But there was someone to blame now. That person didn’t have a face, yet. But somewhere, there was a face.
“Who’s paying Jansick?” she asked.
“That’s the second part.” Cooper leaned forward. “And I need you to listen as carefully as you did to the first part. The short answer is I don’t know. “
Frustration roared through her. She needed a face at which to aim the anger that was building rapidly inside her. It felt like a foot-high tsunami wave starting into a harbor, starting to compress, and as it did so, climbing higher and higher inside her until it was a towering wall of fury. Somebody killed Liam. With malice and intent.
Cooper was speaking again. It was only with difficulty she pushed aside her anger to listen to him say, “I have a suspect with motive, with access to the barn, and with the wealth to pay off Jansick. But none of that is proof, Grace.”
Her head knew his last sentence to be true. But her heart was desperate for somewhere to aim her rage.”
Cooper said with quiet intensity, “I’m not going to hand you a name to hate that I can’t stand behind in a courtroom.”
“But we all know your suspect is Lucas Shoemacher,” she ground out.
Cooper didn’t flinch. “He owned the barn. He collected the insurance. He’s the obvious place a person’s mind goes, and your mind going there isn’t wrong, it’s just too early to be sure. Other people also had access to that barn, and they could have had motives besides the insurance. A disgruntled employee. A rival in the horse racing world. For that matter, all the Shoemacher children had access to that barn.”
“But the payments to Jansick—” she started.
Cooper cut across her words with, “The barn’s insurance policy specifically stated it wouldn’t pay out in the case of intentional damage to the insured property. It’s possible someone else set the fire and Lucas merely paid off Jansick to say the fire was accidental so he would get the insurance money.”
Her anger didn’t want to deflate, but Cooper was right. She sat there for long seconds, fighting to put her fury back into a box and lock it up. For now.
Now that Jansick admitted, with admitting it, that the fire had been intentional, a full blown criminal investigation could proceed. The arsonist would be found. It was just a matter of time.
Cooper seemed to sense when she had her emotions back under control, for he spread his hands and said, “Here’s what I can tell you for certain and no more. Lucas Shoemacher had a reason to want that fire called an accident. A barn fire ruled accidental pays out. A barn fire ruled arson doesn’t, and it gets the owner looked at very hard by law enforcement. That gives him a reason to bury an arson finding. It does not, by itself, tell us whether he set the fire or whether he was a man who paid to cover up something that was already a tragedy, so he could collect the insurance money, because he was greedy and weak.”
“And arson and greed aren’t the same thing,” Grace said heavily.
“No. They’re not even close to the same thing. One of them is murder. And the other, while still a crime, is mostly a person of low morals and weak character profiting in a disgusting way from the death of others.”
She sighed and nodded reluctantly.
Cooper finished with, “I’m not going to let you walk off this porch believing the first one when the truth might be the second. And I’m not going to let you settle for the second if the truth is the first.”
His jaw worked. “We don’t know yet which man Lucas Shoemacher is. We may not know for a while. I went to Arizona to find out for sure that the fire was no accident. And I’m satisfied that I accomplished that goal. Now I and other law enforcement agencies have to do the slogging, methodical work of investigating a five-year old crime and figure out who set the fire. We have an obligation to do that work right, which means taking our time and crossing every T and dotting every I. Or else whoever did this walks.”
She thought about Lucas Shoemacher, dyed hair and a tanning-bed tan, sitting behind his desk at city hall smoking expensive cigars. She thought about Hank’s voice through the oak door—you have weeks to live—and the cold, clear fear that had risen in her in Bonnie’s office that he would die before she and the other widows found out the truth.
“He’s dying, Cooper. As much as you want to take it slow and be careful, you have to hurry. If Lucas did set the fire, I don’t want him slipping out of this life before he has to look me in the eye. Before he has to look all of us widows in the eye.”
She heard the hard resolve in her voice and guessed Cooper did too, for his eyebrows went up in surprise.
She continued, “I don’t need a trial. I’d like one—” She shrugged. “—but what I need is for him to know that we know. While he’s still alive to know it.”
“I understand,” Coope replied grimly.
And she believed that he did. After all, he was engaged to marry Rose, who was the widow of the fire chief and had carried a special burden of guilt along with her grief. She’d spent the past four years secretly convinced her husband made a mistake and killed the seven husbands of her dearest friends.
It was only when Cooper and Grayson found compelling evidence that the fire had been intentionally set that Rose had set her guilt aside and been able to move on with her life.
Cooper said earnestly, “We’re aware of Lucas’s declining health, and we’re moving as fast as careful allows. I can’t promise you we’ll know who the arsonist is before he dies, because I won’t lie to you. But I do promise you that when I do give you a name, it will be the right one. Unfortunately, the arsonist was careful to cover his or her tracks, which means a careful investigation is the only thing that will catch this person.”
The porch was quiet. Marshmallow appeared and jumped up lightly to the back of the sofa, arranging herself against Grace’s shoulder as if she sensed her human’s stress.
“There’s more to talk through,” Cooper said, “but it’s not about the fire, and it can wait until you’ve got room for it.”
“Say it.” Suddenly, she wanted something with edges she could see all the way around. “Give me something I can finish today.”
