Part 3 — Cherry Street Truth
I did not go back to the kitchen with the ice. I sat in my car outside our house for an hour. Then I called Martha Greer, a divorce and fraud attorney in Springfield, and said, “I need to tell you about a fire.”
Martha moved quietly. She requested the old insurer file and the 2004 fire marshal report, and she had Hank Pruitt bank records subpoenaed. The deposits began in 2005, every month, from a shell company in Rick name.
Duane called her himself on Monday morning. He had been drinking at Thanksgiving because he could no longer carry the secret. He arrived at her office with his own lawyer and told her everything. The 2011 fire was a rental duplex that Rick owned, burned and insured the same way.
Twenty years of silence are only as strong as the first person who decides to speak.
The time for criminal charges on the 2004 fire had run out. The state insurance fraud unit and federal investigators could still pursue the 2011 claim and the bribery. Hank Pruitt, the retired fire marshal, was charged with bribery and tampering with records. Rick pleaded guilty to insurance fraud on the 2011 claim and was ordered to pay full restitution to the insurer, with probation and a heavy fine. Duane cooperation earned him leniency.
The divorce court treated the construction company as marital property built on the 2004 payout. I received half its value and my attorney fees. The company was sold, and I walked out of the courthouse with enough to start over and nothing to hide.
My grown children sat with me through the hearing. My oldest, Jenna, held my hand and said, “Mom, you were never the problem.”
Rusty could not come back, and neither could my mother hope chest or my parents wedding pictures. But I found my mother wedding portrait online in a church archive, and the pastor mailed me a copy.
The following March, I gave a donation to the Springfield animal shelter in Rusty name. They put a little brass plate on a kennel door.
I bought a small white house with a porch and a swing. I planted a dogwood tree in the front yard, and every spring it blooms for a dog who loved me without any reason except that I was home.
