Maggie turned off the main road and onto the lonelier highway leading to the airport. She immediately accelerated to seventy-five miles an hour, and the dashboard began to vibrate. "If we're right that means someone knew that Rachel was alive. And whoever it was didn't come forward, even with an innocent man on trial for murder."
Stride nodded. "If Rachel told him what happened at the bam, maybe he thought Graeme was getting what he deserved."
"And why didn't Graeme explain what happened?"
"Graeme? Tell the truth?" Stride laughed. "Forget it. If he admitted having sex with the girl, he was toast. I'm sure Gale told him that. No one would believe his story. He was better off saying none of it happened."
"Okay, take your theory one more step. Who's the mysterious friend?"
"I don't know," Stride said. "It never seemed to me that Rachel had any friends. At least no one she would really trust."
"Except Kevin."
Stride nodded. "Yeah. Except Kevin. But can you picture him staying quiet? He doesn't seem like a smooth enough liar to have pulled it off on the witness stand."
"Well, how about Sally? We know she was hiding something. Hell, we know she went to Rachel's house that night. And I don't imagine she would have been unhappy to see Rachel go away forever, where she couldn't bother Kevin anymore."
Stride put the pieces together in his head. "That's an interesting theory."
"You think we should talk to her?"
"Definitely," Stride said. "Rachel won't be coming back to seduce Kevin, and Stoner's out of the picture. Maybe she'll tell the truth this time."
Maggie turned left onto the entrance road into the Duluth airport and continued along the curving road that led up to the terminal building. The terminal was barely a football field in length, built in the shape of a triangle and dominated by a steep chocolate brown roof. Maggie pulled up to the far end of the terminal and parked, leaving her police placard on the dashboard. They proceeded through the giant revolving doors into the lower level of the terminal, which was almost empty, and took the escalator up to the second level. Country music played softly on the speakers overhead. Stride recognized Vi nee Gill's gentle croon.
They still had a long wait before the plane arrived. He dropped a quarter in a pinball machine, a two-level model decorated with a huge-busted girl in a micro-mini pointing a gun at his face and squealing, "Hit me." He had been pretty good at pinball in his high school days, but unlike riding a bicycle, it didn't come right back to him. He lost the first ball straight down the middle. The second danced around at the top, winning him a few thousand points, before slipping around the graveyard corridor on the left By the third ball, he had some of his rhythm back, swiveling his hips as he banged the flippers with the heels of his hands. Maggie went and got a Coke from a vending machine and drank it as she watched him play.
"Does this cop from Vegas think someone from Duluth killed her?"
Stride shrugged without taking his eyes off the machine. "She didn't say. She just said the trail leads here."
"Serena Dial," Maggie said. "She sounded sharp on the phone. I bet she's a looker."
"Why's that?"
"She's from Vegas. All the girls in Vegas are gorgeous."
"I've never been there," Stride said.
"You need to get out more, boss."
"Well, my idea of a vacation is being alone in the woods, not surrounded by thousands of people in Coney Island." He got distracted and almost lost the last ball, but rescued it with a nifty flip at the last second.
"Alone?" Maggie asked.
"You know what I mean."
The building quivered as loud thunder rumbled around them, a jet engine bellowing as a plane landed on the runway outside. Stride noticed a ticket agent, chewing gum, emerge from the escalator and head toward Gate 1. He took his eyes from the machine long enough to let the silver ball slip past the flipper, ending the game.
He and Maggie headed for the gate area.
"How will we recognize her?" Maggie asked.
"We'll wing it"
Recognizing Serena wasn't a problem. All of the passengers on the jet were typical Minnesotans, dressed in quiet clothes, blending into their surroundings, not attracting attention. Except for Serena Dial. She stuck out from the other passengers as loudly as a piece of crystal amid a row of Burger King plastic cups. She was dressed in baby blue leather pants that clung to her long legs like a second skin. A silver chain belt looped around her waist, with the ties dangling between her legs. She wore an undersized white T-shirt that didn't reach far enough to cover the last inch of skin on her flat stomach. Her black leather raincoat draped almost to her ankles. She had glossy black hair, loose and luscious.
"Wow," Maggie said.
Stride couldn't remember when he had seen a more attractive woman in his life. It occurred to him that, had Rachel grown up, she might have looked just like her.
Serena stopped at the end of the gate area and studied the people from behind her honey-colored sunglasses. She picked out Stride and Maggie immediately, and with a hint of a smile, she glided over to them. Everyone nearby followed her every move, but she didn't seem to notice.
"You Stride?" she asked. With her heels on, she was as tall as Stride, and she looked right at him.
"That's right." He found himself holding eye contact with her. Flirting. "This is my partner, Maggie Bei, who spreads lies about me on the phone."
"It's Sorenson," Maggie said. "He forgets I'm married." She took note of the way Stride and Serena were looking at each other and smirked. "Apparently, he forgets that he is, too."
Stride shot Maggie an evil glance, and she quickly stuck out her tongue at him.
"I love your uniform," Maggie added. "Do all the chick cops in Vegas get to wear that?"
Serena stripped off her sunglasses and studied Maggie from head to toe. Her smile curled into something more wicked. "Only the chick cops with tits, sweetie."
Maggie laughed out loud. She turned to Stride. "I like her."
Stride took another glance at Serena's body and didn't try to hide his interest. He felt something electric when she looked back. "You're in Minnesota now," Stride told Serena. "There's a dress code."
"You mean boring?"
"Exactly."
"Well, you guys don't seem so boring," Serena said.
Maggie laughed. "Wait until you get to know us."
They headed out of the gate area. Heads continued to rotate in Serena's direction as she passed by. Maggie and Stride lingered a few steps behind, and Maggie, laughing, leaned closer and whispered, "Do you two want to be alone?"
"Oh, shut up," Stride retorted.
On the lower level, they retrieved a hard-sided blue Samsonite suitcase that matched Serena's leather pants. Stride lifted the case off the carousel and gasped under the weight.
"Holy shit, did you bring the body with you?"
Serena laughed. "Oh, sorry, would that not be correct procedure here?"
They returned through the revolving doors. The air was still warm, but a breeze rolled in across the hills. Serena put on her sunglasses again and took a deep breath. "God, that's great Fresh air. Feels like winter."
"Well, it's a little cooler in winter," Stride said.
"Like a hundred degrees cooler," Maggie said.
Serena nodded. "Yeah, I looked up Minnesota on the Web, and it pretty much sounded like the icebox of the nation. But this is nice. It's a buck twenty back home. Hot Preheat your oven sometime, then stick your face inside. That's Vegas."