AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nodded again. “Dad was working. Every cop who could work back then, did. We couldn’t take Mom to the hospital because so many of the roads were closed. She wouldn’t even let me call my father. Said that there wasn’t anything he could do, and he’d just worry. She didn’t want him to be distracted during the storm and its aftermath. There was no... Well, there wasn’t a body to bury. She just sat in one of my aunt’s rocking chairs and cried. When Dad finally joined us after working rescue, he was devastated by all he’d seen. I’d never seen him look like that before then. But he knew, as soon as he saw Mom’s face, that something was wrong. She had to tell him and he... broke. I’d never seen my dad cry before that night.”
Molly’s eyes grew shiny. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. I felt so helpless. Nothing I could do but sit and watch and hug them.”
“I think that’s all you can do in those circumstances,” she murmured.
“They named the child John Alan,” Burke said gruffly.
Gabe stared at him. “He told you?”
“Long time ago,” Burke confirmed. “We were on a stakeout, had been sitting in the car for hours. And the conversation happened to turn that direction. He told me, but I think he immediately wished he hadn’t. I never would have mentioned it to a soul. I’d forgotten about it, in fact. Until just now.”
Molly stared at the bank record. “So, he paid three hundred fifty dollars a month for six years to a company named after his dead son? But why?”
“Why did you say it was a woman?” Gabe asked, trying to keep the anger from his voice. She’d jumped to a conclusion that just wasn’t true. Something was odd, but he’d never believe that his father had a woman on the side. Not when his mom had still been alive. Six years ago, she’d been battling cancer. Going to chemo. There was no way his father had cheated. Never.
That was not who Rocky Hebert had been.
“Because there’s a check to a Cicely Morrow, same amount.” She shuffled papers, bringing one from the bottom of the pile to the top. “It was written one month before the payments started to John Alan.”
“His second son,” Burke said softly.
Gabe’s fists were clenched before he realized it. Flattening his palms on the table, he made himself breathe. “What are you insinuating, Burke?”
“I don’t know.” He met Gabe’s gaze, his turbulent but mostly sad. “The man I knew wouldn’t have had a secret child.”
“No,” Gabe snapped. “He wouldn’t have.”
“But it means something,” Molly insisted. “These payments continue up until his death. They’re the only mysterious thing in all of his bank records.”
She was right about that, at least. “Who is Cicely Morrow?” he asked.
“I don’t know a hundred percent for certain yet. But there is a Cicely Morrow who lives in Houston and the day he wrote the first check, he bought gas in Houston with his bank card. I ran a background check on her and she’s a nurse at one of the Houston hospitals.” She turned her laptop so that he could see the screen. “This is a photo of her, taken for a newspaper story about the hospital. She lives in Mont Belvieu, a Houston suburb.”
A lovely Black woman was smiling at whoever had taken her picture. “I don’t know her,” he whispered. But his father clearly had. “Why?”
“That’s one of the things we need to find out,” Molly said gently. “Don’t jump to a conclusion, Gabe. Your father gave money to a lot of different charities. Maybe she runs one.”
He looked up at her, hopeful. “He did?”
Her smile was as gentle as her voice had been. “He really did.” She pulled out several sheets of paper, lining them up, side by side. “Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Meals on Wheels, the American Cancer Society. Just to name a few. He gave away a lot of money. He was a very generous man.”
Gabe found that he could smile, too. “He always said he was gonna give it all away when he died because I didn’t need it, so I shouldn’t count on an inheritance.” He took the tissue she pressed into his hand, surprised. Then realized he’d been crying, so he wiped his face. “Some people would have thought that made him a bad person, y’know, not leaving me anything, but I knew different. There wasn’t a lot left, other than his house and the truck. He really had given it all away, according to his lawyer.”
“The same one you mentioned last night?” she asked. “Paul Lott?”
“The same. Dad always said his life insurance through NOPD would go to me so that I could pay for his funeral, but that didn’t happen because of the ‘suicide.’ ” He used air quotes, the very word making him angry all over again. “Whatever someone was looking for when they trashed his house, it wasn’t money, because there wasn’t any.”
“Maybe Mr. Lott can help us,” Molly said, straightening all the papers back into a tidy stack. “I’d planned to call his office at nine.”
It suddenly occurred to him that she’d organized and combed through a shit ton of papers in the hours that he’d been asleep. “Have you slept at all?”
“No, but I’m okay. I’ll catch a short nap now and set my alarm for nine. Then we can pay Mr. Lott a visit.” She cast a quick glance at Burke. “You okay to stay awake for an hour and a half or so?”
“Now that I can have coffee? Yes.” Burke made a shooing gesture. “Go and sleep. We’ll be fine.”
She slid the stack of papers into a large envelope with the Burke Investigations logo printed on the top corner, then peeled off the gloves. “I think I’ll take you up on the offer of the spare bedroom. If I sleep through my alarm, wake me up.”
