Buttoned Up (6 page)
Authors: Kylie Logan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #General
Was that a roll of the eyes from Richard?
I pretended not to notice.
“You tried to find Forbis because you’d just met the man and you were taken in by that good ol’ country boy act of his.” Richard shook his head, but whether he was disgusted with me for admitting what I’d done or with himself because he’d once been taken in, too, I didn’t know. “Believe me, if you’d known him as long as I have, you would have been glad to see him disappear for a while. Only . . .” Richard’s wide-eyed gaze traveled back to Nev. “Not like this.”
“And how long have you known Mr. Parmenter?” Nev asked.
Richard thought about it. “We met years ago. Ten. Twelve maybe. I was representing another artist down in Georgia and her work was being presented at one of the local galleries. Forbis had a couple pieces there, too, and he tried to interest me in representing him.”
“You weren’t impressed with buttons?” I tried to keep the acid from my voice, but let’s face it, when people start dissing buttons, it’s bound to get me riled up.
“Oh, he wasn’t doing the button thing then,” Richard said. “Back then, Forbis was what I like to call a serious artist. He worked in oils.”
“Painting?” It didn’t exactly fit with the notion of the weird outsider artist I knew.
“Oh yes, landscapes mostly,” Richard said. “He did beach scenes, ocean scenes, scenes around that old plantation home of his back on the island. You both met Forbis. You won’t be surprised to hear that he thought he was brilliant. The Barrier Islands’ answer to Michelangelo.”
We were talking art, and art is a little outside Nev’s area of expertise. I felt perfectly comfortable taking over, at least for a bit. That’s why I prodded Richard, just a little. “And you thought . . . ?”
Richard shrugged. “His work was OK. Just OK. It wasn’t especially inspired, and it certainly wasn’t brilliant. He had average technique. A so-so understanding of color. None of it was very exciting.”
“And so you weren’t interested in representing him.”
“I didn’t see there would be any money in it,” Richard said matter-of-factly. “So why would I waste my time? About five years later . . . well, I guess that was about when Forbis realized he was wasting his time, too. He tossed his easel and his oil paints and started in on this whole crazy button thing. When he contacted me again and I saw what he was up to—”
“So you do think it’s art?” Nev asked.
“And you did finally realize Forbis was brilliant?” I said.
Richard apparently wasn’t sure which question to answer. That would explain why he sidestepped both of them. “Hey, I’ve got bills to pay and a credit card balance just like everyone else,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I thought what Forbis was producing was art. Or if he was brilliant. Truth be told, I thought the guy was a certified nutcase. But that didn’t mean people wouldn’t buy his stuff. It’s different. It’s weird. And a lot of collectors, they like weird.”
“Are any of them weird?” Nev asked. Then because it looked as if Richard wasn’t sure what he meant, he added, “Was Forbis having trouble with anyone? Did anyone have a beef with what he was doing?”
“With the buttons?” Richard barked out a laugh, then looked at me to see if I was offended. I was, but I didn’t let on. “I can’t see anybody getting worked up about buttons.”
“How about someone getting worked up about vudon?” I asked.
Richard shook his head. “This was a brand new show. No one had ever seen it before. Forbis’s last show was classic cars covered with buttons. The one before that, that was the one with the household items. Who would care so much about a couch covered with buttons that they’d want to kill someone over it?”
“Just so I have this straight . . .” Nev pulled a small, spiral-bound notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. “What exactly did you do for Mr. Parmenter?”
“What an agent does.” Richard nodded. “I handled sales. I arranged shipment when a piece was sold. I put out feelers to the art community so that I could book shows for him.”
“Speaking of shows . . .” I sat down next to Richard. “Laverne told us that this show was originally scheduled at another gallery. What happened?”
Richard pulled at his left earlobe. “The guy was a real flake,” he said. “That Bart McCromb over at Mango Tango. Promised us the moon for the show and backed out of every one of those promises. And the gallery?” He clicked his tongue. “In the famous words of Bette Davis, what a dump! When I got to Chicago and went over there, I just about had a cow. I was so excited. Finally, a big show in a big city. We were bound to attract plenty of attention. Then when I realized Mango Tango was just a hole in the wall, well, I’ll admit it, I didn’t know what to do.”
Richard shifted uncomfortably in his seat and I pictured the dust in the pew getting smudged. “I like to come across as a mover and a shaker,” he said. “I mean, that’s part of my job, right? Art critics and buyers, they want to think they’re dealing with the cream of the crop, so I’ve got to put on a show, just like Forbis does. Did.” He cleared his throat. “Truth is, I’ve always worked with small, regional galleries. Never with a show on this scale and never in an art mecca like Chicago. When I realized what I’d gotten us into with crazy Bart and that refuse heap of a gallery, I was sick to my stomach. I didn’t know what to do. Then I remembered Laverne.”
“She’d talked to you about having Forbis here as a guest,” I said.
Richard nodded. “And I realized I’d just had my salvation dropped in my lap.” He cringed and looked around. “Pardon the pun. So I saved my bacon and at the same time, I realized I could do a little good. The church is definitely a worthy cause and with Forbis’s star rising, it wouldn’t hurt us to donate a portion of the profits to this place and get a tax write-off in return. Besides . . .” He glanced away. “Laverne is an old friend, an old girlfriend. We dated back in college and I thought, well, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get together with her again. You know, just to see if any of the old spark was still there.”
“Was it?” I knew Nev wasn’t going to get too personal, or show off his soft, romantic side, so I did him the favor of asking. “What did you do after the show was over last night, Mr. Norquist?”
Richard’s smile was fleeting. “We went for coffee, me and Laverne.”
“And you didn’t come back here to the church?”
He shook his head. “Laverne locked up before we left. We got in a cab, had coffee over near my hotel, then I put her in another cab and sent her home. I didn’t hear from her again until this morning. You know, when she called about . . .” Again, he peeked around Nev. “About this.”
“When Mr. Parmenter ran out of here last night . . .” Nev was holding a pen in one hand, and he used it to point down the aisle in the direction Forbis ran. “What did you think?”
“That he was crazy. That he was ruining a good thing. That he should have known better.”
“And before that, what did you see?”
Richard looked across the church. “I was standing over there. You remember. You both saw me. Ms. Giancola, you walked up to the front with Forbis—”
“And you came over and dabbed some cement on the back of the button I brought with me,” I added.
“That’s right. Then I stepped back over to where I was to begin with. The next thing I knew . . .” Richard made a face. “I’ll admit it, when I saw Forbis wince, I didn’t think a thing of it. He was a twitchy old guy, or at least he liked to pretend he was. I think he thought he was being cute and folksy. But then he dropped his glass and yelled, ‘The button, the button’ and ran out of here, and I admit it, I was as stunned as everyone else.”
“Until you decided it was all for show and you got angry,” Nev said.
“Not angry, more like disgusted,” Richard said. “But not disgusted enough to kill Forbis.”
We were right back where we started from. Nev told Richard that he was free to go, but that he shouldn’t leave town any time soon, just in case he could help with the inquiry.
“What do you think?” he asked me once Richard was out of earshot.
“I think we’ve got it all wrong,” I said, considering what Richard had just said. “Forbis jerked back. Just like Richard said. And we all know he dropped his champagne glass. But you know, Nev, Forbis didn’t say, ‘the button, the button’ like Richard said he did. I was standing right next to him so I know. What Forbis said was ‘le bouton, le bouton.’ It’s French and yeah, it means, ‘the button, the button,’ but you know what? To me, Forbis didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d just naturally start suddenly speaking French.”
I actually do have a real job. And a real button shop to keep open, running—and in the black. As intriguing as Forbis’s murder was, I knew it was best to leave solving the crime to the professionals so I could concentrate on what I knew and loved best, buttons.
Besides, I’d learned that murder takes its toll on me. Like I mentioned earlier, I’d been involved in three cases previously, and with each, I found it nearly impossible to shake the pall of tragedy that followed in the wake of death.
So much potential lost. Not just when an artist like Forbis is killed, but with every life lost. So much sadness.
That next day at the Button Box, I knew I could kill two proverbial birds with one stone. Which, now that I think about it, probably wasn’t the best metaphor to use in regards to the situation. It was, however, true. I could concentrate on the shop and on the customers who came and went that Saturday and at the same time, I would use the opportunity to calm my mind and find familiarity and comfort, as always, in the sanctuary of the restored brownstone with its soothing sage green walls, tin ceiling, hardwood floors, and old library card catalogue file cabinets along every wall, each drawer filled with buttons.
Ah, buttons!
There is nothing like buttons to soothe this collector’s soul.
By the time I helped a woman who was looking for just the right button to use as a closure for a purse she’d knit and felted, rearranged a couple shelves that didn’t need it, and re-catalogued all the buttons in the drawers where I stored my Wemyss (that’s pronounced
weemz
) Ware—those delightful earthenware buttons produced in Scotland at the end of the nineteenth century and distinctively decorated with wonderful things like cabbage roses and dogs—I was breathing easier.
That is, until Nev showed up just as I was about to close and ruined everything.
Oh my, that came out sounding all wrong!
I didn’t mean Nev ruined everything because he came into the Button Box.
I mean he ruined everything because as soon as he walked in, I saw that he had papers in his hand and that look in his eyes that said he was thinking about his case and needed to bounce ideas around.
My vacation to tranquility came to an abrupt halt and my heart began a cha-cha in my chest.
“The list of people invited to the opening Thursday night.” He held up the papers briefly before he tossed them down on the antique rosewood desk where my computer sat. “I thought you could look through it and tell me if there are names of any button collectors you recognize.”
“Hello, Nev.”
It took him a moment, but when he caught on, his shoulders drooped and he made a face. “Sorry. Hello.” Nev hurried over and gave me a quick kiss. “My lieutenant’s riding me about this case and you’ve seen the newspapers, right? Between the vudon connection and those buttons glued to Forbis’s eyes and mouth . . . well, the media is making a circus out of this. The brass isn’t happy about it.”
“That means you’ve been working like mad and you didn’t even take the time for lunch today. Or breakfast, I bet.” It’s not like I was guessing. One quick look and I knew Nev hadn’t even changed his clothes since I saw him at the church the day before. That meant he hadn’t been home, that he’d been running since he’d first responded to the call at the Chicago Community Church. He was even more rumpled than usual, and the belt of his raincoat was still dragging. When he slipped off the coat, I tugged the belt through the loops to even it up all the way around, thus restoring order, at least in this little corner of the world.
Before I said another word, I went into the back workroom and pulled out a jar of corn and black bean salsa, a bag of corn chips, and a couple of paper plates. I’d run out earlier in the day for the express purpose of buying comfort food so I could eat it in front of the TV once I got home, but hey, keeping Nev going was more important and I’d still get my comfort-food fix. I filled our plates and because I didn’t like the thought of salsa mingling with my buttons, I called Nev into the back room.
He brought the guest list along with him and while he polished off his plate of chips and salsa in record time, I looked it over.
“There are a few collectors from the area,” I told him, and pointed out the names. “I spoke to all of them briefly when we first got to the art show. Remember? In fact, they’d heard about Forbis’s exhibit from me and I’m the one who called Laverne and had them added to the list. They’re all nice people. As far as I know, there isn’t one who would have a gripe against Forbis. In fact, none of them had ever even met Forbis.”
“Except he got his buttons from somewhere, right?” Nev talked with his mouth full, swallowed, and took a glug from the can of ginger ale I’d put out for him. “If some of those buttons belonged to one of them and—”
“I did some research last night,” I told Nev, and pointed to my own pile of papers that I’d left on the counter near the mini-fridge. “According to what I found online, Forbis got his buttons from garage sales and estate sales near where he lived in Georgia. And when he couldn’t find enough–because let’s face, there couldn’t possibly have been enough, what with all the buttons he used in his work—he ordered them directly from button manufacturers, most of them in China. He bought so many, they were more than happy to give him wholesale prices.”
“Which means none of the buttons at the exhibit were very valuable.”
“I can’t say.” It was true, and thinking it over, I crunched into my own chips while Nev refilled his plate. “I’d have to take a closer look,” I said before I realized I was insinuating myself back into the case. What about maintaining distance? Not to mention tranquility? As tempting as it was, I knew it was more important to find justice for Forbis. Even so, I gave Nev an out. “That is, I’ll take a closer look at the buttons at the exhibit if you’d like me to.”
“Are you kidding?” The snack brightened Nev’s spirits. He grinned. There was a blob of salsa on his green plaid tie and I dabbed it up with a paper towel, then wet another one and got rid of the tomatoey residue. Well, most of it, anyway. “If you could go back to the church one of these days and do that for me, that would be fabulous.”
“So you think there’s a button connection? That someone wanted one of the buttons in the exhibit?”
Nev wrinkled his nose. “Not really. I mean, if that was the case, why not just grab the button? Why kill the crazy artist? But I would like to cover all the bases.”
“You think it’s far more likely that someone had it in for Forbis?” He crunched into a chip. I chewed thoughtfully. “Why do people kill other people?” I asked Nev. Then, just so he didn’t think I was being too philosophical, I added, “I don’t mean because the killer hates the person, or the killer’s evil or anything. I’m talking more about motive.”
“That’s easy enough.” Nev settled on one of the high stools at the table. “Revenge, jealousy, greed, lust, hate. Motives are living proof that the deadly sins really exist.”
“So we should ask ourselves who wanted revenge against Forbis.”
Nev shrugged. But then, his mouth was full so there wasn’t much he could say.
“Or who was jealous.” To me, this sounded like a better motive, what with the fact that we were dealing with the art community. As a collector, I was on the very fringes. I sometimes sold my buttons to artists and discerning crafters and I’d seen how their vision of their art—not to mention some of their delusions of fame and fortune—could make their egos inflate to the size of hot-air balloons. “If there was another artist who’s ideas Forbis was stealing, or who thought Forbis was getting all the attention he should have been getting—”
“Another artist who glues billions of buttons onto stuff like couches and drums?” Nev’s pointed question gave me all the answer I needed.
“Greed, then. Richard said that since he started in on button art, Forbis was making money. Someone could have wanted it.”
“Absolutely.” I was so grateful to have finally hit on something Nev considered feasible, I smiled. “We’re looking into Forbis’s bank accounts, his expenses. All that stuff.”
“What about lust?” Honestly, I had no intention of bringing up Evangeline so Nev shouldn’t have looked so uncomfortable. Just in case I imagined it, I ignored it completely and answered my own question. “Forbis was a little old for a jealous lover.”
“But we’ll check that out, too,” he assured me.
“Speaking of which . . .”
“Josie!” Nev groaned. “I told you there’s nothing to talk about, not when it comes to Evangeline.”
Since Evangeline wasn’t what I was going to talk about, I froze. But then, I guess that could easily have been because there was suddenly a block of ice in my stomach. My words felt wooden. My legs suddenly wouldn’t hold me, and I took a seat, too. “I wasn’t talking about Evangeline.” A little niggle of worry ate away at my composure. Maybe Evangeline was what we should have been talking about. “I was talking about Laverne and Richard. He said that back in college, they were a couple.”
“Oh.” Nev took another drink of ginger ale.
Sometimes, silence can be just as loud as any noise. And far more uncomfortable.
I got up and refilled our plates with chips.
“Maybe there’s some symbolism for Forbis’s body being found where it was,” I said, desperate to say something, anything, that would relieve the thundering silence and get our conversation back on track. “You know, in the arms of that spirit who grinds up people and eats them. And with those buttons on his eyes and mouth.”
“Well, I’m no profiler . . .” No, he wasn’t and I wasn’t either, but there was no doubt Nev was as grateful for the change of subject as I was. Some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders. “My guess is the buttons on his eyes and mouth pretty much are a giveaway. You don’t just do that to someone, even someone you dislike enough to murder. Not unless you’re trying to send a message.”
“Forbis wasn’t looking. He wasn’t seeing. He refused to open his eyes.” Theorizing, I dragged a chip through the salsa even though I knew I wasn’t going to eat it. After Nev’s comment about Evangeline, I wasn’t so hungry anymore. “He said too much. He didn’t say enough. Button your lip!” I brightened. “That’s about as literal as you can get.”
Nev finished off a chip. “But what was he supposed to button his lip about? It sure wasn’t buttons because, I swear, nothing could make Forbis stop talking about or working with buttons. I did some online research, too, and it’s pretty clear, the guy was a publicity machine. Any time he got the chance, he showed up at regional button shows and county fairs. He loved being the center of attention, and according to his agent, he just got another huge shipment of buttons in so it sounds like he had another crazy notion for more crazy artwork. Not that buttons are crazy,” he added a little too quickly.
“I know what you mean,” I assured him and I did, honest, even though I had to ungrit my teeth before I said, “You don’t need to apologize. What we need to figure out . . .” I drummed my fingers against the table. “One of the things we need to do is figure out who Forbis was arguing with when he first showed up at the art show.”
Nev had a full mouth so he nodded and held up one finger as a way of telling me to hold the thought. While I did, he took his notebook out of his pocket and scanned through the pages. “We know it wasn’t Laverne,” he said, “because she was with us when we heard the fight break out.”
“And Richard?”
Nev looked through a few more of the pages. “After you left the church yesterday, I asked him. He said he’d heard the argument, too, and went to try and run interference, but he never did find Forbis or see who he was fighting with.”
“Which leaves . . .” I picked up the guest list Nev had brought along and let the four single-spaced pages drift back onto the table. “A hundred or so other people.”
“And the church staff,” he reminded me. “Because Reverend Truman and Bob the maintenance guy and anyone else who was connected with the church isn’t on the guest list and they were all in the building, too. And what about that journalist guy . . .” He skimmed through his notes and when he found what he was looking for, he stabbed the page with one finger. “What about this Gabriel Marsh? Journalists can be annoying. I mean, if he was asking Forbis questions that were too personal, that could explain a fight.”
“Except . . .” I thought back to my own encounter with Gabriel on the front steps of the church. Though we hadn’t been able to clearly hear the person Forbis was fighting with, I couldn’t help but think we might have picked up on the accent. “He’s English,” I told Nev.