Hot Button (3 page)

“I thought it.”

“Not the same.”

“So what are you two lollygagging around for?” Laughing at his own cleverness, Thad grabbed my arm and dragged me out to the concourse. “We’ve got a convention to get to. Let’s get a move on.”

Get a move on, we did. Kaz retrieved Thad’s two suitcases from the luggage carousel, and we headed out to where the car was parked.

Only the car wasn’t Kaz’s beat-up Jeep.

It was a limo. A long, black limo so shiny I could see my reflection in the door.

“Kaz…” I waited until the luggage was stowed in the trunk and Thad was in the backseat. “Please don’t tell me you stole the car, too.”

“Don’t be silly. You know I’d never do anything like that. The limo is legit. Bought and paid for. Well, rented and paid for.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

At least until I remembered the state of Kaz’s bank account. “But you—”

He didn’t give me a chance to ask the question. He opened the door and stepped back to allow me to climb inside, and once I did, he bent down so that he could give me a thousand-watt smile and a wink while he whispered, “Not to worry. I told the rental company I was your assistant for the conference. The limo’s on your charge.”

Chapter Two

L
IMO CHARGE NOTWITHSTANDING, SO FAR, SO GOOD
.

Fifteen hours and counting until the official Monday-morning opening of the conference, and I took a deep breath to calm my clattering heartbeat and glanced around Navy Pier, a Chicago landmark that juts more than three thousand feet out into Lake Michigan and includes exhibition halls, amusement-park rides, and boat docks.

The clear evening skies promised a spectacular sunset, the lake waters were calm, and a hint of late summer warmth lingered in the evening air. In the downtown buildings that provided an elegant backdrop to the Pier, thousands of lights in thousands of windows winked at me, and directly across from where I waited, members of the International Society of Antique and Vintage Button Collectors, along with guests and spouses, were gathering for a dinner cruise.

Things back at the hotel were hectic, sure, and I knew I
wouldn’t get much sleep that night, but for now, all was right with the world.

“It’s brilliant, dear.” Helen Obermyer must have known what I was thinking because she put a hand on my arm and gave it a squeeze. “This cruise was such a good idea! It’s certainly going to be an evening to remember. Look at our conference attendees! They’re smiling and happy. You’re making a very good first impression.” I glanced at the people lining up near the canopy just outside the gangplank that led onto the boat, and I smiled, too. Organizing a conference of this size is never easy, but thanks to Helen, who’d chaired the conference in Pittsburgh the year before, it had gone more smoothly than I would have thought possible. Helen had years of experience with the group, and she was just as willing to share her knowledge as she was to pitch in and help. It was a winning combination.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I told her, and I swear, though she didn’t need the reminder, she blushed as pink as the trim suit she was wearing. Helen was nearing seventy and petite, and her hair—cut stylishly short—was as silvery as the puffy clouds that floated overhead.

“Oh, honey, when you’ve been involved in this group as long as I have, it’s all just second nature,” she said, slipping behind the table where she’d help me check in our guests. “You’ll find that out once you’ve done this another decade or two. Or three!”

Laughing, I sat down beside her, and once we were in place, we signaled the line to start moving forward. After that, it was pretty much controlled chaos. Fun, controlled chaos. I greeted people I hadn’t seen since Pittsburgh, met new faces to put to the names of people I’d bought buttons from and sold buttons to over the years, and was pleased to
make the acquaintance of more than a few people new to the hobby of button collecting.

“Mrs. Winston, so nice to see you again!” I smiled up at the tall, broad woman standing in front of the registration table and handed her the nametag Helen had designed. It featured the name of each registrant along with a picture of an antique button.

“Oh, a moonglow!” Gloria Winston beamed at the picture of the glass button next to her name. “How perfect! And so clever since I specialize in collecting moonglow buttons. How ever did you remember, Josie?”

Rather than admit it was pure dumb luck, I smiled in a way that indicated conference chairs have inside information that just might be magical, and I handed Gloria off to Helen, who checked her name off our master list. I moved on to the next guest.

“Daryl Tucker,” the man said, and practically before I had time to look up and register the fact that Daryl was in his midthirties and that he had dark hair, a bushy beard, and wore glasses with fat, black frames, I heard Helen nearly gag on the Starlight Mint she was sucking.

“Tucker! Oh my gracious.” I was glad when Helen spoke—at least I knew she wasn’t choking. She pinned the man with a look and softened it by fluttering her eyes in her little-old-lady way. “No relation to that horrible Donovan Tucker, I hope. Oh good heavens, wouldn’t that be terrible?”

I took pity on Daryl. But then, it was hard not to, considering he looked totally bewildered.

“Donovan Tucker,” I explained. “He’s a filmmaker.”

“And a monster with no scruples.” As if just thinking about Donovan Tucker caused her temperature to climb, Helen fanned her face with one hand. “He makes these silly
films—he calls them documentaries—about collectors. He’s done one on brick collectors and one on PEZ dispenser collectors, and he makes terrible fun of them all. He sneaks into their conferences, and he takes the least flattering pictures he possibly can, and he films things that really aren’t relevant. In other words, he does anything he can to make these people look like laughingstocks when, really, they are just people with eclectic interests. Oh my…” Helen’s face went ashen, and her delicate hands curled into fists. “If he showed up here to film our convention and made fun of us… Well, I don’t know what I might do… I might… I might… Well, good gracious, I might have to resort to murder.”

“She’s just kidding, of course.” I made sure I added a little laugh to my disclaimer. Partly because I was afraid Helen meant it. Mostly because it was my duty as conference chair to put Daryl at ease. And poor Daryl, shifting from foot to foot, his left eye twitching behind his Coke-bottle glasses… Poor Daryl looked anything but at ease. “It’s just that Helen is a serious collector, you see, and—”

“You don’t have to apologize.” From somewhere in that bushy beard, a shy smile emerged. “I know how you all feel. About the buttons, I mean.” It was hard to say if Daryl kept his smile in place. That’s because he took one look at me, turned the color of the setting sun, and fixed his gaze on his sneakers. “I’m new to collecting, and this is my first convention, but I really like my buttons, too.” He took the nametag I handed him and stepped to his left and in front of Helen. “Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he told her. “I don’t know this Donovan guy, and if I did, well, I guess I wouldn’t like him very much, either.”

“What a nice young man,” Helen crooned once Daryl walked away. “He looks to be about your age, Josie.”

I didn’t wait for her to get any farther. “No,” was all I said.

“But why not? He’s a button collector. Wouldn’t that be refreshing? You getting together with a button collector? It wouldn’t be like it was with that what’s-his-name, Karl.”

“Kaz,” I corrected her.

“Yes, just what I said. It wouldn’t be like that at all. You’d have so much in common with a man like Daryl.”

“I don’t want to have anything in common with Daryl Tucker.” I made sure I said this in a whisper just loud enough for Helen to hear. “I’ve got enough to worry about for the next week. I don’t need to add romance into the mix.”

“But there’s always a place for romance.”

I guess my whisper wasn’t soft enough. That would explain why Kaz heard what I said.

It didn’t explain what he was doing standing in front of the registration table in that dapper black suit of his, the last rays of the setting sun glinting against his smile.

In answer to my questioning look, he raised his eyebrows.

“What? Get with the program.” Kaz bent backward to look down the Pier. “I brought Wyant over from the hotel.”

“You mean he didn’t come on the shuttle buses with everyone else?” Silly question. At least that’s what the look on Kaz’s face said. “Yes, you’re right.” I said it before he could remind me I should. “Wyant expects to be treated like a rock star. Absolutely. Sure. Thanks for taking care of him. The boat is supposed to leave in about fifteen minutes, and it’s a three-and-a-half-hour cruise. You can wait around here or go back to the hotel or—”

“No worries,” Kaz said, and he strolled onto the boat. “I’ll be here whenever you need me.” Over his shoulder, he threw me one last smile. “Whatever you need me for.”

“Oh dear.” This time when Helen fanned her face, I was
pretty sure it had nothing to do with being aggravated about Donovan Tucker. “He is charming, isn’t he?”

“He’s a pain in the—” I bit off my words. But that was because Thad Wyant sauntered to the front of the line, and I was afraid somebody might think I was talking about him instead of Kaz.

Maybe I was.

“Well, lookee you!” I was wearing black pants, a black cardigan, and a long-sleeved silk blouse the same shade of ivory as my grandmother’s pearls looped around my neck, so really, Thad’s long, ogling look was unwarranted. “You’re as pretty as a picture, Josie.” He tipped his cowboy hat to me before he glanced Helen’s way. “And this young lady is. . ?”

Helen dithered. I made the introductions. Once she realized the man in the jeans (at least they were clean) and the black Western shirt with the red embroidery at the yoke and cuffs was our guest of honor, she only quivered more. We were nearly at the end of the check-in line, and the cruise would be starting in just a few minutes. I told her to go onto the boat with Thad and I would finish checking in the guests myself.

I would have, too, if the next man in line wasn’t so busy glaring at Thad that he never stepped up to the table. I coughed delicately, and the man jumped and moved forward.

The middle-aged man had a face that looked familiar, and it didn’t take me long to place him. I checked his name off the list. I’d done business with Chase Cadell over the years, mostly selling, not buying, since I wasn’t all that interested in the Western cavalry buttons that were his specialty.

“Nerve of the guy.” Chase still had his eyes on Thad, who already had a drink in his hand and a crowd of starry-eyed button collectors surrounding him. “Thinks he can just step ahead of everybody and go to the front of the line.”

“I’m sorry.” I was. For a couple reasons. For one thing, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Over the years, Chase and Thad had developed a relationship that was legendary in button circles—for all the wrong reasons. Thad considered himself the be-all and end-all of Western-themed button experts. Chase thought he was king of the proverbial Western button hill. Over the years, their bitter back-and-forthing had been played out on the pages of every button-collecting magazine and online button forum there was. Thad would pose some theory on the development of buttons on cowboys’ clothing or how buttons with pictures of horses’ heads on them had evolved over the years. And the next month or the next day, Chase would write an article or post a message that claimed Thad was wrong. Thad would parry. Chase would thrust. I swear, one of the reasons I have a dislike of Western buttons (and disliking any button is major for me) is the bad taste these two left in my mouth.

Oh yeah, things were ugly between them. So ugly, in fact, that the organizing committee had recently spent a whole lot of time e-mailing back and forth, talking about the need to keep the men apart at this conference.

It was my bad luck that they’d just happened to converge on the registration table at the same time. The only saving grace was that Thad hadn’t confronted Chase. In fact, he’d acted like Chase wasn’t even there. That didn’t keep me from making a mental note to myself: don’t forget how pushy Thad can be. Get him his tickets for the keynote banquet and all the conference-sponsored breakfasts and luncheons early so he won’t have the excuse to horn his way to the front of any more lines. I should have thought of that earlier.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Yeah. Sure.” Chase held out his hand for his nametag.

And I would have been happy to give it to him—if only I could find it.

“Cadell, Cadell,” I mumbled under my breath, glancing through the cards still on the table. They’d been laid out alphabetically, and I wondered how, after Helen and I had done a final count at the hotel and we had as many nametags as we did registered guests, I had managed to leave one behind.

Like grumbling and being embarrassed would actually make me locate the tag faster.

Didn’t it figure, the one person who was already starting off the conference on the wrong foot, and there I was, scrambling around like a so-not-together conference chair. I finally gave up with a sigh, grabbed a nearby Sharpie and wrote out a tag for Chase.