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Which made it all the more remarkable that I was able to play it cool, like nothing unusual was going on and finding those pictures of Thad with his eyes stabbed out didn’t give me the royal creeps. “That’s so kind of you, Daryl. But I’m fine. Really.”

“He’s not cancelling, is he?” I didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. When he glanced toward the posters under my arm, Daryl’s left eye twitched. “There are a lot of people here who are counting on hearing Mr. Wyant speak. They’d be really disappointed if he didn’t show up.”

“Oh, he’ll be here.” My voice was perky even while inside my head it grumbled,
He better show up after all I’ve spent so far on plane fare, hotel accommodations, and those endless trips to the bar.
“Thad is as excited to be here as we are to be hosting him. No worries there.” One of the posters slipped out from under my arm and floated to the floor.

I bent to retrieve it just as Daryl asked, “And that button of his? The Geronimo button?”

It wasn’t until I stood up that I realized Daryl had bent over, too. He might have been trying to beat me to the poster. Maybe. To me, it looked more like he didn’t want to miss a word of whatever I was going to say.

“Do you think it’s real?” he asked.

“Of course it’s real.” Once again, I had the uneasy feeling that Daryl was encroaching on my personal space, and I shifted slightly to my left, putting a tad more distance between us and hoping it didn’t look too obvious. “Thad has the provenance to prove it. Geronimo’s autograph dated the same day the original owner purchased the button, a letter from the soldier in charge of the barracks the day the button
was sold, a list of every person who’s ever owned it. You know how it is with buttons, Daryl. Collectors are very particular.”

“Sure. Yeah.” Apparently, I looked like I was ready to leave, because Daryl moved back a step to let me by. “Only it seems like a whole lot of hoopla. You know, for one little button.”

I forgave him—but only because he was new to the button game. “You’ll want to hit the afternoon session,” I told him with a smile. “The one called ‘Collecting Mania.’ We do a workshop on the topic every year at the conference. It’s a good-natured look at what goes on inside button collectors’ heads, and it’s always a lot of fun.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” That bashful smile peeked out from behind the bush of his beard. “Will you be there, too?”

Was that a come-on?

I looked Daryl over and decided instantly that it was not. The guy was too nerdy to try a pickup line as lame as that.

Or too nerdy to know how lame it was and try it anyway.

“I’ll be there,” I promised. Only not in a way that made it sound like a date. “I’m trying to make it to every workshop, even if it’s just for a couple minutes. You know, to make sure the presenters have what they need and that there are enough chairs for everyone. Stuff like that.”

“So you won’t be staying the whole time? I thought…” Daryl glanced down at the blue-and-green carpeting. “I thought maybe we could sit together.”

“Not sure I’ll have time for that,” I said, and hurried away as fast as I possibly could. In a busy-conference-chair sort of way, of course. Not an oh-my-gosh-I-don’t-know-how-to-handle-this-so-I’m-outta-here way.

I hoped.

Still, when I rounded the corner to head over to hotel security to talk to them about the vandalism and about the items missing from Langstone’s display and realized Daryl hadn’t followed me, I breathed a sigh of relief. Not so when I spoke to a security supervisor named Ralph. As far as he knew, no one had reported seeing anyone vandalize the posters, and sure, they had cameras around the hotel, he informed me, but not in all the areas. Ralph would look at the tapes—he said this with as much enthusiasm as noncollectors muster when the subject of buttons comes up—but he didn’t hold out a lot of hope that we’d find the perpetrator, either of the vandalism or the theft.

“Kids,” Ralph grumbled just as I was leaving his office. “Must have been kids. Who else would bother to steal any of that button stuff? Or do such a dumb thing to a button poster?”

Who else, indeed? The theft from Langston’s booth, that was one thing, and apparently, Thad’s work. But when it came to the posters, don’t think I’d forgotten about Beth Howell and the fight she’d had with Thad on the boat. Or Chase Cadell, for that matter, who didn’t seem above finding some way to get back at his rival, even if it did involve the childish destruction of Thad’s pictures. Or even—as impossible as it sounded to me because I knew what a gentleman he was—Langston. After all, the last I’d seen him, he was heading off toward the lobby with an awl in his hands and the certainty in his heart that Thad had ripped him off.

These were the sorts of thoughts that swirled through my head the rest of the afternoon as I went through the paces. They were not necessarily what I was thinking about in the “Collecting Mania” workshop, where I was more concerned about staying in the back corner of the room and not even looking in the direction of the empty seat next to Daryl’s.

By four o’clock, when the afternoon sessions were over, I had just enough time to race up to my room to shower and change into my clothes for the evening banquet. Things would have gone a bit smoother if I could have found my comb faster. I was sure I’d left it in the bathroom earlier that morning, but it wasn’t there, and of all places, I found it finally on a shelf in the hallway closet.

“Weird,” I told myself, not so much because of where I found the comb but because I didn’t remember putting it there. Then again, with everything that had been happening and all the conference minutiae packing my head, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that I was forgetting details. And misplacing things, too.

By the time I was ready and on my way back downstairs, my head was spinning and my anticipation of the night’s event was whirring through my bloodstream. I made sure everything inside and outside the ballroom was ready for our guests.

“Lookin’ good, Button Babe!” There’s only one person on the face of the earth who would have the nerve to call me that, so when I turned around, I wasn’t surprised to see Kaz. I was surprised to see him wearing a tux.

“What?” Like a model on a Milan runway, he held out his arms and spun around to give me a better look. “You’ve never seen me in a tux before?”

“I have seen you in a tux. Once.” I did not elaborate. We both knew the day we were talking about, and what’s that saying about beating a dead horse? Well, there was no use beating a dead wedding. Or more precisely, a dead marriage.

“You look good,” I told him, because it was true.

“And you look…” Kaz grabbed my hands and held me at arm’s length. Thanks to a recent royalty check from a low-budget movie I’d once done costumes for that had
turned into a cult favorite, I’d treated myself to a new dress for this special occasion. Three-quarter sleeves, scalloped neckline, black lace. It was fun without being too funky, elegant and romantic and still professional. When I bought it, I had absolutely no intention of impressing anyone but myself, but the way Kaz’s eyes lit told me otherwise.

“You look amazing!” he said.

“And you’re apparently still my assistant?” I was hoping he’d contradict me, but no such luck, and when I realized it, I breathed a sigh of surrender. “OK, assistant, what’s on our agenda before dinner starts?”

“I was hoping for a glass of champagne and—” The look on my face told Kaz to stick to the subject, and the subject was the conference. “Everything’s all set up for Helen and the people who will be checking the guest list,” he said, pointing to the table near the door. “Only she’s not here yet and…” He glanced at his Rolex, the one I’d bought him back in the day, after I’d received my very first royalty check. Honestly, I was surprised it hadn’t gone the way of all of Kaz’s other assets—to the pawnshops, or the loan sharks, or his landlord to pay his back rent. “She told me she was going to be down here by five, and it’s nearly five thirty.”

“Why don’t you call her room?” I nudged Kaz in the direction of the nearest house phone. “She’s not a spring chicken, and if something happened and she needs some help…”

“Done!” Kaz the Assistant got right on it.

And I hurried over to the sign-in table to get the volunteers waiting there for Helen organized and working. While I was at it, I checked the dinner list for Beth Howell’s name. According to our guest list, she’d be there, and believe me, I was keeping an eye out for her. There was no sign of her yet. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to offer her an apology or
whether I was just looking for information on what happened the night before and why. I only knew that, as chair, my duty was to make sure no one had a bad experience at the conference. What had happened on the boat… Well, that was all about bad.

“So where’s the almighty guest of honor? Not here, waiting for everyone to bow and scrape to him?”

When he walked up to me grumbling, I knew Chase Cadell was perfectly serious. Which is why I had no choice but to act as if he was joking. “Oh, I’m sure Thad will be down in just a few minutes,” I said, and made sure I punctuated the statement with a laugh. “I have a feeling he likes to make grand entrances.”

“Humph.” Chase was dressed in a rumpled gray suit, and when he crossed his arms over his broad chest, the buttons on his white cotton shirt strained. “You know I love ya, Josie, but—”

“Yes, I know.” I made sure I kept my smile in place. “I would have been far better off inviting you to be our banquet speaker.”

“Damned straight.”

“And I would have loved listening to you. You know that’s true, too. But you, Chase, you do not own the Geronimo button.”

He scanned the area where our guests were gathering, and whatever he was going to say, he waved it away as inconsequential. “Bah! Never mind. See you later, Josie. Maybe in the bar after this whole fiasco is over.”

“You’re not joining us for dinner?”

He threw a look over my shoulder into the ballroom and the podium that had been set up for Thad, along with the video screen, where we’d get our first look at the Geronimo button. “You don’t think an old rattlesnake like me is going
to pass up food I already paid for, do you? But I’m not staying for Wyant’s talk. Geronimo button. Hah!”

By the time he walked away, Kaz was just returning. “Helen didn’t answer her phone,” he said. “You want me to—”

“There she is!” When the elevator doors whooshed open and Helen scurried out, what felt like the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders.

“Sorry!” Helen hurried past me with hardly a look. She was winded, and her cheeks were red. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! I fell asleep. Can you imagine? Went up to my room after the last session and fell sound asleep. By the time I woke up and got dressed and—”

“Not to worry!” Just like she would have done if our roles were reversed, I looped one arm through hers to force her to slow down and take a deep breath. “Everything is under control.”

“Oh, don’t tell me that.” She looked positively stricken. “If you do, I’ll think no one needs me.”

By the time Helen was settled at the table, where the other members of her committee had efficiently checked in the dinner guests, most everybody was already in the ballroom, and it would have been rude of me to wait outside, even if I was waiting for our guest of honor. Instead, I went into the ballroom and went from table to table, welcoming people and telling them how excited I was about the evening’s program. I did a last-minute sound check at the podium and then talked to the catering director to make sure the staff was ready to start serving and that the ice-cream cakes we’d ordered in the shape of buttons had arrived and looked perfect.

And Thad Wyant was still nowhere to be seen.

“You pacing from the front of the ballroom to the lobby
and looking worried isn’t helping things.” From out of nowhere, Kaz showed up at my side. “The salads are being served. You’re going to have to sit down.”

“But I—”

“I already called his room.” As smoothly as if we’d choreographed it, Kaz spun me in the direction of the table at the front of the room with the “Reserved” sign on it. “No answer.”

“But I—”

“I checked the bar, too. He’s not there.”

Kaz deposited me in a chair between Helen and the empty spot where Thad was supposed to be sitting and went around to the other side of the table.

“You said Mr. Wyant would be here.” Until Daryl spoke to me, I didn’t realize my chair was back-to-back with his.

“Of course he will be.” That was the perky me. And just to prove it, I glanced around both my table and his, a confident smile on my face. “Thad’s just been delayed for a few minutes. You know how these things are.”

“How?” Daryl’s question was so sincere that I didn’t have the heart to answer. Good thing I didn’t have the opportunity. From the pocket of his orange-and-brown-plaid sport coat, his cell phone rang, and Daryl checked the caller ID, excused himself, and left the ballroom.

I turned back toward my table just as a waitress deposited my salad in front of me, and honestly, it looked as delicious as the picture I saw when I went through the hotel catering menu and ordered tonight’s dinner. Fresh field greens, diced pears, a sprinkling of blue cheese. Too bad my stomach was too jumpy for me to enjoy it. I did another quick scan of the ballroom. No Thad. I pushed my chair back from the table.

“Sit down.” Kaz mouthed the words. “Calm.” Like a
baseball umpire signaling safe, he made a gesture over his salad and smiled.

I knew what that meant, too. Upbeat. I was supposed to remain upbeat. Even though the program was scheduled to start in exactly forty minutes and my speaker was nowhere to be seen.

Chase Cadell was walking back from the bar, a bottle of beer in one hand, and he leaned over and purred in my ear. “Told you you should have picked me. I’m actually here, Josie. And that son-of-a-gun Wyant—”

“Will be joining us in just a jiffy.” I wasn’t sure how my popping out of my chair and heading out to the lobby was supposed to help accomplish that, but I did it anyway, and it was a good thing I did. I was just in time to see a tiny woman in a black suit disappear around the corner toward the vendor room.