“I’m sorry that we have to do this now,” Darrell said, “but take me through exactly what happened, step by step.”
Ruby rolled her wedding ring around her finger. I could see long, perfect nails, none of them broken. “Thursday morning, the kids and I went to see my sister in Marquette for a long weekend.”
“Ajax didn’t go with you?”
“He hates my sister. The feeling is mutual.”
“Did you talk to him while you were gone?” Darrell asked.
“Yes, I called him later that day to say we’d arrived. He was heading out to the 126. We talked again on Friday evening around seven. That was the last time I spoke to him. I tried calling him a couple of times on Saturday, but there was no answer. That was when I packed up the kids and drove home. We got back after dark on Saturday night.”
“Did Ajax know you were coming home?”
“No. I was supposed to stay until Sunday.”
“Why did you come home early?”
Ruby tugged her T-shirt down. “Because I assumed he was taking advantage of me being gone to stick his cock between some tramp’s legs. I thought I’d catch them together.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“What did you do when you got home?”
“I put the kids to bed. I waited up for a while, but then I went to bed myself.”
“What time was that?” Darrell asked.
“I don’t know. Midnight.”
“Did you go down in the basement at all?”
“No. I checked here in the Playboy mansion, and that was it.”
“Were you surprised that his car was still in the garage if he wasn’t home?”
Ruby shook her head. “We’ve got an extra detached garage, and Ajax keeps his restored Mustang out there. It’s his baby. I assumed he was driving that. It’s his chick-mobile.”
“But you didn’t actually look to see if it was there?”
“No.”
“And then what?”
“I told you. I went to bed.”
“Did you hear anything overnight? Cars outside? Noises in the house?”
“No. And I didn’t sleep well, so if anything was going on, I would have heard it. It was quiet.”
“Why didn’t you sleep well?”
“Because I was pissed off thinking that my husband was in bed with another woman! Shit, Darrell, do I have to spell it out for you? You worked with him. You knew what he was like.”
Darrell didn’t answer, but it was true. He did know Ajax. So did I. Every one of us in that room knew the kind of man Ajax was, and neither Darrell nor I had any trouble believing Ruby’s story. Of course, it was also true that she had no real alibi. If he’d come home late, smelling of his latest conquest, they might have argued in the basement while the kids were asleep. She could have hit him. Killed him. Done all the rest and then calmly showered away the blood. Ajax liked to joke that Ruby was a redhead, and redheads were crazy. Looking in her scary eyes, I believed it.
However, I didn’t think she’d done it. Her nails were too perfect. You couldn’t do what had been done to that body without breaking a nail.
But if not her, then who?
“What time did you get up?” Darrell asked.
“Early. Maybe five thirty. The kids wouldn’t be up for hours, so I made coffee and decided I would get a jump on the laundry. I gathered it up and went down to the basement.” She closed her eyes and exhaled sharply. “That’s when I found him.”
“Did you touch anything in the room?”
“No. I just screamed. I stood there screaming. Then I ran back upstairs and called you.”
I sat on the other end of the sofa, listening to the back-and-forth. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Since I wasn’t a deputy anymore, I didn’t really know if Darrell wanted me asking any questions, but then again, he’d asked for my help because we’d worked on the Gordon Brink case together. So I decided to butt in. There was an uncomfortable question that needed to be asked, and I could probably ask it better than Darrell. Ruby couldn’t be any more pissed at me than she already was.
“Do you know who Ajax was sleeping with?” I asked.
Seeing Ruby’s reaction, I realized that she had no trouble getting even more pissed at me. In fact, she practically foamed at the mouth. “Shut up, you little—”
“Ruby.”
Darrell interrupted, but not before Ruby called me what she wanted to call me.
“This is not helpful,” he went on. “I know you’re upset, but Rebecca and I are here to figure out what happened. So let’s leave the personal stuff out of this. Please, if you know, answer Rebecca’s question. Who do you think Ajax was having an affair with?”
“Now or last January?” she spat in reply.
I opened my mouth to protest, but I closed it when Darrell shot me a look. There was no point in denying it all over again.
“Ruby,” he said again. “Come on.”
She turned her anger down to a simmer. “Fine. If you want a list of the women he was with, get me a copy of the phone book. Ajax wasn’t exactly monogamous, Darrell. I knew that when I married him. I’d made my peace with it.”
I hated to interject again. All I would do was make it worse, but Ruby was lying to us, and I wasn’t sure if Darrell realized it. It was the kind of lie that was likely to fly over a man’s head.
“You came home early to catch him,” I murmured. “You waited up to confront him. That doesn’t sound to me like you were at peace with it. Had something changed lately?”
This time she didn’t lash back at me, but she also didn’t answer my question. Her whole body looked stiff and tense, as if she were holding up a wall that was threatening to fall down on top of her.
“Was it someone special this time?” I went on. “Was it somebody who felt like a threat to your marriage?”
Her knee tapped nervously up and down. “I don’t know who it was.”
“But there was someone in particular?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find out?”
She shrugged. “I’m his wife. I knew. He wasn’t acting the same. He was gone more, sometimes overnight. He’d make up lame excuses. Plus, a couple of weeks ago, I went shopping in the next county over. I stopped in at the jeweler where Ajax got my wedding ring. He asked if I liked the necklace Ajax had given me. Except he hadn’t given me anything like that. I covered, but I think he knew. Ajax didn’t get it for me. He got it for her. And if he was buying her jewelry, then I assume it was serious.”
“But you don’t know who it was?” Darrell asked.
“No.”
“Could she have been married?”
“I have no idea.”
Her voice was clipped, urging us to move on. I was pretty sure that Ruby did know the identity of the other woman — or at least she had a strong suspicion — but she wasn’t willing to tell us. Maybe she couldn’t bear to say the name out loud, as if doing so made everything real.
“Was Ajax having any problems recently?” Darrell asked. “He didn’t say anything to me, but it’s harder to keep things from your wife.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He was edgy. Anxious. I figured it was the affair, but maybe it was something else.”
“What about money?”
“It seemed like we were doing fine. Maybe a little tighter this year, but nothing serious.”
“You didn’t see anything unusual in your bank accounts?”
“No.”
“Can you think of anyone who had a grudge against Ajax?”
Ruby ran her slim fingers back through her hair. “Well, there was this thing with Norm.”
“You mean last winter? About Will?”
She shook her head. “No. This was more recent. The lawsuit is finally heating up again. The mine ran out of continuances, so it looks like the case should be going to trial before the end of the year. I got called back for more questions a couple of weeks ago.”