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about when it came to running into not-so-jolly giants again.
    Which means I’d look like a total doofus if anyone found out I’d pushed my couch against my front door as soon as I’d returned to my apartment the evening of the break-in.
    I ran my idea up the flagpole for Stan to consider.
    “Unless those two goons were in the wrong place?”
    “Possible.”
    I breathed a sigh of relief.
    “But not likely.”
    My stomach instantly retied itself into a couple dozen knots.
    “From what you said, they weren’t punks,” Stan pointed out, working through his reasoning when he saw that I wasn’t able—or willing—to do it myself. “Punks would have taken one look around your place, seen there was nothing there worth stealing, and gotten the hell out of Dodge. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that all you’ve got in that store of yours is buttons, buttons, and more buttons. Or maybe they would have at least grabbed something. Your computer, maybe. Something so that breaking into your place wasn’t a complete waste of time. These guys stuck around. And like you said, they trashed your shop and they assaulted you. You’re not going to know exactly what’s missing until you start sorting those buttons of yours, but whether they made off with some or not, the question is why? What were they doing there in the first place?”
    It was the same question that had been pounding through my head for twenty-four hours.
    Fortunately, I got a reprieve from all that thumping when I heard my newspaper hit the front door. I went to get it, not so much because I cared what was happening in Chicagoland that morning, but because the familiar action of walking to the front door, opening it, and finding that, as it always did, my paper had bounced halfway between my apartment and Adele Cruikshank’s next door was soothing and ordinary.
    Something the last twenty-four hours definitely had not been.
    On my way back to the kitchen, I glanced over the front page, confirming to myself that there wasn’t much of anything new in the world that I wanted to know more about, and opened the paper to page two.
    “Hey!” A smile cracked the solemn expression I’d been wearing, and I tipped the paper toward Stan so he could see the photo of Kate Franciscus in all her glory there at the top of the page. “Take a look at the headline. Kate the Great Visits Local Button Emporium . Cool! I couldn’t pay for advertising like that.”
    “Congrats.” Stan drained his cup of coffee. I knew he wouldn’t say yes to a second one, so I didn’t bother to offer. He plucked the newspaper out of my hands, looked at the photo, and whistled low under his breath. “I’d say she looks like a million bucks, only my guess is that a million isn’t nearly enough. She’s some hot number, huh?”
    “They don’t come hotter.” I picked up Stan’s coffee mug and took it over to the sink along with my own. “And . . .” Since we’d been focused on the burglary and the subject of Kate hadn’t come up, Stan didn’t know this part of the story. “She’s coming back. Tomorrow evening after the movie is done shooting for the day. She was really taken with a few of the antique porcelain studs I showed her.” I rinsed the coffee mugs, smiling all the while. But then, thinking about buttons always brought out the best in me. “And those jewel buttons I got in a couple months ago,” I added. “You remember, the openwork metal with the faceted center stone surrounded by three diamonds.”
    Stan didn’t remember. Or maybe he did and he was so enthralled with the photo of Kate in the paper, he just wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were glued to the picture, and honestly, I guess I couldn’t blame him. Kate was a striking woman. A striking woman who also happened to be the biggest mover and shaker in Hollywood.
    I pretended not to be offended that he’d rather look at Kate the Great than listen to me ramble, and just to prove it, I kept right on rambling. “I