J. Jance - Trial By Fire

“ Devon,” he said finally. “Even though he’s been on leave, he’s still been helping me.”

“How?” Ali asked. “Who’s giving him information?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly said. “I never ask. It’s none of my business.”

“It happens that it is my business,” Ali returned. “I’m currently in charge of media relations at the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, and I want to know. Someone is feeding Devon the information he’s giving you, and I want to know who that person is.”

“I don’t know how to find out…” Kelly began.

“You’re an investigative journalist,” Ali said. “Figure it out, and then let me know. If I don’t have the person’s name by nine tomorrow morning, I’m going straight to Donnelley. I guarantee you, he won’t be happy. He’ll make sure you’re hamstrung as far as information from the ATF is concerned.”

She handed him a business card with her phone number printed on it. “Call me,” she added. “Before nine.”

With that she turned and walked away. She heard him mutter the B-word in her direction as she moved out of earshot, but that didn’t bother her. She had been called worse on occasion.

And will be again, she thought.

Driving out of the garage, Ali wondered how long Devon Ryan had been using his position as media relations officer as his own private moneymaking concession. Even though he was supposedly off on leave, clearly he still had access to enough information that he was able to maintain a stream of income. So who was helping him? It seemed apparent to Ali that it wasn’t Sally Laird Harrison. She may have had an affair with the guy, but right this minute, she too was off work on administrative leave, so she wasn’t a logical source of information.

By offering Ali money, Kelly Green showed that he was only too willing to pay to play. She wondered if threatening him with exposure would be enough to force him to name names. Ali hoped so. She knew that if the information on Thomas McGregor got out prematurely, Agent in Chief Donnelley would come looking for her, wanting her head on a platter. She needed to be prepared to hand him someone else’s. Two heads, rather than one-Devon Ryan’s and the one belonging to whoever was helping him.

Then, of course, there was the other side of the coin-Bishop Gillespie. He, too, had been made privy to what should have been confidential details of the investigation. Who were his sources?

Ali drove up to the hotel entrance, parked, and handed her key over to the attendant. As she started toward the door, she almost collided with Hal Cooper. He was walking back into the lobby with a dog on a leash-a tiny white dog not much bigger than a bag of coffee.

“Maggie?” Ali asked.

Hal nodded absently. For a moment Ali wondered if he even recognized her.

“She needed to go out, and so did I,” he explained. From the aroma of cigarette smoke lingering on his clothing, Ali knew he’d gone out for a smoke. “I haven’t had a cigarette in years,” he added. “Tonight I needed one.”

“I’m so sorry about your wife,” Ali said.

He looked at her and nodded sadly. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I know you.”

The red wig was still working, even in its absence.

“I was doing some work with Sister Anselm,” she said. “Up on the burn unit.”

“I see,” he sighed. “I kept hoping she’d make it-that she’d pull through somehow. I can’t imagine what I’m going to do without her. What we’re going to do without her,” he added despairingly, looking down at the tiny dog. “When I go off on my next trip and have to be gone for three or four days, who’ll take care of Maggie?”

Those were the first questions people always asked when someone died-how would the survivors cope? How would they go on in a world suddenly bereft? Who would do all the things the missing loved one used to do?

It occurred to Ali that if Hal Cooper had been the kind of no-good fortune hunter Serenity thought he was, he would have already stopped thinking about having to go to work. If the missing Klee was insured for anything near what Serenity had said, Ali suspected that Hal Cooper could now afford to give up flying for a living. It also occurred to her that he was lost and needed to talk to someone.

“Would you care to stop off for a drink?” Ali asked.

“That would be nice,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I doubt I’ll be able to sleep.”

Ali ushered him into the lobby, which was almost deserted. He sat down at a corner table and lifted Maggie into his lap. “What would you like?” Ali asked.

“Scotch,” he said. “Single malt. Neat.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

Hal shook his head.

“You should eat,” Ali said. She went into the bar and placed an order for chicken wings and fries along with the drinks-Scotch for him and straight tonic for her. While she waited for the bartender to pour the drinks, she realized that DNA was what had brought her here. That’s what her mother always did for grieving people-she fed them. Wings and fries weren’t exactly Edie’s signature tuna casserole, but they would fill the bill.

After all, wasn’t that exactly what she had done for Athena the night before-taken her food?

For the first time, Ali realized that her parents hadn’t mentioned anything about an expected great-grandchild, and that when she had spoken to Chris and Athena earlier, neither of them had mentioned it, either.

It shamed Ali to think that she had been so caught up in her own concerns that she hadn’t brought up the subject. What had happened when Athena had told Chris she was pregnant? Had she somehow managed to convince him that the two of them wouldn’t be able to handle caring for a baby? Ali was half sick when she came back to the table with the drinks. But seeing Hal sitting there, grieving, Ali forced herself to switch gears.

“You said you worked with Sister Anselm,” Hal said when she set his Scotch in front of him. “What happened to her? I expected her to be there for Mimi and me this afternoon. I can’t believe she just deserted us like that.”

Gag order or not, it was time someone told this man what had really happened, so Ali did. She told him all of it-about Sister Anselm being lured into a kidnapper’s vehicle and being left in the desert to die by the same man suspected of murdering Mimi Cooper. Because the charge was murder now that Mimi was dead.

Hal listened to what Ali had to say in stricken silence. “I don’t understand any of this,” he said when she finished. “None of it makes sense. Mimi didn’t have an enemy in the world, and she would never have been mixed up with those Earth Liberation people. That just wasn’t her.”

“Tell me about the painting,” Ali said.

“The painting?” Hal asked, as though he weren’t quite paying attention.

“The Paul Klee,” Ali supplied. “The one you said is missing from your house.”

“Oh, that. Mimi did plan to sell it eventually,” he said. “In fact, she had it reframed last year for that very reason-as a preparation for selling it. I never much liked the piece, and I wouldn’t have bothered reframing it, but I still wonder if maybe it hasn’t found its way into one of Serenity’s galleries. I don’t trust that woman, and I don’t think she’d be above trying to sell it behind her mother’s back.”

“It’s insured?” Ali asked.

“Yes, for something like $750,000, but that’s probably less than it would bring at auction. At least that’s what I was led to believe.”

“You have a record for the reframing?”

“I suppose so,” Hal said. “Somewhere. Mimi always kept meticulous records of everything, including the vet bills.” He patted Maggie while the dog continued to snooze in his lap. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you interested in the reframing job?”