Page 127 of Buried Too Deep

“She will. I’ll think of something to tell her. Maybe I’ll tell her that I want some of those old portraits in the living room restored. She and I have talked about that before. She’s offered to do them a few times, but something always comes up that distracts her.”

Burke’s brows went up. “Tandy does restoration?”

“She does. Usually for clients who buy work she sells in the gallery. They’ll bring her the painting they found in the attic or in a closet. She gets jobs by word of mouth. She doesn’t hang out her shingle.”

Phin stared at her. “Why didn’t you mention that earlier when we were talking about restorers?”

“Because I knew it couldn’t be Tandy and you got me distracted worrying about Patrick. I’m still worrying about Patrick. Anyway, I thought I could tell her that I want the portraits restored, but she’s so busy with the gallery, I was wondering if her father’s ever done any restoration work.” Cora looked satisfied with herself. “I don’t recall hearing him talk about it, but he might have done some when he was younger. Tandy talks about it all the time. That Patrick hasn’t makes me think that he doesn’t know about it. Which would eliminate him as your suspect.”

Burke heaved the sigh that Phin had been holding back. “I can’t tell you who you can entertain in your own home but, for the record, this is a bad idea. She could tell her father that you’re asking questions and force his hand.”

“If he’s involved,” Cora said stubbornly. “But if he is involved and if she does tell him what I’m asking, maybe it’ll force things to move along. I feel like we’re in a holding pattern.”

Phin wanted to shout no! That “moving things along” could get her killed. But Burke was slowly shaking his head at Phin, as if he knew exactly what Phin was thinking. So Phin held his tongue.

“I know it feels stagnant, Cora,” Burke said calmly, “but we are making progress. However, like I said, I can’t tell you who you can invite into your home. If you do get to talking about her past, ask her where her dad got the money for that gallery. Antoine found the deed in his name, but we want to identify the money trail.”

Cora’s satisfied smile faded. “What do you mean?”

“He bought a house in the Quarter and the gallery building at the same time,” Burke said. “The proceeds from his house in Thibodaux wouldn’t have been close to what he’d have needed for the purchase of those two properties. He sold the house in the Quarter after his wife died and bought a place in Uptown, but he’s had that gallery since the day he moved to New Orleans. The value of the gallery property is astronomical now, but even twenty-one years ago, it wouldn’t have been cheap.”

Cora frowned. “Where do you think he got the money?”

Burke shrugged. “Don’t know.”

Swiss bank account, Phin thought. Hidden cash. He was starting to form connections in his mind and he didn’t like them.

If Jack Elliot had had a partner in his eraser business, what skills would that person have needed? Which parts would Jack have done and which would have been left for his partner?

Someone had to have handled all the physical aspects—moving people, setting up a new house or apartment, shooting ex-husbands who tried to thwart their clients’ escape. That someone seemed to have been Jack.

Someone would also have had to do a lot of computer work, identifying all the elements of a new life for their clients—social security numbers, passports, driver’s licenses, work histories, medical histories. It made Phin’s brain hurt to consider. He wasn’t sure if Jack would have had the ability to do all those things.

Phin stopped thinking about skill sets when he looked in the box he’d just opened. Oh. Oh wow. “Cora?”

He looked up and found her watching him, her eyes filled with dread.

“What?” she asked in a croak.

Phin pulled an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven frame from the box. “I found your parents’ college diplomas. They both went to LSU?”

“Yes. That’s where they met, playing in a Dungeons & Dragons club, of all things. He was a grad student and she’d just started on her bachelor’s. Dad was a few years older.” She unfolded herself from the window seat and sat beside him. She picked up the diplomas and studied them. “Dad majored in accounting and Mom majored in biology. She’d started her master’s after they got married, but got pregnant with me, so that slowed her down. And then John Robert came along. Mom had finished about two-thirds of her master’s when Dad disappeared. She threw herself into it the year I started school, and she got her certification.”

Phin smiled at her. “You were proud of your mother.”

“I was. She picked herself up and did what she had to do.” Sadness clouded the pride in her eyes. “She worked—and worried herself—into an early grave. One day she just collapsed. Her heart just…stopped. One day she was there and the next day she wasn’t.”

“You and Tandy had a lot in common,” Phin murmured, ignoring the box for the moment. Cora was more important.

“We did. Her mom’s aneurysm was also sudden. But my mother had warning and just didn’t tell us. Turned out my grandfather had heart disease, but we didn’t know. John Robert and I, I mean. My mother knew and she knew that something was wrong with her heart, but she was determined to work her job and take care of John Robert at the same time.” She drew a breath. “What else is in that box, Phin?”

He peeked in the box. “Books that say ‘Gumbo.’ Cookbooks, maybe?”

She laughed. “No, Gumbo is the LSU yearbook.”

Pleased to hear her laugh, Phin reached in and pulled out a stack of yearbooks, each bearing the word Gumbo on the spine. He handed one to her. “Can you find your parents?”

“Hmm. This one is a few years newer than the ones you’re holding. This is probably my mother’s.”

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