Button Box Mystery: Hot Button Part 16

"Hey." He closed in on me before I had time to duck and run into the military-b.u.t.ton panel. "I've been looking for you."

"Like you were last night?"

His lips puckered. "I wasn't looking for you last night. I knew exactly where you were."

"Yeah, at dinner with a nerd..." I glanced around to make sure no one-especially the nerd in question-was listening, and just to make sure, I lowered my voice. "At dinner with a nerd who declared his undying love."

Nev grinned, then wiped away the expression in an instant. Or maybe it just melted beneath the heat of my glare. "He said he loved you, huh?"

"Not in so many words."

"But he didn't say anything about the murder."

So much for trying to shake the resolve of a determined detective. Nev wasn't about to get personal. Not when we had business to discuss. "Daryl admitted he lied about what he saw in the lobby that night," I said, and with a look, I dared him to grin again when I added, "He said he did it to try to sound important. So he could impress me."

OK, so I shouldn't have gotten all defensive. I couldn't help myself. Not when one corner of Nev's mouth twitched.

I crossed my arms over my burnt-orange suit jacket. "You think it's impossible for a guy to want to try to impress me?"

He bit his lower lip.

"You do. Of course you do." I was a big girl, so the sting shouldn't have been as sharp. I told myself not to forget it and turned to go into the conference room before the doors closed.

Even though I already had my back to him, Nev put a hand on my arm to stop me. "I think," he said, his voice warm and close to my ear, "it's impossible for any guy to meet you and not want to impress you."

If Nev's goal all along was to make me feel all warm and fuzzy, he got his way. I turned to find him looking into my eyes, and rather than get carried away by the blueness and the soft expression in them, I glanced down to where his fingers caressed that oh-so-sensitive spot where forearm and elbow meet. "Why..." My breath caught on what would have come out as a sigh of epic proportions if I let it. "Why were you looking for me?" I asked.

Nev grinned and tightened his hold. "Was I? I don't remember."

Don't think I was going to let him off the hook so easily. "Is that what Kaz told you to say?"

To Nev's credit, he didn't try to hedge. "Kaz tried to give me some advice last night, yeah. But believe me, this wasn't part of it. He talked about wining and dining and candles..." Nev winced. "Something tells me he's much more of a romantic than I am. Which makes me wonder why-"

"I dumped him?" The sound that escaped me was more snort than laugh. "There's more to being a perfect man than just romance."

"But romance is important. At least that's what Kaz said."

I couldn't deny it. "So is dependability," I pointed out. "And responsibility. Trustworthiness. A good sense of humor. Always telling the truth. Those things are just as important."

"He didn't mention any of that."

"He wouldn't. He doesn't know the meaning."

"But maybe that means some other guy..." Nev adjusted his hand just a smidgen, just enough to make tingles dance up and down my arm. "Maybe some guy who's reliable and dependable and who always tells the truth-"

"And doesn't pay attention when a woman is sending him come-and-rescue-me signals?"

Nev groaned and backed off. "You can't hold that against me. If I thought you were in real trouble, I would have come running. You know that. I knew you could take care of yourself, and besides, I was concentrating. You know, thinking about the case. Oh yeah, the case." He put a hand to the small of my back and urged me toward the elevator. "That's why I was looking for you. We need to get up to Brad's room."

A few minutes later, the conference was once again a distant memory, and we were back in the same messy suite we'd visited just a few days before. For a couple of moments, I couldn't understand why. That morning, it looked pretty much just like it had the last time we were there.

Pretty much being the operative words.

When the realization hit, I took another look around, and I felt Nev's gaze on me, watching expectantly.

"You see it, too, don't you?" he asked.

"I see..." I took a couple steps further into the room. "That suitcase was on that chair." I pointed to the now-empty spot. "Not on the floor. And those papers on the dining-room table..." Keeping my hands to myself, I checked them out. "They've been shuffled around. I can tell because Thad... er, Brad... had them all jumbled up, and look, somebody's tried to straighten them. Like they didn't remember how they found them and they figured they must have been piled neatly."

Nev nodded.

"Someone's been here."

He confirmed my guess with a second nod.

"And it wasn't your people, because if it was, you wouldn't think it was weird."

This time, he didn't need to confirm or deny. We both knew the crime-scene techs would have done their work without displacing any of the items in Brad's room.

That left me with only one question. "Who?"

Nev puffed out a breath. "I wish I knew."

"And what-"

"Don't know that, either. If I knew what they were looking for, it might help explain everything that's gone on around here this week."

"And how-"

He shrugged. "Just came to have a final look around. Before we release the room back to the hotel for them to use. The techs will be here this afternoon to gather up Brad's things and put them into storage. Until then..." His grunt spoke volumes about his frustration. "I guess I just needed you to confirm what I suspected. It never hurts to have another pair of eyes look things over."

"And nothing's missing?"

"It's hard to tell." Nev strolled over to the table and took a look at the brochures and booklets that Brad had dumped out of his welcome bag. "We'll check for fingerprints."

"You don't sound encouraged."

"There's not much about this case that's encouraging. With any luck, by the time the techs are done in here, we'll know more."

His words were all about hope. The way his shoulders sagged told me he wished he could believe them.

Done there, we walked out into the hallway just as the door to the room next to Brad's snapped open.

"Oh." A woman wearing a terry bathrobe and yellow rollers in her hair frowned when she saw us. She had a green avocado mask spread over her face, and it cracked just under her lower lip, revealing a narrow strip of pale skin. "I thought maybe you were that housekeeping woman finally coming back. When I saw her this morning, I told her I spilled coffee on the rug in my bedroom, and I figured she'd want to clean it up right away. Before it left a stain. By now, it's probably too late to get the stain out. That was hours ago."

"Hours?" I checked the time on my cell phone. It was late morning, and I knew that at least on the floor where I was staying, the housekeeping staff didn't come around until after noon. "They clean this floor that early?"

"Well, now that I think about it, I guess not." The woman wrinkled her nose, and this time, the mask cracked along the lines of her apple-round cheeks. "I've been here three days, and every one of those days, they've come around later, right around lunchtime. But when I heard the commotion out here this morning-"

"Commotion?"

Nev and I were thinking the same thing, so it was no surprise that we both spoke at the same time.

The woman in the terry robe nodded. "Rattling at that door." She glanced toward the room I'd reserved back in those blissful days when I thought the real Thad Wyant would be staying in it-and staying alive. "You know, sometimes it's hard to tell if those key cards go in one way or the other. Happens to me all the time in hotels. But you'd think a cleaning woman would know. She couldn't get it right. Not at first, anyway. And I figured that was a good thing, because it gave me time to come out here and tell her about the coffee on the rug. And she said she'd be back."

"And she went into that room?" Nev asked.

The woman nodded, and as if the cleaning woman in question was still there, she glared at the room next door before taking a step back in her own room. "I've got half a mind to call down to the desk and tell them their housekeeping staff is slacking off."

"And you can certainly do that." Nev put a hand on her door to stop her from closing it. "Only before you do, can you describe the woman?"

She narrowed her eyes and looked us both up and down. "You're from the hotel?"

Nev pulled out his badge, and the woman's eyes opened so wide that the dry green goo on her forehead chipped.

"Now that I think about it," she said, "that woman wasn't wearing the blue pants and tops I've seen the other housekeeping people wear." Her jaw went slack. "I guess I should have noticed that right away. But when I asked if she was from housekeeping, she said she was, and really, who was I to doubt her? Does that mean-"

"We can't say for sure. Not yet." Nev headed off any questions before she could voice them. "Do you remember anything else about her?"

The woman concentrated again. "She was small," she said. "Tiny, and kind of quiet. Or at least she was trying to be quiet. But she moved really fast, like she couldn't wait to get in and out of that room as quickly as possible. She reminded me of a little mouse."

I managed to keep my mouth shut at the same time I tossed Nev a look. He thanked the woman, and we headed for the elevator.

When it arrived, we stepped inside, and when the doors slid shut, he said what I was thinking. "Mouse. That can only be one person."

"Yeah." Somehow, I wasn't surprised. "Beth Howell."

IT WAS NOT a last-minute decision to have conference attendees stop at the b.u.t.ton Box on Friday night, so really, no one could accuse me of sucking up for the sake of saving my reputation. I'd included an open invitation to all attendees in the conference booklet (and just so no nasty rumors get started about me taking advantage of my position as conference chair, I did pay for the ad s.p.a.ce), and though I knew there were also some other group activities planned that night (the theater, a baseball game, a concert at the House of Blues), I still expected a couple hundred people to be in and out of the shop.

Self-serving?

Not really. In fact, though they were encouraged to browse, I made it clear I wasn't selling that night. Not one single b.u.t.ton. If folks wanted to call me once they got home and purchase something they'd seen, that was another story.

"Now, if only I could get Beth Howell to materialize."

I was speaking under my breath, but leave it to Stan not to miss a trick. He was standing near the refreshment tables, which had been set up along the far wall of the shop, and since he was taller than me, it was easier for him to scan the crowd of seventy-five or so who'd gotten there at the stroke of seven and were already munching appetizers and sipping wine and beer and soft drinks.

"What's she look like?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter." Gloria Winston-never one to miss out on free food-came up to the table to grab (another) plateful of cold shrimp, and I greeted her and waited until she was out of earshot. "The way she's been slipping out of sight, it's obvious Beth's too smart to show up here. Especially after she went through Thad's... er, Brad's... room this morning. She must know we know."

"She might know you know someone was in there, but there's no way she can know that you know it was her."

I think this made sense. While I was trying to make sure, Kaz strolled over. He was dressed to the nines in his black chauffeur suit and white s.h.i.+rt. For the occasion, he'd added a wild tie, free-form boxes in shades of green and outlined in black. It was the first I realized his tie and my scoop-neck jungle-print dress actually kind of matched. Before I could decide if he'd planned for us to look like twins or if it was some sick twist of fate, Kaz smiled and looked around.

"Nice crowd." He wasn't as tall as Stan, but he had me beat by a whole head. He, too, studied the happy, chatting conference-goers, who were oohing and aahing over the b.u.t.tons displayed in the gla.s.s cases along the opposite wall. Stan had been true to his word; the b.u.t.ton Box s.h.i.+ned like a newly minted penny, from tin ceiling, to sage-green walls (Kaz and I matched those, too), to the oak floors.

Stan had even made sure the display cases were cleaned on the insides so that each b.u.t.ton in them was shown to perfection.

"And aren't you the smart one," Kaz said. "Getting all your suspects here in one spot."

Stan perked up. But then, he is a retired cop, and I guess some old habits are hard to break. "Suspects? Really? Give me a rundown."

Before I could, Kaz did the honors.

"That's Langston Whitman," he said, nodding toward the back of the shop, where Langston, Elliot, and a few other people were examining the display of old police-uniform b.u.t.tons I'd let Stan arrange, partly so he'd have something to do while he was babysitting the shop but mostly because I figured he'd enjoy looking through them. "Langston is a vendor, and Thad stole from his booth."

"Which is hardly a reason for murder." This bit of logic came from me, and Stan nodded in agreement.

"Maybe the stealing part isn't." As if there was any chance Langston and company might actually know what we were talking about, Kaz turned his back on them. "But he's crazy about Elliot, and he respects Elliot's work as an artist. The fact that Thad stole one of Elliot's awls-"

"You think he would take it that personally?" I gave Langston a careful look and was just in time to see him put one hand on Elliot's shoulder. "You're right," I admitted. "Langston feels things deeply, and he might be offended that Thad took the awl. But if that's the case, he wouldn't have turned around and used the awl as the murder weapon. That would be a worse sacrilege than stealing it."

Kaz raised one shoulder. "It might have been the only weapon around."

"Maybe." It was as much as I was willing to concede.

"Then there's Chase," Kaz told Stan, discreetly glancing toward where Chase and Gloria Winston had their heads together. "Rival Western collector. And he's never had one good thing to say about Thad."

Stan narrowed his eyes and gave Chase the once-over, from the top of his Stetson to the tips of his black pigskin cowboy boots. "Seems a good-enough reason to me. These b.u.t.ton collectors, they're a crazy bunch, you know." He elbowed me in the ribs, just so I'd know he was kidding.

"Then how about Daryl?" Since Kaz's eyes were gleaming when he said this, I felt perfectly justified in turning away and pretending I was inspecting the nearby tray of grilled asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. "He lied to the cops, and they sent Jo in to prove it."

"Good work, kiddo." Stan was drinking seltzer water, and he raised his gla.s.s in my direction. "I always said you would have made a good cop."

I made a face. "Not good enough to figure out what's really going on around here."

"You will." Further down the table, a woman scooped up the last of the baked brie, and since Stan took his job as helper seriously, he went to take away the empty platter and get another one from the back room to replace it.

No sooner had he left than Helen took his place. "Lovely, dear." She patted my arm. "Just lovely. With the way things are going for you at this conference, I suppose all we can do is hope no one gets food poisoning."

It wasn't funny. But then, she wasn't trying to be.

"So far, we're doing OK," I told her, and whispered a prayer that our luck would hold. "Now if we could only find those missing b.u.t.tons."

She gave me another pat. "Not to worry. These things have a way of sorting themselves out."

I hoped she was right.

"Talkin' about the murder investigation?" Chase Cadell joined us. He was drinking a can of beer. "Josie here thinks maybe I'm the one who killed that old rattlesnake Wyant."

"Did you?" Leave it to Kaz not to beat around the bush.

Chase slapped him on the back. "I sure hope you're gonna be the a.s.sistant to the chair of the next b.u.t.ton conference," he said, throwing his head back and laughing. "You are really somethin'. Helen, you keep this young fella in mind as your number-two man." Apparently, the fact that I was confused by the comment didn't fail to register with Chase. He turned my way. "Ain't you heard, Josie? Since hers went so smoothly last year, and yours has been... well, you know... There's talk of making Helen the chair of the next conference, no matter where it's held."

"Well, that would just be silly," Helen chirruped. "I'm not the only one who can run a conference."

"They say you're the only one who can run one well. Beggin' your pardon for mentioning it, Josie, but you're a smart woman, and my guess is you've heard the grumblin'. They say Helen here is the best there is, and if we were smart, we should have just stuck with her."