“No.” Then she added, “But someone knows what happened. Brink, Kip, Racer. Someone was there.”

Darrell’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. “What do you mean?”

But Ruby didn’t answer us right away. Instead, she went back to the earliest part of the story.

“You’re right, you know,” she admitted wearily. “Seven years ago, Brink came to town to try to get Sandra out of the mine. They figured if she quit, the rest of the women would go, too.”

“How did you find out? Sandra says nobody knew.”

“Ajax was visiting me at the mine. He spotted two of the senior managers talking with an out-of-towner. I didn’t know who he was, but Ajax had been out at the Fair Day that morning, and he’d seen the same man talking to Sandra. He put two and two together. You know Ajax. He could smell a dirty deal a mile away. Whatever was going on, he figured there was money to be made from it. So he followed Brink to the 126 and offered to help with whatever Brink was doing. He had his uncle call one of the execs at the mine and tell him they could trust Ajax with anything they needed. Jerry’s been in the mine’s pocket for years.”

“Jerry knew?”

Ruby nodded. “Jerry knew.”

“What did Ajax and Brink talk about?”

“How to get rid of Sandra.”

“They talked about killing her?”

Ruby shook her head, and her eyes widened. “No, no, they were just going to scare her, maybe rough her up a little. Not murder. Ajax wouldn’t have gone for that.”

“Did you know this was going on?” Darrell asked.

“No! I swear I didn’t. I would have told him to stop it. But he didn’t tell me until later. Until after Kip and Racer were murdered. At that point, there was no going back.”

“So what was the plan?”

“Brink wanted locals who could do the dirty work on Sandra,” Ruby went on. “He was looking for a couple of men who had nothing to do with the mine and who couldn’t be traced back to him. Ajax said he’d put out some feelers. But the next day, he got a call about Kip and Racer, and he figured out where they were hiding. They were perfect. He talked to them and said he could either turn them in, or he could look the other way if they did a job for a friend. He offered to get them off the hook on the liquor store heist, too. They jumped at it. Ajax told Brink where they were hiding and set up a meeting.”

“Did Ajax go, too?”

“No. He made the intro, that’s all. Brink gave him a thousand bucks cash for setting it up, but Ajax made Brink go by himself. I don’t know . . .”

“What?”