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hadn’t touched it in years, except to have the maid do an occasional light dusting. If I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, I could detect the vague aroma of his Cuban cigars, which he’d smoked religiously before his first heart attack. After that, he’d had to quit. “Come hell or your mother,” as he liked to say. He had framed two of my “masterpieces” and hung them on either side of a favorite landscape by John Singer Sargent. “Can you imagine that Degas dismissed Sargent’s work entirely?” he’d remarked to me once when he’d caught me closely admiring the texture of the brushstrokes. “Shows that you can’t listen to anyone else when it comes to your destiny, Andy. You have to listen to your heart.”
    I smiled even now as I remembered. Daddy always knew just the right thing to say.
    Mother was a different story.
    Before I crossed the threshold to her sitting room, I steeled myself. Surely Cissy would try to convince me to let Brian Malone take care of Molly, maybe even hand over David to the Department of Children and Family Services (or whatever it was called), and I couldn’t do it. I only hoped she’d understand why, even if she didn’t agree.
    Just as Sandy had said, there she sat, propped up on the roll-armed Queen Anne settee, bifocals perched on the tip of her nose as she sipped tea from a Limoges cup and read the morning news.
    As I took a step inside, a floorboard creaked beneath me.
    Mother’s chin lifted. She peered over her spectacles. “Well, well, well,” she said and put aside the paper.
    I was hardly in the mood for one of her “I told you so” speeches, but I knew I was going to get one regardless.
    “So she’s really in the slammer?”
    I laughed at her choice of words, and my nerves settled down. Mother had a knack for breaking the ice. “You watch too many old movies.”
    “Who did she kill?”
    I groaned as I sank into a damask-covered wing-chair. “She didn’t kill anyone,” I said quite plainly, not returning her curious stare but glancing around me at the watered silk on the walls and the gilt-framed Impressionist paintings that Mother and Daddy had bought in Europe years before. They had inspired me as a child and even now I could hardly take my eyes off them.
    “The police arrested her for sport, I suppose.”
    I turned my head, scowling at her. “Mother.”
    Her hair was brushed high off her forehead, but she wore no makeup yet, and I could see the grooves of concern etched in her brow. “Darling, I do realize you mean well, but,” she paused dramatically and shook her head. “You’re asking for trouble, getting yourself involved in something that’s none of your concern.”
    “But it is my concern,” I insisted and managed to keep my voice from rising like Minnie Mouse, something I’d learned to do with much practice. I didn’t want her to accuse me of being shrill, not now when I needed her help. She was the one who could pull the strings in Dallas society, not I. She was responsible for getting Molly an attorney in the wee hours of morning, even if it did happen to be Malone.
    I set my forearms on my knees and leaned forward. “Okay, I realize you don’t think much of Molly”—I paused at the telling arch of her eyebrows—“but I honestly believe she had nothing to do with murdering Bud Hartman. She might not be a blue blood, but she’s a decent person with responsibilities and a son to take care of.” I grinned nervously. “You should see him. He’s a doll.”
    Mother’s face tightened up in an “I can go you one better” expression. “I’ve seen him already.”
    I blinked, wondering how she’d managed that. A crystal ball?
    Her mouth curved smugly, and she gestured toward the heavily draped window to her left. “My sitting room overlooks the front drive, or have you forgotten?”
    I had.
    “How long do you intend for us to keep him here?”
    “Um,” I said, ever articulate, and nervously pushed at my glasses. “Just until