Hot Button (27 page)

Who?

I could see a dim reflection of myself in the glass, and the me looking back at me was clearly confused, nose wrinkled and mouth pulled up at one corner.

Like anybody could blame me? I’d been expecting Donovan to name Beth Howell because… Well, because it wouldn’t explain everything, but it would at least explain why he’d been outside the Button Box with her and why she wasn’t around by the time Stan and Kaz found me in the courtyard.

“Who’s Jenny Tucker?” I asked under my breath at the same time Nev voiced the same question to Donovan.

He ran a hand through his golden hair. “You know her as Beth Howell.”

“Aha!” This was me, of course, because Nev was way too professional for that kind of response.

He made a note on the legal pad on the table in front of him. “And why is Jenny Tucker going under an assumed name?” he asked.

Donovan shrugged. He was still wearing that goofy orange-and-brown-plaid sport coat, and on a guy as incredibly
handsome as he was, it looked like somebody’s warped version of a Halloween costume. I suppose in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what it was. “Mom wasn’t sure if the list of registered attendees would be published before the start of the conference. When she signed up, she didn’t want to use her real name and take the chance that Thad Wyant might see it.”

Nev tapped his pen against the pad in a sort of Morse code message that told Donovan that although it was a start, that wasn’t nearly enough of an explanation.

The rapping got to Donovan in no time flat. He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. Inside that oh-so-not-chic sport coat, his shoulders sagged. “You see,” he said, “Thad Wyant is… Well, I guess I should say
was
. Thad Wyant was my father.”

Whoa!

I actually jumped back, and though I was sure Nev was just as surprised by this news as I was, I was amazed that he managed to keep his poker face in place. He took a note before he glanced up at Donovan. “Explain.”

Donovan’s mouth puckered. “There’s not much to explain, Detective. Unless you’re not familiar with the birds and the bees?”

Something told me he was going for funny. It was the same something that told me he should have known better.

A police interrogation room is the last place for trying out one-liners.

Apparently, Nev felt the same way. As if he was moving in slow motion, he got to his feet, his hands braced against the table. He leaned down so that his nose was even with Donovan’s, and though the sound from the speaker in there was crystal clear, I had to strain to hear Nev.

“Attempted murder isn’t funny,” he growled, and I
learned a lesson. Even a guy in a Cubs T-shirt could be intimidating. If it was the right guy. “Neither is the real thing. And right now, Mr. Tucker, you’re looking good for both.”

Donovan’s bravado melted like an iceberg in tropical waters. “M… m… my mother used to be a button collector,” he stammered. “She… she met Thad thirty-six years ago at a button conference, and they had a fling. When she told him she was pregnant, he said she must be mistaken, that there was no way the baby—me—that there was no way I could be his son. Like I said, that was thirty-six years ago, and after I was born, well, she says she tried contacting him, but he was such a hermit, she could never find him. Then she heard about this convention and how he was coming to be the guest of honor. She saw this as her opportunity to finally confront Thad, face-to-face.”

“Which explains their showdown on the lake cruise,” I mumbled at the same time Donovan cried out, “That doesn’t mean she killed him.”

“Nobody said it did.” Nev, the voice of reason. “But you’ve got to admit, she must have been pretty darned angry.”

Donovan shrugged. “Who wouldn’t be? The scumbag ran out on her when she needed him the most. He refused to acknowledge me as his kid. All she wanted was what he owed her, what he owed me. You know, back child support. It’s not like she wanted that stupid Geronimo button or anything. She just wanted… you know…”

Nev leaned forward. “I don’t.”

Another shrug, and by this time, I almost felt sorry for Donovan Tucker. Sure, he was a slimy filmmaker who’d infiltrated our conference for the sole purpose of finding people to poke fun at. And yes, he’d taken a cheap shot
(literally) at me that had left me with stars in my eyes and my head feeling as if there were elephants in there doing a Zumba workout. But it was obvious the poor guy was scared to death, and worried about his mom, to boot.

I know … I know … That didn’t mean he wasn’t our murderer.

I told myself not to forget it and waited to see what would happen next.

“It was her pride,” Donovan said. “Mom just wanted him to admit he was my father so that she could walk away with her pride intact. She wanted what was legally hers. All those payments he’d dodged all these years. On that cruise the first night we were in town, he told her he didn’t even remember her. Imagine how that must have hurt her.”

Still waters really do run deep, and it turns out Nev had a bit of showman in him. He timed his next comment down to the second. “You know,” he said, dropping back into his chair. “You killed the wrong man.”

Donovan’s mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about? Thad Wyant—”

“Wasn’t lying that night on the cruise when he said he didn’t know your mother. That’s because Thad Wyant—the real Thad Wyant—has been dead for weeks. That was his brother, Brad. He was here in Chicago pretending to be Thad.”

“But… why?”

“Doesn’t much matter, does it?” Nev scribbled another note on his legal pad. Donovan hadn’t said anything especially interesting, so I suspected it was a stall tactic.

It worked.

As if the gray plastic padding were on fire, Donovan shifted in his seat. “Whoever he was, I certainly didn’t kill him. And my mother didn’t, either!”

“She had the perfect motive. Thirty-six years, did you say? Thirty-six years of resentment. And anger. Then we start asking questions, and she lures Ms. Giancola into that courtyard and—”

“No! That was my idea. See…” As if weighing the wisdom of saying anything else, Donovan drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I suppose you’re going to find out anyway, so I might as well tell you. The night of the banquet, when I went out to the lobby to take that phone call… I saw my mom out there.”

“Which is why you made up the story about Thad Wyant arguing with a man in a raincoat.”

“It is,” Donovan admitted. “But that’s just because I figured if you were looking for the guy in the raincoat, you’d be too busy to find out about my mom. Just because I lied about that doesn’t mean she killed Wyant, though. Just because she was in the lobby the same time he was… There were other people in the lobby, too.”

His voice was so sincere that even I couldn’t fail to catch the drift of what Donovan refused to say. I may not have had the nerve to voice my suspicions. For Nev, it was part of his job description.

“You were trying to divert suspicion because you thought she really had killed Wyant.”

Donovan’s gaze snapped to Nev. “I may have considered it. Briefly. I mean, it seemed logical. Just for a moment. But then I thought about it and… You don’t know her. She’s not that kind of person.”

“But she is the kind of person who’s careful to avoid the cops. And who can get talked into leaving town when things start getting hot. That’s what she was planning, right?”

“I told you. That was my idea. And she wouldn’t have done it at all except…” His cheeks got dusky. “You’re right.
I admit it. I was worried that Mom killed Wyant. She had plenty of reasons. Plenty of good reasons. But it turns out…” Donovan looked away. “She couldn’t have done it, because it turns out she thought I did.”

“Sounds like you had plenty of reason to hate Wyant, too. Did you?”

“Kill him? No. I told you. No. Before that night on the cruise, I didn’t even know who my father was. She never told me, see. She said he was a deadbeat. And that she’d met him at some sort of convention. But before I heard them talking on the cruise, I never knew anything more than that.”

“So you’re innocent. And so is your mother.” Nev said it like there was just the vaguest possibility it was true. “So how did you get so wrapped up in this whole thing?”

“Well, there’s my film, for one thing.” For the first time since they’d walked into the interrogation room, Donovan’s eyes glowed with excitement. “I couldn’t walk away. Not from something this big. I mean, when I did the brick collectors, sure, that was all like, you’ve got to be kidding! And it was that way when I made the film about the PEZ collectors, too. But this time, I had the magic combination. Crazy collectors and murder. I had to keep filming. And when Mom called me from outside the Button Box, she told me she was thinking about going to the police. Not to confess or anything. Like I said, she didn’t do anything. She just thought she would talk to you guys, you know, and explain about how Thad was my father and…” He scraped his hands through his hair.

“I couldn’t let that happen,” Donovan said. “Not before I finished filming. I had to talk to Mom and convince her to leave town. That’s what I was trying to do outside the button shop. Then, when Josie walked into that courtyard, I just reacted. You know? There was a broom nearby; somebody
must have been doing cleanup back there. And I just grabbed it and… and I clunked Josie over the head. But other than that, honest, I’ve never hurt another person in my life. I just wanted to help my mother. That’s all. I wanted to protect her.”

“And before she left, she gave you those buttons? The ones Brad brought to Chicago with him?”

Donovan nodded.

So did Nev. “She probably figured they were worth a pretty penny, and she could sell them and finally get back some of what she thought Thad owed her.”

Donovan fisted his hands and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe. But I don’t know how she got those buttons. She didn’t tell me. She gave them to me outside the Button Box, said she didn’t want the cops to find them, not before she could get them to a lab for testing. There was a little drop of blood on one of the mat boards, see, and my mom, she watches too much TV. She thought she could use it to prove Thad was my father.”

Interesting. All of it. But it paled in comparison to Nev’s lieutenant walking into the room to join me.

“You’re that button expert, right?” He was holding the evidence bags that contained the two sets of buttons and provenance papers we’d also found in Donovan’s suitcase. “This ought to be right up your alley. The guys down in the lab, they tell me these babies are phony.”

I
COULDN’T SLEEP
that night.

For one thing, Kaz said his nerves were so shot from being worried about me that he had a couple beers after he and Stan closed up the Button Box. And beer always makes Kaz snore.

Yes, he was on the couch out in the living room of my suite.

Yes, I was in the bedroom, and the door was closed (and just for the record, locked, too).

But there was no way I could sleep with all that noise.

And that didn’t even count all the racket inside my head.

Donovan Tucker, his mother, Brad Wyant, phony Geronimo buttons.

If I hadn’t had a headache before, I surely would have after Lieutenant Daniel Kane delivered the news.

Not that the buttons themselves were phony. I mean, they were real buttons, obviously, and one look and I knew they were also old.

It was the provenance papers that told the tale.

“The guys at the lab are sure of it.” The next morning, Nev and I were talking over coffee in my suite. Unlike Kaz, who’d been up and moving early and had left to go downstairs a half hour before Nev arrived, I hadn’t mustered the energy to even get dressed. I’d bet anything I looked like a fright with my hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing my flannel sleep pants and an old Bears T-shirt. Honestly, I was in no mood to care, and Nev was so intent on discussing the case, I don’t think he even noticed.

“The lab techs explained it all had to do with the ink,” Nev said, stirring three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and downing it fast. “The papers we found in the trash can a couple days ago along with that button, those were the real thing. The paper was old and so was the ink. The other sets—the ones we took out of Donovan Tucker’s suitcase last night—are clearly forgeries. Whoever faked them made them look real enough at first glance. But they were printed on paper that’s only been manufactured in the last couple
years. And the ink is pretty standard stuff for computer printers.”

“But the buttons are old.” I drummed my fingers against the table. “Of course, that would be no big deal to accomplish. There were millions of MOP shirt buttons made in the nineteenth century. They’re a dime a dozen. So we know Jenny Tucker got the buttons and the phony papers—somehow—from Brad.”

Nev was just taking a swallow of coffee when I said this, and with one finger, he signaled me to stop right there. “We picked up Jenny Tucker at the Greyhound station on Harrison Street this morning,” he said. “She had a ticket to Omaha in her purse. The guys who found her took her in, so once I get back to the office, I’ll question her, and we should be able to get that part of the story straight.” This was good news, and both Nev and I knew it. “Even before I take her statement, though, I’m thinking we’re on pretty solid ground as to what Brad was up to. Fake buttons and fake papers. That means—”

“He phonied up the provenance papers.” I took over the story. “He bought some old buttons to go with them, or found them in Thad’s collection, and he came to Chicago to sell as many of the ‘real’ Geronimo buttons as he could, to as many collectors as he could find who thought they were buying the genuine article.”

“But one of them was genuine, or at least the provenance papers were.” Nev’s reminder made me think about that button and its glorious history and how it had been tossed in the trash, and my stomach soured. “And the others… ?”

He was asking for my expert opinion, and I knew it. “There’s no way to tell that one old button was on Geronimo’s shirt and the others weren’t, of course, but Thad Wyant wrote about the Geronimo button in countless articles and
in his book on Western buttons. He never said he owned more than one.” Looking through everything I could find that Thad Wyant had ever written was one of the things that had kept me from sleeping a wink the night before.