“Hmm,” she said. “She’s so busy now that she’s home. Is this a police matter?”

“No, like I said, I’m a private investigator.”

“I really don’t think there’s a possibility with her schedule . . .”

“It has to do with the guitar that Jesse Barre was building for her,” I said. “I have to ask her some very important questions. Questions that, unless I get the chance to ask them, will most likely merit a call to the police so they can ask them. Do you understand?”

The woman at least pretended to give it a moment’s thought. I could practically hear the tumblers fall into place just before the safe popped open.

“Is there a number where I can reach you?” she said.

It was a start.

•

In the time I waited for a call back from Shannon Sparrow’s “people,” I got back to my office and checked messages. There was one from Anna reminding me she had book club tonight. They were reading The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I’d read it in college for a comparative literature class. All I remember was a brutal scene where a Chinese peasant woman gave birth alone in a room, cleaned herself up, then made dinner for her husband. I could picture the fun I’d have giving the book club my view on that scene. I’d never make it out of there alive.

I opened some mail, leafed through a Bow Hunter magazine that the post office kept delivering for the tenant who’d left this space years ago.

Just as I was really getting into an article debating the merits of compound bows reinforced with titanium, my cell phone rang.

“Yeah?” I asked, seeing the number and not recognizing it.

“This is Molly Lehring, returning your call.” Shannon Sparrow’s assistant had a voice that was the epitome of crisp, cool professionalism. She gave off as much warmth as a meat freezer.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Shannon can meet with you in exactly one half hour. She has about a twenty-minute window in her schedule.”

“What a coincidence,” I said. “I, too, have a twenty-minute window in my schedule. Let’s do it!

There was dead silence as the woman on the other end let me know that there was no time for levity in Shannon Sparrow’s busy world.

I started to give a more official acceptance of the offer, but then realized that this woman wasn’t seeking it.

“Where are you currently located?” I said, sounding like the very textbook definition of professionalism.

“Eight Four Zero Lake Shore Drive. Grosse Pointe Shores.”

“I’ll be—”

She interrupted me with a quick disconnection. Now that didn’t seem professional to me. Apparently, Molly Lehring skipped the class on public relations.

I checked the number on my cell phone then programmed it into my phone’s memory. I figured if I ever got bored, I’d use it to bug the living shit out of Ms Lehring.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I pulled into the driveway of a monstrous Grosse Pointe, Lakeshore Drive mansion. It looked like a medieval fort with at least three or four turrets and massively thick beams. Brick, slate roof, a couple sets of guest cottages. Easily worth seven figures, probably eight.

There was no doubt in my mind that the house had not seen many white Pontiac Sunbirds coming up the drive. I parked the car with no small amount of pride and rang the quaint little doorbell, at the same time noticing the high-tech security cameras trained on me. They were recessed tastefully, but they were there.

The man who answered the door was actually a woman, once I looked more closely. She had a crew cut and wore a short-sleeved polo shirt exposing extremely impressive biceps and forearms, at the end of which dangled two meaty, veiny hands. Picture Ernest Borgnine after a gender reassignment that never really took.

“John Rockne,” I said.

“Ah yes, I was told you’d be arriving shortly.” Her voice was worthy of a barbershop quartet. She’d have the baritone’s part.

Even though she’d been expecting me, she produced a clipboard, scanned down, then nodded her ham-hock head to let me know all the requisite paperwork was in order.

“My name’s Freda,” she said.

“Lovely,” I said.

Sans a visible expression, she stepped aside, and I caught the scent of either Aqua Velva or Hai Karate.

“This is Erma,” she said and lifted her Kirk Douglas chin toward the hall. Freda’s twin stepped out from a doorway and nodded to me.

“Hey, Erma,” I said. I sounded nice and chipper. If anything, she was more muscular than Freda. Either one could crack my head like a walnut. Erma wore a sport coat, and among her many bulges, I noticed one in particular underneath her left arm. It would probably be a big-caliber gun. You had forearms the size of Dubuque hams, you needed the opportunity to put them to use.

I walked down the hall between them, feeling like the special sauce between two all-beef patties.

The matching Bronko Nagurskis showed me to a small office where a bone-thin woman with wispy brown hair, rosy cheeks, and a small mouth with small white teeth was talking on a cell phone. She sat behind a small glass desk, her black-nylon-encased legs crossed. A white laptop was open in front of her. While she talked, her eyes scanned the computer screen.

Her fingers tapped hard on the keyboard, twice, and then said into the phone, “They’re your fucking problem now.”

She paused, glanced at me, then looked back at the screen.

“You were paid to do a job, not fuck up,” she said. “Fix it and don’t call me until you do.” Her voice was as sharp and cutting as the points of her high heels.

She disconnected the call and looked at me.

“John Rockne,” I said.

“She’s in the studio.” The way she said it, it sounded like I was interrupting Shannon Sparrow in the middle of taking a crap.

“I’m sure it won’t take long,” I said. “By the way, are you Molly?”

She ignored me and my outstretched hand, then answered the phone after it vibrated on the desk.

“Are you sure?” she said, her voice softer, almost warm. Something told me the boss was on the other end of the line. There was a brief pause before she locked her eyes onto mine.

“I’ll bring him right up,” she said.

•

The first thing I saw of Shannon Sparrow in person was her pubic hair.

“Shannon, this is Mr. Rockne,” Molly said, and immediately took her leave.

The famous singer sat spread-eagled in an overstuffed armchair, wearing a sports bra and a pair of bikini underwear rolled down to just above her happy place. I stood there, open-mouthed, God only knows what kind of expression on my face. I didn’t know what to say. “I’m your biggest fan” didn’t seem right under the circumstances. Nor did “I really admire your work.”

She pressed a wet washcloth against her pubic mound, and then with a straight razor, she sheared about a half-inch off the top of her patch, as it were. She then lifted the razor and with a finger, delicately brushed the pubic hair into an envelope.

“Is this a bad time?” I said, thinking this was a really bad time for me. Maybe when I was young and single it would have been fun, but a happily married man, even if he is a private investigator, didn’t really need to be seeing something like this.

“I send them to my doctor for analysis,” she said, by way of greeting. So I guess she didn’t think it was a bad time. “You know, they study my vitamins, nutrients, what I’m missing, what I’ve got too much of.”

“I never realized you could learn so much from pubic hair,” I said. And I’d just used “learn” and “pubic hair” in the same sentence.

“It’s like Nietzsche said, ‘when you look into pubic hair, pubic hair looks into you,’” she said. She gave a weird sort of giggle after she said it.