Buttoned Up by Kylie Logan Page B

eccentric artist, the mysterious death. Voodoo.”
    “Vudon,” I corrected him. “And something tells me that’s nothing more than a coincidence. Forbis’s death can’t possibly be connected to some long-dead religion.”
    “You mean you think Parmenter might just as well have been killed at any of his other showings. The one that featured home appliances, for instance.” Gabriel’s eyes gleamed. “It would have been bloody brilliant if the killer could have left him in a button-covered cooler.”
    It took me a second to realize he was referring to the fridge. I wondered if that scenario would have been any less disturbing than finding Forbis in the arms of the people-eating loa and decided it wouldn’t have made any difference.
    “I don’t know what to think,” I said, and I wasn’t just talking about the case. It applied to Gabriel, too. “I only know that the poor man is dead and the cops are working as hard as they can to figure out what happened to him. I’m sure they’ll be interviewing everyone who was at the opening. They’ll want to know where you were after Forbis ran out.”
    He finished the last of the food on his plate and pushed it away. “With you on the steps of the church. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten. I like to think I make a little better impression than that.”
    Yeah, like I was going to admit that! “What about after?” I asked him instead.
    “After . . .” Gabriel finished the wine in his glass and didn’t pour another. He reached back in the takeout bag, pulled out two fortune cookies, and tossed one to me.
    He broke his cookie in half and ate it without bothering to look at the fortune. “After that, I was . . . occupied,” he admitted, and I wondered if I was about to hear something I’d rather not and then realized what I was comfortable hearing didn’t matter. Wine, women, and song? Whatever Gabriel had been up to, it wasn’t as important as the truth.
    “So you do have an alibi for the time of the murder.”
    He laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound and it shivered along my skin like those wisps of fog in my dream. Only hotter. “Even if I didn’t, you know I’d say I did. As it happens, mine is legitimate, but impossible to substantiate. Not unless the person I was following knew I was following him. And really, I highly doubt that. I may be . . .” He searched for the right word. “I may be conspicuous at times, but I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t follow people without being noticed.”
    “Your job as a writer for an arts magazine.”
    Smiling, he ate the other half of his cookie, then pushed back from the table and stood. “You’re smart. No doubt that’s why the police have let you consult on other cases. You know people.”
    “I know buttons.”
    “Buttons . . . yes.” He ambled to the door and when he saw Stan was still sitting where we’d left him, Gabriel pointed back to the dining room. “There’s plenty left,” he said. “Enjoy.”
    He was about to step into the hall when I stopped him. “You still haven’t told me where you were, who you were following the night of the murder.”
    “Why, Richard Norquist, of course.”
    I remembered what Richard had told us back at the church. “Richard and Laverne. They went for coffee near his hotel.”
    “Is that what he told you?” Gabriel’s gray eyes glinted in the hallway light. “You might consider asking him again. You see, he wasn’t with the lovely Laverne. He was with Victor Cherneko.”
    I suppose I shouldn’t have been stunned. People had lied to me before, especially in connection with murder. Still, the thought that Richard could have told such a story, both to me and to Nev, left me at a loss for words.
    Unless Gabriel was the one with the penchant for storytelling.
    Before I could ask, he was down the stairs and gone, and honestly, I just wasn’t in the mood to chase after him. For one thing, it would have looked pathetic and for another . . . I