Ben had been hit by a speeding car when he started back toward the lot where his car had been parked. The driver was never found, despite vague descriptions of the car by a bystander. It went down on the record as a hit-and-run. Ben was buried, with only Clancey and Tad to mourn him. Morris was refused permission to make the long trip to the funeral. Clancey had written to him, explaining what had happened and how sorry she was. Morris wrote back, a terse little note thanking her for her kindness. She wondered if being off drugs had improved him, just a little. His attitude had been a surprise. Perhaps he’d gotten off drugs and was facing his past. Her boss, Cal Hollister, scoffed at her when she said that. Leopards, he told her, didn’t change their spots.

Although Morris was out of the house and Clancey was in possession of it until Morris got out of prison—having more or less taken possession of her grandfather’s half of the estate when he went missing—it didn’t make her any less afraid of him. The incident had been traumatic for her. The doctor who treated her said that she needed therapy. She told him that she’d go to a therapist as soon as she paid off her new stretch limo. He’d laughed, but his eyes were sad.

Ben’s death and Morris’s incarceration had put Clancey in the position of head of the family.

It was Ben’s house that she and Tad lived in, which now belonged, on paper at least, to Morris. Half of it was still her grandfather’s, because he’d never been declared legally dead. If Morris got out, Clancey worried about having to live under the same roof with him. Morris had always run with people on the wrong side of the law. Any money he got, he hadn’t worked for, because he didn’t hold down a job. No doubt he’d still be hanging around with the people who got their money in illegal ways. They were dangerous. Clancey didn’t want them around Tad.

She was concerned about herself, as well. Morris had been attracted to her, and she was uneasy about living under the same roof with him. If he was using drugs, as she suspected he was when he’d beaten her, he was capable of even worse violence. She’d always wondered if he had something to do with her grandfather’s death, because his attitude afterward, when the old man disappeared, was odd. He didn’t talk about it and he avoided meeting Clancey’s eyes when she wondered what had happened to him.