“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have family?”
“Just Parker, and we’re not related,” he said on a sigh. “My parents were older when they had me, and I was their only child. They’ve both been dead for years.”
“So, you’re alone, too,” she said in her soft, quiet voice.
She looked out the window, fighting tears again. It was so painful, remembering her mother lying at the foot of the staircase.
“You miss your mother,” he said, noting the faint glitter of tears in her averted face.
“She was so trusting,” she said, her voice catching, because the loss was very new. “She never saw the evil in people. Especially in men. It was one after the other, most of my life.”
“Addiction.”
She turned toward him. “What?”
“Addiction,” he repeated. “It’s not much different than being addicted to alcohol or drugs, or even gambling. It wasn’t something she could help.”
She was silent for a minute, thinking about what he’d said. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
“We’re all at the mercy of our urges from time to time,” he said quietly. “But I’m sorry you had to lose her in such a way.”
“Me, too.” She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “She was all I had left in the world.”
“You need to talk to a lawyer,” he said. “You can’t let your mother’s boyfriend get away with murder.”
“He’s very slick,” she muttered. “He could talk people into believing anything.”
“You were an eyewitness to what he did,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and he has friends who are big-time criminals,” she replied. “The minute he knows where I am, he’ll come after me. I have Mama’s will.” She also had Mama’s multi-million-dollar ring on her finger, but she wasn’t mentioning that. It was gaudy enough to pass for paste, which suited Esther just fine.
Butch was thinking. “There has to be some way you could point a finger at him.”
“You think?” she asked on a heavy sigh. She glanced at him. “It would put you in danger as well, and I’m not doing that. Not after you’ve been so kind to me. They have a good police force in Aspen,” she added quietly. “I know, because Mama had to call them, when Darrin hit her . . .”
“So there’s a record of it?”
“There is. In fact, there were three incidents while we lived there.”
“And that will put him on the suspect list, at least.” He glanced at her. “If you want to go back, I’ll go with you,” he said unexpectedly.
“But you don’t know me from a bean,” she pointed out. “I could be lying.”
He chuckled. “Nope.”
“Are you always so trusting?” she wanted to know.
“Not with most people. But you’re an open book, sunshine,” he teased. “You couldn’t hide anything. Your face would give you away.” He paused to grin at her. “I’d love to play poker with you.”
She burst out laughing. “I guess I’d be pretty lousy at that, anyway. The only gambling I’ve ever done was at the slot machines in Vegas, and I lost every penny I put into it.”
“I used to play poker. I never won, so I gave it up. Now it’s checkers or chess, when I have the time.”
“I’ll bet you . . .”
His phone rang. He pulled off on the side of the road and looked at the screen, then pushed a button and put it to his ear. “Where? When? Sure. I’m on my way. Don’t let it out of your sight, okay? Fine.”
He hung up. “I have a call to make,” he told her. “Do you mind going along?”
“Not at all. What do you have to do?”
“Rescue another wolf, but this one isn’t blind or missing a leg,” he said. “You’ll stay in the truck while I deal with it. Got that?”
“Okay,” she said.
He put his foot down on the accelerator. “Two boys with rifles were shooting for sport,” he said angrily. “They are not sure they hit it, but they’re in custody anyway.”
“It’s an endangered species?”
“No. They got arrested for animal cruelty. They had a rope around its neck and they were dragging it behind a pickup truck.” His face was taut with anger.
“I hope they lock them up for a year,” she muttered.
“Me, too.”
* * *
It wasn’t a long drive. Butch pulled off the main road across from a convenience store and cut off the engine.
“Stay put, okay?” he emphasized.
“I will.”
She watched him go over to a pickup truck, which was flanked by a county sheriff ’s