Page 107 of To Catch a Latte Thick as Thieves

“How about some music?” he asked.

“Fine,” she answered. If her response lacked enthusiasm, he didn’t notice.

She watched his square fingers flip the dial, lingering only seconds on the stations as he passed.

“There we go,” he said, finally settling on a station. The twang of a guitar and a nasal voice filled the van.

“Country? You like country-western?” she asked.

“Is there anything else?” Jared asked, turning to look at her for the first time that day.

“You probably wear a cowboy hat,” she accused.

“When I’m working on the ranch,” he confirmed. “Boots, too.”

“Figures.” Cat shook her head. The singer’s voice blared into the silence, crooning about a love gone wrong, his pickup truck and his dog. “I can’t listen to this,” she announced and flipped the dial around until she found a contemporary rock station. The lead singer screamed his vocals to a primal beat that made the entire van shake. Cat bopped in her seat to the rhythm and shouted right along with the singer.

“No! No way!” Jared bellowed over the music. “You have that on and I’ll have a headache in five minutes.”

“If you play country, I’ll die of boredom,” she declared. They glared at each other in a contest of wills.

Jared flipped the dial to a news station. “Local authorities have released the sketches of the suspects, a man and woman in their mid-to-late sixties, wanted in connection with the Boston County jewelry heist last week. The thieves were reported to have stolen the famous ruby-and-diamond choker, last owned by Mrs. Gwendolyn Divine, while it was on display at the New England Heirloom Museum. The Divine choker is valued at three million dollars.”

“No news,” Cat protested. “It’s depressing and I’m on vacation.”

“There has to be something we can both stand.” Jared began to twist the dial again. “Ha! This is perfect.”

A perky beat began to fill the cab, and Cat frowned, trying to recognize the song. It sounded suspiciously like... “Oldies?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

“Oh, come on,” Jared said. “This is a good one. Listen.”

In spite of herself, Cat began to mouth the words.

“Ha! You know the words!” he accused, and she felt herself flush to the roots of her hair.

“This song is older than I am,” she retorted. “I was weaned on this stuff, how can I not sing along?”

“You know the words. You know the words,” he teased her in a singsong voice.

“So what?” she asked.

“So we’re listening to oldies from now on,” he declared with a laugh.

“Oh, yay,” Cat replied without enthusiasm.

Jared’s teasing ended when they crossed the border into Illinois, and found themselves stuck in a major traffic jam.

“Shoot,” Jared muttered, glaring at the endless stream of cars stopped in front of them. “What’s the hold up?”

“This is really going to mess up our schedule,” Cat fretted, once again pulling out her trusty index cards. “We might have to skip a rest stop to catch up.”

“Let go of the schedule,” Jared said.

“But I have it all planned out,” she protested, flipping through the cards.

Jared scooped the cards out of her hands and tossed them under the seat. “You need to learn to be more flexible.”

“I am very flexible,” she said. “You’re the rigid one.”

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