I needed all the information I could get, just to keep even with my nephew.

“What else do you know about David’s murder, Rosie?” I asked.

Rosie pushed herself away from me. I barely kept my balance. “I didn’t do it. How can you think such a thing?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper, a sad croak. “You know how I felt about him.”

“I only meant, what other news have you heard?” realizing too late that my question sounded like an accusation. You’d think a former English teacher would be more careful with words.

I chose not to remind her that great love was often the source of a crime of passion. And I did think that bludgeoning a man to death with his own trophy eminently qualified as a crime of passion and, if I weren’t such a highly moral person, as an example of poetic justice.

A pitcher of Linda’s special mix of ice tea and lemonade brought us a measure of refreshment. Just as we settled down to talk, Linda was called to a patient, which suited me very well. It saved me the trouble of finding a diplomatic way to get rid of Rosie’s protector and sole support.

“Let’s start from the beginning, Rosie,” I said, in the most comforting tone in my repertoire. “What did you do after you left David’s doorway?”

“I went down to the-”

“And please don’t tell me you stayed at the fitness center till two in the morning. They closed at midnight.” Not so comforting a tone, but I didn’t have a lot of time to waste. The police might be screaming down the street toward us with an arrest warrant, sirens blazing, right now. Or was that my vivid imagination after two nights on a busy street in San Francisco? And those sirens more likely came from fire engines, anyway.

“I’m so embarrassed to tell you, Gerry.”

We sat across from each other on uncomfortable straight-back chairs, making it easier for me to remain firm. “It won’t be as embarrassing as being carted off to jail, believe me.”

“You’re right.” Rosie took a long swallow of her lemony tea drink; I did the same. She worked the corner of a tissue around her eyes. I didn’t want to tell her it was a hopeless gesture if she meant to fix her makeup.

“Take your time,” I said, willing her to hurry. The small quarters were already beginning to close in on me. I wondered how Rosie had stood the cell-like room for a day and a half.

“I rode down to the lobby. I was going to go out, but I had on those uncomfortable heels and I wasn’t crazy about walking around the city alone. I’m sure it was safe, but I didn’t want to risk it. And anyway I wanted to see David. I went upstairs to eleven again and listened at David’s door. I could hear David and Cheryl. Not what they were saying or doing exactly, but I knew they were still together.” Another long swallow. “I figured since Cheryl had come to the reunion with her husband, sooner or later she’d have to leave and go back to her own room.”

I could believe that marriage to Walter Mellace would be a strong motivation to at least appear to be a faithful wife. Thinking of Cheryl’s eye patch-which might have come from a visit to her ophthalmologist, I realized-I wondered again if Mrs. Mellace had failed to pass the fidelity test.

Rosie had come to a halt, her eyes tearing up again. I tried to ignore it. Empathy would get us nowhere. I prodded. “And then?”

“Okay, you know where the ice and the vending machines are in the little alcove by the elevators?”

“You hid there?”

Full-out tears now as Rosie nodded. “I wanted to wait until Cheryl left. I had the thought that if I showed David the locker room, it might, you know, soften him and make him remember our first kiss and all.”

“You came into the room while Maddie and I were sleeping?”

She nodded and dabbed her face again. “Uh-huh. I forgot to tell you, I stopped in our room first. The room box was right on the corner of the dresser near the door, so I just slipped in and got it. I knew you wouldn’t have chained the door and locked me out.”

I had a hard time processing that Rosie had come and gone while we were sound asleep, but she had no reason to lie about that.

“Then?” I prodded.

“I went to the eleventh floor. It was almost one in the morning. I was so stupid, Gerry. My legs were cramped and every time someone came for ice, for real I had to pretend I was getting some ice myself, or a soda, or tossing a bag of trash. I hid the room box behind the big drink machine. One guy must have come in three times while I was there. Who knows what he thought. And Barry Cannon came in. He was in the room right across the hall from David’s. He… oh, never mind what he said.”

“Rosie, I’m so sorry you had to go through all this.”

“I thought, you know, maybe the reunion had reawakened feelings in David, and if I had a chance to talk to him alone and show him the lockers…” She shook her head, as if trying to get rid of silly dreams. “I can’t believe I was such a fool.”

“It’s not going to do any good to think that way, Rosie. We need to go on and cover the rest of your night.”

“Here’s the worst part.” Uh-oh. Did I want to hear this? “Cheryl came out for ice, right when I’d taken the room box out from its hiding place, to make sure it hadn’t gotten too dirty behind those machines. She was wearing a robe, one of those thick white hotel robes. I didn’t want to think about why. She laughed her head off, Gerry. She knew right away why I was there. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. She called me pitiful, and she was right.”

Once again, I couldn’t disagree, so I simply uttered a sound between a cough and a grunt.

Rosie wasn’t finished reliving the traumatic episode. “Cheryl grabbed the room box from my hands. Roughly, Gerry. She started to pull at the pieces, but you know how carefully I attach everything. She was getting frustrated and finally she was strong enough to deflate that football I made out of leather.”

Linda came back with another pitcher of ice tea and lemonade, just in time to hear Rosie finish her story.

“I was so mad I hauled off and hit her in the face with my purse. I didn’t even care that the scene fell to the floor.”

Linda stopped in her tracks. “I guess I missed a lot.” An eye patch zoomed into focus on the white wall of the Mary Todd guest room. “Did you injure her?”

“She was bleeding, from her forehead, I think. I guess the heavy rhinestone buckle on my purse caught her in the wrong place. She started to scream, but we couldn’t exactly yell at each other in the middle of the night in the hotel hallway. She just whispered something very crude and ran back to David’s room.”

“And you?”

“I waited… not long… and finally decided it was no use. The great David Bridges didn’t care about me thirty years ago, and he never would.”

“The room box?”

“I just picked it up and took it back to our room. Some things were broken, but I didn’t care.”

Rosie seemed to collapse on the straight-back chair, as if she had just entered room five sixty-eight at the Duns Scotus and flopped on the bed next to me.

Was this the point where an LPPD interrogator would apply further pressure, taking advantage of her exhausted state?

I had question after question on the tip of my tongue. If she never entered David’s room, how did she explain the presence of the tiny oval mirror from the door of the locker? And what was the meaning of the trashed room box? Although Skip hadn’t told me where or how the police had found the piece, I knew the ugly changes-the graffiti and the bottle of poison-were certainly made by the hand of a miniaturist. I could simply ask Rosie where she thought the scene was now, but my mind was in a spin trying to figure out what to settle first.

I was eager to know if Rosie was aware that it had been Barry Cannon who sent her the chocolates, and probably all of the other presents, and not David. If so, did that make her angry? How angry?