Page 84 of Buried Too Deep

Cora’s brows arched. “What? Why?”

“I didn’t like how he treated you yesterday. Getting in a cab and leaving you there when you’d been chased through the city because he had appointments.”

Cora stared up at him, outrage flashing in her eyes. “You think Harry’s involved? Harry?” Her voice rose on each word. “That’s not possible. It’s just not.” Then her outrage crumpled into something sad and vulnerable. “Is it?”

Phin wanted to lie to her. He wanted to tell her that her old friend was perfectly trustworthy, but he couldn’t do that. Not yet, anyway.

“Maybe not,” Phin said, not wanting to hurt her, but the man’s attitude had rubbed him wrong. “Let’s just be careful, okay? He was in your life at the time that the letters started coming.”

Cora’s mouth opened, then closed. Her whole body seemed to sag. “Okay,” she whispered. “Dammit.”

“Did he know what color dress you wore for that first Christmas?” Phin asked, thinking of the letter to Cora that he’d read. “After your father disappeared?”

Cora was quiet for a moment before she nodded. “Yes. He accompanied my mother and us to church that Sunday. He always accompanied us to church. I’ve wondered about that green dress for twenty-three years. I thought that maybe my father was close by at the time, that he’d come visit me or even come back to us. But he never did. Knowing they were written by someone else changes everything. But I still can’t believe that Harry is involved. I just can’t.”

“Did Harry have feelings for your mom?” Phin asked gently.

Cora hesitated, then nodded miserably. “Mama always laughed it off, but my grandmother used to ask him when he was getting married and he’d say that my mother had stolen his heart so he had none to give another.”

Molly sighed. “Okay. He goes up on the board.” She wrote Harry’s name and added Motive: Jealousy? “He’s a possibility we need to rule out. This might have been a simple case of Harry wanting Jack out of the way.”

Cora swallowed, dabbing at her eyes with the tissue that was already wet. Phin grabbed another from the box and she offered him a watery smile of thanks. “I still think you’re wrong about Harry,” she said stubbornly, but Phin could see that she doubted her own words. “But I know you have to check.”

Phin hated having put that wounded look in her eyes. “What about Medford Hughes? Was he around twenty-three years ago?”

“No,” Burke said. “He didn’t move to New Orleans until ten years ago. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. He could have been a partner. If Jack did have a partner, they didn’t necessarily work in the same city. It might have been preferable if they didn’t.”

“But Medford didn’t kill himself,” Antoine said. “He was murdered. And he wasn’t the one to steal the laptops—wrong body type. He was a network guy. Possibly brought in to find out what we’d stored on our hard drives. I think Medford was set up, personal opinion.”

“I agree.” Burke studied the board. “My brain keeps coming back to Phin’s point about a partner. Erasing people is hard work. Let’s assume Jack did have a partner. How did they meet? How did they communicate? What happened to the partner after Jack died?”

“Some of that might be behind the partitioned drive,” Antoine said. “I’ll make breaking into it my highest priority.”

“Do we know any more details about the crime scene at the office?” Phin asked. “Did they find any blood traces?”

“No blood at our office,” Antoine answered, “except for Joy’s, of course. There are the bullets from Medford’s crime scene. Cops won’t disclose anything, but the bullets are currently in the ballistics lab, waiting their turn.”

“How do you know if the police aren’t disclosing it?” Cora asked, then shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

Antoine grinned. “You learn fast. I’ll keep peeking in on them. When they have ballistics results, I’ll pass them on.”

Cora frowned. “Doesn’t your brother—the police captain—get mad when you hack into the NOPD’s files?”

Antoine shrugged. “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

Burke shook his head. “So we’re going to keep searching the attic, Cora. And Antoine’s going to work on getting into the partitioned hard drive. I’ll take the lead on checking out Harry Fulton. If he looks clean, we can approach him with questions about break-ins immediately after your father disappeared. Someone could have been looking for your father’s records, either a partner or a client. We need to know who.”

“And we need to know who wrote those letters to Cora,” Phin said. “Can we get a sample of Harry’s handwriting?”

Cora sighed wearily. “I have letters Harry’s written over the years. A few cards he gave my mother. I’ll find them.”

Burke looked over to Phin. “I got a few of those locks put on the windows, but I’m not as fast as you are.”

Phin was relieved. He needed something concrete to do. “I’m on it. Cora, you can sleep in your room. It was the first room I did this morning. I’ll work on the rest right now.”

Her smile was sweet. “Thank you.”

Uptown, New Orleans, Louisiana

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