Panic Button Read Online Free PDF

added mustard
     and a dollop of horseradish. “And I don’t want to worry you, Josie, but you don’t
     know it was random. He might have been staking out the place.”
    “A button shop?” I asked, only since my mouth was full, it came out sounding more
     like, “Abhtnshp?” I chewed and swallowed. “You and Nev must have been comparing notes.
     That’s exactly what he said.”
    “We didn’t need to compare notes. We attended the same police academy.” Stan made
     sure he paused here, just to be sure I got the message. “You can’t be too careful,
     kiddo. You should know that what with that actress getting killed here, then everything
     that happened at that button convention of yours.”
    He didn’t need to remind me. The fact that Josie Giancola, button purveyor, would
     ever find herself mixedup with murder was as far-fetched as thinking that LaSalle would turn detective.
    I opened one of those little plastic packs of mustard with my teeth and coated my
     sandwich. “Maybe you and Nev would rest easier if you knew the whole story. Then you’d
     know that guy wasn’t staking out the store. He just appeared—poof! You know, because
     of the curse.”
    I was going for funny, but Stan wasn’t laughing. He narrowed his eyes and gave me
     a look designed to get the whole truth and nothing but.
    I gave it to him. At least as much as I could remember. The bit about Angela and how
     superstitious she was, and how she actually thought that the wonderful buttons on
     the wonderful charm string had some crazy power to bring bad luck.
    “See?” I asked when I was finished with the details. “Your theory about someone watching
     me and just waiting for me to set down my purse in a public place is as silly as Angela’s
     theory that bad luck follows the charm string. There’s no such thing as bad luck,
     I know you believe that, Stan. You’re too logical not to. And there’s no such thing
     as curses, either. Absolutely, positively not.”
    Brave words.
    They would have been far more effective if, at that very moment, every light in the
     shop didn’t go out.

Chapter Three

“D ON’T MOVE AN INCH.”
    Honestly, I didn’t need Stan to tell me. Any other day, the lack of light wouldn’t
     have mattered nearly as much, but that particular afternoon, with thunder rumbling
     overhead and Chicago blanketed in a thick layer of black clouds, the shop was plunged
     into darkness.
    “I’ll go into the basement and…ow!” I heard the bang before Stan’s grunt, and I knew
     he’d run into the corner shelves near the back door. “I’ll check the fuse box in the
     basement,” he said once he’d grumbled a couple unrepeatable words, and I pictured
     his teeth clenched and his upper lip stiff. “If you have a flashlight.”
    “Of course I have a flashlight.” I felt my way along the worktable, took the three
     steps I knew separated thetable from the shelves where Stan was standing, and stuck out a hand toward the shelf
     at nose level. My fingers closed around the cool cylinder of a small metal flashlight.
     “Here.” I poked it through the dark toward where I knew Stan was, and when he reached
     for it and I assumed he had a hold of it, it plunked to the floor.
    “Don’t move an inch,” he said again when I was just about to, but then, I guess he
     didn’t want to get stepped on while he scrambled around on his hands and knees. When
     he stood up again, he was huffing and puffing.
    I heard the click of the flashlight’s
on
button. Nothing happened. Another click. A third. “What’s that you said about a curse?”
     he grumbled. “Maybe that lady with those old buttons was right. These batteries are
     dead.”
    “You’re kidding me, right?” It wasn’t like I didn’t trust him, but I groped through
     the darkness to pry the flashlight out of Stan’s hands. I tried to turn it on, and
     when nothing happened, I shook the flashlight, tried the button again, and groaned.
     “I replaced the