“So maybe Tish didn’t like Laura hanging out with you.”
“If she did, I never heard about it.”
“How did you meet Laura?”
“We were in Miss Mathisen’s geometry class together in our junior year. So was Tish.”
“Tish told us that Laura broke up with you after a couple of dates because you wanted sex and she didn’t.”
“Is that what she said? Well, she’s wrong, but it was a long time ago.”
“Is there any reason Laura would have wanted to keep your relationship a secret?”
“I have no idea, but you were a teenage girl once. Isn’t that the kind of thing that teenage girls do?”
“Sometimes.”
Serena wanted to ask more about the night Laura was killed, but she knew she had pushed Peter as far as she could. The rest was in Jonny’s hands. He was the cop, not her. Not anymore.
“I appreciate your letting me ask you all these questions,” she told him. “I’m still a detective at heart, I guess.”
“That’s why I want to hire you.”
“I know. I’ll get back to you very soon about the job.”
“I may be in touch even sooner than that,” Peter said.
“Oh?”
“I have another freelance job for you.”
“What’s that?” Serena asked.
“Well, if Tish pursues this book, it could start causing me problems in the media. They’ll drag up old lies again. I need your help.”
“What can I do?”
“You can find out who killed Laura,” Peter told her. “Or barring that, you can prove it wasn’t me.”
11
Tish was late.
Stride sat on a stone bench amid the rose gardens of Leif Erickson Park. He ate a roast beef sandwich and inhaled the floral aroma of thousands of red, yellow, and white roses surrounding him. Nearby, a white gazebo overlooked the lake, on a bluff adjacent to the boardwalk that followed the cliff’s edge and wound down along the shore to Canal Park. At lunchtime, with a huge blue sky overhead, the park was crowded with people picnicking in the grass and admiring the flowers.
He saw Tish park on the opposite side of London Road and get out of a navy blue Honda Civic. She waited while a package delivery truck passed her and then crossed the street to the park. She waved at Stride and followed the cobblestone path through the garden to join him.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly, sitting down. She had no lunch with her, but she carried a white takeaway cup of coffee. She wore sunglasses, and she was dressed in a white Georgia T-shirt and gray sweatpants. She wore Nikes with no socks.
“Hello, Tish.”
“Sorry I’m so late. I was at the city engineer’s office, and I had to wait for their copy machine.”
“What did you need there?” Stride asked.
“Aerial photos of the city from the late 1970s.”
“For the book?”
Tish nodded. “I wanted to see exactly what the terrain looked like back then.”
“The Duluth paper ran a story about you and your book today,” Stride said.
“Yes, I thought it might flush out more people who remember what happened back then. There aren’t too many still around.”
“A heads-up would have been nice,” Stride said. “I’m getting calls.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t think about that.”
Stride took another bite of his sandwich and didn’t reply. He saw the delivery truck that had passed Tish return down London Road in the opposite direction and pull into a no-parking zone across from them.
“I heard about the break-in at your condo,” Stride said.
“The cops who showed up thought it was just kids.”
“Probably,” Stride told her. “They may have seen you move in and figured they could make a quick score. Those lakefront condos usually go to people with money.”
Tish shrugged. “No such luck. I’m doing a spread on Duluth for a Swedish magazine, and the condo managers let me use an unsold unit for the summer. That’s one of the perks of being a travel writer.”
“We’re still looking into the break-in, but it sounds like nothing was taken.”
“Right, my laptop was in my car,” Tish said. She added, “I don’t think it was kids, though.”
“No?”
“I think someone’s trying to scare me off.”
“Because of your book?”
“Yes. I suppose you think that’s paranoid.”
“A little,” Stride admitted. “It’s been thirty years, Tish.”
She didn’t answer.
“Tell me about the life of a travel writer,” he said, changing the subject. “It sounds glamorous.”
“Not as much as you might think. Sometimes I feel permanently homeless. Whenever I fall in love with a place, I leave.”
“What was your favorite place?”
Tish blew on her coffee and then took a sip. “Tibet. I love the mountains, but I couldn’t live there.”
“Why not?”
“Heights,” Tish said. “I hate heights. I always have. I had to cross this rope bridge over a canyon, and I swear they had to sedate me and pull me across on my ass with my eyes closed.”
Stride laughed.
“What about you?” Tish asked. “What are you afraid of?”
“Me? I don’t know.”
“Come on, there must be something,” Tish said. “Or do tough guys like you never get scared?”
“I’m afraid of a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Loss.”
She looked at him. “You mean like losing Cindy?”
“I mean like losing anything. I hate endings, good-byes, funerals, everything like that. The ends of books. The ends of movies. The ends of vacations. I like it when things keep going, but they never do.”
“How about you and Serena?” Tish asked.
“What about us?”
