“Help like in Darrell Holt help.” He looked at her. “It’ll help you to tell the truth, Erin. Help you inside your heart, and help you with the law.”

“Far as I know, Darrell wasn’t part of the synagogue mess.”

Decker smoothed his mustache. “How about Darrell as Ricky Moke?”

“Nah, not him either.”

Decker studied her. “You honestly think that Ernesto vandalized the synagogue all by himself?”

“I dunno. All I’m saying is Darrell didn’t do it. Or Ricky. Or me.”

“What about Ruby Ranger?”

She shrugged. “Nah, Ruby would never do it. Might break a nail or something. The girl never got her hands dirty. But I could see her manipulating Ernesto by using sex as a reward. That’s what they both liked to do…manipulate people.”

She looked down, her face reddening. Decker asked her what was on her mind. After more prodding, she finally spoke. “I was just surprised about Ernesto’s murder. It was…a shock.”

“You had no idea?”

“No! It freaked me out, man.” She sounded genuine. “I thought he was—” She stopped herself.

“Part of the Baldwin scam?” Decker filled in.

“I was gonna say ‘I thought he was one of us,’” Erin answered. “I don’t know if he was popped on purpose or he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“What do you think?”

“I know that Darrell was real mad about the temple thing. But then after Ernesto confessed, I thought it was…over.”

“Why was Darrell mad about the vandalism?” Decker asked. “I would think it would fit into his grandiose image of himself.”

“It brought the heat to PEI,” Erin stated. “The last thing Darrell wanted was to be noticed, because he had this thing with Dee Baldwin…the test thing.”

“Tell me about that.”

“I don’t know about it.”

Decker glared at her. “We could keep talking here…or I could take you down to the station house—”

“You’re gonna do that anyway.”

“True. But down there I won’t be the only one who’ll be talking to you.”

“What is it? A torture chamber or something? I’ve had worse.”

“Suit yourself—”

“What did you ask me about?”

“What do you know about the Baldwins?”

“This is just…guessing kind of, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” She sat up. “From what I could figure out, I think the old lady was paying Ricky Moke money to hack into the test center to get advance copies of questions on all the college tests or something like that. He had this whole network thing because you can’t get the stuff just by hacking, ’cause they have protection things like firewalls…which isn’t a problem for Ricky. But apparently the testing center has its own computer that isn’t connected to anything on-line. But Ricky had this whole thing of people he knew. I think someone was bought off.”

“How did Hank Tarpin fit in?”