Panic Button by Kylie Logan Read Free Book Online

she heard
     was silence, her shoulders fell.
    “I’ve got to get home,” she said. “Back to Ardent Lake. One more night to have this
     wretched thing in my possession. Then…” Angela breathed in deep and let the breath
     out slowly. “Then maybe I’ll have some peace.”
    “I hope that’s true.” It was a noncommittal sort of thing to say, but I was sincere
     enough. For all her quirks, Angela seemed a nice enough person. If donating the charm
     string eased her mind, so be it.
    Even if it did just about kill me to think of how I’d cherish the charm string if
     it were ever mine.
    I walked her to the front door.
    “Oh, here.” Before she walked outside, she reached into her pocket and pulled out
     a check made out to me. It was for a sum considerably larger than the one we’d agreed
     on for the appraisal. “Not a word of complaint,” she said, when I opened my mouth
     to do just that. “You did a lot of work, and you did it in record time. I’m going
     to get a chunk of money off my taxes when I donate this thing, and I wouldn’t have
     known its real value if it wasn’t for you. The least I can do is share the wealth.”
    I thanked her, and opened the door.
    We were just in time to hear a dog bark.
    “LaSalle,” I explained even though I was pretty sure Angela didn’t care. She turned
     to head off down the street to the right and stopped in her tracks when the dog’s
     bark turned into a long, mournful howl.
    Angela swallowed hard. “Dog howling in the dark of night,” she whispered, “howl for
     death before daylight.”
    And with that, she walked away.
    I didn’t wait to watch her go. Instead, I went into the shop, turned off the lights,
     and told Stan it was time to get a move on.
    “Let’s go get Swiss steak at that diner I like so much,” he suggested when we stepped
     out of the shop and headed to the left. “It’s Wednesday. They’ve got rice pudding
     for dessert on Wednesdays.”
    I like rice pudding.
    And no one tried to steal my purse once we were outside.
    All in all, things were looking up.
    Maybe Angela was right about the charm string all along. Now that it was out of my
     life, maybe my bad luck would evaporate.
    As if.

Chapter Four

T HE NEXT MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT AND SUNNY, AND I was grateful. I’d had enough thinking about doom and gloom and bad luck. With the
     help of a little sunshine, I could forget about curses and get my life back to the
     way it was supposed to be—calm and button-filled.
    I was humming a little tune when I got off the El, made my way to the shop, and stuck
     my key in the door.
    The song evaporated when I noticed a button lying on the sidewalk.
    Remember what I said about the thrill of the button hunt? My head knew this was probably
     nothing more than just a plastic button that had fallen off someone’s raincoat, and
     still, my button-loving heart couldn’t resist. My fingers suddenly itching the way
     they always didwhen I was closing in on a new button discovery, I picked up the button and turned
     it over.
    The button was what we in the button biz call a small, that is, between three-eighths
     and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and it was made of black glass. There was
     a flower pattern etched into the glass and it was accented with gold paint.
    These kinds of button were common enough back in the days when Queen Victoria was
     mourning her Prince Albert. She wore buttons made out of jet, an organic mineral that
     was expensive even back then, and the masses, eager to follow her fashion, copied
     her by making buttons out of black glass. The glass was far less expensive than jet
     and some would say just as pretty, though as a purist, I wasn’t convinced.
    There had been a number of these small black glass buttons on Angela’s charm string.
    Weird, and the weird got weirder when I realized there was another button lying on
     the pavement not far away.
    This one was a man’s shirt button and it wasn’t plastic, but