'No thanks.'
Maggie slumped sideways into an oversized chair and dangled her feet over the cushion. 'Have a seat. Talk to me. The diet's working; you look great.'
'The last five pounds are the hardest,' Serena said. She took a seat on the sofa opposite Maggie and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. 'You look good, too.'
'Yeah? How do you think I'd look with red hair?' Maggie asked.
'Red? You?'
'There's this cop named Kasey Kennedy with this amazing red hair. Makes me want to try it. I'm bored with black.' She added, 'I hear you're back on the job.'
Serena nodded. 'I'm official.'
'Good for you. Are you in town because of Callie Glenn?'
'Yeah, I was asking questions over at St Mary's,' Serena told her.
'Tonight I'm seeing a nurse who lives on the north side of Duluth. She was having an affair with Marcus Glenn.'
'The media has been hitting the doc pretty hard,' Maggie said. 'Do you think he was involved?'
'We haven't crossed him off the list.'
'How's Stride?' Maggie asked. 'Is he still coming back next week?'
'I guess.'
Maggie raised an eyebrow. 'You guess?'
'Something's wrong, but he won't talk about it,' Serena said.
'I'm sorry.'
Serena took a long time to reply. 'Yeah, it's the old story with us. Two stubborn people with baggage.'
'He loves you,' Maggie said.
'I know, but if he won't let me in, what the hell am I there for? I'm getting tired of being alone even when we're together.'
Maggie didn't say anything. This wasn't a conversation she particularly wanted to have with Serena. They both knew the score. Maggie had made her one and only play for Stride in the months after his wife died, but to him, she was still the young kid he had hired as his partner. Not a lover. Then Serena — who wasn't much older than Maggie — had arrived in town, and Stride fell for her hard. Maggie liked Serena as a friend and a cop, but they still tiptoed around their mutual feelings for Stride, trying not to let the competition come between them. She couldn't help the occasional stabs of jealousy that Stride had turned to Serena, not her.
'What do you think I should do?' Serena asked.
'I wish I could tell you.'
'I know I'm not a saint in this. I should push him, but I'm too busy wrapping barbed wire around myself.' She got up impatiently. 'I want a drink.'
'No, you don't.'
'I'm not going to, but I want one. I hate that.' She shook her head and changed the subject. 'What about you? How are you?'
'If I'm thinking about dyeing my hair red, what does that tell you?' Maggie asked.
'I heard you got DNA on the bastard who's been snatching these women.'
'We do, but we don't have results back. Either way, we still have to catch him, and I don't think he's done yet.'
'What about the adoption agencies?' Serena asked. 'Are you any closer to finding a kid?'
Maggie clucked her tongue in frustration. 'I always thought this was the good old USA, where money can buy you anything. Apparently not a baby, however.'
'Give it time.'
'Yeah, time. I don't have time for a kid, so I don't know why I'm trying.' Maggie raised her glass in a toast. 'We're really having a Thelma and Louise kind of day, aren't we?'
'Totally.'
Maggie finished her drink and climbed out of the chair. Outside the window, the sky grew blacker as dusk approached. Serena came and stood next to her, and they watched the lights come on around the harbor below them. An ore boat muscled through the canal underneath the city's steel lift bridge. Beyond the bridge was the strip of land called the Point, where Stride and Serena lived.
'This nurse you're seeing, where exactly on the north side does she live?' Maggie asked, is it in the city or in the farmlands?'
'Up in the farmlands. Lismore Road near McQuade.' Serena added, 'And no, you don't have to remind me.'
Maggie nodded, but she reminded her anyway. 'That's not a very safe place to be these days.'
Chapter Twelve
'You're telling me that Trisha is dead,' Troy Grange said.
Maggie winced. Troy didn't waste time with pretty ways to share bad news. 'We don't know that for sure,' she told him. 'I don't think we can automatically assume the worst. One woman is dead. That's all we know for certain.'
'Liar,' Troy snapped.
He wasn't being hostile, just honest. Maggie knew he was right, but she couldn't say so. She couldn't say that to any victim's spouse and certainly not to a friend.
Troy Grange was the senior Health and Safety Manager at the Duluth Port. They had worked together for five years on immigrant smuggling, outbreaks of communicable disease, and crimes in the harbor ranging from arson to rape. Through it all, she had never known Troy to hide behind his lawyers or his budget. Anything that went wrong in the port was on his watch. He was solid.
Troy ran his hands over his bald head. He was forty years old, not tall, but built like a circus strongman. His face was big: lumpy nose, broad chin, and puffy cheekbones like a squirrel with a mouthful of acorns. He wore a form-fitting red undershirt and baggy black sweatpants.
'You know what I keep thinking about?' he said. 'I used to work on the ore boats, but Trisha made me give it up. She said it was too dangerous, and she didn't want to be left alone with the kids. And now I lose her from inside our own house.'
'I'm so sorry, Mr Grange,' Kasey Kennedy murmured.
Kasey sat on the opposite end of the sofa from Maggie, her knees pressed together. She looked uncomfortable, her eyes darting between Maggie and Troy. Maggie felt bad about bringing Kasey into the middle of this scene, but she wanted Kasey to understand that investigative work wasn't glamorous. Too often, it was filled with suffering.
'You saw him, didn't you?' Troy asked Kasey. 'You saw this bastard?'
'Not his face, but yes.'
Troy got up from his chair and folded his arms over his barrel chest. The floor timbers shivered as he paced in front of the fireplace.
'Tell me what you think,' he said. 'You saw what he did to this other woman. Is he just a fucking murderer? Is there any way my wife could be alive?'
'I don't know what to tell you, Mr Grange,' Kasey stuttered. 'I sure hope she's alive.'
'How are the girls, Troy?' Maggie asked.
He sat down again and wiped his nose on his bare, thick forearm. 'I took them to visit Trisha's parents in
