Cooper came alone.
She’d half expected Sheriff Wheeler too, and some part of her had braced for a whole delegation, like when they’d come to the fire station to tell the waiting wives none of their husbands had made it out of the fire.
But it was just Cooper’s truck that pulled into the drive at five minutes to ten, and just Cooper coming up the porch steps with a folder under his arm. He, did, however, have his hat in his hand.
Reno led him to the screened porch while she set coffee and scones on a tray and carried them outside.
“Hi, Grace,” Cooper said.
“Hey, Cooper. There’s coffee, and as I recall, you take yours with a splash of cream.” She nodded at the little cream pitcher beside the coffee pot.
“Thank you.” He sat in a chair facing the porch sofa that Reno must have brought outside in the past few hours, because it wasn’t usually out here.
Reno stood over by the screen in the corner until she looked over at him and patted the cushion beside her and murmured, “Please? I could use the moral support.”
He moved swiftly to join her, sitting far enough away not to crowd her but close enough for her to reach out and take his hand if she needed to.
Cooper set the folder on the coffee table between them and did not open it yet. He looked at her as if he was weighing how to proceed.
She saved him the trouble of trying to decide how fragile she was. “Give me the truth, Cooper. Straight up”
His gaze snapped to hers, then slid to Reno, who said bluntly, “She’s a whole lot stronger than she looks.”
Cooper nodded. “Okay, then. Straight up it is. I’m going to tell you what I learned. All of it. And then I’m going to tell you what it doesn’t mean, because the that matters as much as the first part.”
Grace nodded firmly.
Cooper began. “Lex Jansick is alive. He’s living in a camper trailer outside Yuma. He’s sick—liver cirrhosis—and he drinks heavily. He says he hasn’t slept right since the fire, and from the looks of him, I believe him. I sat in his kitchen and talked with him for three hours.”
Grace’s right knee started to bounce up and down, and she put her hands on her knees so they would hold still.
“For the last five years,” Cooper went on, “Lex Jansick has been receiving four thousand dollars a month from a corporation registered in Nevada that doesn’t do anything, doesn’t make anything, and exists for no reason anyone can find except to move that money. Jansick and his wife divorced shortly after they moved to Arizona, and she’s getting half of his income. So, the monthly payments from the Nevada corporation total Four-hundred-eighty-thousand dollars over the past four years.”
He paused. “Once I got him talking freely, I asked permission to record him, and he consented. I have him on tape saying, and these are his exact words, “The original fire report had everything in it that I was paid to put in it.’”
The lake was choppy over Cooper’s shoulder with miniature white caps topping the waves scudding across its surface. Grace watched the water fixedly as she asked, “Did he say the fire was set intentionally?”
“He never did say it in those words. I gave him every chance to tell me the fire was an accident and the report was honest, that the money was paid to him for something else. But he didn’t take any of the off ramps I offered him.”
That made her look at Cooper quiestioningly.
He elaborated, “Jansick refused to say the word arson, but he refused to deny it either. When I pressed him on it, he changed the subject. He wanted to tell me he’s dying. That his doctor says his liver is failing and he can’t get a liver transplant unless he quits drinking. But, he can’t stop drinking because it’s the only way he can sleep at night.”
Cooper held her gaze levelly. “He’s a dying man, he’s staring down the barrel of facing his Maker, and he has a guilty conscience. He struck me as a man who’s not willing to pile more lies on top of the ones he’s already told.
‘He did make an interesting comment, though. He said he knew which side his bread was buttered on and he wasn’t going to bite the hand that fed him.” Cooper added dryly, “His mixed metaphor. Not mine.
‘But I think that was him saying he wasn’t going to tell me the full truth about the fire because he can’t afford to have the checks stop coming every month. They’re the only reason he has a roof over his head, and they’re the only reason he can afford the booze he’s drinking himself into an early grave with.”
“Bottom line?” she asked in a distant voice that didn’t sound like hers.
“My professional opinion, Grace, is that the Shoemacher fire was deliberately set and Jansick knows it. He did admit that the contents of his accident report were bought and paid for. From that, we can definitely conclude that the investigation report declaring the fire an accident is not entirely accurate.”
She’d known. She’d said the words out loud on this very porch—he thinks the fire wasn’t an accident—and she had carried them around since like a stone in her apron pocket, taking them out and turning them over when no one was looking.
So it was not a surprise now to hear the truth. It still hit her hard, though. It might not be a shock but it still tipped her world off its axis, and she felt as if she would have to learn to balance all over again.
Liam had run into that barn. She’d been told he was the first one off the truck and had raced in first. For five years she’d told herself that it was nobody’s fault. That faulty wiring and August heat and dry hay and bad luck had taken him, the way a flood or a fall would have, a thing with no face and no name and no one to blame.
