Panic Button (2 page)

“Of course you’re not making any of it up,” I said, because really, a woman like me
found it impossible to even imagine that a woman like her could. “You’re obviously
upset. What’s going on, Angela? And what does it have to do with the charm string?”

She tried for a smile, but it wavered around the edges. “I’m not surprised you figured
out it’s all about those damned buttons. I heard you were smart. That’s one of the
reasons I chose you when I looked for someone to put a value on that…thing.”

Again, her gaze landed on the charm string. But only for a second. Angela might be
trying to put on a brave face, but her body language spoke volumes. She sat up a
little straighter and angled back her spine, putting as much distance as possible
between herself, my worktable, and the charm string on it. A skitter shook her shoulders.
“You knew, and I didn’t even have to tell you. Can you feel the psychic vibrations,
too?” Her palm flat, she put a hand over the buttons that, many years ago, her great-great-grandmother
had painstakingly slipped onto a heavy piece of string the way so many girls had in
the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Making charm strings had been something
of a fad back then. Girls collected and strung buttons, and the tradition was that
each button had to be different. Buttons were traded, given as gifts, and brought
back as souvenirs from places like Niagara Falls and New York City, and legend said
that when button number one thousand came into a girl’s life, so would her Prince
Charming.

I can’t say if that last bit about happily-ever-after held true for every charm string
maker, but I do know that strings with all one thousand buttons on them are rare enough
to make any button collector salivate.

Angela’s charm string had exactly one thousand buttons on it, and I had been salivating
over it since the day she called and asked me to take a look at the photos she’d taken
of the buttons so that I could value the charm string for tax purposes before she
donated it to her local historical society. Of course, I’d been trying to get her
to sell it to me since that day, too.

So far, no dice.

Which, to me, was my own version of a curse.

I snapped out of the thought to find Angela still with
her hand poised over the buttons. “I can practically feel the bad luck bubbling off
this thing,” she said.

This was the point at which I seriously began reassessing my opinion of Angela.

Not that I could let on. I wasn’t about to honk off a customer who was willing to
pay for an appraisal just because she was a little…er…eccentric. Especially not when
six weeks after she’d sent my button mania into overdrive by sending me the photos,
she’d finally brought me the genuine article to study, admire, and yes, covet anew.

I scraped my palms against the black pants I was wearing with a spring green cotton
sweater. “You keep looking at the buttons as if they’re going to ignite and take the
whole shop with them.”

Angela glanced from side to side before she leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“So you really do think the buttons are going to bring you bad luck?”

“No, no, Josie. They’re not
going
to bring me bad luck. They
have
brought me bad luck. Ever since the day I inherited them. And funny you should mention
fire. I had a fire at home. Not two weeks after I brought these buttons into my house.”

Before I followed my dream and opened the Button Box, I’d once worked as an administrative
assistant at an insurance agency. I knew the statistics. “Home fires are not all that
uncommon,” I said, and believe me, I tried to put a kind spin on it. “As a matter
of fact, every year—”

“Yes, yes. I know all that.” Angela hopped off the
stool and paced the length of my workroom, from the counter where I have one of those
mini-refrigerators, a microwave, and a coffeemaker, to the far wall, and back again.
“Don’t think other people haven’t tried to tell me things like that. It was an accident,
Angela. It was unfortunate. It happens all the time.” Her voice singsonged over the
false comfort the way I’m sure her friends’ had when they offered it. “But don’t you
see, Josie, this is different!” She pulled to a stop directly in front of me and,
fists on hips, looked down her long, slim nose.

“The fire came after the attempted break-in. And the attempted break-in just so happened
to come the day after I got the charm string out of Aunt Evelyn’s safety-deposit box
and brought it home. That…” She stopped here like she expected me to interrupt and,
with a glance, dared me to even think about it. “That was the same day the brakes
went on my car. While I was on the freeway.” The way her voice trembled said volumes
about how terrifying the incident must have been.

“As far as that fire,” she went on, “maybe the whole thing won’t sound like just another
statistic when I tell you that not four months earlier, there was a fire at my great-aunt’s
house, too.”

“Aunt Evelyn? You mean the one who—”

“The one who left me the charm string in her will. Yes, that’s the one.” Angela’s
smile was
gotcha!
sleek. But only for a heartbeat. The next second, she was right back to looking upset.
And pacing again.

“Don’t you see, Josie, when Aunt Evelyn was still alive and was the one who owned
the charm string, there
was a fire in her kitchen, and nobody, not even the Ardent Lake Fire Department, has
been able to figure out how it started. Luckily, I just happened to stop in that afternoon
to drop off some cookies I’d baked for Evelyn. Good gracious, the woman was eighty-three.
If she’d been there alone…” Angela didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to.
The way her shoulders shook told me she knew exactly what would have happened to Aunt
Evelyn if she hadn’t shown up.

“And the fire at your house?” I asked.

“Same scenario.” As if she’d been over it a thousand times and was no closer to finding
an answer now than she had been all those other times, Angela shook her head. She
had a head of curls that were far too dark for a woman her age, and they gleamed.
“A fire in the middle of the kitchen table? Come on, that doesn’t just happen. I certainly
didn’t leave a pile of newspapers there, and that’s what caught on fire. And no one
else was in the house. I live alone. I can’t even sleep at night, thinking about how
bad things might have gotten. At Aunt Evelyn’s, you see, I jumped right into action
as if I’d been trained. I grabbed a pitcher of water and put that fire right out.
At my own house…” Though we’d only just met, I knew instinctively that Angela was
not the kind of person who liked admitting to weakness. No woman who wore a crisp
navy business suit and starched white blouse to what was, essentially, a casual meeting,
could possibly be. She glanced away. “I smelled the smoke, I raced into the kitchen,
and then…I froze.” Her shrug told me she still didn’t understand. “I stood there like
a zombie
watching my kitchen go up in smoke and I couldn’t move a muscle. Things would have
gotten really ugly if not for Larry.”

For the first time since Angela had mentioned the curse, the lines of worry on her
face smoothed out, and in the light of the overhead fluorescents, her eyes sparkled.
“In fact, Larry is the only good thing that’s happened to me since those buttons came
into my life.”

I’m a smart enough businesswoman to know that dealing with a happy customer is far
easier than trying to talk one down who’s convinced herself that her life is ruled
by button bad luck. I knew this was one safe subject and I decided to stick to it.

“Tell me about him,” I urged.

“Oh, Larry.” Angela shook her shoulders in a way designed to make me think he was
no big deal, but the little smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth said otherwise.
“He owns the hardware store in Ardent Lake. Has for years. It’s not a very big town,
so of course, I’ve always seen him around and bumped into him now and then. His wife
died a few years ago, and after that, he kept to himself for a long time. But now…”

Because she wouldn’t say it, I figured I would. “He’s your boyfriend.”

Her cheeks turned the color of a Chicago sunset. “That sounds so silly, doesn’t it?
Like we’re in high school or something. Larry and I, we’re…friends. Well, I guess
we’re more than friends at this point. And you know, Josie, it’s really wonderful.
It’s nice to have someone to go to the movies with and to cook dinner for. What with
Aunt Evelyn dying and all I’ve had to do to settle
her estate, Larry’s been a real rock.” Her cheeks still flaming, she glanced at me
out of the corner of her eye. “He’s cute, too.”

It was impossible not to smile. Then again, I’d always been a believer when it came
to happily-ever-afters. That was the only thing that could possibly explain how I’d
been suckered by Kaz, my ex, into thinking that true love is as unalienable a right
as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But I digress. Thinking of how my marriage had gone sour wasn’t exactly appropriate,
what with Angela glowing like the spring sunshine outside the Button Box’s front display
window.

“I’m glad,” I told her, and it was true. “But doesn’t the fact that you’ve met Larry
tell you something? You’ve got the charm string and it’s got one thousand buttons
on it. Prince Charming has come into your life!”

She twinkled like a beauty queen. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. It’s one
of the reasons I want to get this charm string out of my life as soon as possible.
I can’t take the chance that anything will go wrong. Not when it comes to Larry.”

Talk about the perfect opening!

I whispered a prayer at the same time I said, “You could profit very nicely from the
charm string, Angela. If you’re interested in selling it rather than donating it—”

“Absolutely not.” Her words were as firm as the way she held her jaw. “I don’t mean
to be difficult, but you’ve got to understand, Josie. This charm string is most definitely
cursed. That means any money I made from selling it would bring bad luck, too. No.
The only thing I can do
is donate the charm string to the Ardent Lake Historical Society. Everything’s arranged.
I’ll pick up the charm string from you tomorrow, and the next day, the historical
society is having a tea in my honor. That’s when I’ll present them the charm string.
They’ve got the display all ready and they’re going to set the charm string into it
in front of everyone at the tea.” She brushed her hands together. “That will get it
out of my life, once and for all.”

“Of course, that’s up to you.” Big points for me, I managed to say this without weeping.
“But before you make your final decision, there are a couple things you should know.”
I went over to the worktable and turned on the high-intensity lamp. “Most of the buttons
on your charm string aren’t all that remarkable,” I told Angela. “They’re all very
old, which makes sense since the string was made by your great-great-grandmother.
But old doesn’t always mean valuable. Most of these were fairly common buttons at
the time she made the charm string. There are some mother of pearl shirt buttons…”
I found one and pointed it out, and Angela looked all right, but she refused to get
too close. “There are brass buttons.” I showed her some of those, too. “There are
lots of black glass buttons. Individually, at a button show, most of these buttons
wouldn’t sell for more than a couple dollars each. But…” I swept a hand over the entire
length of the charm string. “It’s rare to even find partial charm strings these days.
To find one that’s complete…well, honestly, it’s enough to take a button collector’s
breath away!”

Angela clutched her hands at her waist. “All the more
reason to get the thing displayed at the historical society. Then lots of people can
see it and admire it.”

“That’s true. But there are collectors—and not just me, Angela, so don’t think I’m
saying this for my own selfish purposes—there are collectors who would pay you a bundle
for this charm string.”

Her chin came up a fraction of an inch. “I told you. I don’t want the money. I don’t
care how much we’re talking about.”

“And you should also know…” I looked down the length of the string, and the button
I was looking for wasn’t hard to find. I tilted the light so that it glimmered against
the button’s enameled surface. “Like I said, most of the buttons here are common,
but this one…” Every time I looked at this particular button, my breath caught in
my throat. “It was made in China,” I told Angela. “Sometime around 1850. It’s enameled
and the details are exquisite.” The button was about an inch across and right in the
center of it was a shimmering red fish set on a background that featured green aquatic
plants and turquoise water. “I know collectors who would pay thousands for this button,”
I told her. I controlled myself; I didn’t add that I was one of them.

Angela’s lips clamped tight. “Don’t care,” she mumbled. “Don’t want the money.”

“That’s fine.” It wasn’t. Not to me. To me, the charm string was the embodiment of
every button fantasy I’d ever had. At least I was lucky enough to have it to myself
for a while so I could compare the actual buttons to the photos Angela had sent and
make my final decisions
regarding values. I took comfort (not much) in the thought. “I figured it was only
fair to tell you.”

“And I appreciate it.” Angela backed toward the door. “I hope you can appreciate how
I feel about the whole thing.”

I did. Even if I didn’t understand it.

It was clear Angela was anxious to get out of the Button Box and away from the charm
string, and I didn’t try to stop her. After all, the sooner she left, the sooner I
could immerse myself in studying the buttons. Two days weren’t nearly enough, but
they were all I had, and I was anxious to get to work.

“You’ll be back tomorrow evening?” I walked to the front of the shop with Angela.
“I’m usually open until six, but I can stay late if that works better for you.” I
prayed it did. That meant extra hours with the charm string.