Button Holed (4 page)

I watched all this through eyes that were slowly returning to normal, blinked, and figured it was time to make my move. I got to my feet, and it wasn’t until I stuck out my right hand by way of introduction that I remembered I had a fistful of buttons in it. I transferred them to my left, and gave it another try. “Miss Franciscus, it’s so nice to finally meet you in person. I’m Josie Giancola. I’m glad you could—”

My greeting dissolved beneath a look that could have paralyzed multitudes. Kate Franciscus had ebony hair and porcelain skin. She was taller than me, and she was wearing shoes that added four inches to her already impressive height. Somewhere, an alligator was mourning the loss of a fallen comrade. Kate was no bigger around than a thread of angel-hair pasta, and when she looked me over, one perfectly shaped eyebrow lifted ever so slightly. Without glancing at Margot or any of her other anxious minions, she snapped her fingers. “Where the hell is my champagne?”

Margot flinched and jumped into action. She retrieved a crystal flute from her own leather tote, and a container of fresh raspberries. I swear, the dew was still on them. Margot looked to Blake to fetch the champagne, but poor little Wynona was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs and too antsy to keep still. Eager to please, she raced to the silver ice bucket on my desk, scooped up the Dom, and thrust the bottle into Kate’s hands.

A collective gasp went up from the assistants, and at the same time that Margot plucked the cold, wet bottle out of Kate’s hands, she gave me a pleading look and mouthed the words, “Linen towel.”

I didn’t have one, but no worries; there was a roll of Bounty nearby. I’d been using the paper towels to wipe up the fingerprinting powder, the better to keep it from spreading to my inventory. I set down the buttons I was holding, ripped off a paper towel, and handed one to Kate, whose look told me she wasn’t quite sure what so common a thing might be. She was, though, game, and she touched it to her damp hands, tossed the paper towel at Margot, and swiveled a look at Wynona. It would have knocked the kid dead if not for the fact that Wynona was so embarrassed, she refused to meet Kate’s eyes.

“Who are you?” Kate asked.

Wynona was on the spot and she knew it.

And I was hostess of this little party. I reminded myself that one of the jobs of a hostess is to smooth muddles and ruffled feathers, so I stepped forward. “This is Wynona Redfern, Miss Franciscus,” I explained. “She’s your new assistant.”

Apparently, I do not have as trusting of a face as I always thought. Kate swung toward Margot. “Where’s the other one? That Shannon girl?”

“Shawna.” Margot corrected her, but in a way that made it clear it wasn’t important anyway. “Shawna took suddenly ill, and Wynona came along right in time.” She tried for a smile that matched the enthusiasm of her voice. It didn’t work. Margot, ever penitent, cast down her eyes. “I’ll have a talk with Sloan.”

“And I’ll have a talk with Blake,” Sloan chirped from her perch by the wall.

“And you can be sure I’ll have a talk with Wynona,” Blake snapped.

“And now that that’s all taken care of, we can all talk about buttons!”

Was that me sounding like a cheerleader? It’s so not my style, but for the second time in a day that was already feeling too long, I had no choice but to scramble and punt.

I motioned toward the wing chairs near my desk, but it was clear that Kate didn’t make a move unless it was her idea. She held out a hand, and as if by magic, Margot had a raspberry in a flute and the champagne, too. She handed it to Kate, who took an appreciative sip. It wasn’t until she swallowed that she looked my way. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she demanded. “I don’t have all day. Let’s get down to business.”

STAN MARZCAK, WHO lives across the hall from me, has a hairline that receded long ago; a long, thin nose; and a faraway look in his rheumy blue eyes that people who don’t know him mistake for senility. If they paid attention, they would realize that though Stan is old enough to be retired from the Chicago Police Department, he’s nobody’s stereotype of a little old man.

And nobody’s fool.

Sure, Stan always looks like his mind is wandering. Because it is. Usually straight to the heart of a problem.

He proved it once again when he stopped by for coffee the next morning and completely ignored the subject of Kate the Great. I was grateful, and that was no big surprise. My other neighbors had peppered me from the time I walked into my apartment building to the time I went to bed with the usual who, what, when, and what was she wearing questions.

Stan? Not so much. He got right down to business.

“Here’s what’s got me baffled.” He drummed his fingers against my kitchen table, trying to work through the problem. “Why would a couple burglars bother with a place like yours?”

He didn’t apologize for what sounded almost like an insult.

He didn’t need to.

I knew exactly what Stan was getting at. But then, I’d spent all night thinking the same thing. That is, when I wasn’t tossing and turning my way through dreams about a giant in a black leather jacket who was sipping a glass of champagne while he did a flamenco dance atop my button inventory.

“What you’re saying is that there are plenty of other shops in the neighborhood, and any self-respecting burglar would find any one of them more appealing,” I said, and Stan nodded. There was nothing he appreciated more than logic. Except maybe the fact that I was easy to beat at the monthly poker games he hosted.

My finger drumming echoed his. “There are a few doctor’s offices down the street,” I said.

“And doctors always have drugs.”

“And there’s a jeweler two stores down from me.”

“Jewelry.” Stan was on his way over to his weekly senior softball game. He sat back and crossed his arms over his gray uniform shirt. “Jewelry is easy to carry and easy to pawn. No offense, kiddo, but I don’t know a hock shop in the city that would give you fifty cents for a boatload of buttons.”

This, too, was something I’d considered in the hours between flamenco dreams when I couldn’t sleep.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

Understatement.

Stan was nice enough not to point it out.

“So the cops who came to check things out . . . Who did you say they were?”

I’d already told Stan the story, but I wasn’t surprised he asked again. Stan is an all-ducks-in-a-row kind of guy. “Gonzalez,” I said. “And Morzowski. And the guy who dusted for fingerprints was—”

“Don’t know them anymore.” Stan waved away the fact as inconsequential. “Brand-spanking-new college graduates who watch too many cop shows on TV and think that’s what it’s really like to be on the job. Gonzalez, though, I remember him. Good man. Talks too much, but he’s got a head on his shoulders. And he said—”

I shrugged. “What you said. That he couldn’t imagine why any burglar would bother with buttons.” There was one theory that had occurred to me in the wee small hours of the morning, and truth be told, I was rooting for it to be true. If it was, it would mean I had nothing to worry about when it came to running into not-so-jolly giants again.

Which means I’d look like a total doofus if anyone found out I’d pushed my couch against my front door as soon as I’d returned to my apartment the evening of the break-in.

I ran my idea up the flagpole for Stan to consider.

“Unless those two goons were in the wrong place?”

“Possible.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“But not likely.”

My stomach instantly retied itself into a couple dozen knots.

“From what you said, they weren’t punks,” Stan pointed out, working through his reasoning when he saw that I wasn’t able—or willing—to do it myself. “Punks would have taken one look around your place, seen there was nothing there worth stealing, and gotten the hell out of Dodge. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that all you’ve got in that store of yours is buttons, buttons, and more buttons. Or maybe they would have at least grabbed something. Your computer, maybe. Something so that breaking into your place wasn’t a complete waste of time. These guys stuck around. And like you said, they trashed your shop and they assaulted you. You’re not going to know exactly what’s missing until you start sorting those buttons of yours, but whether they made off with some or not, the question is why? What were they doing there in the first place?”

It was the same question that had been pounding through my head for twenty-four hours.

Fortunately, I got a reprieve from all that thumping when I heard my newspaper hit the front door. I went to get it, not so much because I cared what was happening in Chicagoland that morning, but because the familiar action of walking to the front door, opening it, and finding that, as it always did, my paper had bounced halfway between my apartment and Adele Cruikshank’s next door was soothing and ordinary.

Something the last twenty-four hours definitely had not been.

On my way back to the kitchen, I glanced over the front page, confirming to myself that there wasn’t much of anything new in the world that I wanted to know more about, and opened the paper to page two.

“Hey!” A smile cracked the solemn expression I’d been wearing, and I tipped the paper toward Stan so he could see the photo of Kate Franciscus in all her glory there at the top of the page. “Take a look at the headline.
Kate the Great Visits Local Button Emporium
. Cool! I couldn’t pay for advertising like that.”

“Congrats.” Stan drained his cup of coffee. I knew he wouldn’t say yes to a second one, so I didn’t bother to offer. He plucked the newspaper out of my hands, looked at the photo, and whistled low under his breath. “I’d say she looks like a million bucks, only my guess is that a million isn’t nearly enough. She’s some hot number, huh?”

“They don’t come hotter.” I picked up Stan’s coffee mug and took it over to the sink along with my own. “And . . .” Since we’d been focused on the burglary and the subject of Kate hadn’t come up, Stan didn’t know this part of the story. “She’s coming back. Tomorrow evening after the movie is done shooting for the day. She was really taken with a few of the antique porcelain studs I showed her.” I rinsed the coffee mugs, smiling all the while. But then, thinking about buttons always brought out the best in me. “And those jewel buttons I got in a couple months ago,” I added. “You remember, the openwork metal with the faceted center stone surrounded by three diamonds.”

Stan didn’t remember. Or maybe he did and he was so enthralled with the photo of Kate in the paper, he just wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were glued to the picture, and honestly, I guess I couldn’t blame him. Kate was a striking woman. A striking woman who also happened to be the biggest mover and shaker in Hollywood.

I pretended not to be offended that he’d rather look at Kate the Great than listen to me ramble, and just to prove it, I kept right on rambling. “I encouraged her to look at a few old carved ivory buttons, too. At least the ones I could find. She took thirty-six different buttons with her to look at and consider. You know, so the designer she’s flying in from Paris can look them over, too.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure.” Stan’s mind was still a million miles away.

I guess I couldn’t blame him. He was a man, after all, and I mean, what woman on the face of the earth could even begin to compete with Kate the Great? It was small-minded of me to be offended. Which didn’t mean I didn’t deserve a little revenge.

“I think when she comes back, I’ll show her some of the other buttons I keep in that treasure chest I have buried in the back courtyard between my building and the ones on the next street,” I said, as innocent as can be even though I was pulling Stan’s chain. “You know, right near that outdoor pen where I keep the elephants. And that herd of dinosaurs I found roaming in Lincoln Park and brought to the shop with me.”

“Anything you say, kiddo.” Stan closed the newspaper, folded it, and tucked it under his arm. He popped out of his chair faster than any man his age should have been able to. “I’ve got to get going, Josie. See you later. Bye.”

He made it to my front door in record time, and call me crazy, but something told me all this dodging and scrambling was more than simply a sudden case of Kate Franciscus appreciation.

I stepped into his path to keep him from getting away, and looked from Stan to that newspaper tucked securely under his arm.

Securely
being the operative word.

I am not the suspicious type. At least I never had been until Kaz gave me so much to be suspicious of. Now, my suspicion radar triggered, I motioned for the newspaper.

“Hand it over,” I said, and even though Stan gave me a vacant look designed to make me think he was as innocent as the driven snow, I knew he knew what I was talking about; he tightened his grip on the paper.

“I’m going to be late for my softball game. See you later, Josie.”

I let him get past me. All the better to slide the newspaper out from under his arm. “What’s the deal?” I asked at the same time I flipped back to Kate’s picture.

Stan made a move to snatch the newspaper out of my hands. “You don’t want to see that.”