Hot Button

by Kylie Logan

  The pressure of Nev’s hand on my arm increased just enough to reassure me. “It looks that way.”

  “And you think he was murdered, and that the killer—”

  “Well, we don’t know for sure yet, but my gut says it must have been Brad.” Rolling his shoulders, Nev leaned back against the wall. “Thad’s neighbors say Brad went to visit his brother last summer. They remembered because Brad didn’t come around very often. After he left, they don’t remember seeing Thad. I guess that didn’t cause them to be too suspicious because, as you know, Thad was something of a hermit, but hey, he did leave his house once in a while. But nobody saw him come or go after Brad left, not that they can remember, anyway. That was a couple months ago; the timeline is right. And Thad’s credit cards have been used steadily since then. It doesn’t take a leap of logic to figure out that Brad scooped them up and has been living high off the hog. The stuff he’s been charging went way beyond Thad’s credit limit.”

  “Which is why Thad’s charge was declined when Brad tried to use it at Langston’s booth in the dealer room.” This made a whole bunch of sense. “And no doubt, Brad wasn’t paying the charges—”

  “Because he knew there was nothing anyone could do to him. If they were going to come after anyone for the payments, it would be Thad. And Thad was—” The ice machine made another clunky sound and even Nev—seasoned cop that he was—caught the symbolism and made a face. “Obviously, Thad wasn’t able to make the payments. Brad’s plan was probably to float by as long as possible.”

  “And Thad really being Brad… I mean, the Thad who was here really being Brad… That explains it!” Honestly, I would have slapped my forehead if I wasn’t afraid I’d leave an ugly mark. “When I was reading through Thad’s articles about the Geronimo button, his bio said he was a vegan. And yet on the dinner cruise…” I remembered the scene about the meat that had been too overcooked for Thad’s… er, Brad’s… liking. “It explains why he didn’t seem to know very much about buttons. I mean, on the dinner cruise, when Langston said he specialized in supplies, Thad… er, Brad… thought that was some kind of button. It also explains why he didn’t act the way I thought a Western button expert would act, either. I expected a man who was academic and quiet. And I got—”

  “Brad Wyant, pretending to be his brother and acting the way he thought a Western button expert would act. According to the neighbors, Brad didn’t come around unless he needed something. And their phone records don’t show any calls between the brothers. Brad was playing a role, and since he didn’t know Thad all that well, he didn’t realize he was playing it all wrong. Anyone heartless enough to kill his brother and stuff the body in a freezer wouldn’t realize that a man can be an expert at something and not have to wear his ego on his sleeve.”

  Something told me Nev knew a lot about this. He was an expert, too. An expert at crime and investigation and getting people to talk, even when they didn’t always want to. He was an expert at handling the bad guys, and that meant the good people of Chicago could live their lives securely. Nev wasn’t flashy or loud. He wasn’t showy or pushy. Like Thad Wyant—the real Thad Wyant—he didn’t wear his ego on his sleeve.

  There were usually too many wrinkles on Nev’s sleeves to accommodate it, anyway.

  In spite of the fact that we were discussing murder, I found myself smiling. But then, it was hard not to when a sudden thread of warmth tangled around my heart.

  Nev, of course, was completely unaware of what I was thinking. Thank goodness!

  “I got an e-mail this morning,” he said. “Pictures from the state coroner’s office in New Mexico, and I have to say, Thad and Brad, they looked enough alike to be twins even though they were born a year apart. Thad was so reclusive, Brad just naturally thought he could get away with impersonating his brother. He was an actor, remember. Even if he wasn’t a very good one.”

  “Good enough to fool all of us.” I hated to admit it. “He would have gone right on fooling us, too, if he hadn’t been murdered. I guess that was something he never figured on when he came up with his scheme. Whatever it was. It’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean the whole identity thing and…” I gave Nev a look. “You’re sure?”

  “That our Thad is really Brad and that the real Thad is…” Even Nev was having trouble keeping it straight. He wrinkled his nose. “Between us and the police in Santa Fe, we’ve checked fingerprints, and everything matches up. Of course, the people from the medical examiner’s office have taken DNA samples from our victim, but I’m willing to bet—”

  I didn’t know Nev well enough to go into details when it came to discussing what my life had been like with Kaz, but—duh!—he was good at picking up on clues. At that last word, his cheeks got dusky. At least he didn’t patronize me by apologizing. Instead, he went right on.

  “After seeing those pictures from Santa Fe,” he said, “I’m sure of it, and I bet that speck of blood we found in his suite will confirm it. It was Brad Wyant, all right, and he killed his brother and assumed his identity. Whatever he was up to, whatever he was doing with all that cash we found in his room, he figured he could come here to Chicago where nobody knew him and get away with it.”

  I groaned, and because even that wasn’t enough to convey my frustration, I threw up my hands. “It was staring us in the face this whole time, and we never saw it. The way he was acting, it should have sent up a huge red flag. All that hokey talk about varmints and heck; he even called me little lady. Nobody talks like that. Not for real. Nobody but somebody who’s read too many bad scripts for B Westerns.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Josie. Nobody suspected.”

  “But we should have.” I was so sure of this that a muscle jumped at the base of my jaw. “He was a cartoon. The dusty cowboy boots and the hat and those embroidered shirts. He was an actor portraying a button collector. The only question is, why?”

  Nev looked at me hard and that made the pieces click.

  I nodded. “The money. Sure. Of course. The forty thousand dollars you found. Brad Wyant killed his brother and took his place so he could come to the conference and sell whatever it was he was selling. Then Thad Wyant…” A new thought struck, and my shoulders slumped. “I really have made a mess of this conference. Here I thought getting Thad Wyant to come and give our keynote address was a coup. But Thad never agreed to it at all. It must have been Brad who answered my letters. Which explains…” Just thinking about it made me cringe. “I wrote to Thad Wyant more than a year ago,” I explained. “I invited him to the conference. And when I didn’t hear in a couple months, I wrote again. Just in case he hadn’t gotten the first letter. And again, I didn’t hear. Not for months and months, anyway. Then a few months ago, just when I’d pretty much lost all hope, that’s when he responded. And the fact that I invited Thad…” I pressed a hand to my stomach. “It’s my fault Thad is dead. If I’d never invited him—”

  “Oh, no!” Before I could say another word, Nev pulled me into his arms. “I’m not going to let you talk like that,” he said, his mouth close to my ear. “It’s not your fault, understand?” His hands on my shoulders, he pushed me just far enough away to look into my eyes. “You’re not responsible. Not for what Brad Wyant did. He’s the only one who has to answer for that. And he did. Somehow, this crazy charade of his resulted in his murder. It has everything to do with him and nothing to do with you. You get that, don’t you?”

  I did. At least I think I did. It would have been easier to figure out if I wasn’t feeling a little dazed and confused by that hug. I reminded myself this wasn’t the time or the place and got back on track. But then, that wasn’t so hard. A new thought struck, and I sucked in a breath.

  “Then on the cruise, when Beth Howell confronted the man she thought was Thad—”

  “She was really talking to his brother. And he actually might have been telling the truth when he said he didn’t know who she was or what she was angry about.”

  “Which means if she’s our killer…�
� I hated when the universe thumbed its nose at us mere mortals. Especially when a big dose of irony was involved. “She was angry at Thad, and she may have killed the wrong man.”

  “But not an innocent man,” Nev reminded me. “Don’t start feeling sorry for Brad Wyant. There’s Thad’s body in the freezer, remember.”

  Like I could ever forget?

  “So…” This close to Nev, it was impossible to not think about that hug and lose my train of thought, so I stepped back closer to the ice maker, and realizing it, I sidestepped to stand in front of the vending machine. “Maybe, somehow, Beth really did know Thad. I mean, the real Thad. Maybe she knew him years ago, and maybe Brad fooled even her.”

  “Just like he fooled everyone else.”

  “I wonder.” I flipped through my mental Rolodex, remembering the last few days and the button collectors who’d had run-ins with Brad Wyant. “Langston had never met Thad Wyant before,” I said. “If he had, he would have noticed the differences between Thad and Brad for sure. Langston is a details kind of guy. And Helen… She’s been around for years, but she’s never been interested in Western buttons. Even if she had crossed paths with Thad, it would have been years ago, and as you said, the brothers looked an awful lot alike.”

  “That leaves Beth Howell.” Nev pushed away from the wall, and I knew what that meant. Although the cops had been looking for Beth all this time, he was about to initiate a full-court press.

  “And Chase Cadell,” I added. “Let’s not forget him. He and Thad have been rivals for years.” Again, I felt like giving myself a good swift kick in the pants for missing out on the clues. “The man we thought was Thad didn’t blink an eye when he cut in line in front of Chase on Navy Pier before the cruise. They hated each other. You think he would have reacted somehow. And Chase… He and Thad must have met each other in person somewhere along the line. He had plenty of opportunities to see Thad… er, Brad… at this conference. If he noticed anything was off—”

  “Then he might have figured out that the Thad who showed up for the conference wasn’t the person he was supposed to be.”

  “And he might have confronted him and—”

  I was getting way ahead of myself. I knew it, and of course, Nev did, too. Again, he put a hand on my arm, this time to stop my imagination from running away with me. “That still doesn’t explain all that money,” he reminded me.

  “I know. I know.” I marched out toward the lobby and the conference rooms beyond, already scanning the groups of people leaving this hour’s scheduled panels, looking for Chase Cadell. “But it might give us a lead, right? Thad and Chase weren’t what anybody would call old friends. In fact, they were more like old enemies. And something tells me one old enemy might know a whole lot about the other one. A whole lot he might not want to talk about.”

  I HAD NO luck finding Chase at any of the panels scheduled in the next hour, or at lunch, either, and by the time our luncheon crowd was breaking up to head into the afternoon sessions and I’d already called Chase’s room three times and gotten no answer, I was desperate. I was about to pick up the house phone and try his room one more time when Kaz breezed by. He was dressed in those black pants with the crisp crease in them and a killer black-and-gray houndstooth jacket. White shirt. Black tie. Heck, he looked more like the chair of the conference than I did. But then, he didn’t have black smudges of sleeplessness under his eyes, and I did.

  Kaz was pushing the wheelchair of Betty Cartwright, a lovely woman and longtime button collector from Colorado, and he excused himself, asked a nearby conference attendee to take over the Betty duties, and zipped over.

  “What’s up?”

  I hated to think that he knew something was wrong just by looking at me, so I answered noncommittally. “Nothing. Why would you think something is up?”

  “That little crease. Right there.” He tapped his index finger to the spot squarely between my eyes. “I always know when you’re worried about something because that crease shows up. It’s cute.”

  “Being worried is not cute.” He should have known this, since three years of living with Kaz had left me plenty worried plenty of times. I would bet not one of those times was cute by anybody’s definition.

  “Then there’s that little crease. Right there.” This time, he touched his finger to my bottom lip and left it there just long enough for me to taste a hint of the sugar-coated shortbread cookies that had been served after lunch. “Another telltale sign that you’re thinking about something and that whatever it is, you’re not happy about it.”

  I shoved away from the alcove where the house phones were located. “It’s Chase Cadell,” I admitted. “I need to talk to him, and I’ve looked all over the place and he’s not answering his phone and—”

  “That’s because he’s at Cowboy Bob’s.”

  This sort of out-of-left-field comment might have thrown me for a loop coming from anyone else. From Kaz, I knew better than to dismiss it out of hand. “Explain,” I said.

  “Chase and I talked. Last night. He said he was looking for a place he could hang out and relax. You know, a place with a sort of Western atmosphere. I remembered Cowboy Bob’s, north of the city. It’s a great little country-and-western place, and when I saw Chase this morning, I mentioned it, and he said that’s where he was going. You know, to get away from the conference for a while and chill.”

  “And this Cowboy Bob’s is where?”

  Kaz’s face lit with a grin. “No need to ask, little lady,” he said, bowing and sounding a little too much like the fake Thad Wyant for my liking. “I’ll just mosey on over there with you.”

  APPARENTLY, COWBOY BOB’S had risen from the same imagination that spawned Brad Wyant’s skewed stereotypical view of the West. Lots of cowboy paraphernalia (like chaps and spurs and hats) hanging on the walls and from the ceiling fans that spun in slow motion overhead. Hardwood floors coated with a sprinkle of sawdust. Dance floor. Bar along the far wall, complete with bartenders wearing cowboy hats, waitresses in dance-hall-girl getups, and country music wailing from the sound system.

  Oh yeah, it was a little slice of the Old West in Illinois, all right. Or at least a slice of the Old West as people like to imagine it.

  As it happened, though, there was more to Cowboy Bob’s than met the eye. Turns out Kaz was more than willing to mosey on over there with me because in addition to being the mother of all corny honky-tonks, the place featured offtrack betting on horse races, greyhound racing, and jai alai from around the country.

  Let’s be kind and just say I was less than pleased when Kaz went right into the betting room the moment we were in the front door.

  I bit my tongue.

  It was one way to get my mind off the way my stomach suddenly soured.

  And a not-so-gentle reminder that what Kaz did was none of my business. And definitely not my problem.

  Not anymore.

  Chase Cadell, on the other hand, and what he might—or might not—know about the real Thad Wyant, was.

  Steeling myself against the hair-raising high notes of the woman howling a song about her lost love and the rent money he’d taken with him, I squared my shoulders and did my own moseying—right up to the far end of the bar, where Chase was seated on a stool, one hand wrapped around a glass of amber liquid.

  He looked up when I slid onto the stool next to him. “Fancy seeing you here. You come to apologize?”

  When the bartender approached, I signaled that I wasn’t interested in anything at the moment. “Apologize?” I asked Chase.

  “For invitin’ Wyant to be your guest of honor instead of me.” Chase laughed, the sound like sandpaper on gravel. “At least I woulda lived long enough to give your banquet speech.”

  “You’re not upset that Thad’s dead.” Understatement. Yeah, I got that. But sometimes people need to hear the obvious, just to nudge them toward telling the truth.

  Chase was dressed in jeans and a yellow golf shirt with blue embroidery over the heart that said “Pik
e’s Peak Mini-Golf.” So much for the cowboy motif. “Come on, Josie. You know I couldn’t stand the guy.” He sipped his drink, glancing at me over the rim of his glass. “Now you gonna ask me if I killed him?”

  “Did you?”

  “I wish.” He chuckled and coughed and pounded a hand against his chest, and when he was done gagging, he took another drink. “Can’t imagine the whole, entire button world wouldn’t erect a monument in my honor. You know what I mean? Wyant was lower than a snake’s belly and as nasty as a coyote with a migraine. I won’t miss him, that’s for sure.”

  It was early in the afternoon, and the bar was less than crowded. The bartender came by again and, feeling guilty for taking up space and contributing nothing to his wages, I ordered an iced tea. “When was the last time you saw Thad Wyant?” I asked Chase.

  He sucked on his bottom lip for a while; then, done thinking, he propped his elbows on the bar. “You mean before this conference? Dang if I can remember. Twenty, thirty years ago, maybe. It was the first time we met. The last time, too. We was at a button conference in Boise and me, being the charming sort I am…” He gave me a sparkling smile that hinted at the fact that this might actually be true if the subject wasn’t Thad Wyant. “I went up and introduced myself. Wyant was a legend, after all. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to cultivate his friendship and maybe learn a thing or two from him.”

  “And Thad… ?”

  “Blew me off.” Chase harrumphed. “Told me there was no use me even getting into Western collecting because he had a corner on all the good buttons and there was nothing left for an amateur like me to buy. Told me he had a Geronimo button, and you can just imagine the way he said it. I…” Chase sat up and raised his chin, putting on a pretty good fake Thad Wyant accent. “I am the owner of the one, the only, the original Geeronimo button, my friend. Ain’t another one like it in all the world. Not one anybody can authenticate, anyway. You’re just wastin’ your time trying to come up with anything half as interestin’.” Finished with his Thad impersonation, Chase grumbled and took another drink.