Page 109 of Buried Too Deep

Clancy chuckled good-naturedly. “I was sitting in my back seat, so you wouldn’t have caught me on your cameras, even if they’d been wide-angled. The back seat’s more comfortable and I could slouch down and watch without you seeing me.”

Nasty shivers raced over Cora’s skin. “Did anyone else do that?”

Clancy sobered. “Yes. There was a Toyota Camry parked not too far from where I was last night. Ran the plates. It was a rental. I was about to approach, but then all hell broke loose at your house. I saw the little asshole climbing into your window and then I heard Dispatch request a unit to your address.” He gestured to Molly. “Miss Sutton had called 911, and I responded. I’d called in the license plate of the Camry right before Dispatch announced your 911 call, but the Camry was gone by the time we finished up here. I figured an intruder in your house outweighed a possible reporter.” He looked around the table. “That was a mistake, I take it?”

“I don’t know,” Cora said honestly. “What was the license plate of the Camry?”

Clancy frowned. “He’s followed you before?”

“Yesterday,” Val said. “He tailed us when we were leaving the library. Cora had gone into work for her laptop, only to find out that the Camry had been there that morning, waiting for her in the parking lot.”

Clancy straightened, putting his cup on the table. “Who saw the Camry at the library?”

“My boss, Minnie Edwards,” Cora said. “She thought the guy was a reporter. She said that he was young, handsome, and somehow familiar.”

“I’ll go chat with your boss this morning,” Clancy said. “I want to get her with a sketch artist. Now, don’t think I’ve been distracted from my original question. What’s going on? I need to know.”

Cora sighed. “We aren’t sure exactly. It has something to do with my father. He had some kind of…side business.” She had to be careful with what she said. Her father’s clients had escaped for reasons. Some of them might not have been legit, but some, like Alice VanPatten, were. “We only have hints. Like, he had a secret Swiss bank account. We were going to the bank today to find out more about it. He left receipts for items that had nothing to do with the accounting business he legitimately ran.”

Clancy’s brows shot up. “Legitimately? So the side business was not legitimate?”

Cora shrugged. “He had a secret Swiss bank account, Detective. You tell me. All I know is that he was involved in something that he kept very secret and that he was murdered. And that whoever killed him kept the gun and used it again on Medford Hughes. Or maybe it was stolen by whoever killed Medford Hughes. That person also wanted my private investigator’s laptops, presumably for information about me. They got nothing from the laptops, by the way. They were wiped.”

“We figured that ourselves, too,” Clancy said dryly. “My IT people think you’re a god, Mr. Holmes.”

Antoine looked slightly mollified from his earlier humiliation. “It’s true.”

Clancy laughed. “God. You’ve surely got yourself a passel of characters, Broussard. So, Miss Winslow, you’re looking for records of whatever your father was into, I take it.”

“We are,” Cora confirmed.

Clancy tilted his head, studying her. “And what have you found?”

“Receipts and a Swiss bank account.” That was God’s truth. She’d found Alice VanPatten through her own Google search. “We’re still trying to learn who wrote me all those letters.”

“Ah, the letters.” Clancy picked up his cup again. “I got a hefty envelope from Detective Goddard in Houma late last night. He sent me copies of the letters. He said he’d be sending me the originals by courier today.”

“What else did he send you?” Cora asked.

“Nothing yet. He’s preparing to transfer everything he has in evidence. Mainly things found around the body.” He hesitated. “Are you sure you want me to continue? The victim was your father.”

“I’m sure,” Cora said and almost believed herself.

Phin tapped Delores, who was sitting next to Cora. “Switch with me.”

Delores complied, giving Phin a sweet smile. “Of course.”

Phin sat beside Cora, taking her hand. “If you want him to stop, you just say so. You and I can go out to the garden while he tells Burke.”

What a sweet man. Cora squeezed his hand, grateful for his very visible support. “Thank you. I will say something if I can’t handle it, but I’ve heard most of this before. I know he was found with one chipped rib, probably from a bullet, and two bullet holes in his skull. Those two bullets were found with the skull.” Which was how they’d tested the ballistics of the weapon that had fired them.

“And so far, that’s all I know,” Clancy said. “He was wrapped in plastic, which didn’t stop the decay but it did protect the bones.”

Cora swallowed. “And his hair. That’s how they got the DNA they used to ID him.”

Clancy nodded. “You told me that when you came in on Tuesday morning. That you’d donated your own DNA to find out if you had any other relatives on your father’s side because you’d been unable to locate your father to donate bone marrow for your brother. I’m sorry, Miss Winslow. That has to be hard, to discover that your search was in vain. But it did allow the Terrebonne Parish sheriff’s office to ID your father’s remains. So there was purpose.”

“I know. I’m coming to grips with that. What else do you know, Detective Clancy?”

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