Buttoned Up Read Online Free PDF

found it pretty easily. A bit of bare wood showed through the sea of buttons, and it was exactly the right size and just the right shape to fit the button I carried. The red plastic button would be at the center of a flower, and the surrounding petals were shades of orange and gold. I couldn’t help myself. From back behind the velvet rope that kept the gallery-goers from getting too up close and personal with the artwork, the buttons had been fascinating. But this close . . .
    I pulled in a breath of pure wonderment.
    This close, and surrounded by so many thousands of buttons, I will admit it, I was in button-lover’s heaven!
    Forbis took another sip of his champagne and said a few words to the crowd about what he called his “artistic process” and the lightning flashes of inspiration that led him down the button path to begin with. While he was at it, I took the opportunity to revel in the riot of buttons. There was a yellow glass button just below where my red one would be placed, and I recognized it as a moonglow, one of those charming buttons manufactured in Europe in the middle of the twentieth century that’s made of light-gathering satin glass and topped with clear colorless glass. When moonglows are done right, the results are ethereal, and this one was no exception.
    But it was the button just to the right of where my little red plastic gem would spend the rest of its life that really caught my attention. Was it ceramic? As casually as I could so as not to draw attention to myself, I leaned nearer. Certainly ceramic, and handmade, too, from the looks of it. This ochre-colored button was marked with what looked like shaky alphabet letters and I itched to get closer to see what they said. I promised myself when the ceremony was over, I would ask Forbis for permission to study the button more closely.
    “Button?” Forbis held out one hand, and I had no choice but to pay attention. I removed the red button from the box and dropped it into his hand, and with another sip of champagne to mark the occasion, he held out the button, back side up.
    And waited.
    I wasn’t sure for what until I saw Richard scramble away from Gabriel Marsh’s side, a tube of contact cement in one hand. He dabbed cement on the underside of the button and backed away.
    Then we were ready.
    Forbis leaned closer to the box to put the button in place, and after that . . .
    Well, I’ve thought about it a lot since that night, and I still can’t say for certain what happened first. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Not as much as the fact that all the color drained out of Forbis’s face and he jerked back as if he’d been zapped by an electric line. That’s when the champagne glass slipped out of his hand and shattered on the marble floor.
    “Forbis?” Automatically, I stepped forward, my hand out to steady him, but by that time, it was already too late.
    His hands shaking and a sheen of sweat on his brow, Forbis pointed at the box. “Le bouton, le bouton,” he wailed. Then he turned and bolted off the altar.
    • • •
    “Well, I’ll be darned. I thought that art show was going to be a real snorer. If I knew there was going to be that much excitement, I would have gone with you!”
    It was the next morning and I was back in the Button Box, straightening the display case that was filled with horn and antler buttons. Not that the case needed straightening. But with all that had happened the night before, I’d decided early on that the best way to deal with the day was to keep busy.
    I straightened a little more.
    “So what did you do?” Stan showed up at the door of the shop even before I was officially open for business. He’d brought coffee and bagels, and he’d toasted the bagels in the mini-kitchen in my back workroom. Now, he brought one over to me—raisin, drizzled with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon. Just the way I like ’em! If I didn’t know better, I’d think Stan had used his retired-cop powers of deduction and knew