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Burke wasn’t hurting for cash, so she decided not to argue. For now. “All right. I’ll let Chelsea know.”
“Did you get a look at the unmarked car’s driver?”
She shook her head. “Tinted windows. All I could see was that the driver wore a Saints cap.”
“Like a couple thousand other people in the city,” he grumbled.
“Sucks,” she agreed. “Where is Gabe now?”
“Kitchen.”
She chuckled at that, despite her worry. “Would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when he saw it.”
“I would’ve given the fly earplugs. Gabe was not complimentary.”
“Gabe would be right. That ‘kitchen’ is a disaster.”
“It’ll get fixed. Eventually.”
It was exactly what he’d said when she’d started working for him three years before. She’d given up trying to make a nicer kitchen happen. She gestured to her laptop. “I need to go back to reading these police reports. I hadn’t realized that Rocky worked homicide before he retired.”
She’d read through two reports already and was experiencing minor PTSD, the crime scene photos stirring memories she’d rather have forgotten forever.
“He was Vice when I worked with him. He got transferred to Homicide after I left.” He tilted his head. “He’d asked for an IA assignment, but was turned down. It was the second time that I know of.”
“Who turned him down?” she asked, ears perking up. If Rocky Hebert had tried twice for a transfer to Internal Affairs and was denied both times? He might have been looking for something—or someone. And someone didn’t want him poking around.
“Don’t know. Had to have been higher than Cresswell. I’ll ask around, see what I can find.”
Mont Belvieu, Texas
MONDAY, JULY 25, 4:30 P.M.
“Xavier!” His mother stood in the kitchen doorway, shielding her eyes from the sun.
Crouching next to her tomato plants, Xavier mopped the sweat from his forehead with his bandana, then shoved it in his back pocket. “Still out in the garden, Mom,” he called back and watched as she carefully picked her way across the backyard, a paper bag in one hand.
She was dressed up, wearing makeup and heels and everything. “What’s going on, Mom?”
“Hey, Mrs. Morrow,” Carlos chimed in. “You look really nice. You got a hot date or something?”
She laughed. “Or something. It’s book club night. I’m going into Houston, and we are going to drink a lot of wine.”
Xavier grinned up at her until he’d stood to his full height, then he grinned down at her. Cicely Morrow was a small woman, barely five feet tall. Her mahogany skin was as flawless as it had been the day she and her husband had brought him home from the social worker’s office for the first time. He’d been five years old and so damn scared.
The Morrows had given him a home. A family. It hadn’t been automatic—he’d been a traumatized kid who’d watched his own mother die in the Katrina waters that had flooded their tiny house. She’d boosted him to the roof with the last of her strength, her hands the last thing he’d seen. And the image that haunted so many of his nightmares.
But the Morrows had been kind and loving and patient, and within a few years he’d been calling them Mom and Dad. The loss of his father to a sudden heart attack during his sophomore year of high school had gutted him, and his mother had been so depressed that he’d feared she’d soon follow. But she’d bounced back. His mother was a strong woman.
“You want me to drive you?” he offered. “I can be your designated driver.”
She smiled. “Oh no, it would be an hour and a half round trip this time of day.”
“You know I don’t mind, Mama.”
“I know. It’s very sweet of you to offer, but I’m going to drive to Willa Mae’s house and we’re taking an Uber. I’m staying with her tonight and we’re taking vacation days tomorrow to go shopping in the city. I’ll be back for dinner tomorrow night. I left you boys a casserole in the fridge for tonight and here’s a snack. Ice-cold lemonade and some cookies.”
“Mmmm.” Carlos clutched his hands to his chest and pretended to swoon. “I want to marry a man who makes cookies like you, Mrs. M.”
