Buttoned Up (20 page)

By the time I got where I was going, I was hoping Nev would be with me or at least that he’d be on his way, but no matter how many times I called him (and believe me, I called him a lot of times), he refused to pick up.

“Be that way,” I mumbled, shoving my phone back in my pocket and telling myself it was for the last time. “You’ll be plenty sorry.”

Oh, how I hate it when I’m right!

See, Nev was already there. On the floor, his back propped against a wall. The second I saw him, my heart bumped and my adrenaline kicked in. I’d been thinking I’d assess and evaluate and get the lay of the land before I took the chance of letting anyone know I was there, but those plans pretty much went right out the window when I saw that Nev’s eyes were half-closed, his color was off, and his chin was on his chest.

“Nev? Are you OK? What happened?” I was on my knees next to him in record time and I checked his pulse. It was slow and steady, but his skin was clammy. I chafed his hand between both of mine. “Nev, can you hear me?”

Except for an eye flicker, he didn’t respond, and I didn’t hesitate. I stood and reached in my pocket for my phone.

“That’s a really bad idea.”

Like I was about to let a voice from out of the dark stop me?

My fingers slipped against the numbers: 9-1 . . .

“I said it’s a bad idea.” Evangeline stepped into the light of the single spot that shone over the Field Museum Yoruba exhibit, and, dang, I would have gone right on dialing if that light didn’t glint against the barrel of the gun in her hand, the one she had trained on Nev.

“You wouldn’t.” My voice bumped over the words, and the hand poised above my phone trembled.

Not so Evangeline’s. As cool as a cucumber and as emotionless as if she’d been carved from rock, she motioned for me to drop my phone on the table of Yoruba divination trays on my right.

I did as I was told.

“I was hoping this would be quick and easy,” she said. “I’m sorry you showed up and ruined it.”

“Nev got here before me. He knew before I did, didn’t he?”

“He suspected. He didn’t know. Not until that very last moment when I stepped so close to him and raised my lips to his.” Evangeline tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Just as quickly, she snapped them open again and her smile was sleek. “That was when I stuck him with this.” She took a syringe out of her pocket and tossed it on the table next to my phone. “Oh, you should have seen his face then. That’s when he knew for sure, and by then, it was too late.”

My mouth went dry. “Is he . . . will he be . . .”

“He’ll be fine. At least that was the plan. All I wanted to do was knock him out for a while. The security guard won’t get to this section of the building until at least ten tonight. That would have given me plenty of time to get to O’Hare and get out of here. But now . . .” Evangeline slid the gun in my direction. “Now you’re here and you ruined everything.”

“Hey, I don’t care if you leave. Go!” I made a little shooing motion that Evangeline ignored. “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. Get going.”

Her smile never wavered “I’ve got time. Poor, sweet Nev will be out of it for another couple of hours and like I said, there won’t be a security guard by for a while. How did you get in here, anyway?”

I didn’t exactly feel like shooting the breeze, but there was something about having a gun trained on me that made me chatty whether I wanted to be or not. “There’s a fund-raiser going on downstairs,” I said. “And volunteers were coming in through a side door, and while no one was looking—”

“While no one was looking, you decided to come up here and play the hero. Perfect.” Evangeline didn’t look like she meant it. “You just can’t keep your nose out of my business, can you?”

“I never put my nose in your business. Or at least I never wanted to. You were the one who came around and—”

“And took your boyfriend away?” Her teeth were blindingly white and so perfect and even. Evangeline shook her head and in the light of the spot, her hair looked like liquid ebony. “That wasn’t hard.”

“Because it never happened. Nev and I, we’re—”

“Bickering? Fussing? Finding faults where there never were any before?” I didn’t think it was funny, but I guess Evangeline did because she laughed. “How easy it is to influence the minds of the weak!”

“A spell?” Even I couldn’t believe I was saying it, much less thinking it actually might be true. “You’re the one who had Nev and me going at each other. You’re the one . . .” Trembling or not, I pointed a finger in her direction. “You stashed that voodoo doll in the Button Box!”

“As easy as pie when that sweet old man was there watching the shop for you. All I had to do was pretend to need help—”

“The damsel in distress. The one who spilled iced tea on her clothes on her way to an interview.”

“Smart, huh?” Evangeline pouted. “You weren’t supposed to recover so quickly. How did you—”

“I’m allowed to have secrets, too.” I took a step toward her. Don’t ask me why. It’s not like I had a plan to overpower her or anything. At this point, all I wanted to do was get some help for Nev. I guess I thought if I could duck around her . . .

Evangeline stepped to her right to block my path.

I pretended like it was no big deal. “So Nev . . .” I slid a look in his direction. His breathing was shallow and I didn’t like that at all. “Did he tell you how he finally figured out that you were the one who murdered Forbis?”

“Sorry. He never had a chance. But since you figured it out . . .” She jabbed the gun in my direction. “You can explain. Then perhaps I can learn from my mistakes.”

“Why, you planning on murdering somebody else?”

She didn’t think it was funny, but then, I guess I didn’t, either. I gathered my courage and my wits. “Forbis’s grandfather and his father were killed just like he was,” I said. “They were given the Button of Doom—”

“And after that, it’s so easy to scare someone to death.” Her shoulders rose and fell in a delicate little shiver. “Once the seed of fear was planted in their brains—”

“And you were disguised as a real, living Congo Savanne on the prowl and looking to find Forbis.”

“You figured that part out, did you?” Evangeline was impressed. “And the rest?”

“The button part was easy. You used museum wax.” I wasn’t sure of this, but when Evangeline didn’t protest, I knew I was right. “It’s the same stuff artists use to display delicate glass works. It holds on tight and comes off easily. That’s how you stuck the Button of Doom to the Congo Savanne box, and that’s how you removed it after you killed Forbis.”

“And I suppose you have some half-baked theory about why I’d want to do that?”

I pretended to consider this. “I can’t say if it’s half-baked or not. I can say I saw the first glimmers of a reason the moment I saw those buttons on Forbis’s eyes and lips. I wondered if his murderer was sending a message about how Forbis needed to be quiet, but that wasn’t it at all.”

“He didn’t see,” Evangeline muttered. “He didn’t speak the truth.”

“About vudon.”

“He should have known better than to make fun of a religion that’s sacred to so many people.”

“People like you.”

“And my ancestors before me.” When she looked my way, she grinned. “Surprised? You shouldn’t be. My great-great grandmother was born a slave on a Barrier Island plantation. She was a mambo, a woman who—”

“I know what a mambo is.” There was a perverse sort of pleasure in not telling her how I knew. “And your family has always owned the button. That’s how Forbis’s grandfather and his father—”

“They bought up our land, the land we worked hard for after our people were freed. They told us to leave. They broke up the community.”

“That’s not all they did.” I remembered what I’d seen on Gabriel’s phone. “There’s a big old building on Forbis property. It looks like some kind of garage.”

Evangeline narrowed her eyes. “You can’t know—”

“But I do. Because I’ve just seen a picture of that building and it’s the same as that picture you have hanging in your office. The one you told me wasn’t important at all. But that’s not true, is it, Evangeline? Forbis’s grandfather, and his father, and Forbis when he was a young man . . . they all worked to build that garage. And they built it over where the plantation slaves were buried.”

“They disrespected my people, and they disrespected my religion. My grandmother knew what she had to do, she took care of the old man. And my mother made sure she took care of his son.”

“And your job was to make sure Forbis suffered the same fate.”

She smiled. “Once he saw le Bouton de Malheur, it was easy.”

“But it’s still murder.”

With a snort, Evangeline moved past me. “And you’re going to stop me?”

I glanced down the darkened hallway. I knew there was a stairway nearby, and there were people downstairs at the fund-raiser. If I could get to them and to the security guards who I knew were there, too, I wouldn’t need my phone, I could get help for Nev. I took a step in that direction.

“Don’t do it.”

I whirled just in time to see Evangeline bend over Nev. She had a syringe in her hands. Not the same syringe . . . I looked to where that one was still on the table.

“I didn’t want to have to use this,” Evangeline said. “After all, everything I did to you, I did so that Nev and I could be together again. But really, you’re not leaving me any choice.” She jabbed the syringe into Nev’s thigh and he flinched.

“There.” Evangeline brushed her hands together. “Now here’s the way this is going to work. I’m leaving. You can follow me, screaming your head off the whole time and that’s fine if that’s what you want to do. But if you do . . .” She sashayed past me. “By the time you get back here, I guarantee that drug will be in Nev’s bloodstream. It’s a vudon drug. Very strong. And if you waste a minute, Josie, he’s going to be dead.”

“You couldn’t . . . you didn’t . . .” I pushed right past her to get to Nev’s side. I got down on the floor and held his hand. His pulse was shaky now and I looked up at her through the tears that filled my eyes. “There’s no way you’d kill him. You said what you did, you did so the two of you could be together.”

“That was before I knew I needed time to get out of here.” As calm as can be, she walked to the front of the exhibit. “Here’s the trick, Josie, you can come after me like I said, or you can use that time to head into my office. There’s a syringe there. Top desk drawer, right-hand side. It’s the antidote to what I just gave Nev. The only antidote. Only . . .” She stepped down from the raised platform that held the exhibit. “If I were you, I wouldn’t waste any time sitting there blubbering.”

I didn’t.

Even before the sounds of her heels stopped echoing down the hallway, I was on my way to Evangeline’s office. The door was open and my fingers slick with sweat, I flicked on the lights and grabbed her phone.

I called 911. I called Nev’s lieutenant. I called down to the main desk of the museum. Then I looked for the syringe, but when I got back to Nev, I didn’t administer it. I didn’t need to and that was OK. By then, I heard the sirens.

• • •

When the bell over the front door of the Button Box jingled, I headed out of the back room.

“Nev!” I raced to the front door and threw my arms around him. “Why didn’t you call to tell me you were out of the hospital?” I asked him. That is, right after I kissed him a couple times just to show him how relieved I was to see him on his feet again. “I would have come to get you.”

“That’s OK, after three days of being in bed, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Besides . . .” He squeezed my hand. “You spent plenty of hours there these last few days. I didn’t deserve that.”

“Baloney!” I twined my fingers through his to draw him further into the shop. “You look good,” I said, and it was true. His color was back, his eyes were clear. “Did the docs ever determine what was in that syringe?”

He shook his head. “Nothing they’ve ever seen before. Some mix of herbs and oils and . . .” A shiver twisted over his shoulders. “It’s crazy. The whole thing is just crazy.”

“Crazy but true.” This wasn’t the time to dance around the most uncomfortable parts of the story. “Evangeline, they couldn’t get her to talk and tell them what she gave you?”