Buttoned Up (Button Box Mystery)

by Logan, Kylie

  “I’d think an anthropologist would have more of an appreciation for the historical significance of buttons. Clothing has always been a reflection of the society in which it was worn.”

  “You don’t need to defend your little shop. I understand completely.” She offered me a smile, but it was hardly enough to make up for the little shop comment.

  My shoulders shot back. “What can I do for you?” I asked her again.

  Evangeline set her purse down on the guest chair in front of my desk. “Actually, I thought maybe I could do something for you.”

  I pressed my lips together. Better that then letting you’ve got to be kidding escape them.

  “I know, I know.” Evangeline waved one hand in a way that told me she knew exactly what I was thinking. “If I were you, I wouldn’t believe I was going to help you, either. I mean, there’s the whole ex thing and the rival thing and—”

  “I’m not an ex and you’re not a rival.” Even though I raised my voice just a tad and stared at her when I said it, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add, “Am I clear?”

  “As crystal.” Her smile was crystalline, too, and nearly as brittle. “I was actually thinking about what you asked when you came to the museum the other day.”

  “The day I was being threatening.”

  “The day I felt uncomfortable, yes. You asked about vudon, and you mentioned a button that you thought was missing from Mr. Parmenter’s exhibit. You wondered if there was any connection.”

  Lesson learned here: Though it is tough, I am actually able to put aside personal animosity when it comes to a case. In fact, I hoped I wasn’t suddenly salivating. “You thought of something?”

  “Not really.” She sashayed past my desk to look at the filigree buttons in the glass-topped display case nearby.

  Yes, it was one-upsmanship, but I couldn’t help myself. I strolled over there, too. “Someone once described filigree as lace made with gold and silver threads,” I said. “They’re intricately made with whorls of metal.”

  “Yes. Filigree.” Studying the buttons, Evangeline nodded. “From the Latin filum, which means thread, and granum, which means seed.”

  I pretended this wasn’t news. “As you can see, filigree buttons come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. There are domed.” I pointed. “And some shaped like rectangles. Some that are shaped like flowers, even some realistics. They’re quite beautiful.”

  “Expensive?”

  “That all depends on what you think is expensive.” I crossed my arms over my pink blouse and leaned back against the display case. “And why you’re really here. I asked if you’d thought of something and you said you hadn’t. So why—”

  Evangeline tossed her head. “I didn’t think of it. But your visit got me thinking. I did some research. Well, actually, I did a lot of research.”

  “Why?”

  Her sparkling laugh was nearly lost beneath the next boom of thunder. “Well for one thing, I’m insatiably curious, especially when it comes to vudon. The button you mentioned wasn’t anything I’d ever heard of and I wondered if the story could possibly be true and, if it was, how I’d missed hearing about it or reading about it. For another—”

  “You certainly didn’t do all that research to help me.”

  “No. I did it to help Nev.”

  “Then why don’t you tell Nev what you found out?”

  “Oh, I will.” She touched a hand to her sparkly dress and I don’t think I was being overimaginative; she was sending the message that she was meeting Nev, that she had dressed carefully and spectacularly just for him.

  I ignored it. “The button?” I asked.

  “Yes, well . . . like I said, I’ll tell Nev, but I thought you should know, too, since you’re the button expert. I thought once you knew what I found out, you might want to stop back at the museum and look through my research.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, I thought—”

  “No, I mean why are you doing this for me? Why share the glory with me?”

  “Oh, that.” She slipped into her raincoat. “I just thought you should know, that’s all.”

  “Know?”

  Evangeline sauntered to the door. “What you’re getting into, of course.”

  I refused to play the game; I stood my ground. “What exactly am I getting into?”

  “The button.” She already had her hand on the door and she turned back to me. “I found some mention of it in an old journal that belonged to a houngan.”

  This was one instance where I didn’t mind showing my ignorance. “Houngan?”

  “A vudon priest, and just so you know before you get creeped out, the houngan works for good. It’s a bokor, a sorcerer, who does evil work like casting curses.”

  “But in this case . . . is the button the one I saw the night of the show?”

  “I can’t say for sure.” Thunder underscored Evangeline’s words. “But in his journal, the houngan talks about a button. A very special button. And remember, many of the enslaved people who eventually worked the plantations on Jekyll and other Barrier Islands were originally from Haiti. Many of them were French-speaking. The houngan certainly was. In his journal, he talks about what he calls le Bouton De Malheur, the Button of Doom.”

  The tingle that ran through my body had nothing to do with the electricity flashing through the air. I hugged my arms around myself. “What does it mean?” I asked Evangeline.

  “I don’t know for sure. I’ll have to do more research, but if le bouton Mr. Parmenter was talking about is the same as le Bouton de Malheur . . . Well, the houngan is quite clear about that. He says that any person who is given the button will meet a quick and ugly death.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You don’t really believe in this crazy button of Doom thing, do you?”

  Yes, me asking for Evangeline’s opinion was a little surreal (not to mention disturbing), but hey, she’d invited me to stop in at the museum and talk to her—about the button, about Forbis, and about vudon. Whether it was weird, or uncomfortable, or humiliating (and it was all those things), I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to ferret out more information regarding the case. Evangeline may not have all the answers, but even if she had just some of them, I would be (gulp) grateful.

  “I don’t know if it matters what you and I believe.” When I arrived at her office on that Saturday morning, Evangeline had offered me tea, and now she poured from a pretty blue ceramic pot. “You must add some of this.” She pushed a small jar of amber honey across her desk to me. “It really brings out the flavors of this herbal tea.”

  She was right.

  Oh, how I hated to admit it.

  I sat back to savor my tea and took a moment to glance around her office. It was pretty basic: two walls of shelves filled with books, a desk stacked with more books, a couple exotic (were they vudon?) carvings set here and there. Did Gabriel hand me a line when he said he’d broken into the office to look around during my last visit to the museum? I’d like to think so. In fact, I would have convinced myself the story was nothing more than macho preening if it wasn’t for the picture hanging on the wall behind Evangeline’s desk. A photo of a garage. Matted and framed and hung in a place of honor. The same photo Gabriel had shown me and thought was so intriguing simply because it was so mundane.

  “That’s an interesting picture!” Three cheers for me, I managed to keep the saccharine out of my voice way better than Evangeline had the night before when she strolled around the Button Box and complimented me on my cute little shop. “Does that building have some significance to you?”

  As if she had to be reminded what I was talking about, Evangeline glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, that. The photograph was left here by Dr. Roddy, the man who had this office before me. I have no idea what the building is. One of these days I need to find a picture I really like. Then I’ll hang the new one and take down this old one. Until then, I suppose I should be smart and create some sort of storyline to go alo
ng with the picture because people always ask. Maybe I should say the building is part of the old family homestead.”

  “Or there’s treasure buried beneath it.”

  Too late, we both realized we’d actually relaxed enough to laugh together, and we clamped our mouths shut.

  “So . . .” In an effort to look casual, I sipped my tea. “You were saying . . . about the Button of Doom.”

  “Le Bouton de Malheur, yes.” Evangeline had long, slim fingers and she wrapped them around her teacup and sat back. “I was saying that what the two of us believe probably doesn’t matter in the least. In fact, what the whole world believes may not matter. Maybe all that counts is what Forbis Parmenter believed.”

  “You mean about the button and the vudon connection and the legend that says if you’re given the button you’re going to die. If Forbis was a believer in vudon—”

  “No. Not possible.” Evangeline’s mouth thinned. “If he was, he never would have ridiculed the religion like he did.”

  “So you don’t think the exhibit was some sort of tribute to vudon. It was—”

  “A joke!” Evangeline’s top lip curled. “No man who claims to respect a religion would take its sacred implements and cover them with buttons. No offense intended,” she added after it was already too late. “But you know what I mean.”

  “That buttons are commonplace, and covering things like sacred altars and drums—”

  “And the loa. Don’t forget the loa. No man who had reverence for those things would put them on display like that. Parmenter was pretty much asking for people to poke their fingers at his work and laugh.”

  “Or he was showing that something as unglamorous as a button could become part of something sacred and mysterious.”

  Another lip curl, and I knew what it meant. I could throw out all the theories I wanted, but it was obvious, at least to Evangeline, that I had no basis for even trying to offer an opinion on a subject I knew so little about.

  “So you think he was dissing vudon.” I finished the last of my tea and Evangeline refilled my cup. When I reached for the honey, she smiled. “Do you think someone might have taken offense to that? That some practitioner—”

  “Vudon is an ancient religion that originated in Africa. And the particular brand of it practiced on the Barrier Islands never had many believers to begin with. If you’re asking me if someone who believed in vudon might have killed Parmenter, I’d say it was unlikely. Then again . . .” Thinking, she cocked her head. “As an anthropologist, I’ve seen it over and over . . . old beliefs don’t always die out, even when the modern world thinks they have.” She shook her shoulders. She was wearing a lightweight sweater and pants the same color as her ebony hair. “I know Nev has already talked to members of the Haitian community on the north side. There, they call the religion vodou. That’s spelled v-o-d-o-u. It’s similar, to vudon, yes, but there are differences between its beliefs and those we think of when we think of New Orleans voodoo. There are differences between vodou and vudon, too. That might explain why none of the Haitians claim to know anything about a Button of Doom.”

  “That’s too bad.” My comment did double duty. It was too bad we couldn’t learn any more from the Haitians, and worse if what Evangeline said was true. If Nev investigated the vudon/vodou connection on his own . . . if he never even bothered to tell me about it . . . if he never shared what he’d learned with me . . . if he had consulted Evangeline instead . . .

  “I said, don’t you think that was very smart of Nev?”

  I shook away the bitter thoughts that filled my head and popped back to the matter at hand. “Very smart,” I said. “But then, he’s that kind of guy.”

  “Always has been,” Evangeline commented.

  I shifted in my seat and decided to get back to what we were supposed to be talking about. “What you said, about Forbis not being a believer in vudon . . . Even if he didn’t practice the religion, he might have heard the story of the Button of Doom, right?”

  “Parmenter was how old?” Evangeline asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I’d say he was close to eighty.”

  “And eighty years ago . . .” She rummaged through the books on top of her desk and when she didn’t find what she was looking for, she got up and scanned the bookshelves. She came back carrying a slim volume with a beat-up red leather cover and she flipped through its pages. “Yes. Here.” She pointed to a page, but even though I sat up and leaned forward, she didn’t turn the book around so I could see what she was talking about.

  “This monograph talks about the lives of the last remnants of the vudon community. They were the descendants of the enslaved people who once worked on the plantations on the islands. Once the slaves were emancipated, many of them left the islands, but some stayed and set up small farmholds of their own. The last of the community dispersed back in the 1940s.”

  “When Forbis would have been a young man.”

  Evangeline snapped the book shut. “I’ve studied the oral story traditions of the Barrier Islands and I’ve heard people talk about how the descendants of the enslaved people and the descendants of the plantation owners would mingle from time to time. And no doubt a family with money like Parmenter’s had cooks and cleaning people, and they were probably descendants of believers in vudon. Perhaps they were practitioners themselves. I’d say it’s very possible that a young man of Parmenter’s artistic sensibilities would be interested in the culture and in the stories those people told.”

  “Like the story about the Button of Doom.”

  Evangeline nodded. “If he knew the story, if he believed it—”

  “And if he saw the button on one of his pieces, and he knew he didn’t put it there—”

  “It would explain why he got so upset at the art show opening.”

  Oh, how I hated to agree with her! But hey, I’m a big girl. And I can actually act like one when the situation calls for it. “He was startled.”

  “He was frightened.”

  “And as it turns out, it was for good reason. And once Forbis was dead . . .” I thought through this piece of the puzzle. “Whoever put the button on the loa box in the first place took the button with him. That would explain why the button underneath it was tacky.” Evangeline didn’t know this part of the story so I filled her in. “Whoever wanted to scare Forbis didn’t want us to find the button because it would have been a clue.”

  “If the button you remember really is le Bouton de Malheur.”

  If.

  Such a small word and so many possibilities.

  I reached in my purse and retrieved my drawing of the button, smoothing it out on Evangeline’s desk. “This is what I remember the button looked like. I don’t suppose any of your books has a picture of the button.”

  “Not a photograph.” The book she wanted was at the top of the pile on her desk and Evangeline flipped it open next to my drawing. “This is what I discovered, how I learned about the Button of Doom in the first place.” She poked one finger against the black and white drawing in the book. It showed a button much like the one I’d seen on the art piece.

  “These figures . . .” I ran a finger over the symbols incised on the button. “I thought they were letters of some sort.”

  Evangeline glanced at my drawing. “Yes, you used wavy lines to indicate them.”

  I leaned forward for a better look at the drawing in the book. “But they’re not letters. Not from our alphabet, anyway. Do you know what they mean?”

  Evangeline turned the book around for another look. “There’s little written history of the vudon culture. Myths and legends, stories and prayers were passed down from generation to generation orally. Part of the reason, of course, was because many slaves were illiterate. But there’s more to it than that. Vudon was sacred. And secret. If its beliefs were written, they could be discovered by the slave owners, and practitioners couldn’t risk that. They valued their beliefs too much.”

  “What you’re tell
ing me is that you don’t know what those symbols mean.”

  Evangeline closed the book. “Sorry. I wish I could be of more help.”

  “You’ve helped.” I finished my tea and stood. “There’s a lot I need to talk about with Nev.”

  A slow smile brightened Evangeline’s expression when she stood, too, and walked me to the door. “Don’t bother,” she crooned. “I’ve already filled him in. About everything.”

  • • •

  The headache came back full force that Saturday night, and by the next day, there was no doubt what was going on—I had the flu. Yes, I know . . . the flu in summer? Hey, it might be rare, but tell that to my pounding head, my achy muscles, and a fever that spent the day hovering around one hundred and one.

  I followed the rules and drank plenty of fluids. I turned off my phone, stayed in bed, and slept for hours, sure that if I laid low, I’d be fine by Monday morning.

  I wasn’t. In fact, I felt even worse. I dragged myself into the Button Box anyway. There was no way I could ask Stan to cover for me again, not on a day when he had a senior softball game scheduled, and besides, I didn’t want to scare him off. We had an agreement, yes, but if I started taking advantage of him and cramping his retiree lifestyle, he’d change his mind about helping out at the shop. And I wouldn’t blame him.

  Lucky for me, it was Monday, and not a busy day. I made tea and sipped it to soothe my burning throat, and except for the time I had to come out of hiding and wait on a customer who wanted buttons for a scrapbooking project, I pretty much stayed in the back room.

  It was quiet in there, and since the room had no windows, the sunlight that streamed through my front display window had no way to sneak in and hurt my eyes. Not that I could keep my eyes open. It wasn’t even noon and I was so tired, I couldn’t think straight. Sure I’d hear the little brass bell above the front door if a customer came calling, I laid my head down on the worktable.