Panic Button (28 page)

He wasn’t much for compliments. Not like Kaz, who threw them around like confetti
at a ticker-tape parade. I suppose that’s what made this one more special.

In fact, he looked pretty darned special, too—in a very Nevin Riley way—and I found
out that was thanks to Mary Lou, too, who’d let him use her own private suite in the
B and B to get clean and gussied up. Black pants, gray shirt. So far, so good. It
was the cantaloupe-colored tie and the khaki jacket that threw Nev’s outfit for a
loop.

Not to worry. I made a couple gentle suggestions about how warm the evening was and
how he might want to carry his jacket rather than wear it.

Feeling as confident as a woman can who’s just come out of an abandoned graveyard,
I hoisted my purse up on my shoulder and we walked to the Big Museum together.

Just inside the front door, we were greeted by a huge photo of Susan on an easel,
along with a book where visitors could write their condolences and a box for donations
for those wishing to contribute to the Big Museum in Susan’s name. We did both, and
we moved out of the hallway and into the room across from the photo room, where a
long table had been set up and heaped with appetizers of all shapes and sizes. Nev
reached for the clear plastic plates set out near one of those giant flower
arrangements I’d seen the day before. He took a dish for himself and handed one to
me.

“How can you eat?” I held the plate close to my jumping heart. “I’m so nervous, I
don’t think I can get a bite down.”

“There’s another thing you need to learn about police work.” He filled his plate with
tiny pieces of pizza, stuffed mushrooms, and cheese and crackers. “When you’re waiting
like this, you’ve got to keep your strength up,” he said, adding two kinds of bruschetta
to the top of the pile. “Besides, if you don’t eat…” He glanced toward the door, where
I saw Marci chatting with Larry and beyond them to where Charles had just walked in.
“It’s going to look weird, and somebody’s going to ask you what’s wrong. What are
you going to tell them?”

“That I’m here to catch a murderer?”

He showed his appreciation for my sense of humor by popping down a stuffed mushroom,
and since I knew he was right, I chose a small assortment of finger foods and accepted
red wine in a teeny plastic glass from the server stationed at the end of the table.
Thus fortified, we chitchatted our way through the room, biding our time.

“Can’t say I’m surprised you’re here.”

It wasn’t the most cordial of greetings from Larry, but then, the way I remember it,
the last time we’d been together was the day Susan died, and neither of us was at
our best. He sipped his wine. “Any luck?” The question was clearly intended for Nev.
“With your investigation?”

“We’ve uncovered a thing or two.” How he did it so quickly, I wasn’t sure, but Nev
was down to his last bite
of bruschetta. He snapped it up. “We should know more soon.”

“I hope so.” Larry walked away, his words trailing behind him like a shadow. “I certainly
hope so.”

I had anticipated a long, tense evening, but though the tense part was true, the hours
went by remarkably quickly. Then again, we had the run of the museum, and I kept my
mind busy—and off the subject of murder—by strolling through the displays, while Nev
took care of the rest. I’m not sure how he managed, but by ten when the cocktail party
was set to end and I walked into the pirate room, all my suspects were in there, too.

I wasn’t planning on this taking long, so we hadn’t bothered to ask the staff to bring
in chairs. When I set my purse on top of the Thunderin’ Ben display case with its
displaced toy buoy inside, Larry was standing on my left, Marci was directly in front
of me, and Charles was hanging around near the door, looking like he’d rather be anywhere
but.

I didn’t say a word. But remember, I was once a theater major, and though I’m still
not much of an actor, I do appreciate a sense of drama. I held my breath, and waited
for my cue.

God bless Jimmy Carns, it came just as the floor clock in the hallway stopped chiming
the hour.

The clear, distant sound of a ringing bell.

Marci flinched and red wine slopped over the edge of her tiny glass and dotted her
white blouse like blood spatter. “That’s not—”

“It can’t be.” Brave words from Charles, but he ran his tongue over his lips. “The
schoolhouse bell. They say
you can hear it ring, if there’s going to be a…you know…if someone’s going to die.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Larry was wearing a navy suit and a blindingly white shirt,
and he looked more like a power broker than a hardware store owner. Feet slightly
apart, chin high, his top lip rose. “You’re imagining it.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” This was me, of course, sounding as placid as the waters of
the reservoir usually are. But then, I’d arranged for the bell to ring so it hadn’t
taken me by surprise. In fact, it had done exactly what I intended it to do, set the
tone for a conversation that was as serious as…well, as serious as two homicides.

“Don’t worry,” I added, because I couldn’t bear to watch Charles suffer and the poor
man looked like he was going to pass out. “Nobody’s going to die. At least I hope
not. Of course…” I glanced around at the semicircle of faces. “That doesn’t mean we’re
not going to talk about murder.”

Charles cast a sidelong glance at Nev, who was standing on the other side of the room,
his arms crossed over his chest. “He said you wanted to talk to me, Josie. He didn’t
say…” Charles’s gaze slid from Marci to Larry. “He didn’t say it was about the murders.
What’s going on?”

“Good question.” Larry finished off his tiny glass of wine and set the empty plastic
cup on the display case next to my purse. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but
I’m ready to call it a night.”

“I’m sure we all are.” My smile was as bright as if I were one of the docents and
welcoming the little group to the museum. “It’s been a really busy day. For all of
us.
But before we go, I think there are some things we need to clear up.”

“Oh, give me a break!” Marci downed the rest of her wine in one chug. Something told
me it wasn’t her first glass. Marci’s cheeks were the same color as her hair, and
she swayed just a little on her platform heels. Recovered from the surprise of hearing
the bell—or maybe it was the wine that gave her courage—she made a face. “You’re not
going to start with the interrogations and the accusations again, are you?”

“Absolutely not. Scout’s honor.” Just like a Scout, I held up one hand as if that
would prove it. “In fact, I don’t need to. No more questions. No more wondering who
did what and why. You see, I’ve finally got the whole thing figured out.”

Charles had been busy picking bruschetta crumbs off the front of his gray sweater,
and his hand stilled over his stomach. “You mean…” In the reflected light of the spotlight
trained on Thunderin’ Dan’s exhibit, I saw his Adam’s apple jump. “You know who killed
Angela?”

“And Susan,” I told him just in case he’d forgotten we needed to address that problem,
too. “And why.”

“Impossible.” Marci waved away the idea with one hand. “And if you’re going to say
it was me—” Her slim shoulders shot back. “I didn’t have any reason to kill anyone.”

“Well, you did, actually.” I hated to be the one to remind her, but after all, we
were there to find the truth. “You had a motive to kill Susan because you wanted her
job. And as for Angela…well, if she found out you were taking things from her home
and putting them on display at the Little Museum—”

“Stealing from Angela? Really!” Disgusted, Larry stalked away and something told me
he actually might have kept right on going if not for the fact that, quickly and quietly,
Nev had stationed himself at the door. Apparently, Larry knew a losing cause when
he saw one. His jaw tight, he spun around and came back to join our group.

“You’ve always been a suspect,” I told Marci. “For exactly those reasons, and truth
be told, my money was on you. At least until yesterday. When we were talking in there…”
I gestured toward the room that featured the old photos of Ardent. “You mentioned
Susan, and you looked all around. Like you didn’t know exactly where the body had
been found.”

“I didn’t!”

“Exactly. I’ve always said you had the smarts and the guts to do it, Marci, but after
I saw that, I had to admit it couldn’t have been you. Even though you did have one
heck of a motive.”

Ever since I’d mentioned Marci’s pilfering ways, Charles had been opening and closing
his mouth, trying to find the words to express his outrage. They finally came out
in a sputter. “Angela’s things…Angela’s things are my things now…and if you’re…you’re
not stealing from Angela. You’re stealing from me. How dare you! I’m going to file
a police report. Right now.”

“Not necessary.” I stilled him with a lift of one hand. “Marci returned everything.
And besides, now that we know all those priceless antiques are really nothing more
than good reproductions…”

I let Charles figure out the rest for himself.

By the time he was done, there was a little more color in his cheeks. “So Marci killed
Angela and Susan. Good. Now we know. We can leave.”

“Not so fast.” I was prepared to clamp a hand on his arm if it came to that, but luckily,
I didn’t need to get physical with Charles. My words were enough to keep him in his
place. “We need to talk about your motives, too, Charles.”

“Me?” He was back to opening and closing his mouth. “You can’t possibly think—”

“You cut her brake lines.”

Larry got in Charles’s face so fast, I thought Nev was going to have to break up the
altercation. Luckily, Larry’s fuse was short, but it didn’t burn long. He stopped
just short of doing something he may have regretted, his arm cocked. “You? You risked
my Angela’s life. For…for…”

“For what I thought was a fortune.” Charles hung his head. “I’ve told Josie everything.
She knows I couldn’t—”

“Actually, Charles, I know you could.”

Charles went pasty again.

“Trick is,” I comforted him, “while I could find plenty of reasons for you wanting
to kill Angela, I couldn’t find any for you to want Susan dead. Well…” I’d been standing
in front of the pirate display and I stepped aside and waved a hand toward the diary.
“That is, until we figured out that Ben’s diary has been stolen.”

“Stolen?”

“Really?”

“Preposterous!”

Their voices overlapped, and as if they’d choreographed the move and practiced it
to perfection, all three of them moved forward to peer at the display.

“You see,” I said, “we thought the murder could be about love.” I glanced at Larry.
“Or about envy.” I looked at Marci. “Or jealousy.” When I looked at him, Charles looked
at his shoes. “But what it all comes down to is greed. The murderer was looking for
Ben’s treasure.”

“Treasure.” Larry’s grumbled word echoed in the gallery. “That’s just a lot of nonsense.
Nothing more than a story. It’s no more real than Angela’s silly curse.”

“Well, that’s just the thing, see. The curse…” I looked from Charles to Marci to Larry.
“Turns out that curse was real, too.”

Again, a chorus of protests and questions went up, and since I knew there was no use
trying to talk above it, I waited until the noise died down.

“It took me a while to figure out,” I said, when I finally had their attention again.
“And that’s really too bad. If I’d realized what was going on sooner, Susan might
still be alive.”

I’d gotten this far on nothing but nerve and adrenaline, but I didn’t know how much
longer I could maintain the cool facade. I slipped between Marci and Charles and walked
to the other side of the room and back, eager to dispel the nervous energy. On the
way over, and again on the way back, I glanced Nev’s way. There wasn’t any hint of
emotion in his expression, but his eyes told another story. He was rooting for me.
And I was doing a good job. He had my back.

It was time to finish what I’d started.

I stayed where I was, forcing my suspects to turn around when I said, “If it wasn’t
for the charm string, I guess I never would have figured out what happened.”

“First the diary. Now the charm string.” Larry expression was sour. “I’m sorry, but
you’re just not making sense.”

“That’s because curses don’t make sense. And Angela’s curse was getting that charm
string in the first place. Just like it was Aunt Evelyn’s before her. The charm string
with two touch buttons.”

I was pretty sure none of them knew what this meant, but I let the words fill the
silence between us for a little while before I explained.

“A touch button,” I told them, “was the button a girl used to start her charm string.
It’s usually bigger than the other buttons on the string. And Angela’s charm string
had two. One of them was a rubber button and the other was a button that showed the
scene of a town. I didn’t know it at first, but I know it now. It was Ardent. How
did it get there?”

No one had asked, but hey, I knew they would eventually so I told them the truth.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know. Not for sure. But my guess is that if we did a little
snooping, we’d find out that Angela’s great-grandmother had some connection with Thunderin’
Ben’s family. When Ben needed a place to stash the button, he hid it in plain sight.
He slipped it onto the end of her charm string. Who would look for a button among
all those other buttons? Well, nobody. Not for a very long time. Until our murderer
realized he needed the button along
with Ben’s diary. Without both, he wouldn’t have been able to find the treasure.”

“You mean there really is a treasure?” Marci peered at me through bleary eyes. “Angela
and Susan, they were killed because somebody wanted to get their hands on…what?”

I hated admitting I didn’t know for sure. “I can’t say. Not yet, anyway. Maybe it
was coins. Or gold bars. We won’t know until the cops get back here. You know, after
they’ve executed their search warrants. The only thing we can be sure of is that it’s
been hidden in the Moran family mausoleum all these years. That, and that with the
reservoir being drained, our murderer saw the perfect opportunity to finally get his
hands on it.” I had strolled a couple steps nearer and I turned to face Larry.