“There was no one else. He loved me.”

I could see her trying to convince herself. “Penny, Ajax is dead. You need to tell us the truth. You thought he wasn’t alone, right? He wasn’t answering the phone, because he had somebody else with him.”

She lowered her eyes and gave the smallest of nods. “Sometimes, even when I knew Ruby wasn’t around, he didn’t call me. So I wondered.”

“Do you have any names of other women he was seeing?”

“No.”

“Did you go over there this weekend?”

“No!” she insisted. “I didn’t go to his house. You’re trying to make it out like I killed him, and I would never do that. Never! You should ask Ruby about it. You saw what she did tonight. She’s crazy!”

“Other than Ruby, can you think of anyone else who might have killed him?”

She shook her head. “Nobody.”

“Did he talk about having problems with anyone? Did he say if anything was bothering him?”

“No. I mean, not really.”

I heard hesitation in her voice.

“It sounds like there was something,” I said.

“Well, he talked about the lawsuit a lot. He asked me lots of questions about it. He was always pushing me for information. He wanted to know what I’d heard, what I knew, what Ms. Svitak was saying about the case.”

“Why was he so interested?”

“I don’t know. I figured it was because Ruby was a witness.”

“Did he ever talk about money?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, did he ever mention getting monthly payments from the law firm?”

Her brow wrinkled. “Why would Ajax be getting money from the firm?”

“He never told you about it?”

“No.”

“Did he talk about getting money from anyone else?”

“No.”

“What about the lawsuit? Did you give him information like he wanted?”

Penny hesitated. “I don’t want to get fired.”

“Well, you say you loved Ajax. Don’t you want to find out what happened to him?”

It took her a long time to answer. “Okay, I probably told him more than I should. I wanted him to like me, and I didn’t really see the harm. Ruby was a witness for the mine, so it’s not like I was helping the plaintiffs. Besides, he wasn’t asking about the harassment or anything like that.”

“What did he want to know about?”

“He asked a lot about Gordon.”

“Gordon Brink? What about him?”

“He asked if the firm was hiding anything about him. Did Ms. Svitak know things that might come out at trial? Or did she have any idea who killed him? I thought that was weird, because everybody said Gordon was killed by his son. I asked Ajax why he wanted to know, and he told me his partner still had questions about the case. That you were pushing him to find out more.”

Darrell frowned. “He said I wanted the information?”

“Yes.”