his nametag lanyard hung over his chest, but it was turned the wrong way.
When he looked up from the display, I gave him a friendly smile and said, “Hi. What an amazing collection of buttons you have!”
He returned my smile. “If you want buttons, I’m your man.”
“You know, I think you just might be,” I said slowly.
“Do you like buttons, then? Do you collect them?”
“It’s probably fair to say I’m downright obsessed with them.”
He spread his hands wide over his table as if to say what’s not to like?
“Have you always been interested in them?” I asked, touching buttons here and there on the table to see if I could sense anything.
“For a while now.” Fetching a packet of pearl-white buttons from a box of stock behind him, he added it to his display. “If you’re a koumpounophile — a lover of buttons — then you should come to my talk this afternoon. It’s all about buttons.”
“That sounds fascinating,” I said.
“It starts at two o’clock in the Bison Room.”
I made gun fingers and clicked twice. “I’ll catch you there for sure.”
A short woman who’d been waiting impatiently to be served reached over and picked up the framed buttons. “Are these for sale?” she asked in a nasal voice.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
He took the piece out of her hands and laid it back in its spot, front and center of the table. As he leaned forward, his lanyard swung out. I bent sideways and craned my neck to try to read the name, but he straightened before I could see it, and once again, the blank side faced up.
“Why do you have them on the table if you refuse to sell them?” the woman demanded.
“As a reminder,” he told her.
“Of what?” she said rudely.
I also wanted to know.
He paused for a second, as if assessing whether he wanted to tell this entitled person something that was clearly personal. But I guess he knew the customer was king because he finally answered, “Of my time in combat.”
The woman’s eyes widened, and her mouth formed an O. Then she nodded, shook her head, and tutted. “You were in the military? Well, then I understand perfectly. Thank you for your service, sir. Thank you!”
She launched into a long explanation of where and when her own sons had served, while I pretended an interest in more of the wares on the table. When the woman finally left, having bought nothing, I pointed at a packet containing an assortment of buttons.
“I’ll take those, please.” I got no reading off the packet or the change he handed me and had no further excuse to stand there, but I decided to try one more ploy before I left. “Your nametag is flipped around,” I said, trying to sound casually helpful rather than suspiciously excited.
“Oh,” he said. “Thanks.” And then he turned it around.
– 41 –
Lawrence Johnson.
The two words printed on the nametag set my heart racing and my mind spinning. The nickname for Lawrence was Larry, and Johnson was close enough to Jones. It was him. The seemingly mild-mannered man standing in front of me was Larry the Lodger, a.k.a. the Button Man. This was the man who’d wrapped a garotte around Jacob’s neck and tightened it until the life drained out of him. This was the man who’d stitched Jacob’s lips closed, added a button for extra effect, and then dumped his remains in a shallow grave far from home. This was the man who may well have killed Derek Kehoe.
I must’ve been staring because he gave me concerned look and said, “Are you okay, ma’am?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. I just … thought of something I need to do urgently. But I’ll see you later at your talk, for sure,” I said.
I turned and had my phone out to call Singh before I was ten paces away. I figured Washington wouldn’t be allowed to come on the strength of my intuition without his senior agent’s permission, so I might as well contact Singh directly. Surprisingly, he answered.
“It’s me. Garnet. I’m at a fabric convention in Montpelier, and he’s here! The Button Man is here.”
“What are you talki
ng about?”
I backed up and explained. “The Kehoes — the family who owned that farm with the well outside of Crowbury? They had a lodger named Larry. He drove a Ford Thunderbird, the same car I saw in my vision with the victim who was hitchhiking. He worked in at least one fabric store in Woodbridge, New Hampshire. And there’s a man here, one of the stallholders, whose name is Lawrence Johnson. Lawrence — like Larry, see? He’s the right age, he’s left-handed, and he’s all about buttons. That’s what he’s selling at his stall, and he’s even doing a talk on them later. It’s him. I know it!”
Singh’s reaction to my excited babble was distinctly underwhelming. He pointed out that there was no evidence to tie my guy to the crimes.
“That’s only because you haven’t investigated him, yet. Please just come and see him, ask a couple of questions,” I begged and gave him the name and address of the hotel. “His talk starts at two o’clock in the Bison Room. If you leave Rutland now, you’ll still be in time to catch him before the end of it.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Singh said with zero enthusiasm.
“That’s a yes, right? You are coming?” I said, but I was speaking to dead air.
Impatient and anxious, I hurried to meet my mother at the food stalls. I warned her we didn’t have long because I wanted to attend a talk starting at two. We bought lunch — hotdogs with onions and fries from one of the food stalls — and my mother rambled on about the vendors she’d found who’d be able to supply her with tree of life embroidery kits and ying-yang symbol applique sets.
“And just take a look at this beauty!” she said, opening the largest of her shopping bags to show me the magnificent homemade quilt she’d purchased. From the way she asked whether I liked the design of geometric sunflowers, I suspected it would be an upcoming birthday or Christmas gift for me.
“Lovely,” I said absently.
I wanted to go back to Lawrence Johnson’s button stall and take a picture of him but was afraid that if I showed too much interest, it might make him suspicious. I was too distracted to finish my food — an occurrence so rare that it had my mother feeling my forehead to test for a fever.
“I’m not sick. I’m just—” For a moment, I considered filling her in on the picture. But when I imagined how she’d react — lots of excitement, too many questions, and the possibility of saying or doing something that would put my suspect on his guard — I decided to keep it to myself. “You know, eager to hear the talk. It’s about buttons.”
“Oh, well then of course you are, dear,” she said, patting the back of my hand indulgently.
I dumped the remains of my food into a trashcan, and we headed to the Bison room. Visitors were already streaming into the venue, but we waited outside while I searched face after face for Agent Singh, even though I knew there was no way he could be there already, even if he’d decided to come. I told myself that he was on the way, that he might be an asshat, but he was also a dedicated investigator who would want to check out this lead. Surely, he was.
When the crowd entering the venue thinned down to a few stragglers, I saw posters advertising the talk sitting on tall easels beside the doors at each of the two entrances to the room. They displayed a photograph of the speaker, along with the title of the talk: Buttons: Milestones and Meanings by Lawrence Johnson.
I called Singh again, but this time he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail reminding him that the killer was due to strike in two days’ time. “Even if we do have his name and can find out where he lives, there’s no guarantee he’ll go home after this,” I said. “He might be planning to go straight from here to someplace we don’t know about and then what?” I took a photograph of the poster and sent that to him. Even if he hadn’t left his office yet, he could still get here before the end of the talk if he broke a few speed limits.
An amplified voice drifted out of the room. The talk had started. Right now, someone was probably introducing Lawrence Johnson, Button Man.
“We need to go in,” I told my mother.
“I think I’m going to sit this one out, dear. I have a horrible headache from all the noise and bustle, and a quiet sit-down is just what I need.” She indicated a bench near the far door of the venue.
“Oh. Um, can you keep a lookout for Singh?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Special Agent Ronil Singh is coming?”
“Yes. Maybe. I mean, he’s interested in learning more about buttons, too, so I told him about this talk.”
“I’ll keep my peepers peeled!” she said excitedly. Lugging the big bag containing the quilt and her other purchases, she headed over toward the bench
“Send him in as soon as he arrives,” I called after her, then entered the room via the door closest to me.
The Bison Room was surprisingly big and almost full. Who’d have thought so many people would be interested in buttons? I grabbed an aisle seat in a row near the back, where I could keep an eye on both entrances and see Singh as soon as he arrived. Which he would. He had to.
On the stage, the master of ceremonies was wrapping up his introduction of Johnson. “— an expert in the field of buttons and who also owns a wholesale supply business. So, ladies and gentlemen — and there are a few thorns among the roses here today, I see, ha-ha — it is with great pleasure that I welcome our expert speaker, Mr. Lawrence Johnson.”
The man I was sure was the prey I’d been hunting stepped up to the podium, waved a hand to acknowledge the applause, and clicked a presentation into life on the screen behind him.
“We all have a history,” he said.
Some of us more than others, Larry, I thought.
“And buttons are no exception.”
Johnson pressed a clicker, and I swore under my breath when I saw the slide that appeared on the screen. It was a photograph of a young man in a black bomber jacket and jeans, slouching against the side of a car. The picture had been taken from a distance of perhaps twenty yards, so I couldn’t make out the man’s facial features too clearly, but I could tell that the car was a dark blue Ford Thunderbird. I swore again.
“Do you mind?” the woman seated next to me complained.
I fumbled in my handbag for my camera while Johnson said, “Thankfully, I’ve changed a lot since then. I no longer wear stonewashed jeans, for one thing.”
There was a smattering of laughter from the audience. My fingers brushed a smooth glass surface, and I closed them around my phone.
“Buttons, however, still look a lot like they did thousands of years ago,” he said. “The earliest known button dates back five thousand years and—”
I brought my phone up, activated the camera, and took a pic of the screen just as Johnson changed to the next slide.
“It was made from shell and was found in the Indus Valley, where modern day Pakistan is.”
Heart thumping, I checked the photographs on my phone.
– 42 –
Gotcha!
The photograph of the slide was slightly blurred, but it was still possible to make out the car model, although because of the angle of the original photograph, the license plate wasn’t visible. I forwarded the image to Singh. That was proof that not only did details about Lawrence Johnson match my vision, but they also corresponded with what was known about the man who’d lodged with the Kehoes.
Johnson was now taking the audience through the history of buttons, explaining how they’d originally been made of shell, bone, animal horn and metal, but that they’d also been manufactured from more unusual materials such as stone, compressed paper, glass, ivory, and even a substance called vegetable ivory — the hard white endosperm of certain palm trees. Ordinarily, I would’ve found this all fairly interesting, but my attention was divided between checking my phone and the doors — where was he, already? — and having an internal conversation with Johnson about the type of buttons he personally favored.
How about plastic buttons in dark green, huh? Or wooden buttons threaded with black twine? Show us some photos of thos
e, why don’t you?
Instead, he showed pictures of ancient buttons that had originally been used as ornaments and seals, and said that the first usage of buttons as fasteners for clothes emerged in Germany in the thirteenth century.
What about fastening lips? When did that usage emerge, you sick, twisted excuse for a human being?
“These days, of course, the world mostly uses mass-produced plastic buttons, over sixty percent of which are produced in China.”
What buttons are you using these days? Whose lips are you sewing?
“Still, it’s good to remember the days when a button could be a miniature work of art, like these gold-and-enamel beauties with diamond edging, created by the Russian artist Peter Carl Fabergé — yes, he of the famous eggs — which today are housed in the Cleveland Museum of Art.”
I scanned the doors again, then my phone, and chewed on a fingertip.
“And I would be wrong not to mention even more exotic uses. For example, this ring from medieval Italy has a hollow core to hold poison, which could be surreptitiously tipped into an enemy’s wine at the feasting table.”
You would like that detail, wouldn’t you, you freaking psychopath.
“In World War II, some Allied agents were issued these buttons” — he flipped to another image — “which, as you can see, contain a miniature compass! And in our own century, hollow buttons have been used to smuggle drugs and diamonds.”
Overcome by impatience and anxiety, I slipped out of my seat and headed for the nearby exit, while Johnson told his audience about koumpounophobia, the fear of the sight, smell and feel of buttons. I pushed the heavy door open and stepped outside, closing it softly behind me, then marched over to where my mother was keeping watch by the other door, her handbag on her lap and her shopping on the bench beside her.