Panic Button Part 11

I didn't dislike Marci. She struck me as being a little flighty, and let's face it, she did admit to lying to her husband about jogging and not smoking, but hey, there were worse crimes. The least I could do was cut her a little slack.

"I suppose," I said, strolling closer to the table and touching a finger to the punch bowl, "you'd have the receipt. You know, to show the cops when I tell them I think this came straight out of Angela's house."

Her jaw went slack. Her face paled. Marci was wearing the same ridiculously high heels she'd worn to Angela's wake, and her knees knocked and her ankles gave way. She plunked down on one of the green velvet-cus.h.i.+oned dining room chairs and I was glad. Yeah, she was a pet.i.te woman, but I didn't fancy the thought of hauling her up off the floor.

It seemed she was also a lousy crook. At least if covering her tracks and acting innocent had anything to do with it.

"How do you...When did you..." Marci's hands shook and a single tear trickled down her cheek. "Are you going to turn me in to the cops?" she asked.

"That depends."

She swallowed hard. "On..."

"On if you tell me the truth."

"I have. I always have." Like a bobble-head, Marci nodded. "Well, not about the jogging. And the smoking. But I didn't lie to you about the smoking, I lied to my husband about the smoking. So that doesn't exactly count. And I didn't lie about Susan. You've got to believe me. She did used to date Larry, and she was as mad as h.e.l.l when Larry broke up with her to date Angela."

"I believe you." I did. There was no use beating around the bush. Marci was sitting at the head of the table, and I took the seat to her right. "But what about the punch bowl, Marci? Why did you take it? And how much of this other stuff is Angela's?"

"Well, none of it's hers anymore, is it?" Marci's voice was sharp. Until she remembered that she was in over her head. The starch went out of her, and her bottom lip quivered. "Angela inherited so much from Evelyn," she said, her voice bouncing over the words with each unsteady breath she drew. "She never even noticed some of it was missing."

"So you've been doing this for a while? Since before Angela was killed?"

Marci stopped to think, and I could only imagine she was wondering what would make her look guiltier.

I figured I'd help along her thought processes. "If you were stealing from Angela when she was still alive, and she found out about it, she'd have a reason to be really angry. And she might have threatened to go to the police and turn you in. On the other hand, if you didn't take anything until after Angela was already dead, then it's going to make you look like you were taking advantage of a really bad situation. Personally, I'd go with the second option if I were you. The first one gives you a mighty good motive for killing Angela."

"Me?" Marci hopped out of her chair. "I didn't! I couldn't! I'd never..." She gulped. "OK, I admit it, I've been sneaking into her house for a couple months and taking some of the stuff Aunt Evelyn left to Angela. But Angela never found out about it. I swear. She never missed a thing. She didn't know. So she couldn't have turned me in to the cops for stealing. She didn't know about me stealing. And stealing...You've probably already figured it out. That's what I was doing in the park the night I ran into you. Teapots, that night. I took a couple teapots. But I'd never..." There was so much of a green tinge in her complexion, I couldn't help believing her.

"All right, I admit it," she said. "I thought about killing Angela a time or two. But I never did it. I never would. Taking some of her stuff, that was different and there's not a person in Ardent Lake who wouldn't say it was justified. After all, Angela owed me."

First things first. "You thought about killing Angela a time or two? You want to explain that?"

The head bobbing started again. "Because she lied to me. And she owed me. You know that, don't you? You understand? Angela owed me big-time."

"Because...?"

Marci dragged in a breath. "Because of the charm string, of course," she said.

At this point, even a pretty intelligent woman was allowed to be confused. I was plenty intelligent. And plenty confused.

I patted the table to invite Marci to sit back down, and when she did, I spoke slowly and carefully. "Start at the beginning," I suggested.

She flicked the tears from her cheeks. "Yes, that's what I need to do. I need to start from the beginning, and tell you what happened. Then you'll understand and you won't..." Hope gleamed in her eyes along with the tears. "Then you won't have me arrested."

"Talk," I said instead of making any promises I wasn't sure I could keep.

She actually might have if she didn't jump out of her chair, hurry into the parlor, and come back holding that date book I'd seen on her desk. "It started a couple months ago," she explained, flipping back the calendar pages. "That's when...that's when Angela came to me." She stabbed her finger against a Monday circled in red on the calendar. "She offered to donate her charm string."

"To this museum?" I didn't mean to make it sound like I was dissing the Little Museum so I scrambled. "What I mean is, that's not what I heard. That's not what happened. Angela was donating the charm string to Susan's museum."

"Yeah. Well, that's how things ended up. Only..." For the first time since I'd caught her red-and-purple-grape-handed, Marci's expression brightened. "Only as it turned out, Susan never did get that charm string, did she? Serves the b.i.t.c.h right."

"And gives you another motive."

Her smile vanished. "That's not what I meant. I just meant, well, Angela, she calls me one day out of the blue. Says she's got this authentic and complete charm string and she'd like to see it displayed here. And I admit, I'd never even heard of a charm string so I didn't have any idea what she was talking about. But we agreed to meet and discuss it, and before we did, I did some research. I realized she had something special and I told her I'd be thrilled to accept her donation and display the charm string here."

"Only Angela apparently changed her mind."

"And fast." As if she still couldn't believe it, Marci made a face and tapped her finger against the very next Wednesday on the calendar. "We agreed on the donation on Monday evening, and then on Wednesday, she calls again, says she's changed her mind and she's going to give the b.u.t.tons to the Big Museum."

"And you were surprised?"

"That's putting it mildly. The night before, I even talked to my volunteers about where we were going to put the charm string. In the parlor." Marci poked a thumb over her shoulder toward that room. "And how we'd host a little party one evening. You know, as a way to let people know about the charm string and to thank Angela for donating it. We even planned a menu! And not twelve hours after all that, she calls me to tell me she changed her mind. Oh yeah, surprised is putting it mildly. We're not a fancy organization, not like over at the Big Museum. But I do have some loyal supporters, mostly the teachers in the local school system. I was so excited about the charm string, I'd already sent out an e-mail to all of them telling them all about it. That Angela..." Marci crossed her arms over her chest. "She made me look stupid and incompetent."

Motive.

I didn't say this out loud because, let's face it, alone with someone who has motive to be a killer isn't the best time to bring up something like that.

And it wouldn't have mattered, anyway. Marci was on a roll. She wasn't listening. "Once Susan made the announcement that the charm string was going to the Big Museum and there was an article about it in the Ardent Lake Gazette...well, that's when I knew it was official, and that's when I started going over to Angela's and picking up stuff," she explained, as if picking up stuff was enough of a euphemism to excuse the stealing. "That charm string must have been worth thousands. The way I figured it, that's what Angela owed me. Thousands. One way or another, I figured I'd get it from her." She darted me a look. "You going to turn me in?"

I pretended to think about it. Just to make her squirm.

"You going to return it all?" I finally asked.

The wistful look Marci gave the punch bowl was all the answer I needed.

SO HERE WAS the question, at least the question I was asking myself: Why had Angela offered the charm string to Marci, then changed her mind and promised it to Susan?

As far as I could see, there was only one way to find out.

The last I saw of Marci, she was getting out a roll of brown paper and a stack of boxes to pack all her purloined exhibits. That taken care of, I headed to the Big Museum.

Susan wasn't in her office, so while I waited for a woman wearing a yellow T-s.h.i.+rt that said "Docent" on it to find her, I took a quick stroll around.

Unlike Marci's homey little place, the Historical Society museum was roomy, a broad stone building that, according to a plaque on the wall, had once been a private-and pricey-psychiatric clinic. It had a central entranceway with a marble floor and rooms with tall ceilings that fanned out on either side. The first room to my right featured a display about the "old" Ardent, including some photographs of the town before the reservoir was built.

I confess, it was a bit of a letdown. After seeing the fictionalized version of the town in all its color-coordinated glory, I expected more. More spectacular. More charming. More interesting.

In fact, Ardent wasn't all that different from thousands of other small towns. One picture showed a main street with a pizza place, a gas station, and a convenience store flanking the police station and a firehouse. Another picture showed an old-fas.h.i.+oned railroad. A third must have been taken on the Fourth of July, because there was red, white, and blue bunting on the gazebo in the town square, and flocks of people in summer clothes were eating ice cream cones and listening to a band whose members had s.h.a.ggy hair and wore leisure suits.

The room beyond that one had a small crowd of senior citizens in it, all of them jockeying for position around a poster with big, thick lettering: "Thunderin' Ben Moran," it said. "Ardent's Own Pirate."

Years of b.u.t.ton collecting had taught me never to try and get ahead of a senior citizen in any line. I politely waited my turn, but I had just stepped up to the front of the line for a chance to read the poster when I heard Susan call my name.

In a gray suit and crisp pink blouse, she looked trim and as orderly as her museum.

"I'm glad you stopped by," she said, extending her hand and shaking mine. "I knew you'd enjoy yourself here. There's so much to see."

"And learn." I gestured toward the poster I hadn't had time to read. "You weren't kidding when you told me about the pirate at the wake. There really were pirates. In Illinois!"

Susan laughed. "Well, not too many of them. In fact, we like to think of old Thunderin' Ben as the one and only. That's what makes him so fascinating. He was born in Ardent, you know. Did you have a chance to look at the exhibit?"

I told her I hadn't and she waited until the senior citizens had moved on to the next room and ushered me closer so that I could get a good look at the grainy black-and-white photograph of an old lake schooner, sails unfurled, cutting through the water.

"That was Thunderin' Ben's s.h.i.+p," Susan explained. "The Annie Darling. He captained that s.h.i.+p for nearly fifty years, and wreaked havoc up and down the sh.o.r.eline of Lake Michigan." She smiled. "These days, it all sounds like something out of a screwball comedy, but I suppose back in the early 1920s-that's when Ben was at his thunderin' best-well, it was serious business."

Inside the gla.s.s display case in front of the picture was a replica of a buoy bobbing in the southern end of a painted Lake Michigan, and Susan pointed to it. "One of the things Ben was famous for is what's called mooncussing," she said. "Don't ask me where the word comes from! I only know what it means and that was that pirates like Ben would move the buoy markers and that would cause s.h.i.+ps to go aground. Then once the crew abandoned s.h.i.+p, Ben and his crew of bandits would board the vessels and steal everything they could. They used to do the same sort of thing with the Annie Darling, sneak into a port at night when no one was around, and dock the s.h.i.+p long enough to steal anything that wasn't nailed down."

I couldn't help it. In my own imagination, I wondered if someday there would be a display about Marci Steiner in the Big Museum.

"Of course, what Ben is really famous for around here..." Susan snapped me out of the thought with a wave toward a book with a tattered brown cover inside the display case. "His diary," she said, her eyes lighting. "And though I've read it cover to cover and never found a thing, there are supposedly clues inside. You know, about the treasure."

Aha! Now all the interest in Thunderin' Ben was starting to make sense.

"Let me guess," I said, "Caribbean islands, sandy beaches."

"No such thing." Susan laughed. "The legend says that the treasure is buried nearby." Still smiling, she turned from the display. "Every once in a while, someone gets it into their head to try and find it, but so far, no one's had any luck. Personally, I think old Thunderin' Ben made it all up. He was as big a storyteller as he was a pirate."

"You mean no pieces of eight and gold doubloons?"

Susan's shrug said it didn't matter. "Never that," she said. "The story says that on one of those midnight raids of his, Ben ended up with the chest full of money that was headed up to the mining camps along Lake Superior. Thousands and thousands of dollars. Who knows if that's true! All I know is that the more interest there is in Ben and his treasure, the more people come to visit the museum. And really, that's all I care about."

"Which is exactly why you were so happy to get the charm string, right?"

It seemed the most natural question in the world to me, yet something about it must have signaled to Susan that the topic of our conversation had s.h.i.+fted. Just a tad. She gave me a quick, sidelong look. "Would you like to see the spot we had picked out for it?" she asked, and without waiting for me to answer, she led the way.

We crossed the wide entranceway to the other side of the building and a room that reminded me a whole lot of the parlor at the Little Museum. Victorian bric-a-brac, flamboyant furniture, elaborate paintings. Like the Little Museum but not. Susan's palatial to Marci's homespun. If she was trying to compete, I could understand why Marci had turned to a life of crime.

"There." Susan waved her hand toward a wide-and very bare-expanse of wall. "We were going to install it starting there." She swung around to her left, then did a slow arc in the other direction. "All the way to there. One thousand b.u.t.tons. The charm string was going to take up a lot of room."

"It would have looked great. And to think, you almost didn't get the charm string at all."

Have I mentioned that I'm getting really good at sounding casual when I'm actually digging for information?

Maybe not as good as I thought, though, because Susan glared at me, her eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"Angela," I said, still oh so casual. "You know, she originally offered the charm string to Marci."

Susan flinched. "You're kidding me, right?"

"Heard it from Marci."

"Well, consider the source."

"Let's pretend she is telling the truth." I dangled the possibility in front of Susan. "That would leave us with two questions. Number one, why would Angela offer the charm string to Marci in the first place? And number two, why would she change her mind within just a couple days and call you?"

"Is that what happened? Who knows why? I told you before, Angela was crazy."

"That actually might explain it," I conceded, but I didn't add that it wasn't likely. In my experience, there were far more complicated and sinister reasons for murder than simple craziness. "But what if it wasn't because she was crazy? Why would Angela want the charm string to go to the Little Museum?"

"Well, that seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?" As if the thought sat uncomfortably, Susan twitched her shoulders. "Angela and I weren't exactly best friends."

"Because of Larry."

I wasn't imagining it-a small smile touched the corners of her mouth.

"But if that's true, why would Angela change her mind?" I ask.

That smile froze in place and Susan's shoulders shot back. "Maybe Angela realized Marci was just as nuts as she was. Imagine, anyone taking that tacky little museum of hers seriously! And the woman is so enamored of herself, she's even had a state-of-the-art security system installed. Honestly, Marci Steiner's ego could float a boat."

"So Angela withdrew her offer because of Marci's ego?"

"Well, Angela had something of an ego of her own, you know. She's the one who insisted we put on that tea party in her honor. You know, as a thank-you to her for donating the b.u.t.tons. We've never done anything like that for any other donor. But Angela said, no party, no charm string."

"And you caved."

"I cooperated." Susan stepped away from me and I knew what it meant. Marci might be uppity and think more of herself than any museum curator should, but Susan was important and had things to do. "I did what was good for my museum," she pointed out. "In the end, that was all that mattered anyway."

"So you're willing to believe that Angela simply changed her mind. Kind of like Larry changed his mind when he dumped you for her."

Her chin came up a fraction of an inch, and that tiny smile was back.

"Ancient history," Susan said. "And it doesn't matter now, anyway. Larry realizes he made a mistake. He freely admits it. And in case you don't know what I'm getting at here, Ms. Giancola, let me be perfectly clear: it doesn't matter what Angela did or said. Angela is dead. And Larry and I? We're a couple again."

Chapter Twelve.

AS FASCINATING AS ALL THIS WAS-MARCI BEING A Thief, Susan and Larry together again, motives piling up for Angela's murder like the slush piles along Chicago's curbs in January-I did have a real life to live. And a real business to run.

I intended to do both the next day.

As soon as I made one quick stop.

A note here, and it's an important one: It wasn't like I was missing Kaz. Honest. But when it came to Kaz, something strange was going on, no doubt about that. There had been a major change in the routine he'd followed in all the time we'd been divorced, the one that had Kaz coming around to see me at least once a week to ask for money.

Which, naturally, meant there had been a change in my routine, too-the one where I roll my eyes when he shows up and firmly tell him no.

I didn't have to be pining for my ex to be curious. And believe me, I wasn't pining for my ex.

But I was plenty curious.