“I miss it too,” Sam said. “I used to be a diet cola addict, but my doctor said I can’t have it anymore because it was messing up my stomach.”

“So you can’t have it ever?” Amber asked.

“I’m not supposed to, but I sneak one every now and then.”

“Is that right?” Freddie asked, drawing girlish giggles from both their guests.

“You guys are good friends,” Amber said.

“I’m his boss,” Sam said. “He has to do what I tell him to.”

“But you’re a girl,” Amber said. “Girls don’t get to be the boss.”

“Around here, girls get to be the boss. In a lot of places girls get to be the boss. Someday maybe you can be the boss too.”

“Do you think so?” Amber asked, her voice full of yearning.

“I know so.”

“You need us to tell you what we saw at the motel,” Ginger said.

Sam wondered if the food had softened her disposition and made her more inclined to cooperate. “That would really help.”

“He came in a cab after the baseball game,” Ginger said.

“How did you know about the game?”

“Bruce watched it in the office. He was really mad when that guy dropped the ball. He said Rick would come to us after the game because he’d be too upset to go home.”

“So he’d been there before?”

“He came a lot. He said it was the one place he could totally relax.”

“What did relaxing entail for him?”

“Getting high, getting laid, getting drunk. All the things he couldn’t do at home, or so he said.”

“Did you have sex with him, Ginger?”

“Many times.” This was said without a hint of emotion. “I was his favorite.”

Sam recalled Lind’s hulking size and tried to picture him with petite Ginger. The image made her sick. “Did he pay to have sex with you?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Bruce about that. If he did, I never saw any of the money.”

“Was he nice to you?”

“Nicer than most of them.”

“There were a lot?”

“Six or seven a day on a slow day.”

Freddie gasped and then cleared his throat to cover it.

“Have you had medical attention at all?”

“No.”

Sam felt her composure wavering, but fought through the urge to punch something—or someone. “Did Rick have any visitors while you were with him?”

“Just one.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“I don’t know her name, but she has long blond hair. She was angry, and he asked me to leave so he could talk to her.”

“Are you able to describe her in any more detail?” Sam realized that Ginger was most likely the second to last person to see Rick Lind alive.

“She was very pretty and skinny. Super skinny.”

“You said she smelled rich,” Amber reminded her friend.