Buttoned Up (8 page)
Authors: Kylie Logan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #General
“If it was, nobody told me.”
“Then what did they tell you?”
I had an excuse for not answering—I had a mouthful of lo mein. I chewed, swallowed, and washed it all down with another sip of wine. “If you’re looking for answers, you came to the wrong place. You should talk to the police.”
“You found the body.”
There was no use denying it so I didn’t even try.
There were two sets of chopsticks in the bag and Gabriel scooped up fried rice with his as if he’d been born using them. I am not so adventurous or willing to make a mess; I played it safe and used a fork.
“Is it true?” he asked. “About the buttons glued to Parmenter’s eyes and mouth?”
“Is that what the news reports said?”
“You know they did, or I wouldn’t have the information. I’ve called your boyfriend any number of times to try and get a few quotes and a whole lot of information. He’s either busy, or he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“And you think I can put in a good word for you.”
“I think you look like a woman who could use some fried rice on her plate.” He did the honors and for a couple minutes we sat in silence, eating. When I was feeling more generous and less like I’d been ambushed, I’d have to ask Gabriel where he got the food. It was too delicious to be from one of the carry-out places in the neighborhood.
He finished off his fried rice and attacked a portion of lo mein. “You know buttons,” was all he said.
“If you’re talking about the buttons on Forbis’s eyes and mouth . . .” Sitting in my dining room eating lo mein did not seem like the appropriate time to think of what I’d seen at the church. I tried to stay as objective as I could, as objective as I’d seen Nev at the scene of a crime. Turns out, I wasn’t very good at it, but it did give me a better appreciation of what it must cost him to retain his professionalism in the face of human tragedy.
“What about the buttons?” I asked Gabriel.
His right eyebrow lifted just enough to let me know he hadn’t expected me to be even this cooperative. But then, he didn’t know how firmly I believed that two could play the same game. He wanted information from me? Well, I wanted the same from him. Namely, why. Why was an arts writer so interested in murder? And why was he so convinced that buttons were involved that he thought a payoff in the form of lo mein to a button dealer was going to get him somewhere? If he knew something I didn’t know then I owed it to my investigation, not to mention to Forbis, to find out what Gabriel had up his sleeve.
“The buttons the murderer glued onto Forbis, were they valuable?” Gabriel asked. “Unusual? Striking? Was there anything extraordinary about any of them?”
I’d gotten a close-up look at the body once the techs took Forbis down from Congo Savanne’s arms, and I closed my eyes, pictured the scene, and gulped.
“Sorry.”
When he spoke, and I opened my eyes again, Gabriel was refilling my wineglass. “It’s not easy, is it, staring death in the face?”
“You didn’t ask about death, you asked about buttons. One button on each eye,” I said, and this was not some deep, dark secret because I knew the media had already reported it. “One button on his mouth. They were generic. Generic plastic buttons. My guess is that they were cut off shirts and probably manufactured in the mid nineties.”
“My guess is that isn’t a guess at all.” Gabriel acknowledged my expertise with a lift of his wineglass.
I took the compliment in stride. Just as I’d told Nev when he asked for my opinion at the church, if I couldn’t say that much about the buttons the murderer had glued to Forbis’s body, I’d be a poor expert, indeed. Rather than risk getting caught in the snare of Gabriel’s admiring look, I stuck to the facts. “One of the buttons was red, one was yellow, and one was green. Vudon colors.”
“And the other buttons?” he asked.
I nibbled my spring roll. “You saw the exhibit. There were thousands of them. They were . . . buttons.”
“None more valuable than the others?”
“Oh, I’m sure some were.” I thought back to what Nev had mentioned about the buttons earlier in the evening. He wanted me to go back to the church and check them out. This was not exactly information I was willing to share. Not until I knew what Gabriel Marsh was up to. Lo mein can only get a guy so far. Even a guy like Gabriel, who was as delicious as the dinner he’d brought with him.
I told myself to get a grip. I hadn’t spoken more than a couple dozen sentences to the man and I already knew one thing about him—he was a lot like Kaz, my ex. In fact, he was way too much like Kaz. Handsome and snake-oil-salesman charming. I knew better than to get fooled. I’d been fooled once and once was enough for a lifetime.
“When you found the body . . .” Gabriel pushed his chopsticks through the fried rice on his plate. “You didn’t happen to notice if any of those buttons were missing?”
“Any of the thousands and thousands of buttons on Forbis’s artwork?” It should have been enough of an answer, but when all he did was sit there as if he was waiting for more, I sat back. “You’re serious. You think Forbis’s murder has something to do with buttons he used in his artwork.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“You’re used to being the one who asks the questions.”
“And I’ve got plenty.” I took another sip of wine and realized my headache was still pounding, but not quite as much. For this, I was grateful. “Why do you care so much?”
He considered the question while he dished up more lo mein. His perfect body (there I was getting off track again!) didn’t seem to go along with his super-sized appetite. “It would make a hell of a story, don’t you think?” .
“And you’re that hard up for something to write about in an arts magazine?”
“Unless I’m not thinking of writing this particular story for an arts magazine.”
Some of the fog cleared, and I would have slapped my forehead if I wasn’t afraid that would make my head start pounding all over again. I should have seen it sooner. I would have if I was thinking more clearly. “You have delusions of grandeur! Is it a book or a movie deal you’re hoping for?”
“With any luck, both. You can’t deny it, a story like this has bestseller list written all over it. The eccentric artist, the mysterious death. Voodoo.”
“Vudon,” I corrected him. “And something tells me that’s nothing more than a coincidence. Forbis’s death can’t possibly be connected to some long-dead religion.”
“You mean you think Parmenter might just as well have been killed at any of his other showings. The one that featured home appliances, for instance.” Gabriel’s eyes gleamed. “It would have been bloody brilliant if the killer could have left him in a button-covered cooler.”
It took me a second to realize he was referring to the fridge. I wondered if that scenario would have been any less disturbing than finding Forbis in the arms of the people-eating loa and decided it wouldn’t have made any difference.
“I don’t know what to think,” I said, and I wasn’t just talking about the case. It applied to Gabriel, too. “I only know that the poor man is dead and the cops are working as hard as they can to figure out what happened to him. I’m sure they’ll be interviewing everyone who was at the opening. They’ll want to know where you were after Forbis ran out.”
He finished the last of the food on his plate and pushed it away. “With you on the steps of the church. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten. I like to think I make a little better impression than that.”
Yeah, like I was going to admit that! “What about after?” I asked him instead.
“After . . .” Gabriel finished the wine in his glass and didn’t pour another. He reached back in the takeout bag, pulled out two fortune cookies, and tossed one to me.
He broke his cookie in half and ate it without bothering to look at the fortune. “After that, I was . . . occupied,” he admitted, and I wondered if I was about to hear something I’d rather not and then realized what I was comfortable hearing didn’t matter. Wine, women, and song? Whatever Gabriel had been up to, it wasn’t as important as the truth.
“So you do have an alibi for the time of the murder.”
He laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound and it shivered along my skin like those wisps of fog in my dream. Only hotter. “Even if I didn’t, you know I’d say I did. As it happens, mine is legitimate, but impossible to substantiate. Not unless the person I was following knew I was following him. And really, I highly doubt that. I may be . . .” He searched for the right word. “I may be conspicuous at times, but I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t follow people without being noticed.”
“Your job as a writer for an arts magazine.”
Smiling, he ate the other half of his cookie, then pushed back from the table and stood. “You’re smart. No doubt that’s why the police have let you consult on other cases. You know people.”
“I know buttons.”
“Buttons . . . yes.” He ambled to the door and when he saw Stan was still sitting where we’d left him, Gabriel pointed back to the dining room. “There’s plenty left,” he said. “Enjoy.”
He was about to step into the hall when I stopped him. “You still haven’t told me where you were, who you were following the night of the murder.”
“Why, Richard Norquist, of course.”
I remembered what Richard had told us back at the church. “Richard and Laverne. They went for coffee near his hotel.”
“Is that what he told you?” Gabriel’s gray eyes glinted in the hallway light. “You might consider asking him again. You see, he wasn’t with the lovely Laverne. He was with Victor Cherneko.”
I suppose I shouldn’t have been stunned. People had lied to me before, especially in connection with murder. Still, the thought that Richard could have told such a story, both to me and to Nev, left me at a loss for words.
Unless Gabriel was the one with the penchant for storytelling.
Before I could ask, he was down the stairs and gone, and honestly, I just wasn’t in the mood to chase after him. For one thing, it would have looked pathetic and for another . . . I pressed my hands to my head. The rumba was starting up inside my brain again, and all I wanted to do was put on my jammies and crawl into bed.
First, I helped Stan get his chair back inside his apartment, thanked him, and wished him good night. Then I realized I had a mess to clean up in my dining room.
I tucked away the leftovers, filled the dishwasher, and grabbed the bag and cartons to throw everything away.
It was the first I saw that Gabriel had left the fortune from his cookie still lying on the table.
I picked it up and read it.
“A clear conscience,” it told him, “is the sign of a bad memory.”
Mine?
I cracked open my cookie and popped half of it in my mouth, then was sorry I did. I needed a gulp of wine to force the cookie past the sudden lump that blocked my throat when I read my fortune. Too bad the wine did nothing to erase the memory of that dream that had knocked me so off-kilter, or the thought of Forbis propped in the arms of the vicious Congo Savanne.
“You will be forced to face fear, but if you do not run, fear will be afraid of you.”
When Nev is knee-deep in a case, it’s not unusual for him not to call. After all, as so many TV shows say so many times, the first forty-eight hours of a murder investigation are the most important.
According to the medical examiner, Forbis had been killed in the wee hours of Friday morning. Which meant by Sunday, forty-eight hours had come and gone. I knew this. Just like I knew that because there had been no break in the case, Nev was harried, busy, and being pressured by his superiors, not to mention the media.
He didn’t call.
And this shouldn’t have bothered me.
But it did.
I spent Sunday doing laundry, cleaning the apartment, and trying not to think about it. As a thank you for his above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty good deed the night before, I made dinner for Stan—pot roast, his favorite—and he declared my roasted parsnips the best he’d ever eaten. Coming from Stan, that is high praise, indeed.
After I cleaned up, I did some reading and since the remnants of that pounding headache still lurked in my brain and threatened to erupt at any moment, I made a cup of herbal tea with honey and went to bed early.
And still, Nev didn’t call.
And I was worried.
Oh, it’s not like I was concerned that he was in some kind of danger. Though he keeps it hidden beneath the rumpled clothes and the little boy smile, Nev is as tough as nails. He can take care of himself.
And it’s not like I’m some kind of crazy, jealous girlfriend, either. At least I never had been. I knew Nev cared about me, just like I did about him. We had a special relationship and thanks to him, the places in my heart that had been left cold and empty by Kaz’s lying ways had been filled with warmth.
But as much as I tried (and honest, I tried!), I couldn’t stop thinking about Nev. Nev and Evangeline.
Believe me when I say I knew this was disturbed. Not to mention disturbing. It was so not like me that I knew I had to do something to shake loose from the thoughts.
By Monday morning, I’d had enough, and I vowed to keep myself busy in spite of the fact that the headache was back full force and no amount of pain relievers would touch it. I put a message on the Button Box website and another one on the shop voice mail that said I’d be opening a little later that day and with that taken care of, I headed on over to the Mango Tango Gallery.
As soon as I stepped off the Blue Line El, I remembered how much I love the Wicker Park neighborhood and wondered why I didn’t make it a point to visit there more often. Then it hit me: Wicker Park is adjacent to Bucktown where Kaz lives. And adjacent is too close for comfort.
Still, I will admit that in spite of its proximity to my ex, Wicker Park is funky and fun. It’s got about a million little independent shops and, of course, that’s the kind of thing that gives this small business owner hope for the future. It’s also home to a ton of gorgeous old churches and more—many more—neighborhood dive bars. I must have passed at least a dozen on my way over to the gallery.
Mango Tango was located upstairs from a tapas restaurant that, this early in the morning, wasn’t open for business. Too bad. I looked over the menu posted in the window and promised myself a return visit. Goat cheese with honey and sweet onion? Be still, my heart! Oh yeah, I’d be back.
Unfortunately, it looked like I’d have to come back to talk to Bart McCromb at Mango Tango, too.
My hand was already on the door that led up to the second-floor gallery, when I caught sight of the note stuck on the window nearby:
Off to sunny St. Croix. See you next week.
It was signed simply,
Bart.
So much for that line of investigation. I checked the open and close times on the tapas restaurant so I could hit both the gallery and goat cheese/honey heaven the next week, and headed over to the Button Box.
The first thing I saw as I approached the brownstone was Nev standing outside.
OK, I’ll admit it, I’m not sappy and I’m nobody’s definition (I hope) of a woman whose ego depends on the man in her life.
That didn’t mean I didn’t give Nev a mile-wide smile.
“You’re late today.” After a quick peck on the cheek, he stepped back so I could unlock the robin’s egg blue front door. “I wondered what was going on.”
I told him about Mango Tango. “Weird to think the owner went to St. Croix when he was supposed to be hosting Forbis’s exhibit.”
While I turned on lights and put out the sign that said the Button Box was officially open for business, Nev went into the back room and made a pot of coffee. “Maybe not,” he said when he came back with a mug in each hand and we slipped right back into the conversation with all the comfort of a couple who knows each other’s minds. “If Richard and Forbis moved the exhibit to the church, maybe this McCromb guy was left high and dry.”
“You think McCromb might have been angry enough about it to kill Forbis?”
“I think . . .” Nev took a drink from his mug. He can drink coffee hotter and faster than anyone I know. I think it has something to do with cops and how they’re always so busy and always on their way somewhere. He was halfway done with his coffee and I was still blowing on mine and taking tiny sips to test the temperature. “If McCromb was left high and dry without the exhibit he was planning, I think the guy was pretty smart to head on down to St. Croix for a week.”
He was right, and I was seeing motives and menace where it probably didn’t exist.
I told myself not to forget it.
“So, what have you been up to?” I asked the question because I honestly cared. I wasn’t fishing, and I sure wasn’t prying.
That didn’t keep an image of Evangeline and Nev from flashing through my head.
I pushed it aside. “I mean about the case, of course. Is there anything you can tell me?”
“No progress.” He drained the last of his coffee. “I wish I could say there was. The crime-scene techs tell me they haven’t found anything very useful at the church. Have you had a chance to get back there and check out the buttons?”
I told him I hadn’t, but promised I would, and soon.
Then I remembered what Gabriel Marsh had told me. “You might want to talk to Richard again,” I suggested. “He told us he was out with Laverne after the show on Thursday.”
Nev raised his eyebrows just a tad. In Nev’s world, this is the equivalent of unbridled surprise. “And you know that’s not true?”
“I know there’s another version of the story. Richard might have been with Victor Cherneko. You remember him, the guy who was wearing a tux at the show. Laverne pointed him out, said he was some hotsy-totsy patron of the arts.”
“And a prominent businessman.” Nev nodded. “I was just reading something about him in the newspaper. His company built some new building downtown and there’s been a dispute with the general contractor or the architect or someone. He’s a mover and a shaker, all right. And you say Richard was with him after the show and not Laverne? How do you know?”
“Gabriel Marsh.” It was all the explanation I had a chance to give before a customer came through the front door. She was particular and, honestly, I didn’t hold that against her. When it comes to buttons, I am particular, too. Still, I didn’t anticipate spending nearly an hour with the woman and dragging out every Czech hand-pressed glass button in my inventory.
While I took care of my business, Nev handled his own. He went into the back room and I heard him on the phone, no doubt going over the details of Forbis’s death and following any lead that came his way.
No sooner had I bagged the woman’s button purchases than Nev came back out to the front of the shop.
“What about Gabriel Marsh?” he asked.
It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about and pick up the threads of the conversation. I did that, and put away the hand-pressed glass buttons while I talked. “He stopped over Saturday night,” I said.
“The shop isn’t open on Saturday night.”
My hands stilled over the buttons. “Not here. He came to my apartment.”
Nev crossed his arms over his chest. I pretended not to notice because, let’s face it, the gesture was entirely too confrontational and, therefore, uncalled for. Then again, so was the slightly accusatory tone of Nev’s voice. “Gabriel Marsh was at your apartment. How did he know where you live?”
I shrugged. That pretty much said all I could say about Marsh finding me. While I was at it, I answered what I knew would be Nev’s next question even before he asked it. “He was looking for information. Seems he wants to write a book about Forbis’s murder.”
“And you told him . . . ?”
“That I didn’t know anything.” I replaced the first batch of buttons in the old library card catalogue file cabinet where they belonged and got to work on the rest of them, sorting first by manufacturer, then by when they were made, then by color. “I wouldn’t have even bothered telling him that much, but he brought lo mein and—”
“This Marsh character showed up at your apartment with dinner?”
It was a logical question, but blame it on my headache, I didn’t like Nev’s tone of voice when he asked it. I slammed the card catalogue drawer shut and spun around. “He was looking to butter me up. That’s what the lo mein was all about. But like I said, it didn’t work. He asked what I knew and I told him nothing.”
“But you ate dinner with him. Jo . . .” Nev’s exasperated sigh echoed through the Button Box. “There’s a murderer on the loose, you know.”
When I gritted my teeth, my head pounded just a little harder. “I’m well aware of that.”
“But you let the guy into your apartment, anyway?” Nev ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe you’d be so stupid.”
I already had another handful of buttons and, truth be told, had they been anything else—jewelry, coins, bits and pieces of ancient Egyptian artifacts—I would have flung them across the shop at Nev. But they were buttons, after all, and I treasure my buttons. My fingers closed tight around them. “What did you say?” I asked. Oh yes, it was a rhetorical question, so technically I shouldn’t have needed an answer. But I wanted one. Along with an explanation of what on earth had possessed Nev to talk to me that way.
He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you were stupid. I just meant—”
“That what I did was stupid.” I deposited the buttons in the proper drawer and slid it shut with a little more of a bang than I intended. It was my turn to cross my arms over my chest. “I know what I’m doing,” I reminded Nev. I shouldn’t have had to. “I’ve investigated murders before. And successfully, too. I’m not some dumb kid who—”
“I know, I know.” He hurried over and looped his arms around my waist. “I’m sorry. Really.” I guess the quick kiss he gave me was supposed to prove it. “I’m tired and I haven’t had breakfast and you know how crabby I get when I haven’t had my Cheerios. Besides, I’m worried about you, Jo. I know you want to help, but we don’t know who this Marsh guy is.”
When I was looking for information about Forbis in art magazines, I’d read a few articles by Gabriel so that wasn’t exactly accurate. “He’s a journalist,” I told Nev. “That means he’s naturally nosy. He was fishing for information. He didn’t get any. But I got some from him.” Usually, I like nothing better than standing in the circle of Nev’s arms and resting my head on his chest. This time when I tried, my headache only beat harder, and I pushed away.
“Richard told us he went out for coffee with Laverne after the show,” I reminded Nev. “But Gabriel says that’s not true. He says he followed Richard, and Richard was with Victor Cherneko.”
Nev considered this. “Did he say why?”
I would have shaken my head but when I tried, it hurt too much and I guess that’s why my questions came out filled with just a little too much sarcasm. “Why Richard lied to us? Or why Gabriel was following Richard? Or why Richard was with Victor?”
Nev winced. Then again, my words were as sharp as stones.
I pressed my fingers to my temples and tried to make up for it by saying, “It’s looking like Richard’s alibi might be a little shaky.”
“Unless Marsh is lying.”
So much for being conciliatory.
“Why would he?” I asked. “What could he possibly gain from lying to us about Richard and Victor?”
“You mean what could he possibly gain from lying to
you
about Richard and Victor,” Nev jabbed back. The next second, like me, he realized he’d come across as too harsh. “That’s what we don’t know,” he said, his voice a little softer, his words less stinging. “Don’t you see? That’s why I’m suspicious. OK, so we know Marsh is a journalist. That’s all well and good. But other than that, we don’t know anything about him. Who knows what his motive might be! It’s not like we can suddenly trust him just because he shows up at your door with lo mein. It’s not like he’s some old friend or anything.”