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Caroline sighed. "All right, I confess. I met Dodge in Houston a few years ago."
"How?"
"Through my friend, when she retained him to do some private investigating for her. She was uncomfortable with the whole idea. It seemed sordid, sleazy, a B-movie-type action to take. Dodge, being Dodge, made her even more apprehensive. So she wanted me to meet him and give her my honest opinion. Did he seem reputable? Worth his fee? That sort of thing. I had no experience in those matters, either, but she valued my judgment of people in general."
"Which friend? Do I know her?"
"Yes, but I can't tell you who it is."
"How come?"
"Because that would betray her confidence."
"Did Daddy ever meet him? Dodge, I mean."
Caroline laughed. "Goodness, no. Can you imagine the two of them even being in the same room?"
Berry smiled. Her dad had been a slender man, not very tall, but so dignified that his modest stature went unnoticed. He was tidy and compact, soft-spoken, cultured, and genteel. The polar opposite of Dodge Hanley.
Caroline was saying, "I didn't tell anyone, even Jim, about the straits my friend was in. It was a messy, humiliating situation."
"Cheating husband?"
"All I'll say is that she was desperate, or she would never have sought the services of a private investigator."
Berry mulled over her mother's wording, then asked softly, "Is that why you sought his services? Do you regard my current situation as desperate?"
"Not yet. He'll help keep it from becoming so."
"He's a street fighter."
"I'm sure."
"Irreverent, disrespectful of authority, and beyond the pale."
"I doubt he lets rules get in his way."
"He's unrefined."
"You should have seen him in Mabel's Tearoom."
Berry laughed. "You took him to a tearoom?"
"I had to meet him somewhere." She thought for a moment, then added, "Actually, he handled it with more aplomb than one would expect."
"He's kinda cute," Berry said. "If you're into scruffy."
"I hadn't thought of him in that way."
Berry gave her mother a playful nudge. "Come on. He's cute. Admit it."
"Some women might find him attractive."
Berry grinned at the evasion, mainly because her mother was working so hard at being evasive.
Following an acceptable period of grieving for her dad, Berry had encouraged her mother to start dating, especially when Caroline moved to Merritt, where no one had known her and her dad as a couple. The town had a large retirement-age population. There were a lot of unattached men of suitable age and means available.
Caroline would hear none of it.
