Page 82 of Buried Too Deep

“Yeah. Another project I was helping a student to research.” She drew a breath. “I suppose we have to assume that whatever money is in that account came from this eraser side business.”

“That makes sense,” Burke said gently. “Are you okay, Cora?”

“No, but I will be. Meeting Alice turned my brain inside out. Everything I’d thought about my father has been a lie. I thought he was alive. I thought he’d left us to start another family. I thought he was cheating with Alice.” She looked down at her hand, still holding Phin’s. “I almost wish all those things were true. Now I know my father was a paid killer. Or at least he killed once.” She looked up and her eyes were filled with tears that hurt Phin’s heart. “Did he just erase people like Alice, giving them a new start, or did he kill for greed and gain?”

Burke passed a box of tissues across the table. “We don’t know, but we’re hoping there’s more on that old computer.”

Cora dabbed at her eyes. “So what next? And I don’t mean about the money. I don’t care if it’s one dollar or a million. I don’t think I could take it, knowing it was blood money. Even if most of it wasn’t for killing, at least some of it was.”

“Jarred Bergeron might have been an anomaly,” Burke said. “He was shooting at them at the time, after all.”

“According to Alice,” Cora said.

Burke nodded. “Yes, but you believed her, didn’t you?”

Cora sighed. “I did.”

Burke looked at Phin. “Did you?”

“I did,” Phin said. “She had much more to gain by lying and telling us that she didn’t know Jack Elliot. She had much more to gain by not letting her husband open the door.”

“I agree,” Val said. “I believed her, too.”

“Well,” Burke said, “hopefully, Jack kept files on his eraser clients like he did with his accounting clients. I think that’s what’s next, Cora. It makes the most sense that someone from that side of your father’s life killed him. It could have been someone like Bergeron, trying to stop him from rescuing a client. It could also have been a client, especially if your father didn’t deliver.”

Phin had been turning the facts over in his mind the entire way back from Baton Rouge. “Burke, when did Cora and her mother get the first letters? How long after Jack disappeared?”

“Her mother received a letter the day after the foundation was poured,” Burke said. He gave Cora a look of sympathy. “Antoine and I found the letters your mother kept. They were in another one of those boxes in the attic.”

Cora went still. “I thought she burned them. I saw her burn them.”

Burke shrugged. “She might have burned them later, but she kept the first few. I set them aside in case you want to look at them.”

Cora’s lips trembled. “I don’t think so. What did he say to her? Or whoever wrote the letters?”

Burke hesitated. “He said that he was leaving. That he had a girlfriend in another state and that she was pregnant with his child. It was a very cold letter, not at all like the letters written to you.”

“So she not only wouldn’t look for him, but she wouldn’t read any other letters he might have left for her,” Cora said. “Like the poem on the computer.”

“That’s what we think,” Burke agreed. “The signature on the letters looks like your father’s, though.”

“Can we get a handwriting analysis?” Val asked.

“I’m setting that up,” Antoine answered. “But we should also find out if the Terrebonne Parish sheriff has done one.”

Cora rubbed at her temple. “Detective Goddard said it was on his list. I think we need to talk to him again. He’s the one leading the investigation in Houma.”

“Tomorrow,” Val said. “You need to recharge after today.”

Cora’s smile was wry. “Because you already tried to call him, but the operator told you that he was out on another case and would return your call as soon as he could.”

Val rolled her eyes. “I did. I thought you were asleep when I did that.”

Cora waffled her free hand. She still held Phin’s hand with the other. “I was in and out. Mostly out, but I did hear that part.” She looked up at Phin. “Why did you ask about the date of the letter?”

“Because only his killer would know exactly when he was killed. Only his killer would have known that he needed to act fast to keep your mother from looking for your father. I wonder if his killer knew about his Swiss bank account.”

Molly got up and wrote the question on the whiteboard. “I’ve wondered that, too. What else are you wondering about, Phin?”

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