Buttoned Up (17 page)

It’s amazing what a long, hot shower and a two-hour nap can do for a recently vudon-hexed girl.

Refreshed, revived, and wearing khaki capris and a red T-shirt instead of my yellow nightgown, I was ready to take on the world.

All right, so not the world, exactly. But I sure felt ready to talk about the investigation again, and about the Parmenter family’s strange tradition of being frightened to death.

My resolve might have stayed firm if I hadn’t walk into the kitchen and been greeted by the incredible aroma of pizza.

Double pepperoni!

It was steaming and gooey with cheese and I didn’t wait for Gabriel to hand me a dish. I scooped a slice out of the box and dug in.

“You’re hungry. That’s good. But . . .” He had been leaning against the granite countertop and now he swung around to grab a bottle of water. “Don’t forget. Mambo Irma says—”

“Plenty of water. Yes, I promise.” I took the water out of his hands, but I didn’t bother opening the bottle until I wolfed down that piece of pizza and another one after. “I feel as if I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“You’ll be back to your old self in no time at all.” He polished off a piece of mushroom, sausage, and green pepper, brushed his hands together, and tackled a piece of pepperoni.

Satisfied, at least for the moment, I took my bottle of water and sat down at the kitchen table. I waited until Gabriel came over and took the chair opposite from mine before I asked something I’d been thinking about in the shower as I let the Champagne grape-seed nourish my hair. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

He was mid chew, so he held up a finger to tell me I’d have to wait for an answer. “You mean about saving your life?” he asked after he’d swallowed. “All in a day’s work.”

“But it’s not. Not really. Certainly not for a journalist who writes about art show openings. And did you save my life? I mean, I know I felt awful, but . . .” Blame it on the fog that had been clogging my brain for days. Though I knew I’d felt lousy and though I hadn’t forgotten the nightmares that plagued me, I’d never thought of the curse as really serious, really . . . deadly.

My stomach soured and I sat back in my chair.

Gabriel brushed a strand of mozzarella off his chin. “It’s over now,” he said. “So it’s best if you don’t think about it any longer.”

“Yeah, but—”

“It’s not going to happen again,” he assured me, though how he knew that I was wondering if another curse might be headed my way, I don’t know. “Mambo Irma, she made sure of that.”

“She’s that powerful.”

“She is.” He grabbed a bottle of water for himself. “And you’re lucky we went to her for help. Another mambo might know the right prayers and the words to the ceremony, but Mambo Irma said that trick against you—”

“Trick.” I’d heard the word before and remembered Mambo Irma using it back in her apartment. “What does that mean?”

“To trick someone is to use the left hand of vudon. You know, black magic.”

“And you know this, how?”

He pursed his lips. “I know a damned lot of useless information. What I’d like to know . . .” He leaned forward. “What I’d really like to figure out is who cursed you like that. You have a powerful enemy, Josie. Who do you suppose it is?”

“An enemy?” I lifted my hands, then let them drop. I’d wondered about this, too. “I’ve met other button dealers who weren’t happy because I outbid them at auction for buttons they wanted, but cursing me because of something like that seems a little extreme. I’ve helped put a couple of murderers behind bars, but none of them seem to be the type who would be into vudon. Then there’s—” I clamped my lips over the name that I’d almost let escape.

There was Evangeline, of course.

That’s what I was going to say.

Evangeline who seemed to use every opportunity she got to remind me that she and Nev had once had something special.

“Who?” Gabriel demanded.

“Nobody. It’s nothing.” I got up to get another piece of pizza and while I was at it, I brought over both boxes, so Gabriel could grab another slice, too. “Besides, the last time I saw her, she was perfectly nice to me. And she was helpful, too, as far as information regarding vudon. She’s not even close to what I’d call an enemy.”

“If you say so. Then what about—”

Gabriel didn’t have a chance to finish asking the question. My phone rang and since it was in my purse in the dining room, I headed that way.

It was Nev.

“Hey!”

“Hey,” he said back. “Are you busy?”

I glanced at the clock. It was a little before five and Nev probably thought I was at the Button Box. “Not so busy,” I said, avoiding the subject of being home and why I was there. Then again, I obviously wasn’t the only one avoiding. If Nev thought I was at the shop today, he mustn’t have known I wasn’t there the day before.

I slugged down a drink of water to squelch the bitter taste that filled my mouth. “What’s up?” I asked him.

“Well, I thought you’d like to hear the latest. I just got the lab report.” In the background, I heard him shuffle papers. “You know, the results of the tests on that smudge of white stuff we found in Reverend Truman’s office and up in the choir loft at the church.”

So much had happened in the days since Forbis’s murder, I’d nearly forgotten that little detail.

Nev put a hand over the phone and said something to someone. “Hey,” he said again, talking to me this time, “I’ve got to go. My lieutenant wants to have a meeting. But just so you know, that smudge of white, it was theatrical makeup.”

“Makeup?” When I told him good-bye and got off the call, I tapped my phone against my chin and made my way back into the kitchen. “Why would anybody wear theatrical makeup to the church?” I asked myself, and Gabriel. “There was nobody there in costume that night.”

His eyes lit. “There was no one we know of who was there in costume. Not anyone we saw.”

I knew exactly what he was getting at, and I sat down to think it over. “If Forbis really was frightened to death, you think it might have been by someone wearing a costume.”

He pulled out his phone. “What color theatrical makeup?”

“White.”

“Exactly.”

He flipped the phone around and I looked at the image on the screen and sucked in a breath.

The Congo Savanne I’d seen made of buttons was scary enough, but this drawing—one that showed the loa as huge and glowering and with the red fire of hate glittering in his eyes—was positively terrifying.

“It makes perfect sense.” I didn’t like the way my voice shook, but then, I didn’t like the chill that ran up my spine when I looked at the picture of the loa, either. I glanced away, and I guess Gabriel got the message, because he put his phone screen-side down on the table. “If someone wanted to scare Forbis, it makes perfect sense that they’d dress like the scary loa. Imagine seeing that coming at you. Seeing it come to life. The poor man!” I could picture the scene, Forbis crouched in the choir loft, frightened by the sight of the Button of Doom. And the loa, alive, horrifying—and hunting him.

I shook the thought away and came back to reality to find that I’d wrapped my arms around myself. Gabriel watched me closely.

“It makes even more sense when you think of the old legend,” he said. “You did say the police believe Forbis was killed in the choir loft, right?”

I nodded.

“And there’s an old legend that you’ll find no matter what branch of the religion you look into—voodoo, vodou, or vudon. It says that the only way to find protection from a loa who seeks to crush your bones and devour your soul is in the voice of God. What does that mean? I can’t say. But I do know that if I was desperate and very much afraid, I might think the voice of God—and protection of some sort—could be found in the choir loft.”

It was a theory that explained everything, but I didn’t bother telling Gabriel that. I was too busy listening to all the questions that spun around inside my head.

“You seem to know an awful lot about stuff an arts journalist shouldn’t know about,” I blurted out. “Even back at Mambo Irma’s. What was that bit about Eleggua—”

“The spirit of the crossroads, yes. He opens and closes doors and is called on to remove evil and misfortune.”

“And Chango?”

“He’ll protect you against enemies.”

“And Oggun.”

“Another protector. Like I said . . .” Gabriel’s smile might have been devastating to a woman who hadn’t already been involved in her share of murder investigations. To this one. . . . well, let’s just say I’d always been a pragmatist and being involved in murders had only served to ramp up my logical side. Not to mention my suspicious one.

That didn’t stop him from turning up the fire of his smile a notch. “I know all sorts of useless information.”

“Like about firewands and wish papers and where to find the most powerful mambo in Chicagoland. Call me crazy . . .” With a look, I dared him to even think about it. “But that seems like a mighty big stretch for an arts journalist.” I pressed my palms to the table and leaned forward. “Unless you’re not really an arts journalist.”

Gabriel scraped his hands over his face. “I like you,” he said from between his fingers. “You’re smart and you’re pretty and you’re gutsy and that’s a rare combination in a woman.”

I forced myself not to notice the tingle that started up in my bloodstream and waited for more.

“But—”

I cut him off before he could even get started. “I’m smart. You said so yourself. I know there’s something else going on, so don’t hand me some line about how you just happen to know a lot of weird things for no reason at all. I’m going to keep asking questions, Gabriel, until I find out the answers.”

He steepled his fingers. “But—”

“And I’m the one who got tricked by black magic, remember. As far as I’m concerned, that means I’ve already gone above and beyond in the name of this investigation. You owe me an explanation.”

“It’s like this . . .” Gabriel was quiet for so long, I thought he might leave it at that, but when his gaze met mine and he drew in the tiniest breath, I hoped it meant we’d turned a corner.

“What if I was something else?” he asked. “Something other than an arts journalist? I’m not saying that’s true,” he pointed out. “This is just speculation. But let’s pretend it is true, just for a moment. Let’s pretend I’m someone who takes special commissions from various discerning collectors. Let’s say I’m a person who finds things that other people really want.”

Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. Deep in my bones. Down in my gut. As sure as I knew it was Wednesday, and we were in Chicago. “Things like the Button of Doom.”

His smile was so quick, I might have imagined it. I for sure didn’t imagine that he didn’t ask what the Button of Doom was or what I was talking about. “Do you believe there really is such a thing?”

“Do you believe I could have been on the bad end of a vudon curse?”

“So if there is such a button . . .” He paused to choose his words carefully. “If there really was such a thing and if a collector of oddities in Shanghai wanted that button badly enough—”

“No!” Honest to goodness, I wasn’t sure I believed in such nonsense. At least I never had until I saw that voodoo doll. But just thinking about someone getting their hands on the Button of Doom made my breath catch. “Nobody can actually want the Button of Doom. Evangeline told me that the legend says that anyone who’s given the button will die a quick and terrible death.”

“Given it, yes. But not if he seeks it. Not if he pays for it. Not if he wants to get his hands on it because he’s convinced its power is real and he can use it against his rivals.”

I wrinkled my nose and considered the possibilities. From every angle, it looked like nonsense. “You don’t really think that’s possible, do you? That somebody would use a button to gain the upper hand on some rival? It’s like some crazy plot for an Indiana Jones movie.”

Gabriel pushed his chair back from the table. “I think it’s worth considering. After all, we’re just dealing in a hypothesis anyway, right?”

I got the message and reined in my skepticism. “OK.” A deep breath helped calm me. “So
hypothetically . . .”
I emphasized the word just as he had. “Hypothetically, if there was someone who wanted the button and if there was someone else who was trying to get that button for him, how did you . . . I mean, how would that person even have known the button was going to be at the exhibit? Obviously, Forbis didn’t even know, and it was his exhibit. He was scared out of his wits when he saw the button. That tells me he wasn’t the one who put it there.”