backed up, she heard metal grinding on asphalt and felt the car lurch as if it were bouncing over something heavy. She stopped, shut off the engine again, and climbed out, leaving the driver’s door open. When she went around to the front of the car, she cursed, seeing the hood slumped to one side. Through the glare of the headlights, she saw that the right front tire was flat on the ground.
“Oh, hell,” she murmured.
She squatted by the tire and checked her watch. She knew nothing about changing tires, and she had no idea if there was a service station nearby. The answer was obvious. Go get Stride. Even so, she hesitated to see him again when she had just shut the door in his face.
Tish got up, turned around, and screamed.
Rikke Mathisen stood directly behind her, so close that their bodies were nearly touching.
“Are you having problems?” Rikke asked.
Tish backed up to give herself space. “Flat tire,” she said.
Rikke towered over her by nearly a foot. Her eyes flicked to the disabled tire, and her face was impassive. “Do you need to be somewhere?”
“I’m heading to the airport.”
“Leaving town?”
Tish nodded.
“I can drive you,” Rikke told her. “Put your things in my car.”
Tish attempted a smile. “You don’t have to do that. I can get the tire changed.”
“It will give us a chance to talk,” Rikke said. “Don’t you think we should talk, Tish?”
Tish rubbed the skin on her forearms. She was cold. “Sure, but it’s a rental car. I can’t just leave it.”
“This isn’t the big city. You can call them. They’ll send someone to get the car.”
“I have friends inside,” Tish said, glancing at the entrance to the bookstore and suddenly wishing she could see Stride’s face. “I’m sure one of them can drive me. You probably want to be alone.”
“I said I would drive you, so let’s go.”
Tish hesitated for another second. Rikke was angry about the death of her brother, but if she wanted an opportunity to vent her poison at Tish, so be it. Tish didn’t care. On some level, she deserved it.
“Sure, okay,” Tish said. “Why not?”
She retrieved her purse, turned off the lights on the Civic, and popped the trunk. She removed her suitcase and relocated it to the trunk of Rikke’s tan Impala, which was parked next to her. Rikke made no move to help. She waited until Tish had closed the trunk and then climbed inside the driver’s door and started the engine.
Tish got inside the Impala and went to put on her seat belt. The strap was broken.
“Sorry, I’ve been meaning to get that fixed,” Rikke said.
She drove out of the parking lot, leaving Tish’s stranded Civic behind them.
“Which bridge do you want me to take?” Rikke asked.
“Whichever is lower,” Tish said. “I hate heights.”
48
Stride leaned closer to Maggie and Serena across the table at the cafй. “How did Finn get home?” he asked them.
Maggie sipped from her cream-colored mug of chai tea and raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you talking about?”
“On the night Laura was killed, Finn was in the park watching her. How did he get back home to Superior?”
Serena shrugged. “By car.”
“Yes, except Rikke never let Finn drive himself,” Stride said.
“Well, Rikke swore that Finn wasn’t in the park at all, but we know he was there,” Maggie said. “So he must have had a car.”
“Or maybe Rikke picked him up,” Stride said.
As soon as he said it out loud, he realized that was what had happened.
After Amanda’s offhanded comment about mothers and daughters, Stride had found himself looking at the circumstances of Laura’s murder from an entirely new perspective. In a case with too many suspects already, he had overlooked one other person who must have been in the park that night.
“Does that really change our theory of the crime?” Serena asked. “If Rikke picked him up, that means she must have suspected all along that Finn killed Laura. So she lied to give him an alibi.”
Stride leaned back in his chair. “That’s what I thought, but it works both ways. By giving Finn an alibi, she also gives herself one.”
Maggie shook her head. “What are you saying, boss?”
“I’m saying if Rikke went to the park to pick up Finn, maybe she came upon the baseball bat lying in the field.”
“Or maybe Elvis found it,” Maggie suggested. “Maybe he was so wracked with guilt about killing Laura that he OD’d a month later.”
Stride nodded. “Yeah, I could be crazy, but Finn’s prints
“Why would Rikke kill Laura?” Maggie asked.
“That depends on what was really going on between the two of them,” Stride told her. “Amanda said that every daughter becomes her mother sooner or later. We see it all the time in abusive relationships, right? Abuse begets abuse. Rikke admitted to us that her mother sexually molested her. The question is, did Rikke take after her mother and become an abuser herself?”
“You think that Rikke had a sexual relationship with Laura?” Maggie asked.
“I think it’s not impossible. Laura spent a lot of time there when she was struggling with her sexuality. After her breakup with Tish, maybe she was confused and vulnerable and needed someone to confide in. So she went to her favorite teacher for help. What if Rikke took advantage of her trust? We already know she got kicked out of the school district later for an affair with a student. We’ve been saying all along that Finn was insanely jealous of Laura’s relationship with Tish, but maybe we’ve got it backwards. Maybe Rikke was the one who was jealous.”
Maggie took time to think about it, but then shook her head. “Even if Rikke did seduce Laura, why would she kill her?”
“If she was abusive and obsessed, who knows what she would have done when she found out Laura was running away from her?” Stride replied. “You’re talking about a brother and sister who were raised on violence and incest. We know what it did to Finn. Do you think Rikke doesn’t have demons, too?”
“Except we know that Finn is the one who’s capable of murder,” Maggie said.
Stride had a vision of a lonely North Dakota farm, glowing faintly in the center of miles of nighttime fields. It was like being on the moon, Rikke had said. His eyes grew hard.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Do we?”
Maggie opened her mouth to protest and then clamped it shut.
“Son of a bitch,” Serena gasped. “No, we don’t.”
“I want to talk to Rikke,” Stride said, standing up. “I want to get her prints to match to the murder weapon, and I want to know what was really going on in that house.” He stood up and looked around the bookstore. “Is she still here?”
