Free Hot Button by Kylie Logan

she was talking to. “She’s got some kind of problem and—”
    “Helen!” Sure, I felt dopey standing there in the laundry room and yelling into my phone, but it was the only thing I could think to do to get her attention. “Helen, this is kind of important.”
    “Of course it is. You wouldn’t have called during dinner otherwise.”
    She was back, and before she could get distracted again, I said all I had to say and said it fast. “Thad Wyant isn’t going to be able to make the dinner tonight.” Talk about understatements! Rather than dwell on it, I kept my focus. “I need you to rustle up a banquet speaker,” I told Helen. “I was thinking… I almost said Chase Cadell, then reconsidered. Things were bad enough; there was no use making Chase the center of attention and giving him the opportunity to say “I told you so.”
    I scrambled, furiously thinking about our conference attendees. “How about Brenda Perry? You know, the woman who makes those really cool polymer-clay buttons and—”
    The ladylike tsk on the other end of the phone was enough to stop me cold. “Lovely woman,” Helen said. “Gifted artist.”
    “But…”
    “Terrible public speaker. Oh my, yes. You haven’t heard her, have you? Mumbles. Stumbles over her words. Simply terrible. When Brenda’s speaking in front of a crowd, she’s uncomfortable, and so is everyone who’s in the room with her.”
    I scratched Brenda off what had been a very short list and tried for another idea. No easy thing, considering my gut was twisted in painful knots, my knees felt like they were made out of some of Brenda’s uncured polymer clay, and my heart was pounding so hard, I was sure Nev and the other cops across the hall heard it and figured the thumping was coming from the washing machines. Fighting to steady myself, I waited until the cops were done with their sweep of that side of the basement and leaned against the cool,tiled wall. “Then how about Bob Johnson? He knows everything there is to know about cloisonné buttons.”
    “Just saw him at the bar.” Helen’s tone of voice told me she was shaking her head sadly when she said this. “One too many glasses of Jack Daniel’s, I’m afraid. My goodness, and it’s so early in the conference for him to misbehave like that. Bob usually waits until the last night to let it all hang out.”
    “Then what about—”
    “Thad isn’t just late. Is that what you’re telling me? He’s not going to make it at all?” I think the enormity of what I’d been trying to tell her finally sunk in. Poor Helen didn’t know the half of it. That’s why she didn’t sound as worried as she did uncertain. “Are you sure, Josie? He’s your guest of honor, after all. The conference paid for him to fly all the way here from New Mexico. And the conference is covering every single one of his expenses. Hotel and such, I mean. Are you telling me you’ve lost him?”
    I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly even as I switched my phone from one sweaty hand to the other. “It’s complicated.”
    “It must be, dear, for a conference not to have its guest of honor at the opening banquet.”
    Don’t ask me how, but I somehow managed to sound as levelheaded and focused as I wasn’t feeling. “You’re right. It’s unforgivable, but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable. Still, we can’t have people sitting there after dinner waiting for a speaker who’s never going to show.”
    “Does that mean we’re not going to see the Geronimo button tonight?”
    Leave it to Helen to get to the heart of the matter. And for the heart of the matter to be all about buttons. I can’t say I blamed her. Had I come all the way to Chicago fromwho-knows-where just to get a gander of the famous Geronimo button, I, too, would wonder what Thad’s absence meant.
    The Geronimo button.
    The thought galvanized me, and I straightened up like a shot. A chill crawled through my bloodstream, and this time, it had nothing to do with