Button Holed (27 page)

“REALLY, JO, YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS.”

It wasn’t the first time Kaz had said that. Like the last time and the time before, I ignored him—and the little thread of relief in his voice that told me he was saying one thing and hoping for something else—and kept on writing the check. I ripped it out of my checkbook and handed it across my desk to him.

“Let’s get this straight. I’m not paying your gambling debt,” I said. There was no way I was going to establish that sort of precedent. “I’m paying you for helping me out in West Virginia. For your time. And your effort. It’s a business arrangement, nothing more. What you do with the money is up to you, though if you were smart, you’d use it to make sure you don’t get kneecapped. But don’t think you can come to me every time you need—”

“No worries!” Kaz folded the check and tucked it in his pocket. His smile was as bright as the Chicago sunshine. “You’re the best, Jo.”

“Not the best at figuring out what I’m supposed to be figuring out.” When I got to the shop the morning after we returned from West Virginia, I’d made two lists: one of what we knew about the case and one of what we didn’t.

Guess which one was longer.

I nudged the legal-pad pages spread across my desk. “None of it makes sense,” I grumbled.

“Except that we’re sure Lois Buck killed Kate Franciscus.”

Kaz’s use of the word
we’re
was poetic license. On the drive from West Virginia to Chicago, he’d decided this was the one and only valid explanation, and he was sticking to his conclusion.

Me?

“I wish I knew for sure,” I said.

“What we need to find out is who Lois Buck really is. That’s the key to this whole thing, Jo. Obviously, she’s living under an assumed name. That’s why we can’t find her anywhere on the Internet.” Kaz knew this for sure because I told him how I’d tried searching every which way and sideways and had come up empty. “We also know that she knows we’re onto her. That’s why she got rid of all those pictures at the library and why she broke into Tiffany’s home and took everything Tiffany had set aside for us. She doesn’t want us to recognize her.”

“But how did she know that Tiffany was going through her old stuff and pulling out pictures of Lois? And what about the guy who followed us from Chicago?”

Kaz’s shrug said it all. He wasn’t even going to consider these things, because if he did, they would blow his theory out of the water. Instead, he stuck to his guns.

“Think about it, Jo,” he said. “Lois was in eighth grade in 1987. That means she’s in her thirties.” He’d been standing, and he dropped into my guest chair, the better to give me a searching look. “Who do we know who fits the bill?”

“Besides me?” His expression told me he wasn’t going to let me off with a smart-aleck answer, so I actually took some time to think. “Wynona and Blake are too young,” I said. “And Estelle Marvin . . . My guess is she’s too old, even though I bet she’d never admit it. She’s too well known, too. If she was Lois, someone would have noticed by now. But Margot and Sloan . . .” I thought about the two assistants. “They’re both about the right age.”

“See?” Kaz perked right up. “It’s not such a crazy theory after all, is it? Think about it! Lois Buck leaves Bent Grove and changes her name. That’s why she doesn’t want us to find any pictures of her. Because if we did, we’d recognize her as one of Kate’s assistants.”

I thought this through. “OK, so if we think it’s possible—”

“We know it is!”

I stayed on track. “If we think it’s possible, then the next question we need to ask is why did Lois kill Kate?”

“Come on, Jo, there must have been plenty of reasons for either Margot or Sloan to hate Kate. You said it yourself. She treated them like they were unappreciated servants.”

“And they did each have a personal grudge against Kate.” It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of it before; it was just that I was reconsidering. “Margot, because Kate had ruined the vacation plans she had with a man, and Sloan, because of some silly mix-up about lipstick. It was nothing, really, but Kate embarrassed Sloan in front of the production crew, and before it happened, Sloan was planning on applying for a job on Hugh’s staff.”

“Which means the nothing was really something.” Kaz was all fired up. “See, Jo, we haven’t gotten nowhere. We’ve got something to go on. All you have to figure out is if Margot or Sloan is really Lois Buck.”

“
All
.” He missed the significance of that one little word. In fact, Kaz looked at his watch and popped out of the chair. “I’ve got to get going,” he said. “And about that check . . .”

I waved him away. He didn’t need to say thank-you again, and I didn’t need to hear it.

Once he was gone, I did a turn around the store, dusting off the display cases and making sure every button in them was shown to perfection and while I was at it, I thought about the murder. I wished I could be as sure as Kaz was about Lois Buck. But there was still the matter of the big guy. And the button.

Too preoccupied to sort and pack the order I’d gotten in that morning from a dealer in Honolulu who had a customer interested in an entire collection of sweet calico buttons, I went over my list again.

And got to the same old nowhere I’d been to before.

My disheartened sigh echoed in the silence of the shop.

I spent a few minutes wandering and thinking and a few more minutes helping out a customer (hallelujah, foot traffic!) who bought four lovely enameled buttons for a jacket she was making and promised she’d tell her friends who sewed all about the Button Box. Once she was gone, I settled down and looked through the press clippings that Stan had assembled pertaining to the case. Still doing his best to prove he wasn’t washed up, he went over all the details each day and gave me an envelope full of the articles he found in various and sundry newspapers and magazines not only about the crime, but about Kate’s life and her work as an actress. With nothing else to do (except for those buttons getting the aloha, and I promised myself I’d get to them as soon as I was finished), I read through the clippings, steadfastly ignoring the ones that included that picture of me with my butt sticking out from under the desk.

I found nothing new.

Nothing helpful.

Nothing.

I tapped the articles into a neat pile and would have slid them back into the envelope they came out of if the item at the top of the stack didn’t catch my eye.
Actress, Artist
, the headline read, and I knew the piece was a retrospective of Kate’s career because I’d just read through it. What I hadn’t done was paid a whole lot of attention to the photo that went along with it.

It was taken on the set of
Charlie
a couple days before Kate’s murder, and it showed her looking like a dream in a costume that included elbow-length kid gloves and a white off-the-shoulder gown with puffed sleeves. But it wasn’t the star who caught my eye in the photograph; it was the little slice of behind-the-camera activity that showed in the background.

There was Hugh, watching the filming and looking miserable, his gaze on Kate. There was the director, signaling to a cameraman who was giving him the high-sign back.

And behind them all, there was . . .

I sat up like a shot and since I was sitting at my desk toward the back of the shop, I got up and carried the clipping to the front near the display window so I could take a better look.

It wasn’t as crisp as I would have liked, but then, it was a black-and-white newspaper photo. Still, it was just possible to make out the man who stood far back in the shadows.

The one in the sunglasses who was wearing a White Sox cap and a Cubs shirt.

Yeah, that’s the one.

The prince who swore he wasn’t even in the country until after Kate’s murder.

I WAS IN luck. Roland was still in Chicago. In spite of the fact that he was in “deep mourning” (or so his quote in the morning paper said), he was hosting a fund-raiser at the Field Museum that evening.

No, I hadn’t been invited.

But I’d just gotten a big, fat royalty check, remember. I could afford to be a five-thousand-dollar donor.

And according to the website of the charity benefiting from the event, five-thousand-dollar donors had the honor of being presented to the prince.

My closet wasn’t exactly a fashionista’s dream, so I made a quick trip to Saks and spent as little as I could for a dress I thought was appropriate. It was basic black (hey, if I was spending that kind of money for a dress, I wanted to wear it time and again), strapless, with a nipped-in waist and a slightly flared skirt.

“Cute.”

I knew Stan meant it as a compliment, but “cute” wasn’t exactly what I was going for. I wasn’t used to running around with bare shoulders, and I tugged at the top of the dress to make sure it was right where it was supposed to be. At the same time, I glanced out the car window to the imposing facade of the museum, with its gigantic columns and the colorful banners that announced the royal fund-raiser. “You sure I’m going to fit in?”

“Hey, you’ve got a chauffeur like these other highfalutin types, don’t you?” Stan laughed. He’d insisted on driving me to the event, saying that nobody who was dressed the way I was should be riding the El. “There you go, kiddo.” He stopped in front of the building and a valet moved to open my door. “Call me when you’re done. I’ll pick you up right here.”

I was inside in a matter of minutes, and after showing the appropriate identification, having my evening bag looked through, and being wanded, I was in the royal reception line.

Not the ideal way to interrogate a suspect, I told myself for about the hundredth time. But at least it gave me access to Roland. I knew I might only have a moment to speak to him, so I pulled out the folded newspaper clipping that had been tucked in my sparkly black evening bag. When I was three from the front of the line, I got waylaid by a woman with a sharp expression and an eagle eye who looked me up and down. “You will curtsey when you are introduced to His Royal Highness,” she said in an accent that matched Roland’s. “You will not speak unless you are spoken to. You will not, by any means, solicit His Royal Highness on behalf of any charity or cause. You will not be too familiar or too forthcoming, nor will you call him by his first name. You will extend your right hand and touch it to his, but you will not close your fingers over his. He is a prince, not a rock star. You will smile. You will not gush or carry on. You are being given exactly thirty seconds of His Royal Highness’s valuable time, and you will certainly appreciate his generosity and thank him. You understand all this?” Her smile was as fleeting as her instructions were terse. “That is all very good. Have a nice day.”

And I moved up another place in line.

There was a couple in front of me, and I watched them follow the woman’s direction to a tee. She curtsied. He bowed. They spoke to Roland in hushed tones for exactly thirty seconds, after which it was my turn.

“Ms. Giancola!” Apparently, rules don’t apply to princes. He did, indeed, close his fingers over mine. Like we were old friends. Or like he was trying to schmooze me. I told myself not to forget it. Not so easy a thing, considering that the man I’d last seen in jeans and a T-shirt was decked out like the hero in an old swashbuckling movie. Oh yeah, Roland had it all: the pseudo-military uniform, a chest full of medals, even a cummerbund and a sword. Considering what I had to talk to him about, I hoped it was just ceremonial.

“How kind of you to come and support the cause.” Roland’s smile dazzled. He was a handsome man, and he had the whole rich and powerful thing going for him. I might have been caught in the spell—if I didn’t remember why I was there.

And if a movement from behind the nearest pillar didn’t catch my eye.

I glanced over just in time to see a man move back behind the column, where he’d been hidden. Dark suit. Grim expression. Shoulders as big as—

“Hey!” I darted forward. Not so good an idea when there are more big guys in black suits guarding a prince. They came running, and I had a feeling I would have been hogtied, gagged, and on my way to a Ruritanian prison if Roland hadn’t flashed them a signal that said all was A-OK. By this time, it was pretty pointless for the big guy behind the pillar to stay hidden, so I pointed right at him.

“He was in my shop,” I told Roland, though at this point, I figured this was no big surprise to him. “And he followed me to West Virginia.”

“Yes, yes. This is true.” Roland spoke quickly and quietly, the better to send the message that this was what he wanted me to do, too. “You must not hold it against him. Wolfgang was acting on my behalf.”

“Burglarizing a button shop?” I was pretty sure my thirty seconds was up, but then, I’d wasted a lot of mine getting almost apprehended by Roland’s security team. Behind one hand, the protocol maven coughed gently. Roland shot her a look that said this one time, he would be the one who set the limits.

I stepped back and gave him a searching look, and since he didn’t bother to answer me the first time, I said again, “Burglarizing a button shop?”

Roland’s smile was sleek. So was the way he slipped one arm through mine. “You will excuse us for just one moment,” he told the waiting crowd, and with that, he led me across the wide gallery and behind one of the massive pillars.

No doubt, I was about to make the tabloids again. As the prince and I walked away, a dozen cameras snapped. In the interest of keeping away as many of the sensational headlines as possible, I waited until we were far from the crowd before I batted his hands away.

“You’re ignoring my question,” I said. “You said Wolfgang and that hulky friend of his were working on your behalf. Why?”

Roland sniffed. In a very aristocratic way, of course. “They were protecting my best interests, of course.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “And killing Kate, was that in your best interest?”

Roland didn’t look surprised. Or outraged. In fact, a smile twinkled in his eyes. “Don’t be a silly woman,” he said. “I loved Kate. Everyone knows that.”

“But not everyone knows you were in town when she died.”