“Did something happen back then between you and Peter Stanhope?” Serena asked. “Is that what you’re hiding?”
“No.”
“Then why are you convinced that he’s guilty?”
“You didn’t know Peter back then. I did.”
Serena shook her head. “If you were a cop, I’d say you’ve fallen in love with a suspect. Not love-love, not romance. It’s easy when you’re a cop to fixate on one suspect and wind up wearing blinders.”
“Maybe you’re the one wearing blinders,” Tish said.
“Peter didn’t try to commit suicide after being questioned about Laura’s murder,” Serena reminded her. “Finn did.”
“Finn was just a pathetic, mixed-up kid.”
“People like that are capable of anything,” Serena said. “Including murder.”
“If Laura thought Finn was violent, she wouldn’t have spent so much time with him.”
“Maybe she didn’t know. Did Laura tell you anything about Finn’s background?”
“She told me that something terrible happened to him back in Fargo, but I don’t know what. That was when Rikke swooped in and rescued him.”
“Finn was in love with Laura,” Serena said. “Love can be pretty twisted for someone like that. We know he was spying on Laura. He’s been spying on young girls his whole life.”
“You mean the peeping incidents?”
Serena nodded. “Stride and Maggie are certain that Finn is the peeper. He hounded one girl until she died.”
“That doesn’t mean he killed Laura,” Tish said.
“You know what made that girl special? She had a tattoo of a butterfly on her back. Just like Laura did. He’s still obsessed with her.”
Tish’s eyes opened wide. “Is that really true?”
“It’s true.”
Tish brought her bare feet down onto the balcony and cupped her hands in front of her face as if she were praying. Then she shook her head. “Peter is the one who attacked Laura,” she insisted. “Not Finn. You don’t know how vengeful Peter could be when he was rejected.”
“Are you talking about Laura or yourself?” Serena asked.
“Both of us.”
“Come on, Tish. What are you not telling me? What did he do to you?”
Tish’s lips bulged with defiance. “You mean other than pushing me into a closet at school and groping my tits and pawing my crotch? Peter was the kind of boy who took what he wanted even if you said no. He thought he was entitled. He hasn’t changed a bit.”
“I’m not trying to defend his behavior,” Serena said.
“That’s good, because he was nasty. Vicious.”
“How so?”
“After I said I didn’t want to go out with him, he spread rumors about me all over school.”
“What rumors?”
“He told people I was queer. That made me very uncomfortable.”
“I’m sure it did,” Serena said. “Teenagers are quick to believe that kind of lie.”
Tish watched the moths buzzing around the porch light and didn’t say anything. She sucked on her cigarette.
Suddenly, Serena understood. “Wait a minute, it wasn’t a lie, was it? He was right. You’re gay.”
Tish nodded slowly.
“Did you tell Peter?” Serena asked her.
“No, he had no idea it was true, but it scared me to death to have the rumor out there.”
“So you knew back then?”
“I knew.”
“Are you still in the closet?”
“I don’t hide it, but it’s not like I wear a T-shirt that says ‘pink and proud.’ ” Tish blew smoke out of her mouth.
“I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable,” Serena said.
“It doesn’t, but you have no idea how ugly and hateful people get over homosexuality. The same people who tell me that Jesus loves me would stone me to death if they could.”
“Not everyone feels that way.”
“Enough do that I’m still careful about who I tell.”
“Is there someone in your life?”
Tish crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “Not anymore. I lived with Katja, a photographer I met in Tallinn, for five years. She was getting too close, so I ran away. It wasn’t the first time for me. Lesbian relationships crash and burn a lot. We get emotionally close, and then you put the physical attraction in the middle of it, and a lot of times, it flames out.”
“Did Laura know you were gay?” Serena asked.
Tish’s face glowed with dew from the humid air. “We didn’t talk about it.”
“Not even with your best friend?”
“You have to remember the times, Serena. It’s bad enough today, but being gay was dangerous back then. This was when Anita Bryant was on the rampage about homosexuals. You didn’t advertise being different. You kept the closet locked up tight.”
“What about Laura? Was she gay?”
“I told you, we didn’t talk about it.” Tish stood up, shutting down the conversation. “I think you should go.”
“If that’s what you want,” Serena said.
“I do.”
Serena stood up, too. “Can I ask you about something else?”
“What?”
“What happened to your mother?”
Tish folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes were angry. “If you’re asking a question like that, you must already know.”
“I heard she was shot. She was a hostage who died in a bank robbery.”
“That’s right. Why do you care?”
Serena wasn’t really sure why she cared, but it was a detective’s curiosity. “When someone’s life is touched by violence more than once, my instinct is to look for a connection.”
“There’s no connection,” Tish insisted. “The robbery has nothing to do with any of this. It was years before I even met Laura. My mother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“It must have been hard to be left alone at that age,” Serena said.
Tish shrugged. “It’s hard to be left alone at any age.”
30
Stride was stretched across the leather sofa in the great room of the cottage when Serena arrived home near midnight. He was sleeping, with a paperback novel still in his hand. One leg had fallen off the sofa, and his bare foot was on the carpet. Sara Evans sang on the stereo. Serena let him sleep while she undressed and got ready for bed. The windows were open, with the curtains blowing like sails, and the night air was humid and hot. She slept in a loose tank top in that kind of weather. Back in the living room, she turned down the lights, switched off Sara, and made herself a cup of pear tea, which she sipped in the love seat opposite Stride. Rose fragrance blew in from the bushes near the porch. Her eyes got lost in the shadows and felt heavy. When she put the teacup down, she leaned back into the folds of the sofa, and soon she, too, was dreaming.