Page 26 of Buried Too Deep

Now Phin looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I was trying to figure out what you did for a living. I figured professor or librarian.”

“She gets that a lot,” Tandy put in, unconcerned when Cora turned her glare on her. “Well, you do.”

“A librarian in the Garden District,” Antoine said thoughtfully, staring at his laptop. “You work a few blocks from where you live. Nice house, Cora. Very nice.”

Cora tamped down new irritation. Doing background checks on new clients had to be their standard operating procedure.

And her home was a very nice house. It was also an expensive house to maintain and the source of nearly every one of her headaches. Before her father’s body had been found, of course. That new development was front and center. “It’s been in my family for six generations.”

Phin leaned over to look at Antoine’s laptop. “Wow. I bet your handyman is rich.”

He didn’t know the half of it. “My handyman is mostly me.” Still, the costs of maintenance were nearly unmanageable. “But we digress.” She folded her hands in her lap and focused on the reclining Burke Broussard. “The detectives from Houma told me that they’d be investigating, but that after so much time, it would be a difficult case to solve.”

“Who were the detectives?” Bishop asked.

“Dan Hardy and Liam Goddard.”

Phin frowned. “Did you tell them about the break-ins?”

“I did. They said I should call the local police and file a report, which I already had done. They said they’d coordinate with NOPD. I told NOPD about my father’s body being found and the letters. They said that if nothing was missing, there wasn’t anything they could do.”

“You’ve gotten a real runaround,” Delores said sympathetically.

Cora sighed. “Yeah. I’ve wondered if I was losing my mind. Except then this morning happened.”

Burke opened his eyes, focusing on her. “Did you walk or drive this morning?”

“I took a streetcar. I didn’t want anyone to be able to follow my car, but they managed to follow me anyway.”

“Where did you get on?” Burke asked. “Which stop?”

“St. Charles at Washington.”

“Did anyone else get on at that stop?” He’d closed his eyes again, reminding her of a burly, Cajun Sherlock Holmes.

“Two elderly ladies and a middle-school-aged boy. The boy I know from the library. He comes in to read manga every Friday after school.”

“The intruder must have followed you somehow. Or…” Burke’s eyes flew open again. He abruptly slammed his recliner down and lurched to his feet, earning an alarmed squeak from Tandy.

Cora pressed her hand to her heart, which had taken off like a house on fire. “What?”

Burke shook his head, tapping his lips with his index finger. “Can I examine the contents of your purse, please?”

Cora clutched at her bag, a reflexive motion. “Why?” Then she understood. A tracker. Or a bug. “Fuck,” she muttered and handed her purse to the large man.

Antoine got up as well and Broussard dumped the contents of her purse onto his dining room table. Both Phin and Delores’s husband, Stone, rose and joined them at the table and the four men searched through the pile of stuff.

“There,” Stone said.

“And there,” Phin added.

Antoine made an annoyed sound. He went outside and returned a few moments later. “Stored in your garden shed, Burke. We can give them to Detective Clancy later.”

Cora turned in her chair to stare at them. “Tracker or bug or both?”

“Both,” Broussard said grimly. “They were in the lining. Do you always carry this purse?”

“No. I switched it two weeks ago. Maybe three. It was before the detectives came to the library to tell me my father’s body had been found.”

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