Page 119 of Buried Too Deep

“It has to be,” she whispered.

Phin brushed his fingertips over her hand, a fleeting touch. “I want him to be uninvolved. I also want you to stay alive.”

So did Cora. “I shouldn’t be fighting you all. I wanted you to find out who was breaking into my house. And then to find out who shot Joy.” Sudden hope gave her heavy heart some buoyancy. “But Patrick wasn’t in town on Tuesday. He couldn’t have been the one to shoot Joy.”

“That’s true,” Phin said steadily.

Cora sighed again. “But you need to be sure. I need to be sure. I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

“I understand,” Val said. “I think we all do. Patrick is close to your heart. He’s important in your life. We can be objective when you can’t. Let us look into him and we’ll see what comes up.”

Cora nodded. “Okay.” She wiped at her eyes again because they kept leaking. “Are we going to see this hole in the ground?”

The hole where her father had been buried.

The father she’d hated for twenty-three years. Hated and loved at the same time. Twenty-three years later, she still did.

“We are,” Burke said. “But you don’t have to go, Cora.”

“Yeah, I do.” She pulled herself together. “As angry as I am with the man for doing a dangerous job that got him murdered, I do want to pay my respects.”

Phin got out of the car and jogged around to her side, SodaPop keeping close. Phin held out his hand and tugged her to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t be.” She leaned up, gently patting his cheek. “You’re right. We need to exclude him.” She rested her head on his shoulder, able to breathe again when his arms came around her. His lips brushed the top of her head and she swallowed hard, tears threatening once again.

They would exclude Patrick. She was certain.

She pulled out of Phin’s embrace and gripped his hand as they approached the area of the foundation where her father’s body had been found. Val and Burke flanked them.

Burke, Val, and Phin were constantly looking around for threats.

Burke lifted the caution tape, gesturing for them to pass under. Cora held her breath as they edged up to the large hole in the ground. There were still pieces of broken concrete littering the ground.

And…

It was just a hole with some rocks at the bottom. Her father’s resting place.

She should have been feeling something now. She knew she should have.

But until she found out who’d killed him and why, she didn’t know what she should feel. Other than anger. That was still there, simmering in her gut.

“We had a good life,” Cora said quietly. “At least I remember it being good. We lived with my grandmother, but that was just the way it was. We were family, sharing the big house. We didn’t have a lot of money, but Mama said we were okay. Well, up until he disappeared. Then I remember Mama crying because she had bills to pay. Grandmother helped, but it wasn’t like she was super rich. We held on to the house and Mama got her physical therapy certification. Things were better then.”

“Tell me about the school you attended with Tandy,” Phin said.

She clutched his hand gratefully. He was strength and goodness. She’d yelled at him and here he stood.

Supporting me.

They all supported her. Burke and Val, too.

“It was a private girls’ school here in the Garden District. Kindergarten through twelfth grade.”

“Fancy,” Val said. “Sounds expensive. How did your mom afford it?”

“Grandmother paid for it. I was a legacy student. Both Grandmother and Mama attended. It was assumed that I would attend, too.” She stared down into the hole, casting her mind back to that time. “But there was financial assistance. I remember that pretty vividly. The other girls could be vicious. I was glad when Nala and Louisa started, because they were scholarship students, too.”

---