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“Can you track Rocky’s movements from his cell phone SIM card?” Molly asked.
“Sorry, but no. He’d turned his location off in the settings. Smart of him, but bad for us. I can tell you that whoever wiped his laptop wasn’t a novice, but wasn’t a pro, either. I’ve found some nuggets of information, but it hasn’t been easy.”
“So they’re moderately tech savvy,” Molly said. “Good to know. We have to assume that they know by now that we’re investigating.”
“Yeah,” Antoine said. “Burke told me that you were followed from the restaurant yesterday afternoon and that it was an unmarked NOPD vehicle.”
Gabe swiveled to stare at her, mouth open. “What?”
She winced. “I didn’t want to upset you any further yesterday afternoon. And then we got to your house and someone was trying to poison your dog...” She sighed. “Sorry.”
Gabe tried to calm his now-racing heart. “It’s okay. Just... I need to know this stuff, okay?”
She nodded. “Understood. I think that was the only thing I didn’t share.”
Antoine was watching them, a gleam in his dark eyes. “Molly?” he singsonged. He cast a deliberate glance at their joined hands. “Care to share with me?”
“No,” she said primly. “Need to know only. And you don’t need to know.”
But she didn’t let Gabe go, and that made him want to smile.
Antoine snickered. “Touché.” Then he sobered. “Okay, back to this. I found what might have been a search for a location. ‘Bayou’ is all I could recover.”
Molly groaned. “Like there aren’t a million place-names with ‘bayou’ in them.”
Antoine shrugged. “I know, I know. Just telling you what’s left on the drive. Which is really not that much.”
Molly frowned. “I’ve been thinking that Rocky wasn’t the one who wiped his own laptop. Whoever killed him wouldn’t have left the laptop behind unless they were sure it wouldn’t be useful, so it makes sense that they were the ones who wiped it. Could they have done that while the laptop was still in his house?”
“Sure. It takes a while, though. Couple of hours at least.”
She hummed under her breath. “So they were in Rocky’s house for a few hours or they took the laptop and brought it back when they killed him.”
“Makes sense to me,” Antoine said. “He also made several calls to a number in Montreal in the days before his death.”
“Aunt Gigi,” Gabe murmured.
Antoine nodded. “I traced the number to Gigi Gauthier. I don’t think he ever talked to her. The calls never lasted more than a minute and a half, so I think he was leaving messages.”
Anxiety and fear battled in Gabe’s gut. “I’ve been trying to reach her all day.”
“That was the number you wanted me to trace?” Antoine asked.
“Yes,” Molly said. “Can you?”
“Of course. The last time it seems like he actually connected with her was a week before he died. He sent her a text about his chemo. Said: ‘Sicker than a dog. How did Lili stand this for all those years?’ ”
Gabe felt a spurt of anger mix in with the anxiety and fear. “He told her, but not me.”
“For what it’s worth, she fussed at him—at least in the texts I saw,” Antoine said. “Said he was doing wrong by keeping it from you.”
“She’d be right.” Gabe’s stomach was in knots every time he thought of his aunt. “Please, let her be on vacation.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up,” Antoine promised.
“So will I,” Molly added. “I can make cold calls to her neighbors if need be. I can even call her neighborhood police to do a wellness check.”
“Yeah,” Gabe said hoarsely, wishing that he’d thought to do that earlier. “Let’s do that. The thought of her...” He trailed off, trying to erase the image of his aunt slumped over her kitchen table with an exit wound the size of his fist, just like his father had been.
