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She slid off his lap and onto her feet, then reached for his hand to tug him out of the chair. “Come on. We’ve got work to do. Will the vet allow Burke to get Shoe?”
The moment itself was broken, but she’d given him some of her strength and he held on to it as he forced his brain to shift gears. “They will. Shoe knows Burke since he’s visited my dad’s house a lot over the past few years. They said Burke can pick him up tomorrow. Is your sister okay?”
“Yes. One of Burke’s men is going to stay outside our apartment again tonight, just to be sure. I think Burke’s going to be buying a company vehicle so that we can use it from now on instead of using our personal vehicles. Especially on cases like this.”
Because people are trying to hurt us. Kill us.And that thought brought everything back into perfect focus.
“Let’s go pick Xavier’s mind,” he said. “Maybe he or his mother has some idea of what my father was talking about when he said he left me information.”
“Let’s hope.” She glanced at her phone for the time. “It’s coming up on dinnertime. I’ll call for pizza delivery later.”
Gabe made a face. “Not on my watch. I already took care of dinner. I heard poor Carlos’s stomach growling from across the table in spite of the sandwiches we all ate, and I don’t think Xavier ate much at all. I know that I didn’t and now I’m starving. I called the Choux and one of our cooks is bringing dinner for everyone.” He had to chuckle when Molly’s eyes lit up. “I assume that meets with your approval?”
She made a happy noise. “Dinner from my favorite restaurant two nights in the same week? Yes, please.” She took his hand and tugged. “Come on. I’m starving.”
The Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana
TUESDAY, JULY 26, 5:15 P.M.
Standing in front of the conference room whiteboard, Molly clapped her hands and waited for the dinner chatter to quiet. She was going to concentrate so that she could keep her promise to Gabe. She was not going to think about how perfect his lips had felt when she’d kissed him. And she definitely wasn’t going to think about the raw desire in his eyes afterward. “I hope everyone got enough to eat.”
Everyone nodded but Carlos, but then he nodded when Xavier elbowed him in the ribs. “You ate three dinners,” Xavier hissed.
“For fuck’s sake,” Manny said, passing his plate to his brother. “I’m full. You can have mine.”
Carlos mumbled his thanks, then continued to eat.
“Thank you, Gabe,” Xavier said, earning him a smile from his mother. “It was so good.”
“So good,” Carlos moaned around a mouthful of étouffée.
Manny elbowed him from the other side. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Carlos swallowed and turned to his brother. “Sorry, Mom.”
Cicely leaned forward. “Speaking of moms, does yours know where you are?”
“I called her,” Manny said. “Told her that we came to New Orleans on a whim. Which isn’t untrue.”
“Give Joy her number before you leave tonight,” Molly said. “Just in case.” She watched everyone on the Houston side of the table flinch, so she hurried on to keep them on task. “But this is the time when we throw everything we know on that whiteboard, so everyone focus.”
“My dad was murdered as part of a murder cover-up,” Gabe stated baldly.
Molly wrote that down. “We need the victim’s name. Xavier, you said that you didn’t know her name, but what about your address back then?”
He started to shake his head, but Cicely Morrow nodded. “We have the address in our records at home, but I can’t recall it. We do remember his mother’s name, though.”
“Monique Johnson,” Xavier said, his voice choked, then he pursed his lips hard. Tears had filled his eyes. “She died the night the levee broke and the floods came.”
Carlos put his arm around Xavier’s shoulders. “I’m sorry I never asked.”
“I wouldn’t have told you,” Xavier whispered. “It’s hard to remember.”
Molly gave him a few moments to regain his composure and pushed on. “Rocky said that the murder victim’s body was gone, so somebody took her away after the rescue teams came through.” She wrote: Who took her away? Was it her killer? She turned to the group. “What else?”
“My father had been investigating,” Gabe said. “He must have gotten close for someone to kill him now, after all these years.”
Molly wrote that on the board, then added: Who knew he was investigating?
