“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.