“Great wit for someone who’s sleep deprived. Now if you could only tell me about the phantom cell?”

“I think we’re just looking at the top of the proverbial iceberg. This case gets more and more complicated.”

“I wonder if you can find any residue of burned skin on that sauna stove?”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Sue said thoughtfully. “I’ll need to make some phone calls and send some emails.”

40

Ray read Sally Rood the boilerplate from a laminated card. Then he identified himself and Rood, and gave the date, time, and location of the interview. He glanced up at one of the two ceiling cameras as he finished, then settled his gaze on Rood.

“Thank you for coming in,” he said.

“Like I had a choice,” she responded. “So there’s this cop at my hotel room at seven in the morning. I’m sure my new boyfriend is sitting there now, wondering what kind of woman he got mixed up with.”

Rood’s face was flushed, her body tense. To Ray, she smelled of soap and shampoo, cigarettes and coffee.

“The SOB wasn’t even going to give me a chance to shower.” She crossed her arms fiercely over her chest. “What’s this all about anyway? Is Jim claiming I stole something on my way out? Your deputy was with me the whole time.” She made a face. “That asshole doesn’t have anything worth taking, and if he did, fat chance you could find it in that dump.”

“Jim Moarse was found dead in his sauna this morning.” Ray let the words sink in.

Rood stared blankly, her defensive stance drooping. She clenched her arms again. “Jim and that damn sauna,” she sneered. “When he was really drunk, he liked to climb in there, said the heat was ‘purifying,’ that he never had a hangover the next day.” She laughed, but her fingers were making white marks on her arms. “He liked to drag me in there with him, but he couldn’t keep his hands off me. I don’t like being pawed. It was one of the things we argued about, one of the many things.” She relaxed slightly and lifted her chin. “So I’m sorry he’s dead, but what does it have to do with me?”

Ray slid his notebook into a more central position. “I need some general information,” he said. “Where were you last night?”

“I sure as hell wasn’t with him, if that’s what you’re asking. You followed me down 22 almost to town yesterday. And that’s where I was. I didn’t come back up here to God’s country.”

“What were you doing?”

“I was hanging out with a friend.”

“Where?”

“In town.”

“Doing what?”

“What people do when they hang out.” She lifted her hair off her neck with one manicured hand and laughed at him.

Ray kept his gaze steady. “Can you be a bit more specific?”

“Like are you trying to establish if I have an alibi? Is that it? Okay, I’ll play the game. I met someone in town. We had lunch, walked around. We got a room at the Park Place, had dinner there, and late in the evening we had drinks in the bar up at the top. Get a copy of my hotel bill; it’s all there. And the city cop that was pounding on the door of our room before dawn will tell you…I guess he figured out that I was there because my car was in the parking lot.”

“The room was registered in your name?”

“Yeah, my name, credit card, my plate number.”

“Does your friend have a name?”

“I don’t want him involved. Like, he’s getting a divorce, and him being with me would just make things worse.”

“That shouldn’t happen. His name is?”

Rood narrowed her eyes, staring him down. “Okay, it’s Dan Ellis. He’s a lawyer from downstate. Wyandotte.”

“After you left Moarse, did you go back there again?”

“No.”

“Did you contact him again by phone, text, e-mail?”

“No.”

“Tell me more about your relationship with Moarse?”

Rood crossed her legs, opened her purse, and closed it again. “God, I wish you could smoke in here. Anyway, there’s not much to tell. I met Jim the summer I was waitressing. He was sort of a fun guy and a big tipper. In the fall I was looking for a new place to stay. I’d been sharing an apartment with three other girls, and that wasn’t going so well. Jim offered me a room, no strings attached.” She uncrossed her legs, re-crossed them. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, looking directly at Ray. “At first things were okay, fun, but that didn’t last too long. I figured out pretty quick that he had money trouble and was going down fast. Of course, the worse things got, the more he drank.”

“What was his occupation?”

Rood snorted. “Like half the men I’ve met up here, he said he was a builder.” She shrugged. “And I guess that was true, or at least it had been once. Jim talked about this formula he had. He’d buy lots cheap at tax sales and build inexpensive homes—bi-levels, half story down and a half story up. He told me that he and his crew, a couple of guys, could throw one of those together in a few weeks, and he cleared about 20 grand on each building. Then, boo hoo, the housing market fell apart, and his bank cut off his credit line. By the time I moved in, he was running out of money. And all the so-called friends he’d screwed along the way wanted their money. They were pissed. People were always coming by, calling, sending letters.”

“Did he ever mention Al Capone or buried treasure?”

“Are you kidding?” She laughed. “Pretty funny. He could have used a little buried treasure. He was desperate.”

“Can you give me any names of friends?”

“Who knows? Like I said, what friends he might of had were super pissed. The two of us ended up completely isolated out there. He didn’t have money to take me anyplace, and he refused to drive that stupid old Jeep of his anywhere—except in the middle of the night. That’s a lot of fun. He acted like I was his chauffeur or something.”

“So there were no other friends?”

“Not really. Well, there was one guy that came on the scene about the time I was thinking of leaving, a Ricky something, an old friend from somewhere. Jim was pretty excited to hook up with him again, said the guy was rich and knew all the angles.”

“Can you tell me about this man?”

“Not really. I only saw him, let me think, twice. The first time he arrived with a lot of food and booze. The food came from some good place in TC, not your usual carryout. The two of them got pretty smashed, and then went off to take a sauna. Jim wanted me to join them, but I wasn’t going to have any of that.”

“And the second time?”

“Pretty much like the first, but at some point, Jim told me to get lost for a while. They had to talk business. I did, I went to the movies. The guy was gone when I got back. Jim said they were working on some big deal, that things were going to get better.”

“Did he give you any details?”

“No, and by that time I just couldn’t stand him anymore. I didn’t care. He might have been up that minute, but he’d be down the next. Since I’d moved in, he was more and more depressed. I’ve heard stories, but I’ve never seen someone so determined to drink themselves to death before.”

“So you lived with him from…?”

“Sometime in October till the second or third week of February.”

“Can you describe this Ricky fellow?”

“About your height and size, early 40s. He seemed pretty fit, especially compared to Jim. Wore those nylon running suits like ghetto kids. Used too much perfume. Something sort of foreign about him. But it wasn’t how he talked. You know, just something different. Not from here. He gave me the creeps.” She crossed her arms again over her chest and took a deep breath. “A woman knows a lot about a man by the way he looks at her,” she said. “That’s one of the first things you learn waitressing. Ricky looked me over like a piece of meat, something he’d use and toss away like an empty cigarette pack. I’m sure if we had ever been alone together, he would of hit on me instantly.”