Button Holed (31 page)

BOXWOOD BUTTONS

Granny Maude isn’t the only artisan who’s made buttons out of boxwood. The wood is hard, has a smooth texture, and retains its sharp edges, which makes it perfect for details and for intricate carving. Boxwood colors can vary from dark yellow to brown to a reddish hue. The wood is mellow, and in the hands of a skilled carver, it can almost glow. You’ll find boxwood buttons in the shape of everything from dragons and mermaids to dogs and bees.

To clean boxwood or other wooden buttons, gently polish them with a soft cloth and a little furniture polish or mineral oil.

Turn the page for a preview of Kylie Logan’s next Button Box Mystery . . .

Kill Button

Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

WITHIN TEN MINUTES OF MEETING THAD WYANT FOR THE first time, there were two things I knew about him:

1.
He was high maintenance.

2.
He wasn’t going to let me forget it.

On the five-minute walk from where I collected him at O’Hare over to the baggage carousel where we’d pick up the luggage he’d brought with him from Santa Fe, I added two more items to the list:

3.
It was going to be a very long five days.

and

4.
Thad liked scotch. A lot.

“That showed that varmint a thing or two!” Finished telling the story he’d been recounting loud enough for everyone in the airport bar to hear, Thad slapped his thigh, threw back his head, and laughed. No small feat considering he managed to do it all while downing a glass of Johnny Walker Blue. Blue. That’s the expensive stuff.

“One more for the road.” He tapped the bar in front of my ice water. “And this young lady here, she’ll be paying for it,” he told the bartender. “Her and that cute little button club of hers.”

“That cute little button club . . .” I didn’t give the words the same sickening sweet twist Thad had. But then, that would have been tough since my teeth were clenched. It was no wonder why. The International Society of Antique and Vintage Button Collectors was a group near and dear to my heart. It better be. I was chairing this year’s convention and—I glanced at the time on my cell phone—I still had a heck of a lot to do back at the hotel before this evening’s opening festivities.

It was no easy thing to stifle my worries, but then, I reminded myself the delay was all for a good cause. The best of causes. Thad Wyant might be loud, pushy, and more worried about grabbing a drink than getting to the conference, but he was also reclusive—and legendary in the button business. The fact that I’d convinced him to come to Chicago at all was something of a coup. Now, all I had to do was not murder him before we got over to the convention.

“Our membership is honored that you agreed to give our keynote address this year, Mr. Wyant.” Oh yeah, that was me, sounding as professional as it was possible for a woman to sound when she knew the Blue Line train to downtown was set to arrive in exactly four-and-a-half minutes, and there were a million little details that needed her attention, details that couldn’t be handled from O’Hare.

“Who you talkin’ about, girl? My dear ol’ daddy? He’s the only Mr. Wyant I know.” Another of his laughs rattled the glasses on the bar. “I wouldn’a agreed to come to this here conference at all if it wasn’t for you sweet-talkin’ me with your letters. You won me over, darlin’, heart and soul.” To prove this, he pressed one hand to his heart. “That means you can call me Thad, just like all my friends do. We are friends, ain’t we?”

It’s a delicate line a conference chair walks.

Older-than-middle-aged man in ratty jeans, a worn flannel shirt, dusty cowboy boots, and a seen-better-days Stetson. Leering smile and a slow, deliberate look that took in everything from my black skirt and jacket to my tasteful white tank, and yeah, it did kind of make my skin crawl. Scotch on his breath.

Of course, all that was balanced by keynote speaker at the most prestigious button event of the year. Expert extraordinaire on Western-themed buttons. Owner of the one and only known to exist, coveted, and wonderfully historic Geronimo button.

Automatically, I glanced at the carry-on Thad had tossed on the floor beside his bar stool. Was the Geronimo button in there? Well, of course it was. I answered my own question because there really couldn’t be any other answer. No collector in his right mind would dare put the button into checked baggage. Not the Geronimo button.

“So what d’you think?”

Thad’s question snapped me back to reality and once there, I heard that clock tick-tick-ticking away inside my head again.

“You think we’ll get a chance to get some of that Italian beef? I’ve been reading about it online, Josie. They say Chicago is downright famous for them sandwiches.”

Who uses words like
downright
? And
varmint
, for that matter?

I couldn’t point out that Thad talked like a bit player on an old TV Western. Not without offending the man hundreds of button collectors from all over the world had traveled to Chicago to finally meet.

“I’ll make sure you get an Italian beef sandwich,” I told him, deliberately leaving out the part about how there wouldn’t be any money left in the conference budget for Italian beef—or anything else—if he didn’t stop drinking the top-shelf stuff at the speed of light. “In fact . . .” I grabbed my purse. Subtle hint. “It’s a forty-five-minute train ride back into town, but if we hurry, we’ll still have plenty of time this afternoon. We can stop at one of the Italian beef places on our way over to the hotel. If there’s time, that is.”

OK, so that last bit was not quite as subtle. It might as well have been attached to a hot air balloon and dangling up near the ceiling. That’s how far over Thad’s head it went.

He crooked one bushy gray eyebrow at me. “Shucks, little lady, I must have heard you wrong. I could have sworn you said
train
. Well that for sure can’t be true.” Like a man who’d just been given a death sentence he didn’t deserve, Thad shook his head sadly. “A man like me—”

I knew what he was going to say, and I didn’t give him the chance. “You’re used to being driven. Of course you are. It’s just that my friend, Stan, he was supposed to come pick you up this afternoon, and he couldn’t make it. Just as he was about to leave to come over here, he got a call that his granddaughter was having her baby. And obviously, a great-grandchild has to take precedence over doing me a favor.”

With thumb and forefinger, Thad snapped his cowboy hat farther back on his head. “It surely does,” he said. “But I gotta say, I don’t see as how that has anything to do with me. And it sure, by gum, has nothing to do with a train. But then, I guess my ears is playin’ tricks on me. On account of the plane ride and all. There’s no way you said
train
. ’Cause if you did, that would mean you’d expect me to git on down there to baggage claim and pick up my own luggage and haul it down to this big, fancy conference on a train. And there’s no way in hell a conference expects that of the guest of honor. Not a conference that’s dragged a man all the way clear across the country from his home where he’s nice and comfortable and happy spending all these years just writin’ about buttons and studyin’ buttons and never comin’ out to meet people because buttons . . . well, shucks, buttons is enough. That man, he don’t need people to make his life complete. And so he’s doin’ you and all these other button folks a big ol’ favor. And expectin’ him to be treated like just an average sort of Joe . . .” With one thick-fingered hand, he waved away the very idea as preposterous. “It just don’t make sense, does it?”

It did.

At least it had back at the hotel when I was going through the registration list one last time and got that call from Stan. By that time, everyone else on the conference committee was too busy to drop what they were doing and get out to O’Hare. And it would have taken me too long to go home, get my car, and get over to the airport. I would have been way late picking up Thad, and that, to me, was the height of rudeness.

Besides, it wasn’t exactly like I was asking him to rough it. Thousands of people took the El every day. It was efficient and economical. The train made sense.

Yet there I was, with my tongue tied, unable to explain and afraid that whatever I said, I was about to offend the man I’d worked with for more than a year in order to make his appearance at the convention possible.

“You see, it’s like this, Mr. Wyant—”

“Wyant? Thad Wyant? Well, isn’t this lucky!”

The voice came from behind me and I spun around on the bar stool and found myself face-to-face with a face I hadn’t seen in six weeks.

Eyes the color of a shot of double espresso and hair to match. Shoulders that wouldn’t quit.

That afternoon, they were encased in a black suit jacket that set off a blindingly white shirt, black pants, a killer silk tie in swirls of red and gray, and—

A chauffeur’s cap and a hand-lettered sign that read
Giancola and Wyant
in fat Sharpie letters?

Bewildered, I sat back, the better to take stock of Mitchell Kazlowski. My ex acted like being there where he had no business was the most natural thing in the world. Which in Kaz’s world, it usually is.

“You must be Ms. Giancola.” His smile was wide and, yes, as seductive as a nibble of Godiva truffle. But then, Kaz knew that. In fact, I’d bet he was counting on it. He put two fingers to his hat. “I’m from the limo service, ma’am,” he said. “Here to pick up you and Mr. Wyant.”

“Well, that’s more like it.” At the same time Thad clapped Kaz on the back, he slipped off his barstool. “I’ll just head to the outhouse . . .” He tipped his head toward the back of the bar and the sign that indicated the restrooms were that way. “I’ll be back in a jiffy. I knew it. I just knew it.” When he looked my way, his grin revealed uneven teeth. “One look at you, little lady, and I knew you’d know how to treat your guest of honor right.”

Lucky for Kaz, he waited until Thad walked away before he had the nerve to chuckle and say, “Little lady.”

I swung his way. “What are you doing here?”

Kaz rolled back on his heels. “Looks like I’m saving your pretty little butt.”

I ignored the
pretty little
comment, but only because I had more important things to worry about. “How did you—”

“Saw Stan.” I guess he was taking his role as chauffeur seriously, because Kaz reached down and retrieved Thad’s carry-on. I was tempted to tell him about the precious button inside and how—considering that Kaz doesn’t care about buttons and I am one of the country’s most respected experts on the subject—he really should let me handle the bag. Kaz didn’t give me the chance.

“I was actually heading over to see you, and your apartment door was open, and I poked my head in and saw—”

“Chaos, right?” I am organized and tidy. I couldn’t stand the thought. “Since I’ll be at the conference for the next five days, I’m having the kitchen remodeled. And as long as they’ve got the place torn apart, I figured I’d have the rooms painted, too.” I squeezed my eyes shut and shuddered. “How bad is it?”

“It actually looks like they’re making good progress. You did want the living room painted purple and orange, right?” When my eyes flew open, Kaz laughed. “Just kidding,” he said.

It was another one of his not-so-funny jokes—I hoped—and I ignored it and got back to the matter at hand. “And Stan . . .”

“Oh yeah, Stan. When I realized you weren’t around, I left, and I met Stan at the elevator, and he told me about the new baby and how he was supposed to be here and how you were coming to pick up Wyant and take him back to the hotel on the train. Jo, Jo, Jo.” Kaz shook his head like Thad just had, only there was a spark in Kaz’s eyes when he did it. “You’ve got to stop being so practical. This Wyant guy is some kind of button rock star, right? Then that’s how you have to treat him. It’s what he’s expecting and what he deserves.”

“I guess you’re right.” In the three years we’d been married, I don’t think I’d ever spoken those words to Kaz. Right wasn’t something Kaz usually was. With Kaz it was more like in over his head, in trouble, owing somebody money and showing up to see me because—

I narrowed my eyes and gave him a once-over. “What do you want?” I asked.

Kaz is delicious and he knows it. That would explain why he thought he could get away with smiling a smokin’ hot smile and resting one hand on my arm in a very un-chauffeur-like way. “Just trying to help,” he crooned.

“Yeah, like you were just trying to help when I was investigating that murder a while ago and you practically scared me to death, hiding out in my car and hitching a ride to West Virginia with me.”

He backed away a step, his hands up in a gesture that I would have taken as surrender from anybody else. From Kaz, it was more like,
hey, not my fault
. “I helped you catch the bad guy, didn’t I?” He knew I couldn’t deny it, and big points for him, he didn’t make me embarrass myself and admit it. “How’s that policeman boyfriend of yours?”

“I don’t have a policeman boyfriend.” This was mostly the truth. Though Nevin Riley and I had reconnected during the above mentioned investigation (we’d had a disastrous blind date a few months before that thanks to Stan, who is a retired cop), we hadn’t exactly gone skipping off together down some primrose path. Nevin was committed to his work as a homicide detective. He was professional, busy. I was just getting the Button Box, my newly opened button shop, off the ground, and in my own way, just as committed and professional as Nevin was. Not to mention busy.

“He’s been working nights,” I said, only because I knew that Kaz would never leave the subject alone if I didn’t give him some kind of answer.

“That means you haven’t been seeing much of each other.” He sounded way too pleased by this turn of events.

Exactly why I ignored Kaz.

I saw Thad step out of the men’s room so it was the perfect opportunity for me to climb off the barstool. And change the subject, too. “You didn’t really rent a limo, did you?”