“Quietly. I don’t want her or Emily to worry. Ugh. Speaking of worry…” She let her head drop into her hands.
“You have to tell Chris about this.”
“Yeah,” she said to the countertop. “Damn.”
“Do you have to tell him?”
“Is there any chance this is just a prank?”
“Do you have friends that would fuck with you like this?” he countered.
“No. There’s always at least one practical joker on tour. A realistic cockroach in bunks, Saran Wrap over the toilet, that kind of thing, but I don’t think that would extend to my home after we went our separate ways.”
“How many people know about your grandmother and what she meant to you?”
She squinted, trying to come up with a number. “Thousands? Tens of thousands?”
“What?” he said, obviously started.
“It’s part of my story the label likes me to play up, so I’ve talked about it on stage, during interviews. My grandmother played electric guitar in an all-girl rock band in the 1960s. They were really good; I’ve heard recordings they made. This is a pretty conservative part of the country, and women weren’t supposed to do things like that, but she told everyone to go to hell and did what she wanted. She and her friends traveled all over the Midwest in a VW van, playing in nightclubs and bars. Even after she got married she kept on doing it, until she got too pregnant to play. She’s my inspiration, musically and professionally. It’s common knowledge among my fans.”
He blew out his breath. “So, the likelihood is that someone who knew how much that meant to you and how devastating it would be to lose it got into your house and stole it.”
“Damn,” she repeated, then reached for her jacket, pulling her gloves from the pockets. “I’ll call Chris on the way to Mom’s house.”
Conn took them out of her hands. “We’re not going anywhere. I need to call in Hawthorn.”
“We are going to church, then to brunch, then to the Christmas tree farm,” she said precisely. “My sister’s choir is singing today, I have brunch with my mom every Sunday, and we always pick out our tree three weekends before Christmas.”
A muscle flexed in his cheek. “Why three weekends before Christmas?”
“It’s the routine. Three weekends before we get the tree. The next weekend we decorate it and go see Santa. Then we make cookies and wrap our presents for each other the following weekend. Then it’s Christmas. That’s how we do things.”
He stared at her.
“Christmas only comes once a year,” she said. “In a couple of months I’ll be out on the road again. I need normal. Church. Brunch. Christmas tree shopping.”
She must have looked absolutely mutinous, because he handed over her down jacket and gloves, then shrugged into his jacket and pulled his watch cap over his hair. “Ready?”
“I’m ready.” She looked at the manila folders in his left hand. “Is that my file?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m going to dig deeper. I need to be able to give Hawthorn some answers when he gets here.”
Conn reversed down the driveway while she buckled her seat belt and swiped through her recent calls to Chris’s number. “Hello, my dear,” Chris said expansively when he answered. “How are you?”
Cady held the phone away from her ear and looked at the contact information on the screen. Chris Wellendorf. “Chris?”
“Yes. What? Don’t you recognize me in a good mood? I just got spectacularly laid. I’m about to enjoy the Sunday paper, and some excellent coffee, and maybe round two.”
“Chris, TMI. You’re with someone and you answered my call?”
“Because I will always answer your call. What’s up? Tired of the sticks and ready to be a superstar again?”
“Someone broke into my house and stole Nana Maud’s bracelet.”
Dead silence. Then, “I can’t decide if that’s scary or hilarious.”
“Tell him I said it’s scary,” Conn growled. The Audi’s back end hitched sideways like a spooked horse. He downshifted, corrected into the skid, and the car obediently straightened out.
“I heard him,” Chris said. Cady heard a door close in the background. “What happened?”
Cady explained that they’d left the house for a while last night, purposefully vague about the circumstances, said nothing about the sex, and added that she’d noticed the bracelet was missing that morning.
“Where were you?” Chris asked absently.
“Out.”
“Where out?”
“It doesn’t matter where I was.”
“You were at the drag races. How charmingly NASCAR of you. And the weather was … mid-thirties and dry as a bone. Cady. Jesus.”
“I hate Instagram,” she muttered. “I didn’t sing. I had a scarf over my mouth the whole time.”
“If they ask you do to the National Anthem, say no. Was this Conn’s idea?”
“No! I used to go all the time when I was younger. It was fun then, I thought it would be fun now, and it was!” Her voice was rising, both in volume and pitch. “I’m relaxing! You told me to relax.”