Button Holed (25 page)

“It’s just as well you never hooked up with Rand,” Betty said. She kept her voice low enough not to be heard at the bar. “Betcha even with the tips you get over at the salon, you couldn’t keep up with his bar tab. I swear, I don’t know where that man gets his money. Says he works hard over at that gas station of his, but it’s hardly ever open, and I never see him do hardly a lick of auto-repair work. He’s always off huntin’ or fishin’. And did you see that new truck of his out in the parking lot? Is there a female version of a sugar daddy? That would explain everything. Maybe Rand’s got a sugar mama!” She squealed with laughter, then clamped both her hands over her mouth, just in case Rand might know what she was laughing about.

“So this Rand . . .” I glanced over my shoulder again and saw that Rand was lost in his own world, his hands clutched around a rocks glass and his gaze on the amber liquid in it. “He and Lois . . .”

“Oh, they were an item!” Sharon giggled. “Remember how Lois got put on suspension in eighth grade?” she asked her friends. “Mrs. Greer, she found Lois and Rand out on the playground together when Lois should have been in class and Rand should have been over at the high school. They was behind the bushes by the softball field doing . . . well . . . you know!” Her face flushed a color that matched the flashing scarlet beer sign over her left shoulder.

Interesting, from an oh-my-gosh-what-is-the-world-coming-to standpoint, but off subject. I gently nudged us back in the right direction. “So Lois and Rand were dating, and Lois was in your class, so she got a set of the buttons, too. But she couldn’t make it here tonight, so what can any of you tell me about her buttons?”

One by one, they either shrugged or shook their heads. “Nobody’s seen Lois in years,” Homer said. “Since that summer right after graduation, in fact.” He leaned closer. “Been stories that Rand there, he killed her and buried her out behind his shed.”

I was appropriately shocked and didn’t even try to hide it. “Do you believe it?”

Homer waved to the bartender for another round of beers. “Her parents never did. That’s for sure. I mean, they never called the sheriff or anything. I know that for a fact, ’cause my ma, she was the dispatcher for the sheriff’s department then.”

“But then . . .” Tiffany had her purse open. She peered into a tiny mirror, added another coating of lipstick, and looked at Kaz before she smacked her lips together. “From what I hear, those parents of hers, they didn’t much care if Lois was here or gone. My mama always said Lois was raised by wolves. Those parents of hers was heartless and thought they was better off without her.”

“Which means we have no idea what happened to Lois’s buttons.”

Nobody else caught the undercurrent of despair in my voice except Kaz. He tossed me enough of a look to commiserate before he went back to sliding his gaze between Tiffany and Betty. Betty? Honestly? The woman had to be forty-five. A well-preserved forty-five, sure, but forty-five nonetheless.

Fortunately, our dinners arrived, and the burgers were far more appetizing than my current train of thought. I waited until we’d all finished (it took Sharon a while, but then it’s hard to eat a burger without teeth) before I made my next move. “So your buttons . . .” Tiffany’s were still on the table and I made sure my hands were perfectly clean before I put a reverent finger on them. “Like Kaz told you when he contacted you this afternoon, if any of you are interested in selling, I’m more than interested in buying.”

“My wife would kill me,” Mike said. “Not a chance!” Gil and Homer and Sharon and Ron and Betty all nodded in agreement.

Which left Tiffany.

She hesitated.

I was already prepared to offer a more-than-fair amount, and I wondered if it would sweeten the pot if I threw Kaz into the deal.

She didn’t give me the chance.

“I’m not ready to make a decision,” she said, scooping up the buttons and stowing them back in the plastic bag. “Not right at this very moment, anyway. But I will think about it and maybe we can . . . negotiate.”

Do I need to say she wasn’t looking my way when she said this?

I wasn’t sure if I was more disappointed or disgusted. I told myself neither emotion was going to get me anywhere, thanked everyone for coming, and as they were just getting up to leave, asked, “What about Lois’s parents? Do they still live nearby?”

“I see them around,” Homer said. “They live in that house on the street that backs right up to the high school, the house with the big oak tree in the front yard.” He grinned. Which made me think that Homer was pretty savvy. At least when it came to buttons. “You think maybe they got Lois’s buttons and they’ll be willing to sell?”

“Well, I’d certainly like to know,” I said and gave Kaz a meaningful look. “I mean, I’d like to know if they have Lois’s buttons.”

That was a good enough answer to satisfy them. One by one, I thanked everyone and wished them good-night, and they left. Homer was last out, and I’d just barely said good-bye to him when Kaz walked over to the bar. I opened my mouth to tell him I really wasn’t in the mood to hang around, then snapped it shut again when I saw that he’d gone over to sit next to Rand Jones.

With a look, Kaz told me to keep quiet; he’d do the talking. “Buy you a drink?” he said to Rand.

This close, Rand smelled like cigarettes and motor oil. He sat back, sniffed, and looked Kaz up and down. “Don’t know you.”

“Not yet.” Kaz signaled the bartender. I slid onto the bar stool on one side of Rand. Kaz took the one on the other side. “We’re visiting Bent Grove and—”

“And you been talkin’ to all them losers who were in school together.” He glanced at the mirror behind the bar, and from where we sat, I could clearly see the table where we’d had dinner with the class of 1987. “What do you want?”

The bartender deposited two shots in front of Kaz. He slid one Rand’s way. “Just a little information,” Kaz said.

Rand downed the whiskey. “About what?”

Since Kaz was busy slugging down his own shot, it gave me a chance to get in on the conversation. “Lois Buck.”

Rand wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. “Don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on!” I’d already sat up, all set to challenge him, when Kaz signaled me to shut up.

“I must have misunderstood Tiffany,” he said. His smile was all about keeping things light and casual. “We were talking over there . . .” He tipped his head back toward our dinner table to make it clear that he knew Rand knew who we were talking to. “And she said she used to be crazy about you. And Lois stole you away.”

“Oh, that Lois.” Even though Kaz didn’t offer it, Rand signaled for another shot. “Haven’t seen her in years. Nobody has.” He drank down this shot as quickly as the first. “You gonna ask me if I killed her? I know for sure those losers you were havin’ dinner with mentioned it. Everybody knows that story.”

“Don’t be silly.” I could be cool and casual, too. Yes, I’d been told to keep quiet, but I figured one pointed question wasn’t going to hurt. “Do you suppose her parents know where she is?” I asked Rand. I did not add, “and her buttons.” But then, Rand didn’t look like the type who would care about buttons.

He laughed so hard, he started to cough. “You can surely ask,” he said, pounding his chest. His smile made my skin crawl. “But I’m tellin’ you now, lady, you’re wastin’ your time. I can guarantee you . . . Red and Masie Buck, they got no idea where their little girl’s gone to.”

I WAS GOING to tell Kaz about the burglar at the fair on the way back to the motel, but I never had a chance. For one thing, we were too busy going over everything we’d learned from the class of 1987. It wasn’t much, but there were some interesting details to consider, the most important of which was that Lois seemed to be our only hope. If all the other buttons were accounted for, then maybe one of Lois’s was the one I’d found at the scene of the crime.

Unless Granny Maude had made who-knew-how-many-other hawk buttons and kept them for herself. Or sold them. Or given them to Halloween trick-or-treaters.

If I sound sullen, it’s because I was. I felt as if we were getting nowhere with the case. That was problem number one. Then there was also the fact that in between discussing our case, Kaz asked me what I thought of Tiffany. And Betty.

He had to be kidding, right?

My mood thoroughly soured, I didn’t confess how nervous I was knowing the big guy in black was in Bent Grove. Instead, when we got back, I took a good look around my motel room, and once I said good-night to Kaz and locked the door, I pushed the couch in front of it. My car was parked right outside, and for the second night in a row, Kaz was sleeping in it. If anyone tried to kick down my door or smash through my window, he’d hear for sure, and he could have his chance to play Superman.

We’d decided to visit the Bucks the next day, so once I was up and dressed, I fully expected Kaz to come knocking, asking to use the shower.

All the more reason I was surprised when he finally did show up and he looked as fresh as the proverbial daisy.

“You ready?” he asked me. “I’m starving. Let’s get out of here and get breakfast.”

“You don’t want to . . .” I looked toward the bathroom.

“Let’s get going and talk to these people.” He grabbed my keys from the bedside table and headed out to the car.

We were almost there when I stopped and sniffed the flowery scent that perfumed the air.

“Is that—?” I bit off my question because I already knew the answer.

What I smelled all over Kaz was either gardenias.

Or roses.

Either way, I didn’t want to know.

Chapter Sixteen

“CAN’T FIGURE WHY ALL OF A SUDDEN, PEOPLE IS SO worried about Lois and those infernal buttons.”

These were the first words spoken to us by Masie Buck after we got to her front door, introduced ourselves, and told her why we were there, and hearing them, I perked right up.

Just in case he missed the significance of the comment, I poked Kaz in the ribs with my elbow to get his attention. He’d been preoccupied (and humming softly to himself, by the way) since we left the Debonair, and I really, truly did not want to know who—or what—he was thinking about. “Someone else has been here asking about Lois? And the buttons?” My throat tightened around a ball of anticipation, and I squeaked, “Who?”

Masie was a beefy woman with faded red hair and a tattoo of a butterfly on her upper left arm. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and her jeans weren’t zipped. It was already close to noon when we rang the bell at the house behind the high school, but I had a feeling we’d woken her up.

That might explain why she wasn’t quite getting it. “Who what?” she asked.

I stifled a groan of exasperation, the better to keep my smile firmly in place. “Who came by and asked about Lois and the buttons?”

“Ain’t seen Lois in years. And good riddance to her.” Masie was half in and half out of the front door, and from where I stood facing her, I could see into the living room. It was just as well we hadn’t been invited inside. The place was a pack rat’s dream, a maze of boxes and stacks of newspapers. A black-and-white cat darted between Masie’s legs and raced across the porch and down the front steps. “Girl was never nothin’ but trouble from day one. Never did a lick of work around here. All’s she ever cared about was party, party, party. Surprised she even made it out of the eighth grade.”

“And after that . . . That’s when she disappeared.” Since I had no children, there was no way I could fully understand a mother’s love. Still, it was impossible to imagine that any parent wouldn’t still be frantic, even after all these years. “You never heard from Lois after that? Aren’t you worried?”

“Sheriff come around when school started that year. Somebody there musta wondered where Lois was. They looked.” She shrugged. “The way I figure it, if she was dead somewhere, we woulda got her body back by now.” Masie took a step back into the living room and the door inched shut.

I knew we were going to lose her if I didn’t act fast.

I wedged my tennis shoe against the inside of the door. “So that other person who was here asking about Lois . . . ?”

“Wasn’t nobody here. I never said there was. Don’t you young people pay any attention? A man called a few days back and asked about Lois, of all people. Never said who he was or why he wanted to know, but he asked about them buttons of hers, too. Just like you did. He the one who sent you?”

“That’s right.” Needless to say, a lie that smooth and easy could only flow from Kaz’s lips. At least it proved he was paying attention and not lost in thoughts about . . . whatever. “He asked us to stop by and—”

“Told him already, told him I didn’t know nothin’ about them buttons, and he said to take some time, like, and think on it some more. Damn if I’m gonna waste my time on such nonsense. That’s what I told him. But I guess the mind, it’s a funny thing. There I was last night, just sittin’ and watchin’
American Idol.
That’s when I remembered.”

“You found Lois’s buttons?” I sucked in a breath to calm my suddenly racing heart. Sure, another piece of the puzzle that was Kate Franciscus’s murder might be chunking into place right before my very eyes, but let’s face it, I had other things to be excited about. It was obvious Masie Buck didn’t give a damn even about her own daughter, so unlike the people we’d met at the Dew Drop, she might not give a damn about the buttons, either. That meant . . .