Chapter 18 #2
The evening passed with food and laughter. By the time they were gone, and the tables taken down and stored, Briar had fallen asleep on the living room couch.
“Bless her heart,” Lilith said. “We wore her clean out.”
Tate shook his head. “No, Mama. You settled her sad heart. That’s not exhaustion. That’s relief.”
He picked her up and carried her up the stairs to bed, and they were up and gone early to catch their flight home. It was the best time for all of them, and going home to uncertainty didn’t seem as big a deal for Briar anymore.
She just needed to find a job.
* * *
When they got home, Tate brought their suitcases inside. Briar carried their quilt, holding it to her like she was carrying a baby.
“It’s our first gift as a couple,” she said, then went straight through the little house to their bedroom, removed it from the plastic bag, and spread it out over the bed. “Look, Tate! Look how beautiful it is! Granny Barton said the pattern is called Crown of Thorns! It’s a treasure!”
He set the bags down, walked up behind her, wrapped her up in his arms, and kissed the top of her head.
“You are my treasure,” he said.
She turned in his arms. “Thank you for taking me with you. I love your family. They made me feel like I was part of them.”
“If I love you, then they love you too. That’s how it goes. You get yourself settled and do what you need to do, while I get caught up on the backlog of messages I know is waiting.”
“Back to work we go,” she said, then flung herself backward onto the quilt.
Tate laughed.
“I just had to try it out,” she said, then rolled off, kicked off her shoes, and began to unpack.
He was still smiling when he headed to his office, and as soon as he logged into his laptop, the business of the day began.
Briar unpacked and changed clothes, straightened her framed star certificate hanging on the wall, then took her laptop to the kitchen table. She pulled up her résumé and added her new address and the notation “Summa Cum Laude” with her degree of study.
It was official. She and Tate Bandy were finally living under the same roof, sleeping in the same bed, creating their own world in the life they would live, and all she could think was that every bad, sad thing she’d endured under her father’s roof to get here was worth it.
She spent most of the day researching job openings all over New Orleans, and at the university, as well, and submitting résumés.
Briar was looking to the future, while Tate’s work was most often in the past—looking for the lost, whether it was a thing or a person.
A large portion of his backlog from their trip was the usual. People wanting everything from winning numbers for the lottery, to terminally ill people asking him when they were going to die. He never responded to the outrageous or absurd.
When the day finally came to an end, Briar had submitted a dozen résumés, and Tate had gone through six clients to successful conclusions.
The next day he got a request he could not ignore. An elderly woman was in a local hospital. She wasn’t going to recover, and she needed closure. Her daughter had run away years ago, leaving the woman to raise her granddaughter on her own.
Her granddaughter, Raina Hooper, who was now twenty-six years old, was the one who contacted Tate, begging him to come to the hospital and talk to her grandmother in person.
“I’ll pay double if you will,” Raina said.
“There’s no need for double. Pay the usual. Send me her name and room number, and you need to be there too.”
“Thank you. Yes, I will be there. I’m sending the money now. She’s at the University Medical Center.” Then she gave him the address and her grandmother’s room number.
Tate wrote the information down, told Briar where he was going, then grabbed a cold drink from the refrigerator to take as he left.
A short drive later, he entered the hospital and headed for the elevators, got off on the third floor, and started down the hall to room 312.
The door was ajar. He knocked lightly.
A woman called out. “Come in.”
He pushed the door open and saw the old woman resting quietly, then the young woman at her side.
“I’m Tate Bandy. Are you Raina?”
“Yes,” she said, and motioned him forward. “This is my grand-mère, Marjolynne LeBlanc.” She patted her grandmother’s hand. “Grand-mère. Tate Bandy is here. You can ask him your question now.”
The old woman opened her eyes, then looked past her granddaughter to the man standing beside her.
“Mrs. LeBlanc, may I hold your hand?” Tate asked.
There was a flash of glee in her eyes as she extended a hand, wrinkled from age. She was little more than skin and bones, but life within was still there, and Tate saw it.
“It’s been a while since a handsome young man asked for my hand,” she said.
Tate smiled as he gripped it. “I see you as the beauty you were. Not where life has taken you. Ask me your question.”
“My daughter Caroline worked for an offshore oil company and had to travel now and then for her job. She never got married. Raina was hers alone. One day my daughter comes to me, asking me to keep Raina while she goes on a work trip. She said she would be back in three days, but she never returned. That was June 3, 2002, and we never saw her again. I was devastated. I knew she would never abandon either of us, but police searches came to nothing. Raina is the joy for me that my daughter should have been. I would not exist to this day had she not given me something to live for.” She paused to catch her breath.
“I need to know. Did she leave us on purpose, or did someone take her away from us?”
Tate reached for Raina’s hand, holding two generations as he sought for the lost one between, and what he saw was hard to see, impossible to describe to a mother, and so he took the kinder path.
“Someone killed her. She never saw it coming. She was not in bad company. She did not willingly abandon either of you. Know that the man who killed her got away with murder, but he caught COVID before there was a vaccine and suffered greatly for weeks before he died. Karma took him when justice could not.”
Tears rolled from the corners of the old woman’s eyes. “Do you know where her body is?”
He nodded. “I will help Raina recover her.”
Marjolynne turned to her granddaughter. “Caroline needs to come home. Lay her to rest beside me.”
Raina was in tears. “I will, Grand-mère. I promise.”
The old woman’s eyes closed, but she gave Tate’s hand a quick squeeze. “Thank you. I will be at peace now.”
Tate glanced at Raina. “Can you step into the hall with me for a moment?”
She nodded and followed him out.
As soon as they were alone, Tate told her what he’d seen.
“There is an abandoned antebellum mansion about six miles outside of New Orleans. I don’t know the address, but I would recognize the house.
The man who killed her lived there then.
He might have been someone she knew or worked with.
I saw an oil company connection. He buried her behind a wall in the attic.
The local police are not going to want to follow through with this.
I don’t know who owns it now, but I think it’s unoccupied.
But if your grandmother reported her as a missing person, they might be inclined to investigate just to close a case. I’ll let you know what they decide.”
Raina sighed. “I have no memory of her, but she is forever fixed in my mind from my grandmother’s stories. Thank you. This has eaten at her every day since my mother disappeared.”
“I will be in touch,” Tate said, then left the hospital and went straight to the New Orleans PD.
He’d already encountered them for other less serious reasons, and they hated every time that he’d been right. This wasn’t going to be any different.
He drove to the PD, went up to the front desk, and asked to speak to a detective in Missing Persons.
The desk sergeant smirked. “Here comes the lost-and-found man again. Find yourself a dead body this time, did ya?”
Tate glared silently, and the sergeant decided he was too big and scary to mess with. “Have a seat. I’ll let them know you’re here.”
Tate walked to the window, shoved his hands in his pockets, and waited.
Detective O’Brien got the message and headed up front. He thought it was someone coming to report a missing person. But when he saw Tate Bandy, he frowned. If this dude was real, he should already know who was gone and where they were. What the hell is he doing here?
“Mr. Bandy, you wanted to see me?”
Tate nodded.
“Follow me,” he said, and walked him back into the division. “Have a seat and tell me why you’re here.”
Tate gave him the short version, including the fact that the old woman who’d asked for his help was in the hospital, on her deathbed.
“Her granddaughter, Raina Hooper, who was abandoned at the age of three by her mother’s absence, is now twenty-six years old and wants answers for the grandmother she loves.”
“I need some info,” O’Brien said. “Did the LeBlanc lady file a missing person report with us?”
“Yes. The daughter who went missing was Caroline Hooper. The date was June 3rd, 2002. The mother’s name is Marjolynne LeBlanc.”
O’Brien turned to his computer and typed in a name, and a file came up. He scanned through the notes, frowning as he read.
“There was never a lead. They interviewed her employer and the people she worked with. They never had an actual date for when she went missing, only the date when she left her child with her mother. There was no way to know where she disappeared or when. That’s why the case went cold,” he said.
“Yes, I know that, but I know where the body is and who killed her, and you don’t. Now…do you want to solve a cold case and give a dying woman some measure of relief, or would you rather make another sick joke like the desk sergeant did and send me packing? Your choice.”
O’Brien glared.
Tate never blinked.
“Where the hell is she then?” O’Brien asked.