“I can’t drive that,” I said to the guy. I looked at his nametag: Buddy. “We’re getting three more cars this afternoon,” he said. “If you can wait—”

“I can’t wait, Buddy.”

Anna had already dropped me off and left. I’d have to call her and tell her to come back and get me. Jesus Christ. Was I going to tail someone in a white Sunbird?

“Sorry, man, there’s nothing I can do,” Buddy said. “The last Aztek went out fifteen minutes ago. All I’ve got left are these white Sunbirds. I’ve got twelve of them.”

“Big surprise,” I said.

Buddy handed me the keys, and I had no choice but to take them. He slid a piece of paper across the counter, and I signed away what little pride I had left.

“Take it easy on the ladies,” Buddy said, laughing. Everyone’s a smartass.

•

Considering everything that had happened—Hornsby’s murder, my running and gunning with Randy, etc.— I decided it was time to touch base with my client.

I drove over to Clarence’s place and rang the bell. When he opened the door and after we exchanged hellos, he looked over my shoulder at the Sunbird in his driveway.

“Don’t worry, it won’t be there long enough to affect your property values,” I said.

“Is that a Sunbird?” he said.

“I can think of a few other names for it,” I said.

“Doesn’t seem like your style,” he said.

“I drove a Taurus,” I said. “Taurus drivers by definition have no style.”

He nodded again, silently agreeing that I had no style.

“What happened to the Taurus?” he said.

“That’s partially why I came to talk to you,” I said.

“Come in, come in,” he said. “You want something to drink?”

“Coffee would be great.”

I followed Clarence into the kitchen while he poured me a cup. He stood behind the kitchen’s island, and I pulled up a stool.

“Have you heard about Nevada Hornsby?” I said.

He sighed. “I just read about it in the paper.”

I waited him out.

“I’m not going to lie,” he said. “I never liked him, never trusted him, never thought he was right for my daughter. But I’m not happy he’s dead. He didn’t deserve that.” He paused for a second then said, “Were you there?”

“I was.”

“Were you—”

“Not bad. Just a little shaken up, I guess.” I had a sudden thought that wasn’t very pleasant. But a part of me was intrigued by the triangle between Hornsby, Jesse, and Clarence. I waited a beat then said, “Do you mind if I ask where you were when it happened?”

His shoulders slumped a bit, either from disappointment that I was going in this direction, or that overall the chain of events had led to this. “I was at a guitar store in Clinton Township.”

“Witnesses?”

He nodded. “I was there pretty much all day, jamming, checking out guitars, giving a few lessons. An old buddy of mine owns the store.”

“Okay,” I said. I then filled my client in on everything that had happened, from the explosion on Hornsby’s boat to my car chase with mysterious Mr. Randy. When I finished, Clarence had gone a bit pale. Imagine Kenny Rogers under the weather.

“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in this. I want you to stop working on it. Clearly, I was wrong, and the last thing I want, the last thing Jesse would have wanted, is for anyone else to get hurt.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” he said, now pacing around the kitchen. “Let me cut you a check, and we’ll be done with it all,” he said. He started rummaging through a drawer by the cookie jar that must have held his checkbook.

“Look, you can cut me a check, because frankly, I always love it when people cut me checks,” I said. “In fact, cut me two if you want to. But I’m not giving up. Someone tried to kill me. Twice, to be accurate. And it’s the same person or people who killed Nevada Hornsby and probably killed your daughter. It’s personal now. Besides, I legally need to have an employer to do some of the things I’m going to do on this case.”

“No.” He said it with conviction, but I could tell he was mulling it over.

“I’m going to do them anyway,” I said. “I’m going to find out who killed your daughter, whether you pay me to or not. Consider me Pandora, and you opened the damn box a few weeks ago.”

“I just don’t get it,” he said.

“Don’t get what?”

“Why someone would do this,” he said. “What are they after? What are they trying to do?”

“As the saying goes, when I know why, I’ll know who,” I said. “Or maybe the other way around. Actually, both would work . . . I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Clarence shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Wranglers, I saw. Definitely country and western. “I thought of something else,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Jesse was building a guitar. A special guitar.”

“I thought all of her guitars were special,” I said.

“This one was really special.”

“Meaning. . .”

“She told me it was for Shannon Sparrow.”

“Ah.” That certainly explained it. Shannon Sparrow was one of the hottest singers in the country. Technically, she was country, but had achieved that “crossover" status that record executives loved. Her last CD had sold something like seven gazillion copies.

Best of all, she was a hometown gal. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Actually, if I remembered correctly, she’d been born in Detroit then fled to the suburbs in the ’70s with the rest of the scared white people.

“It was going to be her masterpiece,” Clarence said. “Shannon was going to play it at her concert next week.” I’d heard about the concert. Shannon Sparrow was playing a free concert as her way of saying thanks to her hometown. Anna had said she wanted to go. She and the girls both loved Shannon Sparrow. Frankly, give me Tom Petty and some old Stones stuff. But I was already planning to go. The kids would love it, and it was free, right? What the hell. Maybe I’d get myself a pair of Wrangler’s like Clarence and do some line dancing.

There was something in Clarence’s face I hadn’t seen before. It could have been fear. Or more heartbreak. Or maybe he was lying to me.

“Any reason you forgot to tell me this?” I said.

He held his hands wide. “It wasn’t that I had forgotten; I just assumed I would come across the guitar. Jesse told me it was pretty much done.”

I remembered seeing various guitars in Jesse’s workshop and in her apartment. They’d all looked fairly exotic, the kinds of wood you don’t ordinarily see. I wouldn’t have recognized anything special about any of them.

“Had she shown it to you?”

He shook his head.

“Then how—”

“She told me about it,” he said. “Described the wood. It was the rarest of all the wood she’d ever come across. Worm-eaten, five-hundred-year-old tiger maple. She said the pattern was breathtaking.”

“But how could you know for sure?”

“I would know,” he said. “Besides, Jesse said she put Shannon’s name on it at the bridge on the neck. On that little metal buckle.”

“Maybe she hadn’t gotten around to that part yet.”

“You have to do it to get as far along as she was. So it was done. Plus, she always put the name on the inside of the body as well.”

“And you didn’t find it?”

He shook his head.

“You looked everywhere?”

He gave me a look that I’d seen a tiger on the Discovery Channel give a springbok just before he killed it. And ate it.

“Did you tell the cops?” I said.

“Not yet.”

“You should tell them right away.”

“Does it mean anything?”

I stood to go.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Spook reflected that one of the great things about having worked for the CIA was having access to its infinite supply of handy gadgets. Despite the constant complaining on Capitol Hill regarding lack of budgets and depleted funds, the Spook personally had never seen cutbacks or depleted resources in his area of expertise. In fact, never once had he requested a certain new technology and had it denied due to lack of money.