Page 55 of Buried Too Deep

Antoine looked like he’d object, then he nodded. “You’re right. Pays to be careful.”

“Pays to stay alive,” Phin muttered.

Burke clapped him on the back. “That too. I’m glad you came, Phin. I was so stuck on the glove that I wouldn’t have noticed either of the other things.”

Phin’s insides warmed with the praise, even though he knew that what he’d done was nowhere close to enough. They needed to find out who’d shot Joy. Because that person had intended to harm Cora Winslow, too.

Maybe they still did.

Gert Town, New Orleans, Louisiana

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 10:05 P.M.

Alan was shaking as he approached his storage unit.

“Pull it together,” he snapped at himself.

He was almost finished. He could fall apart once he got home. In the privacy of his study where no one would bother him. But first he had to park the van and change out of his bloody clothes.

Blood had spattered in all directions, staining his hoodie, which Alan had expected. He’d burn everything he was wearing.

Just in case. He couldn’t be too careful at this stage.

Medford’s suitcase had to be dealt with as well. He didn’t want to take it home, just in case there was something in it that could be tracked. He wouldn’t put anything past Medford Hughes.

He’d search the suitcase in his storage unit. If it was just clothing, he’d toss it into a dumpster. Any electronic equipment would have to be destroyed. Which was fine. He had a hammer and a lot of stress to work through. He’d smash Medford’s electronics to bits.

Starting with the man’s burner phone. Alan took it from his pocket with a shudder. If Medford had been allowed to make that anonymous call to NOPD’s tip line, Alan would have been put into prison and a lot of people would have been impacted.

Alan’s business was caring for people. If he went to prison, everything he’d built would crumble. People would suffer. Their faith would falter. Many would fall.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

He’d done what he had to do. Now he had to clean up. Wearily he took his macular glasses off, got out of the van, and stretched his back. He was tired, but there were still things to be done.

He surveyed the front bumper in disgust. That list of things now included having the crunched bumper of his van repaired. Alan had hit a parked car when he’d swerved out of the path of an oncoming vehicle, the headlights having blinded him. He’d heard a loud crash behind him, but he hadn’t looked back. He’d gotten out of there.

At least the bumper could wait a little while. He might even be able to fix it himself. That way if the owner of the parked car reported the damage, no repair shops would be able to report him to the cops.

Opening the back of the van, he unzipped Medford’s suitcase and rifled through it. It mostly held clothes, but he found Medford’s personal laptop.

He retrieved his hammer and a bag of trash bags from the shelf where he kept his tools. It was a basic solution, but it would do. He put Medford’s laptop and phone in the bag and hit them with the hammer, the bag keeping shards of plastic from flying everywhere.

When he checked inside the bag, the workings of the laptop were exposed. He pulled out the hard drives and went back to hammering them to pieces.

Exhausted, he took the bag filled with the remnants of Medford’s laptop and set it aside. He’d throw it in a dumpster on his way back to the college campus where he’d catch a cab home.

And then he’d get a good night’s sleep in his own bed. He’d earned it.

8

The Garden District, New Orleans, Louisiana

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 10:30 P.M.

“THIS MAGNIFYING GLASS IS AMAZING.” Molly Sutton slid another credit card receipt under the large magnifying glass that Cora had brought to the kitchen table. “Where can I get one?”

Cora’s fingers trembled slightly on her computer keyboard as she waited for Molly to read the details of the receipt. They’d been at it for an hour, Molly keeping up a steady stream of pleasant chatter as they’d built a spreadsheet of her father’s business expenses from the year he’d died.

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