“You might want to think twice about this, Serena,” he cautioned her.
“I can’t say no. This is a big break for me.”
He heard the stubborn resolve in her voice and knew her mind was already made up.
“You can’t trust him.”
Serena shrugged. “Dan can open doors for me all over the state.” She added, “Besides, I don’t trust any of my clients.”
“Do you know what he wants?” Stride asked.
“No, he wouldn’t talk about it on the phone. He asked me not to tell you anything about it.”
“But you’re telling me anyway.”
“It’s in the box.”
They had struggled to find a way to work through the secrets they both had to share, without creating personal or professional problems for either of them. The reality was that they needed each other. Stride wanted her input on investigations because she was one of the most experienced detectives in the city, but her contributions had to be confidential and unofficial. Serena in turn wanted to get Stride’s bounce on her own assignments, without worrying that anything she told him would wind up in a police file. So they invented the box. When they wanted to share information privately with each other, it went in the box.
“He’ll make a pass at you,” Stride added, smiling.
“He makes a pass at everyone.”
“That’s Dan.”
“Why does Lauren put up with it? She’s the one with the money.”
“Dan and Lauren are all about power, not sex. If Lauren cared about Dan’s affairs, she’d have cut him loose long ago.”
“Spoken like a man,” Serena said. “So what do you think Dan wants?”
“He probably needs to dig up dirt on a political opponent.”
“Yeah, that was my guess. The legislature is back in session soon.”
“Just make sure he doesn’t hang you out to dry,” Stride said. “For Dan, everyone around him is expendable. I’ve been there.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Serena closed her eyes and lifted her chin to let the icy wind strike her face. When she did that, you didn’t argue with her.
Stride knew she had survived a long time on her own and was fiercely determined to make it here without his help. He didn’t bother warning her that Duluth could be as extreme and cruel in its own way as Las Vegas. All he needed to do was look at the great expanse of the lake to remember that one person alone was pretty small in this part of the world. No matter how strong you were, there were things around here that were stronger.
FIVE
Serena climbed the steps toward the county courthouse for her meeting with Dan Erickson and felt an odd sensation dogging her again, as it had for weeks. Uneasiness settled over her, and she stopped dead in her tracks. The feeling blinked out of the gray morning like a neon sign in her head, broadcasting the same word.
Danger.
She waited on the top step of the garden with her back to the courthouse, studying the comings and goings in the government plaza. A stony-eyed statue of a centurion towered behind her, guarding the three historic buildings clustered around the park. City Hall, where Jonny worked, was on her left. The federal building was directly opposite, on her right. All three government buildings were austere monuments from the 1920s, built of sand-colored granite blocks. Cars were parked in the slush around the circular driveway, and people hurried up the sidewalk, tramping through the cold in their winter coats. No one looked at her. She surveyed the windows in the neighboring media buildings one by one, then examined the street, her eyes moving from car to car.
A television truck with a satellite dish on its roof. A purple van from a computer repair shop. A delivery truck from Twin Ports Catering. A police car.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Serena shrugged off the feeling and blamed it on the ugliness of January. It wasn’t the cold that she found hardest to get used to living in Duluth. It was the deathly pallor of the city at this time of year. Days would go by, sometimes weeks, with only the same charcoal mass of clouds overhead. Winter felt like a long, cheerless twilight, full of somber faces and ominous skies. Those were the times when she felt a sharp pang of longing for the desert with its sunshine and energy.
But for all that, she liked it here.
Her old home was barren compared to this ever-changing landscape. The Duluth summer had been cool and glorious. The fall, with its palette of reds and yellows stretching for miles on the trees, had awakened a strange, uplifting sadness in her when she passed through the rain of dying leaves. Even the winter was beautiful, with something spiritual about the severity of cold and clouds that made her live inside her mind.
She liked that she stood out in this city. She was tall and athletic, with full, highlighted raven hair. In Las Vegas, she had regularly been mistaken for a showgirl, but statuesque beauties were a dime a dozen in that city. Not in Duluth. She enjoyed the stares. She liked watching men melt. It empowered her and gave her the confidence that she was up to the challenge of making a new life for herself in a new place.
She liked what being here did for Jonny, too. He was home, in a cold place, in the shadow of the lake. Serena found that her love for him had deepened and matured this past year, as she got to know him in a more intimate way. Their attraction had been electric and physical in the beginning, but the longer she lived with him, the more she had come to respect his decency and humanity. It also aroused her no end that he thought she was one of the sharpest detectives he had ever known.
But she couldn’t escape the sense of unease that twisted her insides now. The sensation of eyes watching her under a microscope.
Danger.
She had learned to listen to her intuition. Back in Vegas, there had been a stretch of weeks when she got the same feeling, that something was wrong, that she was sharing her life with a secret stalker. Later, she discovered that a predator named Tommy Luck really had been watching her all that time, and she wound up with a narrow escape.
That was then, she thought, and this is now. Tommy was history. The past was behind her.
Maybe it was simply that she couldn’t escape her demons so readily. She was still haunted by memories of her teenage years in Phoenix, before she ran away to Las Vegas. Her mother had descended into a life-stealing addiction to cocaine and begun living with a sadistic drug dealer named Blue Dog who used Serena as his personal whore. She had fought long and hard to get past the helplessness of those days and still saw a psychiatrist every month to help her cope. It was over, but it was never really over. It only took a strange, disconnected sensation of danger to reawaken the scared child.
I’m not fifteen anymore, she told herself.
Serena continued through the park to the courthouse. She took the antique elevators to the top floor, where Dan Erickson had his office as county attorney with windows overlooking the lake. She introduced herself to the receptionist, hung up her coat, and took a seat on the almond-colored sofa. Serena wore black dress slacks, heels, a burgundy blouse, and a black waistcoat with gold buttons. It was a conservative outfit but didn’t hide her figure. She noted the sideways glance from the receptionist and wondered if the girl had pegged her as the next in the long line of Dan’s conquests.
The inner door to Dan’s office opened.
A woman in her forties appeared in the doorway and gave the receptionist a cold smile that barely crinkled her lips. She had wheat-colored hair crisply pulled back behind her head, leaving only a few strands free to carefully graze her forehead. She was small and elegantly thin, with ruler-straight posture that would have made a Catholic nun proud. She had a Coach purse slung over her shoulder and wore a knee-length charcoal skirt and ivory jacket. Pearls dangled on inch-long gold chains from her earlobes, and a matching necklace glinted discreetly in the hollow of her neck. When her lake-blue eyes latched onto Serena in the waiting room, her brows arched into perfect twin peaks. She marched over and cocked her head.
“You’
re Serena Dial?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
The woman took the measure of Serena from head to toe. “Well, good for Stride. I didn’t realize you were such a gorgeous creature.”
“And you are?” Serena asked.
“Lauren Erickson. Dan’s wife.”
“Oh, sure, of course. I’m sorry, we haven’t met before.”
Serena recognized her now. Lauren was in the papers regularly, tangling with the city council over zoning issues on her real estate properties. She rarely lost; it helped to have the power of the county attorney quietly behind you and enough money to grease itchy palms. She was the banker and brains behind Dan’s career.
“You’re from Las Vegas, aren’t you?” Lauren asked.
“That’s right.”
Lauren clucked her tongue as if Vegas belonged to a different solar system. “Duluth must be quite a disappointment for you. No Elvis impersonators. No topless chorus lines.”
Serena stood up. She was nearly a foot taller than Lauren, and the other woman’s small mouth puckered with annoyance as she tilted her chin upward to look at Serena.
“I was always a fan of the Liberace museum,” Serena replied, smiling.
The receptionist smirked. Lauren silenced her with a glare and nestled her expensive purse against her shoulder.
“Everyone is talking about Eric’s murder,” Lauren said. “I took an early flight back from D.C. this morning, and Dan called me at the airport with the news.” Lauren leaned in and whispered, “Of course, I always thought Maggie might blow his head off one day.”
“Why would you think that?” Serena asked.
“This is a small city. People talk.”
“What do they say?”
“Oh, please. We both know that Eric had a reputation.”
“So do a lot of men,” Serena said. Like Dan, she thought to herself.
“Maybe so, but I own a dress shop, and my store manager says that Eric is a regular customer.”
“So?”
“So not all of the dresses he buys are in petite,” she said with a wink. “Get the picture?”
Serena said nothing.
“What business do you have with Dan?” Lauren asked, giving Serena a cool smile.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s discreet, but you can tell me. Dan and I don’t keep secrets.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but I really don’t know what he wants yet.”
Lauren took a long moment to consider Serena’s face and apparently decided that she was telling the truth. Serena suspected that Dan had already given his wife one story, and Lauren was trolling to see if he had told Serena the same thing.
“As it happens, I’m on my way to see Stride,” Lauren continued.
“Oh?”
“Yes, there’s an issue involving one of my employees. She’s disappeared.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, it may be nothing, but she’s a little unstable.”
Serena didn’t reply.
“I’ll leave you to Dan,” Lauren said. She added with a frozen laugh, “This is almost like wife-swapping, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Me with your boyfriend, you with my husband. That’s a Vegas kind of thing, isn’t it?”
“Not for me,” Serena said.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Lauren told her. “It’s not my thing either.”
Lauren was gone when Dan Erickson invited Serena into his office.
She wondered how long it would take before he touched her. It turned out to be three seconds. As he guided her toward the red leather sofa near the window, he put a hand on her shoulder and left it there too long.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he apologized. “It’s been a crazy day. Everyone’s calling.”
“That’s all right.”
“Do you want some coffee?” he asked.
Serena shook her head.
“I’m addicted,” Dan said. “Two pots a day.”
He poured himself a cup and sat down uncomfortably close to her on the sofa. Serena slid away, putting more space between them. He noticed her maneuver and grinned. Serena didn’t think she had ever seen whiter teeth, and she assumed that he treated them every night to keep them glossy.
Dan was one of those men who was every bit as handsome as he believed himself to be. She could smell his ego oozing from him like cologne. He had blond hair, heavily sprayed so that not a strand moved out of place, and a blemish-free complexion with a store-bought tan. His forehead was creeping northward, and Serena imagined him frantically applying Rogaine to stem the damage. He wore a shimmering navy suit, a gold Rolex, and a thick band on his wedding finger. He wasn’t tall, no more than five feet nine, but she had no doubt that women found him attractive. Serena had seen carbon copies of him for years in Las Vegas. A predator, like a hawk. Self-absorbed. A sex addict.
“How’s Stride?” Dan asked. “He must be worried about Maggie.”
“Of course.”
“Most people around here think she did it.”
“You’re getting way ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”
Dan shrugged. “I’ve already talked to Teitscher. It doesn’t look good.”
“Stride says she didn’t do it,” Serena told him.
“He would say that, wouldn’t he? Stride’s not objective when it comes to Maggie.”
“And you are?” Serena asked. “I know the two of you had a relationship a few years ago.”
“If anything, that means I know her better than Stride. When our little affair came to an end, I saw what her temper was like.”
Serena frowned. “Maybe we should talk about why you wanted to see me.”
“Absolutely.” Dan stood up and crossed the thick gray carpeting. He made sure the door was locked. He leaned back against the office door and studied Serena. “Before we begin, it’s critical that none of this gets back to Stride, okay? This is not a police matter, and I can’t have it become one.”
Serena nodded. “No offense, but if it’s so important that Jonny not find out, why hire me?”
“Everyone tells me you’re good,” Dan said.
“I am, but there are others around who are good, too, who don’t happen to be sleeping with a man you hate.”
Dan returned to the sofa and sat down again, even closer than before. “You think I hate Stride?”
“Don’t you?”
“Stride and I have had our disagreements over the years, but that’s water under the bridge. I’m moving on to bigger things.”
“Okay,” Serena said, but she wasn’t convinced.
“What’s your hourly rate?” Dan asked.
She gave him a number.
“I’ll pay that plus twenty percent.”
Alarm bells went off in Serena’s head. “Why would you want to do that?”
Dan eased back into the leather folds of the sofa and cradled his coffee mug in both hands. “Because there may be some risk involved.”
“Oh?”
“That’s another reason why your background as a cop is important to me. You’re used to dealing with risky situations.”
“Let me hear what you have to say first,” Serena told him.
Dan nodded. “I’m being blackmailed.”
“Then you should call the police.”
“No way,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t risk this information coming to light.”
“Someone blackmailing the county attorney raises all sorts of issues. You know that. You ought to be talking to Stride.”
“Maybe so, but that’s not an option in this case.”
“What does this person have on you?” she asked.
“You don’t need to know that.”
“That’s going to make it hard to help you,” Serena said. “I don’t like flying blind.”
“Let’s just say that it’s sexual in nature. Okay?”
Serena’s mind flitted to Maggie’s question. Have y
ou two ever done anything… strange?
“An affair?” she asked.
“You’re not a detective anymore. Forget the interrogation. It makes no difference what I did. It’s enough that I was stupid and shouldn’t have done it.”
“Does Lauren know?”
Dan snorted. “No, and you don’t tell her a thing, okay?”
“What did you tell her about hiring me?”
“I said it was a political deal. Dirty tricks. She bought it.”
“I take it you want me to find out who’s blackmailing you.” She wondered if he had fantasies of her conducting a hit for him.
“No, I don’t care. I don’t want to know. I just want to make this go away, and I need you to be my intermediary. This man has already given me a price, and I’ve got the money right here in cash.”
Dan extracted a thick envelope from his suit pocket and deposited it on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“He’s going to call me in the next couple days about a drop,” Dan continued. “I want you to make the payoff for me.”
“Why not do it yourself?” Serena asked.
“And risk having the media there with cameras? No thanks. I want this all done at arm’s length. Just you. No one else.”
“This is a blackmailer. He won’t be satisfied with one payoff. He’ll be back for more.”
“I’ll take that risk.”
Serena sighed. “Do you really need me to tell you this is a very bad idea?”
“Bad idea or not, I’m willing to pay a lot of money to have you handle this for me.”
“You know there’s no such thing as private investigator’s privilege. If this were to wind up with the police, I’d have to tell them what I know.”
“That’s why I don’t want it to wind up with the police.”
Serena didn’t like this. It smelled bad. “Do you have any idea who the blackmailer is?”
“No. He’s just a voice on the phone.”
“How did he get the information he has on you?”
“I don’t know that either. I have some suspicions, but it doesn’t matter now.”
“You’re sure he’s not bluffing?” Serena asked.
“He told me things on the phone. It’s no bluff.”
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