something to look at. I see why you fell for her. I mean, Laura was a typical teen beauty, but Cindy was distinctive.” She let the silence linger, and then she added, “So tell me about Laura. What was she like?”
“I didn’t really know her all that well,” Stride admitted. “She wasn’t home a lot when I was around. I always thought she was one of those girls who was uncomfortable being as pretty as she was. She didn’t like the stares from the boys.”
“Were she and Cindy close?”
“No. Not really. They weren’t enemies the way sisters can be, but they both led their own lives. Cindy really regretted the distance between them after Laura was killed. She thought she had missed out on having a sister.”
“I saw Tish in the yearbook, too,” Serena told him. “She’s not lying about her relationship with Laura. I spotted them together in three separate photos, and they were hanging on each other like BFFs.”
“Score one for Tish,” Stride said.
“Except you never saw them together, did you? You didn’t know Tish. Why not?”
“Tish says she and Laura had some kind of fight, and she moved to St. Paul by herself after graduation. That would have been in May and June, when Cindy and I began dating.”
“Did Tish say what the fight was about?”
“She claims she doesn’t remember but that it wasn’t anything important. I think she’s lying on both counts.”
“So what was it?”
“I don’t know, but what do teenage girls usually fight about?” Stride asked.
“Boys.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“Tish says that Laura dated Peter Stanhope for a while. She all but accused him of being Laura’s stalker.”
Serena frowned. “Peter.”
“Sorry, he was up to his neck in this case,” Stride said.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I knew you weren’t happy when I started doing work for Peter’s law firm, but I didn’t realize you had this kind of history with him.”
“It was thirty years ago. I’ve barely spoken to him since then. People change.”
That was a lie. Stride didn’t think anyone really changed. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of Serena taking a job at Peter Stanhope’s law firm, but he also wanted her off the streets. Somewhere safe. The fire in which she had nearly died during the winter hadn’t been an accident. Her career had put her in the path of a stalker, and Stride found himself struggling with his anxiety whenever she was back on the street. Serena was a former homicide cop from Las Vegas, which was one of the toughest beats he could imagine. Her background made her fiercely independent. Even so, he understood now the emotions that Cindy must have felt whenever he left the house and the fear that would have flitted through her brain whenever she picked up the phone. For the spouse of a cop, the call could come anytime.
“Can I tell Peter about Tish and her book?” Serena asked.
Stride shrugged. “If Tish keeps digging, Peter’s going to hear about it sooner or later. You can tell him. For now, I’m not involved.”
“Do you really think that Peter could have killed Laura?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible, but no one wanted to go down that road back then.”
“Because of Peter’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Who worked the case?”
Stride rubbed the scar on his shoulder where a bullet had violated his flesh. The wound twinged like a reminder. “Ray Wallace.”
Serena let out a slow breath. “You think Ray gave Peter a free pass?”
“Maybe.”
“I think you should tell me exactly what happened that night,” Serena said. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Stride steepled his fingers and stared at the fire and didn’t say anything more.
“I could read the police file if you want,” Serena said. “Or talk to Maggie. But I’d prefer to hear it from you.”
Stride ran his hand through his wavy hair, the way he did when he was tense. He thought about the long hair he had worn back then. About Cindy’s fingers running through his hair while they were in the water.
“Cindy and I felt guilty for a long time,” he told Serena.
“About what?”
“About leaving Laura alone that night.”
“You couldn’t possibly have known what would happen.”
“Yes, but it was dark, and it was raining, and kids had been drinking, and we just let Laura go off into the woods. It was stupid. We should have stayed with her.”
Serena waited.
“A few of us were playing softball that night,” Stride continued. “I was there. So was Peter Stanhope. Cindy was supposed to meet me afterward, and the two of us were going to hang out by the lake. I didn’t even know that Laura would be with her, but she and Cindy stopped by the field while we were playing, and then they headed off by themselves. I was a little pissed. I didn’t want Laura around.”
“Why not?”
“That was supposed to be the night.
“Oh,” Serena said, drawing out the word. “Now I understand.”
“So I wasn’t exactly thinking with my brain.”
“I’m sure.”
“The thing is, Cindy and I talked about it later, and we knew something was wrong, but we didn’t care.”
“What do you mean, something was wrong?”
Stride frowned. “Someone was in the woods that night.”
WHO KILLED LAURA STARR?
SIX
July 4, 1977
I heard a growl of thunder beyond the trees, as if the storm were an animal getting closer. The path was dark, and that meant the sky over our heads had turned black, shutting out light through the trees. I felt the thick air like a weight on my chest when I breathed. You could almost see humid haze hanging in a cloud over the trail. My skin was dewy with sweat, and my long hair clung to it like vines. I wore a bikini top, shorts, and bare feet.
