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André rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, Antoine. I had to ID the woman’s head.”
Antoine made a sick noise, wrinkling his nose. Gabe handed him another beer.
“It’ll help,” Gabe said, and Antoine guzzled the beer down, still grimacing.
“Ducote’s driver came by the police station last night,” André said. “He was very shaken. He wanted no one to think that he’d been involved in Ducote’s crimes. He was, in fact, able to fill in a lot of blanks. He said that he’d been Ducote’s driver for twenty years. He remembered Nadia Hall and remembered taking Ducote by her house one night. Ducote didn’t go in, but the driver said that Ducote seemed satisfied when he saw that the lights were on in the woman’s house.”
“He was checking up on his mistress,” Molly murmured. “April Frazier, Nadia’s best friend, said that her boyfriend was very controlling.”
“Then that fits,” André said. “The driver also said that the night before Ducote killed Mule, he left the office with two large boxes wrapped in silver paper. We found the boxes and the used paper in the trunk of the stolen car at Mule’s murder scene. The paper had been wiped clean of prints, and Ducote had triple-bagged the victim’s remains.”
“He knew what he was doing,” Molly said. “Probably saw enough criminals make mistakes and learned from them.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Cardozo said. “He had a really decent plan, but he didn’t count on a few things. And that’s where you guys come in. He’d planned to disassociate himself from Ashley’s murder.”
Burke’s jaw tightened. “He blamed it on Joelle, his wife. We saw the note on the passenger seat when we were getting her out of her car yesterday.”
“What was his ‘decent plan’?” Xavier asked, using air quotes.
“He’d made a recording of him and his wife having an argument on his phone,” Cardozo said. “Which, thankfully, was still in his pocket when he died—along with his wife’s phone. Our tech guys were able to break into Ducote’s cell. He’d used a program to create a clip of her voice, rearranging the things she said. Then, just before he left for the dinner, he used his wife’s cell phone to call his desk phone.”
“He played the recording,” Molly guessed, “so it would sound like she was still alive?”
“Exactly,” Cardozo said. “He knew that his assistant would be curious and made sure she could hear the whole thing. We think he planned to ‘discover’ his wife’s body when he got home from the fundraising dinner.”
“But he’d have an alibi for the time of her death because the assistant heard Joelle alive before he went to the dinner,” Burke said. “I have to admit, that is kind of a good plan.”
“What time did he make the call?” Gabe asked.
Cardozo’s lips curved into a satisfied smile. “Right about the same time you discovered Joelle Ducote’s body in her car.”
Carlos made his voice sound older and crotchety. “And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.”
André tried to hold back a grin but was unsuccessful. “Exactly. We might have been able to pin it all on him eventually, but you four showing up when you did was the nail in his coffin.”
“It also didn’t hurt that his new assistant was one of my people,” Cardozo said. “When I heard that he wanted to reassign his assistant, I stepped up to take Ashley into my own office. I wanted to keep eyes on her because I suspected that she was involved in his schemes somehow, even if she was unaware. We made sure that Carrie was assigned to Ducote, and she played a very convincing gossip. Enough that he chose her for his alibi. When Ashley didn’t show up to work Thursday morning, I knew something was wrong. She’d never missed a day, even though Ducote claimed she sometimes called in sick because of a hangover. And then... André showed me a photo of the remains.”
“You knew her,” Gabe said. “Why did you let me know that you knew her that day when you interrogated me?”
“Just in case you weren’t who you appeared to be,” Cardozo said. “I wanted to see what your reaction would be. André vouched for you, but I needed to know.”
“And now you do?” Willa Mae asked sharply.
“Yes,” Cardozo said. “Totally convinced. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have let him go.”
“Oh, I think you would have,” Willa Mae said ominously.
“So now we have some questions,” André said, segueing smoothly. “How did you know about Ducote’s dog?”
“It was Gabe’s idea,” Xavier said. “I remembered Nadia Hall walking her dog when I was little. Before Katrina. Gabe wondered what happened to it because his dad hadn’t seen a dog when he discovered Nadia’s body that night.”
Cardozo studied all of them with a confused frown. “What’s this?”
Burke looked at André. “You didn’t tell him?”
André shrugged. “I don’t know it all myself.”
So, Xavier told his story and the rest of them jumped in to add details as needed, including how they’d found evidence in Rocky’s bank statements that had led them to Xavier. No one mentioned Xavier’s gun and his shooting of the home intruder, but they laid out everything else.
