Page 206 of Buried Too Deep

Tandy touched the bags under her eyes self-consciously. “I’m leaving New Orleans.”

Cora gasped. “Tandy, no.”

“For a while. I don’t know what I’ll do with the gallery, but I’ll figure it out. I can’t stay here, Cora.”

“Where will you go?” Cora asked, her voice small.

“To Seattle. That’s where Maura’s been living and she likes it.” Tandy’s smile was wan. “Lots of coffee shops up there. I could use the caffeine.”

Cora wanted to beg her to stay, but she could see Tandy’s point. Everyone knew about the shootout in the Garden District, as it was being called. There would be reporters and memories everywhere she turned. “Will you come back?”

“Someday. Maybe.” Tandy blew out a breath. “I need to explain a few things. I owe you that much.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Cora said fiercely.

“I do. So hush. I lied to you that night in your kitchen. My father had been traveling a lot in the years before we moved, and always to New Orleans. After I left your house Thursday night, I asked him if he’d ever done any art restoration. I told him that I had an overload of clients and might need his help. He said that he did, back in Thibodaux, when I was little, but he’d lost his love for it.” She bowed her head. “He said he was restoring a painting when a friend of his died. Every time he picked up a brush, he was reminded of that man and he couldn’t stand it. I…I didn’t want to believe that the paint found on Jack’s clothes could have been my father’s.”

“But you did believe it,” Burke said. “What made you?”

“Two things. Cora mentioned that the letter writer had a wobbly r. I checked the last note Dad left me and…wobbly r’s all over the place. Then I found a little envelope of keys in his coat pocket. They matched the key you gave me, Cora. I didn’t make even one copy. He must have taken my key and made copies. So I took one of those keys and went to your house. I wanted to be sure they really were keys to your place, y’know?”

“I know,” Cora said quietly. She hadn’t wanted to believe it about Patrick, either.

“I unlocked the door and it was…devastating. The key fit. But I didn’t have time to think about it because that man was behind me, pushing me into the house.”

“Alan Beauchamp?” Cora asked.

Tandy nodded, her face haunted. “He made me turn off the alarm and told me we were going to wait for you, and then you were going to take him far away. I was leverage.”

“I’m glad he’s dead,” Cora said, not sorry in the least.

“Me too. There, at the end, Dad said that Detective Clancy had already asked him who might have that kind of paint stain, so he was already a suspect. He used his last breaths to tell me that. When I asked about the restoration work on Thursday night, he was afraid I knew about the stain, too. On Friday, in your kitchen, he said that he’d found that one of the keys he’d made was missing and was afraid I’d gone to tell you. But when he got there, you and Val and Phin had already come back. He thought he’d go around the back, listen in to find out what we were saying. When Val came through the gate, he panicked because he figured that she knew, so he…” She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Val. He shouldn’t have hurt you.”

Val smiled graciously. “Not your fault, hon.”

“We saw all of that later, on the camera feed we set up for Cora,” Burke said. “We got a notification from the alarm system that someone had entered the house on Friday, but at the time we thought it was Cora, Val, and Phin coming back from talking to Clancy. We didn’t look at the camera feed right away and that’s on us. We would have known you were in danger, but we were busy settling some visitors in at my house and…”

“Alan still would have been inside,” Phin said. “Your cameras would have given us warning, but he still would have had Tandy. Your father came to save you, Tandy.”

“Well, I think he originally came to stop me from talking. But once he saw I was in trouble, he was going to help. Anyway, I thought you should know. I’m sorry, Cora. I didn’t listen to you and it nearly cost us both of our lives. Can you forgive me?”

“Oh, Tandy. There’s nothing to forgive. I couldn’t believe it, either.”

Tandy’s lips quivered, then pursed firmly. “Nevertheless, thank you for trying to help him.” She pulled a thick envelope from her handbag and set it on the foot of Phin’s bed. “The other thing he told me, right before he died, was that he had a safe-deposit box in a different bank than the one we use for the gallery. I retrieved his papers this morning. He kept records, too, it seems. It’s all there, Cora. Information on their partnership and their clients. All of his emails to and from clients are in there, too, all signed John Robertson. There were a few clients that he wasn’t so proud of, but I think you might already know about them. Your father and the other guy—Tom Rodgers, a cop—were in it to help people, and my father was, too, at first. Then he met a guy in a chat room who needed passage out of the country and, from what Dad wrote, the money was just too hard to pass up. He was a schoolteacher back then, making no money, and he wanted better for us.” She took a moment to breathe, then squared her shoulders. “He lied to your dad and Tom about how much those two clients paid them. He kept most of it. I think you’ll find that the money he made from their side business funded the purchase of the gallery and the house we lived in when we first came to New Orleans. There was no aunt who left him an inheritance. You were right about everything.”

“I didn’t want to be,” Cora whispered.

“I know,” Tandy whispered back. “There’s a letter in my father’s things. It’s from your father to your mother. I…I think my father took it from your house.”

Cora looked at the thick envelope, considered pulling the letter out to read, but her heart hurt and she didn’t think she could bear it. “What did he say?”

Tandy swallowed. “He told her that he’d left her a puzzle, the most important of their lives. That she should remember the night they met and all the nights thereafter, to look at all the beautiful photos they’d taken of their family. Of ‘just us.’ Then he told her to ‘roll the dice’ and ‘use the key.’ That part didn’t make any sense to me.”

“It does to me,” Cora murmured.

“Good. He also said that he loved her and that he’s sorry if he’s dead. That he was trying to do the right thing. He never stopped loving your mother, Cora. When I said he probably deserved what he got, I was wrong. I was wrong about so many things. And I’m sorry.” Tandy rose, gripping her handbag tightly. “Give the papers to the police or don’t. I’m too tired to care anymore.” She met Cora’s gaze. “I’ll write you from Seattle, I promise. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Cora jumped from her chair. “Tomorrow?”

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