Button Box Mystery: Hot Button Part 2

"How soon can we see it?" she asked, her eyes on Thad. "You're not going to make us wait until dinner tomorrow night, are you, Thad?"

He knew exactly what Helen was talking about, and his eyes lit up. I knew what she was talking about, too, and in spite of the fact that I told myself that it was nothing more than a b.u.t.ton and that I had known for a while that it would be on display at this conference, a little tingle of excitement shot through me.

"You'd like me to say you can see it before then. I can see that in those pretty blue eyes of yours." Thad was done with his steak, so he wagged one finger at Helen. "You're figurin' I'll say somethin' like come on up to room 842 tonight at eleven and you'll get a look at it-the Geronimo b.u.t.ton."

I may have been imagining it, but I swear, at the sound of those words being spoken, every person at the table caught his or her breath.

Everyone but Thad.

He slapped his knee. "Sure, you're gonna have to wait. Just like everyone else. Ain't that right, Josie?"

All eyes turned to me. "Thad and I have an agreement," I explained. "You know, so that none of his thunder gets stolen before tomorrow night's banquet. That's the first anyone here at the conference is supposed to get a look at the Geronimo b.u.t.ton."

"I can't wait." Helen's cheeks flamed. At least for a second. Then it was as if someone had turned off a switch. She c.o.c.ked her head and stared at Thad. "But how-"

"Lookee this, my gla.s.s is empty!" Thad jiggled the ice cubes in his gla.s.s and got up from the table. "Gonna pay a quick visit over to the bar. Be right back, folks."

Honestly, I thought about joining him. It had already been a long night, and officially, the conference hadn't even begun. I talked myself out of a trip to the bar and a well-deserved gla.s.s of wine, though, wishing my dinner companions a pleasant rest of the evening and staying right where I was as they rose and scattered, walking around the room to chat with other conference-goers, heading up to the open third deck to watch the Chicago skyline in all its glory.

I would have to go outside eventually, too, but for now, I savored the peace and quiet, the smooth whoosh of the boat in the serene waters, and the contentment that comes after a good meal in (mostly) good company.

"Wanna dance?"

I didn't even bother to look at him when Kaz flopped into the chair next to mine. "It's not a dancing cruise," I told him. I sat up and worked a kink out of my shoulders. "I should know. I planned it. No music."

"We could hum and dance."

Like I said, I was feeling content. I laughed. "Actually..." I pushed my chair back from the table. "I've got to go mingle. There's a woman here from Australia-"

"Meghan Moran." Kaz nodded. "I hooked her up-in a b.u.t.ton conference way, I mean-with a couple ladies from Indianapolis. They're hanging out like long-lost friends."

"Thank you." Had I actually said that to Kaz? Had he actually done me a favor? I eyed him carefully, but then, that wasn't exactly uncalled-for; when Kaz is in a giving mood, it's usually because he expects to receive something in return. "I don't suppose you took care of the contingent from Paris, too?"

"Sorry." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Don't speak the language. But that guy from the Czech Republic..." He glanced over to where I saw Alexander Benes talking to some folks. "He speaks really good English. He was telling me about the gla.s.s b.u.t.tons they make at that factory of his."

"And you were listening?" OK, call me cynical, but let's face it-in the three years we'd been married, Kaz had never listened to word one from me. Not when it came to b.u.t.tons.

Another shrug. "I was sitting next to the guy at dinner. I didn't have a lot of choice but to listen. I had him on one side and some lady from L.A. on the other. She specializes in b.u.t.tons with p.o.r.nographic pictures on them. Jo, you never told me b.u.t.ton collecting could be so interesting!"

"You wouldn't have listened if I'd tried." There was no use debating the point. Even when I was in a good mood, being reminded of how Kaz had always treated my "little hobby" as just that always had a way of rankling. I stood, ready to head up to the open deck. "I've got to go make sure everyone is happy," I told him.

"You could start with me."

Oh yeah, he was smiling, all right. In that devil-may-care way that used to make my blood boil. In a good sort of way. These days, the boil was usually because he was annoying me. This time...

I gave him a smile. "Thanks for helping out. For the rest of the week, Thad will be at the conference and at the hotel. You can take the limo back."

"And miss all the fun?" Kaz followed along behind me. "Hey, I'm just getting into all this b.u.t.ton stuff."

"Right, and I just fell off a turnip truck." I shook my head. Honestly, the man can be brazen. The fact that he still expected me to fall for his line never ceased to amaze me. "Good-bye, Kaz," I said, just as a man came up behind me.

"Oh, there you are!" I turned to see what he wanted from me and realized he was one of the waitstaff and was talking to Kaz. "We've got the tea you requested for that woman from j.a.pan," he told Kaz. "It took some digging, but we found it in the kitchen." The waiter turned to me. "You're Josie, right? I saw you talking to Micah a little while ago. I've got to tell you, I don't know where you got this guy..." The look he gave Kaz was one of pure admiration. "But you've got an amazing a.s.sistant here."

"a.s.sistant? I-"

There was no use trying to explain. Kaz and the waiter had already walked away.

And I told myself not to worry. If Kaz wanted to play the good guy for tonight, so be it. Once he took Thad back to the hotel, that would be that, and we could get on with our conference.

My conference.

I breathed a sigh of pure contentment.

Every program was organized and interesting.

Every speaker and panel was ready to go.

All was right with the world, Lake Michigan was as smooth as gla.s.s, and my guests were having the time of their lives.

"Oh, yeah?" The words-spoken by a woman-were loud and said with enough sarcasm to sour a lemon. They echoed down the metal stairway from the open third deck. "I can't believe you'd have the nerve to show up here, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. I'm warning you right now; you'd better step away from that railing, Thad Wyant, or you're going to find yourself in Lake Michigan-floating fish food!"

Chapter Three.

I SCRAMBLED UP THE STAIRWAY AS FAST AS MY LESS-THAN-long legs allowed, and got up onto the open deck just in time to see that every single person out there had gathered in a semicircle around the far railing. The fabulous Chicago skyline was at their backs. But the show was happening right in front of them. Eager to diffuse whatever time bomb they were watching and waiting to explode, I pushed myself to the front of the crowd (politely, of course) just in time to see Thad Wyant shake his head in a way that told me that woman's outraged voice I'd heard was nothing to him-nothing but pitiful.

My guest of honor had both his elbows propped against the railing. His lanky legs were stuck out in front of him, crossed at the ankle. With his Stetson far back on his head and those cowboy boots of his coated with enough dust to make it look as if he'd just come in off the range, he was the picture of serenity.

Not so the middle-aged woman who stood across from him, a woman I didn't remember checking in at the gangplank. She was no more than five feet tall and as thin as a stick of chewing gum. Tiny hands, bitty feet. She reminded me of a little gray mouse. Gray pantsuit, gray hair, sensible gray shoes. From where I stood, I could see her trembling like the flag that snapped at the back of the boat in the breeze we kicked up as we scooted through the water.

"You don't even care, do you?" Her voice-high-pitched and quivering-floated away on that same breeze. "How can you stand there and pretend like it doesn't matter?"

"Aw, shucks, lady." As if it was a monumental effort, Thad unfolded himself from the railing and scuffed his boots against the metal deck. "Why don't you just head on out of here? I told you; I don't know what in the tarnation you're talkin' about."

"You... don't... know... what..." The woman contained her aggravation, but just barely. And it cost her. Her hands curled into fists, she pressed her arms close to her sides, and she pulled in breath after uneven breath. "I'm not going to give you another chance. You hear me, Thad Wyant? You've had every opportunity to come clean about this. Now-"

"Yer wasting your time! Git along. Git yourself outta here." Thad never touched her, but the shooing gesture he made toward her might as well have been a slap in the face. That's how violently she reacted.

Her shoulders so stiff that I swore they were going to snap, the woman backed away from Thad and whirled around. It was the first she realized there were a couple dozen people watching their confrontation, and when she did, all the color drained from her cheeks, leaving her grayer than ever. Her chin quivering, she dropped her face into her hands and raced to the stairway, sobbing.

I was torn between going after her and checking on my guest of honor. I'm pretty sure I would have opted for the woman if not for the fact that Thad, hands in the pockets of his jeans, ambled over like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Well, ain't that just the darndest thing." He looked toward the now-empty stairway, shaking his head.

I am not the dithering type. Still, I found it hard to get anything evenly vaguely coherent out of my mouth. I looked from the stairway to Thad and from Thad to the crowd that, now that the excitement had ended, was heading over to stand near the railing and watch the city skyline float by and-no doubt-go over a play-by-play of the knock-down, drag-out they'd just witnessed. By the time I did, my blood pressure was down and I'd regained some of my legendary composure. "I'm so sorry," I said. "Things like that shouldn't happen in public. It's bad enough that your friend was upset, but-"

"Friend?" Thad wrinkled his too-big-for-his-face nose. "Never seen that there lady before in my life."

"But how... Why?" I didn't want to get into an instant replay. I mean, really, Thad must have remembered everything the woman said just as clearly as I did. "Why was she so angry then? And who is she?"

He had a gla.s.s in one hand, and he looked down into its empty depths. "Darned if I know. Crazy, huh? b.u.t.ton folks, they're just darned crazy!" He threw back his head and laughed, then twitched his shoulders, tossing off the whole incident just like that. As if he didn't have a care in the world, he strolled downstairs.

That's exactly when I realized Daryl Tucker was standing next to me, looking where I was looking.

"I'm so sorry." There I was, saying it again. Sorry was quickly turning into the conference mantra. "That certainly isn't the best way to start off a conference."

"It's amazing." He didn't so much speak the words as let them escape on the end of a sigh. Behind his gla.s.ses, his eyes were thoughtful. "I can't believe it."

"Me, either." I tried for light and was afraid I sounded callous, so I figured it was as good a moment as any to try to put Daryl at ease. "No worries. The woman apparently mistook Thad for someone else."

Was that enough to rea.s.sure Daryl that he hadn't come to his first b.u.t.ton convention and found himself in the midst of a bunch of loony people? I can't say. I do know that when he walked away, he was muttering to himself, "Didn't look that way to me."

"Chin up, Jo." Before I even knew he was in the vicinity, Kaz had an arm around my shoulders. He gave me a squeeze. "You can't control every minute of this conference. You do know that, don't you?"

I slipped out of his embrace. "It's my job. I should find that woman," I said, already moving toward the stairway where I'd last seen her. "Only I don't know who-"

"Beth Howell." He supplied the information before I could even ask, and I guess my openmouthed stare said it all, because Kaz added, "She was one of the people I checked in after you boarded the boat. Said it was her first conference."

"Beth Howell." I committed the name to memory. "I need to make sure she's all right."

I would have, too, if I'd been able to find Beth. I tried every ladies' room on the boat, glanced around the knots of people who were chatting, went to the bar-twice-and even checked the kitchen. Either I wasn't very good at picking out a tiny gray woman in a crowd or I had terrible timing and always ended up exactly where Beth wasn't exactly when she wasn't there.

Either that or Beth Howell's threat to Thad about ending up as fish food had gone awry, and she was the one who'd gone over the side of the boat and into the water.

I had already mingled my way through the rest of the cruise, the boat was docked, and I was standing at the gangplank wishing folks a good evening when that thought hit. It took my breath away.

"What is it, dear?" Helen was just walking by, and she took me aside. "You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"No. I was just thinking, that's all, about-" From over Helen's shoulder, I saw a wavering in the shadows, and the next thing I knew, a tiny gray figure slipped off the boat and hurried down the pier. I would have gone after Beth, right then and there, if not for the fact that the man who walked off after her was someone I had just sold an entire collection of j.a.panese satsuma b.u.t.tons to. He couldn't wait to thank me for my excellent service as well as my good taste in b.u.t.tons, and by the time he was done, Beth was long gone.

And I was breathing a sigh of relief.

Beth hadn't taken a header off the boat. Her argument with Thad hadn't escalated further or continued later. Mayhem and murder didn't happen at b.u.t.ton conventions. By the time I was ready to head back to the hotel, my fears were calmed and I was smiling.

Little did I know that within twenty-four hours, I would welcome a little mayhem. Because mayhem isn't necessarily murder, and murder... Well, that was about to hit a little too close to home.

ADRENALINE IS A wonderful thing.

So is coffee.

Though I didn't get more than five hours of sleep that night, I was raring to go the next morning. I'd better be. I had to emcee the opening ceremony at ten, host a panel on scrimshaw b.u.t.tons at eleven, introduce our luncheon speaker (a wonderful woman who knew everything there was to know about rubber b.u.t.tons), and still be perky at six for the banquet and Thad's keynote address.

By eight in the morning, I was in the elevator and heading down to the hotel's conference rooms, and when the doors swished open and the first thing I saw was a life-size picture of Thad on the poster that featured the huge headline "Geronimo!" in heavy block letters, I didn't need to look at myself in the mirrored panels that lined the walls. I could feel my grin stretch from ear to ear.

Sure, there had been some b.u.mps on the proverbial conference road. And yes, I was still on the lookout for Beth Howell so I could try to figure out what had happened on the boat the night before. But all in all, I was handling things with poise and a.s.surance. And besides-I pa.s.sed another poster advertising Thad's keynote-I had gone after and snagged the most coveted speaker on the b.u.t.ton circuit.

"Josie Giancola..." I shifted the briefcase I was carrying from one hand to the other and tugged my sage-green suit jacket into place, marching across the lobby. "You are doing an excellent job."

"You really are!"

When I realized I'd spoken loud enough that the stranger standing nearby sipping a cup of coffee heard me, I blushed a thousand shades of red. She was kind enough not to point out that talking to yourself is one sure sign of mental instability and, instead, hurried forward. "My first national conference," she said. "And things are going so smoothly over at the registration table that it's a dream. Helen Obermyer... I've known Helen for years. She's got everything moving like clockwork. And that a.s.sistant of yours..." The woman's little shiver spoke volumes. "Talk about a dream!"

I didn't ask who she was talking about.

I didn't have to.

The way she shivered said a whole lot. It ought to. I myself had once been p.r.o.ne to those same kinds of shivers, and not that long ago. In fact, I was convinced it was that shiver-inducing charm that had robbed me of my senses and made me utter those fateful words, I do.

I hurried over to registration to find Kaz and get him the h.e.l.l away from my conference, but that was not so easy considering when I finally spotted him in the crowd, he was in the middle of helping a man from Georgia-not the state-make sense of our conference booklet and which sessions were being held in which rooms.

I left my briefcase in the care of one of the conference volunteers and waited until they exchanged cordial good-byes in English and whatever language it is they speak in Georgia before I closed in on him. "What, you're some kind of expert in foreign relations now? What are you doing-"

"He's as smart as a whip." A woman walking by patted Kaz's arm.

"And as cute as a b.u.t.ton!" her companion said, and laughed.

"See?" Once they were gone, Kaz turned up the wattage on his smile and aimed it full at me. "I'm indispensable."

"But why?" I was tempted to throw my hands in the air and raise my voice while I was at it. Maybe then I could get through to Kaz. I controlled myself, but only because we were within feet of the registration table, and the area was abuzz with eager conference-goers. After the debacle onboard the boat the night before, I didn't need another scene. Especially one that featured me and my ex duking it out in front of b.u.t.ton collectors from all over the world.

I grabbed onto the sleeve of Kaz's blue blazer and dragged him further down the corridor, where things were quieter.

"You own a blue blazer?" When I realized what I was doing, I dropped my hand as if the cloth were on fire and looked over Kaz's outfit: blue blazer with shiny bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, white Oxford cloth shirt, khakis. "You've never owned a blue blazer in your life. And khakis?" I had a rule about not getting within touching distance of Kaz's bare flesh, but I figured desperate times, desperate measures, and all that. I pressed a hand to his forehead. No fever.

"What's going on, Kaz?" I asked. "What are you up to and why aren't you working down at the port and why are you here?"

"Apparently, to help." When a group of elderly women walked by, grinned, and waved at him, Kaz waved back and called each and every one of them by their first names. "A conference chair can never have too many dedicated volunteers to do her bidding."

"Apparently, this one can." I crossed my arms over my chest and stepped back, my weight against one foot. I'd hoped for intimidating.

Kaz's smile never wavered. "Hey, I took some vacation time. Because I figured this was a big deal for you and you could use the extra help. Now, there is something you can do for me. You know, to show your appreciation."

"I knew it." The words popped out, along with a whoop that pretty much said I knew you were up to something, buster, the moment you showed up at the airport. When I realized how loud both had come out, I clamped one hand over my mouth, grabbed Kaz's sleeve, scooted a few feet further down the corridor toward the room where the vendors were set up, and hissed, "I knew it."

Kaz was less than repentant. "It's nothing like that!"

"Like what?"

"Like whatever you think it is. I was just thinking, that's all. Helen tells me you're staying in a suite and-"

"Josie?" Langston Whitman stuck his head out of the vendors' room, and the instant he saw me, a look of relief swept over his face. "Well, this is lucky. I thought I'd have to search all over for you. Could you..." He glanced from me to Kaz and back to me. "Could we talk somewhere? Privately?"