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“Good question,” Burke murmured. “I didn’t.” He looked at Gabe. “Have you heard from your aunt Gigi yet?”
“I keep getting her voice mail. Wherever she is, she’s got her phone turned off, and I don’t know any of her friends or neighbors to ask them. If Dad told her anything, she didn’t tell me.”
“We know she knew about John Alan Industries,” Molly said, then wrote: Aunt Gigi, lives in Montreal, president → John Alan Industries. “We know that whoever killed Rocky has his phone, but not his SIM card.”
Xavier looked up, a proud smile spreading across his face. “He hid his SIM? I told him to do that if things got bad.”
“It was in his truck,” Gabe said. “Hidden under the floor mat. Burke’s IT guy has it.”
Burke took out his phone. “I’m texting him now to see what he’s found.”
“Hopefully we’ll find something on that card,” Gabe said. “Dad’s laptop was in his house, but wiped. We don’t know if Dad wiped it or his killer did. His killer also planted cocaine in his pantry with the flour and sugar.”
Xavier sucked in a breath. “Sonsofbitches,” he snarled.
Cicely closed her eyes. “They had to tarnish Rocky’s name so that no one would believe whatever it was he either found or was on the verge of finding.”
Molly wrote all that on the board, then stared at it, still wondering about who’d known that Rocky was investigating. “Paul Lott called you about the inheritance, Xavier?”
“Yes’m. But not on my cell phone. Rocky gave me a burner. It was how he’d contact me.”
Gabe looked surprised. “My dad gave you a burner?”
“Yeah. He had one, too. He’d text my normal phone from his burner with something innocuous, like ‘Thirty percent off sale!’ I’d know then to check my burner. When he first gave it to me, I carried it everywhere, but after a while I left it at home because he contacted me so infrequently. Sometimes months would go by. Once a year went by, but that’s when his wife got really sick.”
“Okay, so his lawyer knew of you,” Molly clarified, “but not necessarily where you were.”
Cicely clenched her teeth. “Until Xavier called him for help last night.”
“But someone already knew where to find me,” Xavier said. “That guy followed me all day yesterday. Parked in front of our house.”
“And the man who Xavier called wasn’t Paul Lott,” Burke added. “He was already dead by then or killed right around the time Xavier called.”
Molly wrote: Was Paul Lott involved? Or did killer force him to tell about X? “That his killer just happened to be there at the exact time that Xavier called can’t be a coincidence. Either Lott was cooperating or whoever killed him had bugged his phone. Still doesn’t make sense, though. Why kill Lott when they already knew where Xavier was by then? It’s a five-hour drive to Houston and they’d been following him all day, so they knew Xavier’s location at least forty to forty-eight hours ago.”
“Or,” Burke said slowly, “there were two people searching for Xavier. One found him first. The other found him after he called for help.”
Cicely rubbed her temples. “My head hurts.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Xavier murmured.
“Hush, son. None of this is your fault, so you stop that thinking right now.”
Xavier’s lips quirked up. “Yes, Mom.”
“What did you pack in your duffel bag, Xavier?” Willa Mae asked quietly.
Molly startled. The woman had been so quiet, Molly had nearly forgotten she was there. “That’s right. Carlos, you said the Paul Lott imposter insisted that Xavier pack a bag. What’s in the bag?”
“Underwear and socks,” Xavier said, bewildered. “A few clean shirts and some jeans. We each grabbed our backpacks, too. Carlos was staying overnight, so he had his with him.”
“I don’t think he intended for us to follow him to New Orleans,” Manny said. “Carlos and me, I mean. I think he planned to kill us.”
Carlos flinched but nodded. “I agree.”
Xavier had closed his eyes. “Probably,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “Paul Lott knew about the UPS box that Rocky set up for me, though. That’s where he sent the paperwork I had to sign for the trust. But that’s in Baton Rouge.”
Molly wrote that down. “Which underscores that the lawyer didn’t know where to find you until you called. What about the intruder? Cicely, you said that you tracked down his body.”
