Page 42 of Buried Too Deep

“Yeah,” Molly said. “Just like that.”

6

Uptown, New Orleans, Louisiana

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 7:30 P.M.

“THANK YOU, DRAKE,” ALAN TOLD his driver as he got out of the town car. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You sure, Reverend Beauchamp?” Drake had been Alan’s driver long before the macular degeneration had curtailed his driving, and Drake knew that he often had late-night appointments with parishioners in crisis. “I can stick around.”

“No need. You can take the rest of the night off. I’m planning to stay in.”

Lie. He was planning to silence Medford Hughes, but he couldn’t have any of his staff tracking his movements. He needed to establish an alibi. He was also aware of the time quickly ticking away.

Medford could be talking to the cops right now. But Alan had to do this right. There could be no trail. He’d involve no one else. He’d do this himself.

Two men can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

That was just a fact.

He climbed the stairs to his bedroom, smelling the dinner Cook had left for him in the oven. But the thought of food made him sick. He was stressed and…scared.

Yes, he was scared.

He’d been prepared for this all those years ago. Prepared for the cops to knock on his door. He’d had an escape plan, fake passports, foreign currency.

But the fake passports had long expired. And now people would recognize him, no matter where in the world he tried to hide. Like Sage, his face was on billboards and in ads on the television.

So he’d have to make sure the cops never knocked on his door.

Medford would be the fall guy. It was the best choice.

Quietly he entered the bedroom he’d shared with his wife Lexy for the past eighteen years. They’d been happy together, for the most part. Lexy didn’t know his secrets.

Not like Anna had. His first wife hadn’t even known the worst of the things he’d done. Still, she’d left him. Violently and permanently.

He pushed the memory aside. He didn’t need the distraction. He needed to be focused.

He went into the massive closet that held his suits. So many suits. So many shoes. But they provided a necessary armor for the man he’d become.

He changed out of the suit he’d worn that day and into a pair of black jeans and a plain black sweater. They’d be burned later.

He packed a gym bag with a change of clothes, and then, checking to ensure that he was still alone, he went down the hall to his home office, where he locked the door behind him. He moved to the massive bookcase that held all his reference books and pulled at a hinged shelving unit. It had been custom made by the home’s original owner, who must have also had his secrets.

Alan had discovered the little alcove quite by accident when he’d first bought the house. He’d never told a soul of its existence.

The shelf swung wide, revealing his personal safe. He knew exactly what it contained and it took him only moments to twist the dial. One-zero-fifteen. October 15. The date his life changed forever.

He reached just inside the safe, taking the gloves that he kept there. He pulled them on, then reached deeper into the safe, bypassing the photographs and stacks of cash to grab the gun and the silencer that were stored at the very back. The gun had been hidden in this safe for twenty-three years. He cleaned it once a year, religiously, but he hadn’t fired it since that awful night.

One-zero-fifteen.

He checked the chamber and made sure the magazine was filled with bullets before slipping the gun and the silencer into one of his pockets. He contemplated his other guns, then chose a second pistol, an unregistered Glock. He put it in his other pocket. Just in case he needed to shoot someone that he didn’t want tied to the remains of Jack Elliot via a ballistics report.

He hoped that “someone” wouldn’t include Jack’s daughter, but if Cora continued to poke into things that needed to stay buried…The consequences of her actions would be on her own head.

He closed the safe and replaced the shelving unit.

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