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office—which the thieves must not have discovered in the cabinet. Because she didn’t let him play video games at home, coming to String Fever was usually a genuine treat for him.
    She loved having a few extra hours with them when they weren’t bickering. This didn’t look like one of those times.
    “Macy has a boyfriend, Macy has a boyfriend,” Owen sang out, his wool beanie covering his dishwater blond hair and his narrow shoulders swamped in the bulky snowboarder parka he insisted on wearing.
    “Shut up! ” Macy followed closely behind with a harsh glare at her brother, somehow managing to look both outraged and a little apprehensive of hermother’s reaction at the same time. “You don’t know anything.”
    “I know you were walking after school with Toby Kingston and you were laughing and looking all goofy.” Owen crossed his eyes and let his mouth sag open in what Claire assumed was his interpretation of a lovesick twelve-year-old.
    “I was not.” Macy’s color rose and she looked mortified, especially when she saw Riley sitting in the visitor’s chair. “Mom, make him stop!”
    “Owen, stop teasing,” she said automatically.
    “I wasn’t teasing! I’m telling the complete and total truth. You should have seen her! Macy and Toby sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S…” His voice trailed off when he finally focused on something besides tormenting his sister and realized she had company in her office. “Sorry. Hi.”
    Riley looked amused at the sibling interchange. Big surprise there because he’d written the playbook on teasing one’s older sister. Or in his case, five older sisters. “Hey.”
    “Owen, Macy, this is Chief McKnight.”
    Macy dropped her messenger bag next to the desk. “Anna Kramer said a bunch of stores in Hope’s Crossing were robbed last night and String Fever was one of them. Is it true?”
    Even though she didn’t want to unduly alarm her children, Claire couldn’t figure out a way to evade the truth. “Yes. They took my computer and a little money out of the till. They also yanked out all the displays and dumped them on the floor. That’s what Grandmaand the others are doing in the workroom, helping me sort the beads that were spilled.”
    “Why didn’t you call me?” Macy turned the glare she was perfecting these days in her mother’s direction. “I had to hear about the store being robbed from Anna, the biggest know-it-all at school.”
    “I asked your mom not to tell too many people about the robbery yet while we’re still trying to figure things out,” Riley said.
    Macy looked impressed. “Wow, like a real police investigation?”
    His dimple flashed. “Just like.”
    “You’re Jace’s uncle, huh?” Owen said. Jace was Riley’s sister Angie’s youngest kid and he and Owen were inseparable.
    “Guilty.”
    “Jace is my best friend. We’re in the same class at school.”
    “So I’m guessing that means you’ve probably got a part in tonight’s Spring Fling.”
    “Yep. This year the third grade is doing a patriotic show. I get to be Abraham Lincoln.”
    “You should see his dorky hat.”
    Owen glared at his sister. “Shut it. You’re just jealous. Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator. When your class did the Spring Fling, you had to be a stupid pansy.”
    Here we go. Claire sighed. The two of them bickered about everything from which row of the minivan they each would claim to whose turn it was to feed Chester.
    She fought back her stress headache and optedfor diversion, her favorite fight-avoidance technique. Divide and conquer, the time-proven strategy. “Macy, go ask Evie what you can do to help sort the beads.”
    As soon as her daughter left, she turned to Owen. “When you finish your homework, you can play the Lego Star Wars video game your dad bought you this weekend, before we have to go home and get you in your costume for the pageant.”
    “Can we go to McDonald’s for dinner?”
    He always knew how to hit her up when she was