Page 126 of Buried Too Deep

Cora was keeping hers busy. Amazing smells wafted up the stairs from the kitchen. She’d retreated into the kitchen on their return, her eyes red-rimmed. She’d cried most of the way back from Baton Rouge. Phin couldn’t imagine what she was going through. Still, she’d taken him into the darkened living room to kiss him before asking which cake was his favorite.

One of these days he was going to get to kiss her first. For now, he’d let her have the control. She’d lost so much control in every other part of her life.

“Not finding much,” Burke admitted. “These boxes are mostly photo albums. Antoine’s been checking online. There’s hardly anything on Patrick Napier online, especially not from before he moved to New Orleans.”

“Not too surprising.” Phin reached for another box that had been labeled in Cora’s mother’s handwriting. He slit the tape with his box cutter. “The internet was still new then. Unless he’d done something amazing and gotten written up in the paper for it—or done something horrible and gotten written up in the paper for it—there shouldn’t be much on him. Not much social media back then. MySpace hadn’t even been created then, I don’t think.”

“I usually wish for the days before social media,” Burke grumbled, “but sometimes I wish more people had used it.”

A knock at the door had both of them looking up. Cora was poking her head in, her expression drawn but determined. “I brought you some sweet tea and red velvet cake.”

She set the tray she carried on a stack of boxes. “Antoine found out that Patrick was a schoolteacher before he moved to New Orleans. Taught high school in Thibodaux.”

Burke rose with a groan, his joints audibly popping. “Subject?” He took a glass of the tea. “Thank you, Cora.”

“You’re welcome.” She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “Art. Patrick taught art.” She opened her eyes and they were filled with confusion and doubt. “He had a painting included in an art exhibit in Houma, back in the midnineties. But that doesn’t mean he was a restorer.”

“It doesn’t,” Burke agreed.

But Phin thought that it was likely. He wasn’t going to say a word, though. He’d what-iffed enough for one day. She was hurting and he hated to see it.

“I fixed the shutter outside this window and the faucet in the primary suite bathroom sink,” he said, changing the subject, because Cora’s eyes had grown shiny and even sadder.

She knew what they thought. She knew they suspected Patrick.

Of what, exactly, they weren’t sure.

Patrick could have carried Jack Elliot to that hole in the ground that night twenty-three years ago.

He was the right age to be the letter writer.

Whether he’d killed Jack was unknown.

His involvement in Cora’s life didn’t make sense. Yet.

Cora sighed sadly, the sound cutting like a knife. “Patrick fixed that faucet for me a few months ago. It didn’t stop dripping. A lot of the things you’ve fixed in the past two days are things he fixed first. I’ve spent years going back and refixing things he’s tried to fix.”

Phin had reached for a glass of the tea but halted. “He fixed things around your house?” She’d mentioned that once before, but it hadn’t really sunk in. Patrick had been puttering around her house for years.

“He did. Tandy and I became friends on the first day of the third grade. My mother and Tandy’s mom became friends, too. Patrick would come over and fix things because my grandmother and mother were really horrible at it. So was Patrick, but at least he tried.”

Phin was conflicted. They had no hard evidence that Jack Elliot and Patrick Napier had ever crossed paths. Not even the night Jack died. At the moment, his killer was just some random guy with old-style paint on his clothes.

He hoped Patrick was simply a nice guy who was a bad handyman.

“Do you want to help us search?” he asked. “Plenty of boxes to go around.”

“No, not really,” Cora said quietly. “I asked Tandy to come over for dinner.”

Burke’s head jerked up, his hands stilling in the box he searched. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Cora shrugged and wandered over to the window seat. “She’s my best friend, Burke.” She sat, drawing her knees to her chest. She looked so very young in the afternoon light. And so very pretty, despite her swollen eyes. “I believe I trust Patrick, but I need to know for sure. You said you wanted to exclude him. So I’m going to ask Tandy some questions and hopefully we can glean the information we need.”

Phin winced as he returned to his own box. “What kind of questions?”

“Like…what caused her parents to move to New Orleans? She would have been almost eight, so she should have at least a recollection.”

Phin wanted to sigh. This can only end in tears. “You don’t think she’ll want to know why you’re asking?”

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