Xo

off in Seattle.” His head eased toward his chest and he muttered, “It’s not as hot either. It’s really hot in … it’s hot here.”
    Kayleigh smiled but said earnestly, “Edwin, you can’t drive like this. Wait a couple of days. Please. Come to the concert if you’re feeling up for it. I’ll get you a ticket front row center.”
    He was fading fast. “No. Better. It’s better if I …”
    Then he was sound asleep. Kayleigh looked over the picks and seemed genuinely moved by the gift.
    She and Dance then left the hospital. They were in the parking lot when Kayleigh gave a laugh.
    The agent lifted an eyebrow.
    “Hey, you hear the one about the blond country singer?”
    “Tell me.”
    “She was so dumb she got dumped by her stalker.”

 
     
     

 
     

Chapter 67
    THE DAY OF the show.
    The band had arrived from Nashville at nine a.m. and come straight here, the convention center, where Kayleigh and the crew were waiting. They got right to work.
    After a couple of hours Kayleigh had called a break. Backstage she had a tea and called Suellyn, then spoke to Mary-Gordon; she was going to take the girl shopping that afternoon for a new dress to wear to the concert.
    After she disconnected she picked up her old Martin again and practiced a bit more with the picks that Edwin had given her.
    She liked them a lot. Top flat-pickers, like Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Tony Rice and Bishop Towne, would never use big flexible triangles; the real virtuosos used small, hard picks like these. Kayleigh was more a strummer, but she still liked the control that—
    A voice startled her. “How’s the action?” Tye Slocum asked, appearing silently from nowhere, despite his size. His eyes were on the instrument.
    Kayleigh smiled. The guitar tech was referring to the height of the strings above the fret board. Some guitars had a bolt or nut that could be turned to easily alter the action. Martins didn’t; to make that adjustment required more effort and skill.
    “Little low. I was getting some buzz on the D.”
    “I’ve got a saddle I can swap,” he said. “I just found some bone ones. Real old. They’re pretty sweet.” The saddle, vital to a guitar’s tone, was the white bar on the bridge that transmitted the sound from the strings to the body. Acoustically the best material was hard ivory, from forest elephant tusks; soft ivory was the next best—from large African elephants. Bone was the third best material. Both types of ivory were available—somelegally and some not—but Kayleigh refused to use ivory and wouldn’t let anyone in her band do so either. Tye, though, had good sources for vintage bone, which produced a sound nearly as good.
    A pause. “Just wondering: Is he going to be mixing tonight?” A glance toward the control platform in the back, where Barry Zeigler sat with hard-shell earphones on, hands dancing over the console.
    “Yeah.”
    Tye grunted. “Okay. Sure. He’s good.”
    Bobby Prescott had not only been the chief roadie but handled the demanding job of sound mixing, his father’s profession, at the live shows. Anyone on the crew could do a decent job on the massive, complex Midas XL8 mixing console—Tye was pretty good himself—but she had decided to ask Zeigler, as long as he happened to be in town. Her producer had started in the business as a board man when his own dreams of being a rock star hadn’t come to pass. Nobody was better than Barry at getting right both the FOH—front of house—audio, along with the foldback: the sound the band heard through their monitors.
    Slocum wandered off to his workstation of tuners, strings, amps and tools. Kayleigh walked out onstage and the rehearsal resumed.
    Her band was made up of artists whose whole professional lives had been devoted to music. There are a lot of talented people out there, of course, but Kayleigh had worked hard to assemble folks who understood her and her songs and the tone she strived for. Folks who could work silkenly together; oh, that was important, vital. There are few professions as intimate as making ensemble music, and without complete synchronicity among the performers the best songs in the world and the most talented front person will be wasted.
    Kevin Peebles was the lead guitarist, a lean, laid-back man in his thirties whose mahogany scalp glistened with sweat under the lights. He’d been a rocker for a few years before turning to his real love—country, a genre in which his race had not been