Jane puffed out her cheeks, exhaling a long, slow breath as she left Maura by the compost pile and continued towards the perimeter of the garden. She'd been stonewalled again. No amount of quips or jokes or sarcasm or banter seemed to be able to breach Maura's defences. The one thing that possibly or even probably could—an apology—Jane simply wasn't willing to offer. She'd be damned if she'd ever be sorry for doing her job and doing it well. Paddy Doyle had to be taken down, and it was incomprehensible to Jane that Maura hadn't seen that as soon as it happened. None of how Maura had reacted made sense, and Jane felt too proud to ask for clarification.

She also, admittedly, thought that it would blow over if she just left it alone. Maura had gotten over Jane shooting herself in the stomach pretty quick, and that was way more reckless, so this thing dragging on like it had was a bit of a shock.

She trudged through the grass to come up beside Frost, who was speaking to an older woman, somewhere in her fifties, and they both paused their conversation as she approached. The woman looked pale, but was otherwise in great shape, and she kept darting her eyes to the compost pile. Jane offered a firm nod.

"Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston Homicide. I'm Detective Frost's partner."

The woman smiled wanly but made no attempt to introduce herself. "I just can't believe something like this could happen in our little garden. It's so horrible." She wrung her hands together nervously, still staring past the two detectives to watch Maura and the other personnel process the scene. Jane followed her gaze, and did a double-take when she found Maura holding a handful of compost in a gloved hand and sniffing it thoughtfully. Gross. Jane grimaced.

"This is Lorraine Taylor, she organizes this garden." Frost's voice brought Jane back around to look at the woman again, who barely acknowledged her identity with a small nod. Frost continued. "There was a wallet on the body so we have an ID. Deceased is Arthur Hill, 57. He lives a few streets over. Mrs. Taylor was telling me that he's been a member of this garden for several years, and that she hasn't seen him much lately, because he'd taken to gardening in the late evenings and early mornings. Apparently he has also been a bit of a nuisance over the years."

"I don't want to speak ill of the dead, detectives," she fretted.

"Of course, Mrs. Taylor." Jane dropped her voice an octave. "But anything you can tell us, even if it's not that nice, is important information for us to have. The most respectful thing to do is give us as much information as possible so we can figure out what kind of motives we might be looking at."

Mrs. Taylor blanched. "You're not saying you think someone in the garden might have done it?"

Jane and Frost exchanged glances. Jane turned back to the garden organizer and unleashed her most sympathetic head tilt and most reassuring murmur.

"Mrs. Taylor, right now we don't know anything at all, and so we have to consider everything. He was found at the garden, so that's unfortunately where we have to start our investigation. Please, can you tell us about the trouble he was causing."

"Well, he was just…awful. I'm sorry. He was awful. We've been trying to get rid of him for the last three years, and he's gotten worse every season. Any time he thinks someone is taking too long to harvest their produce, he steals it. He's destroyed plants in plots if he thought someone was breaking the rules about organic gardening. He's just a menace." The woman's voice was strained and angry by the time she finished. Jane was a bit taken aback.

"Trying to get rid of him? Why not just kick him out if he's that awful?"

Mrs. Taylor sighed. "It's not that simple. We have bylaws and policies at the garden and he knows them very well, if we don't follow the letter of our laws he voids the whole process. We thought about just assigning his plot to someone else, but we were worried what he would do to the whole garden if we just tried to force him out. The fact that he'd at least started coming at odd hours was such a blessing for everyone. He was just an awful, awful man. He was going to literally ruin the garden."

"Property destruction is a crime, ma'am," Frost volunteered. "If he did something like that you could press charges." The older woman laughed mirthlessly.

"No offence, detectives, but we've tried to bring this up with the police, and got laughed off the phone. Low priority we were told. So we've had to protect ourselves."

"Protect?" That word in particular raised a red flag for Jane. The detective peered carefully at the woman, who immediately turned flustered and offended.

"Not like that, detective. I'm certain this horrible situation has nothing to do with anyone in the garden." She scowled and crossed her arms across her chest. "I'd like to go home now, this has been very upsetting."

Jane looked meaningfully to Frost, who gave a small nod. She then turned to one of the officers nearby and beckoned him over, curling two fingers towards herself. "All right, Mrs. Taylor. Before you go, we'll need you to speak with one of our officers and provide him with a complete list of everyone who is a member of this garden." The woman grumbled her begrudging assent, and Jane and Frost left her with the officer.

Once out earshot, Frost turned to Jane.

"You like her for it?"

"Nah," Jane mutttered. "I mean, as the organizer of this whole shebang, we gotta bring her in for questioning for sure, but my gut says no. She was way too eager to talk shit. I wouldn't be so keen to bury the guy if I killed him." She looked over at the compost again, where several techs in Tyvek suits were shoveling piles to transport it back to the lab. She grinned at Frost. "Metaphorically, anyway. I guess I would have been pretty keen to literally bury him."

Frost rolled his eyes, chuckling. He looked down at his notebook.

"All right. Let's go look at this charmer's plot and see if we find anything there. We've also got some people waiting to be interviewed who were here at the time that the body was discovered."

"Sounds good. Let's dig in." She waggled her brows and grinned again. Frost groaned, and the two headed off.

An inspection of the plot and a few on site interviews later, Jane was certain she was dealing with a murder, even if Maura wouldn't deign to identify it as such. They had found the faintest bit of blood evidence at the victim's plot, and Jane suspected the rest of the evidence would show that he'd been killed there and then dragged to the compost.

The interviews with the people who had been on the scene at the time of discovery painted a picture of a real son of a bitch. The volunteers who had come to turn the compost had been horrified to discover the body, but were visibly less upset when they were informed of the victim's identity. They had a complete list of garden members from Lorraine Taylor, and Jane suspected every other gardener was going to give the same unflattering account of the victim.

Getting ready to head back to the precinct, Jane was on her way to her unmarked when a distantly familiar voice slowed her pace. She glanced over at an ongoing interview between one of the uniforms on site and two female gardeners. She peered closely.

"Amy?"

The taller of the two women appeared startled to hear her name, and looked around to figure out where it came from. When her eyes landed on Jane, she narrowed them slightly before they widened in recognition.

"Jane?"

Jane broke out into an odd smile and headed over. She could see the officer who had conducted the interview was flipping her notebook shut, and Jane met her eyes to ensure she wasn't interrupting anything. With a nod from the uniform, she looked back to Amy and the other woman.

"Hey! Are you a member of this garden? I didn't see your name on the list we got." Jane stopped in front of the two women and hooked her thumbs on her belt loops. Amy shook her head.

"No, my friend Bex is, though. I was here helping her put up a trellis."

"Ah, okay. Wow. I haven't seen you in…god, ten years? Twelve? I barely even see Mark anymore, not since he wimped out and took that cushy job in Cambridge." She spared a glance for he woman standing with Amy, clearly the aforementioned Bex, who Jane realized was staring at her unhappily. She blinked in confusion, and held her hand out for a handshake. "Hey, Jane Rizzoli, BPD."

The other woman barely gave her hand a shake and mumbled a greeting. She turned to Amy.

"I'm going to go pack up my truck. I'll see you over there?"

Amy looked away from Jane for just a moment to acknowledge the other woman.

"Uh, yes. I'll be right there. Jane and I used to hang out years ago. Just give me a second to catch up." She gave a winning smile, and the skepticism on the other woman's face deepened.

"Sure," Bex offered begrudgingly, giving another pointed glance to Jane as she departed. Jane watched her go, suddenly suspicious.

"Your friend really didn't appreciate my presence," she mused.

"Wh— Bex?" Amy looked over at her friend, then back at Jane's look of concentration. "Come on. You think she had something to do with this mess? She just felt threatened."

"Threatened?" Jane looked at Bex over by her truck, now even more suspicious.

"Not that kind of threatened," Amy laughed. Jane shook her head, indicating she still wasn't following. Amy cleared her throat, her features setting in a wry expression.

"She and I were here together as a date, kind of. And…" Amy sighed, as if in disbelief that she had to explain this. "You're very hot, Jane. In a way that is particularly threatening. If someone didn't know better, they'd think…" she trailed off. She could finish, but she didn't need to. Jane knew what she meant. She quirked a brow at Amy, directing the conversation away from Jane's substantial gay vibes.

"Putting up a trellis is a date? Manual labour. In dirt. That's a date?"

"It's a kind of date," Amy insisted with a laugh. "It's a very specific type of date. I guess you wouldn't know." She gave Jane a smile that also felt like a challenge. Jane was surprised to find herself blushing just a bit.

"Well, I'm sorry to have interrupted your romantic afternoon. Looks like you're free to go, so I won't keep you. But it was good to see you." Jane smiled at Amy, who matched it with one of her own, and reached out to give Jane's arm a squeeze. She was about to say something, but then suddenly was peering beyond Jane to the compost pile.

"A woman over there is staring at you. Don't look." She gripped Jane's arm tighter to keep her from turning around. "She doesn't know I've noticed, but she's… she does not seem happy. Blonde, well-dressed. She's beautiful. She's pretending to look at her phone."

"Oh yeah," Jane sighed. "That's a long story."

"Scorned lover?" Amy raised a brow. Jane rolled her eyes.

"Scorned friend. Really, really scorned. We had a falling out a while ago and things are still really bad. She's uh, she's the medical examiner, so we work together a lot, which is fun."

"Sounds like my last break up." Amy grinned. Jane snorted, and before she could help it, looked over at Maura and caught her still staring. She could see Maura freeze and panic, but she didn't look away, coolly meeting her gaze. Scorned was certainly the right word. Jane looked back to Amy and gestured helplessly.

"Yeah, it's not… But it does feel a little like that sometimes. I should go talk to her, for…work reasons." Jane paused, and then rushed into the next thing she wanted to say without thinking too much about it. "You want to get a drink tonight? That shithole we used to go to?"

Amy was visibly surprised by the invitation, but she recovered with a pleased smile.

"Yeah, absolutely. Eight o'clock?"

"Perfect, yeah." Jane saw Maura making a beeline for her car, and started walking away from Amy without turning around. She felt extremely unsure of herself all of a sudden, but she flashed a grin anyway. "Tonight at eight. Okay. See you then!"

Jane pivoted smoothly to book it after Maura. Not long after catching up to her, she would find herself staring at the back of that stupid little Prius as Maura nearly burned rubber to get away from her.

She heaved a big sigh.

"Ok, let me see if I have this right…"

It was hours later. Jane and Amy were at the bar, and it was getting late. They'd spend the first part of the evening drinking beers and catching up on the last decade of their lives, mostly by making a lot of jokes at the expense of their brothers. The last hour or so, they'd switched to whiskey, and Amy had dragged out the story of Jane and Maura's falling out.

"…She was your work wife, you were friends, then best friends, and now it's been years and neither of you has had a serious relationship during that time…"

Jane wasn't normally one to talk much about her personal life, but she was tired. She was tired and she was drunk. Jane wasn't normally one to get this drunk, either, but the evening had gotten away from her a bit. It just felt really good to tell someone the story of her and Maura who didn't already know the doctor. Maura was so woven into Jane's life and so beloved by everyone in it, she couldn't really talk about this to anyone she was close with, and Amy had been expertly dragging tidbits out of her with the right questions and the right amount of Jameson's.

"…You spend all your time together, you often ended up in the same bed together…"

But this conversation had taken a turn in an unwelcome direction. Alarm bells were ringing in the back of Jane's mind and she was trying and failing to clear her head enough to put things back on safer terrain. Amy, however, was clearly on a mission.

"…and you've pretended to be a couple to avoid dating men—"

"Man," Jane finally interjected. "Giovanni."

Amy looked at her skeptically, and Jane could tell that wasn't quite the checkmate that she thought it was.

"Didn't you say you did it again at your high school reunion?"

"Oh, that—" But Amy made a shushing motion with her hand, and continued.

"So you're avoiding men regularly by way of pretending to be together."

"Well, regularly makes it s—it just seemed like the easiest way. And besides, we'd already gone undercover as lesbians."

"You'd already gone—Jane. Are you hearing yourself?"

"Not together! Separate lesbians. I went on dates with other—I'm not—this is not…" she trailed off with a sigh, pressing her fingertips right above one of her eyebrows and massaging lightly. "It was to catch a murderer. It wasn't sexy!" It was actually very sexy. "I'm just not telling these stories well."

"I absolutely believe that." Amy nodded emphatically. "And you said she was interested in Tommy, but decided not to date him? Did she say why?"

Jane swallowed uncomfortably, and tried to come up with a lie. "Uh yeah, she said um… She said she likes him, but she loves me." Oh, or the truth instead. That was fine. Everything was fine. Amy's eyes bugged out, and Jane lifted her hand, fingers flexing as she grasped repeatedly at the air, as if he could physically stop Amy from misinterpreting. She closed her fingers into a fist and knocked her knuckles against her own forehead a couple times, eyes screwed shut. "But that's not how she meant it!"

"Mmhmm, of course. I often platonically tell my platonic friends that I love them platonically and that's why I can't date someone else. I'm sure there's a very reasonable explanation for every one of these things on their own. But my god, taken collectively?"

"It's really not… You're taking it all out of context."

Amy stared dumbly for a long, long moment. "What's the context, Jane?"

"…We were just friends!"

"Oh my god." Amy placed her rocks glass down on the bar and fixed her gaze on Jane. She pursed her lips, clearly debating her next words carefully. After an excruciatingly long silence, she continued. "Why did we stop hanging out?"

Jane cleared her throat. She tried to meet Amy's eyes, but found that she couldn't. She stared into her own glass and gave it a little shake, trying to melt some of the ice and create something to drink.

"I don't remember," Jane lied.

"Good thing I do." Amy's serious expression softened into a beguiling smile. "I made a pass at you."

Jane could feel the heat creeping up her neck, and told herself that it was just the whiskey. She drained every last drop from her glass, and ferociously smashed her teeth down on an ice cube. This was really getting out of hand. Amy looked away from Jane, giving her a modicum of privacy, and waggled two fingers at the bartender. She finished her own drink before continuing, and watched as their next two whiskeys were poured. "It was outside this bar, the night you and Mark and everyone else graduated from the police academy. Everyone was drunk, us included. A bunch of the idiot guys had gone outside to—and I quote—'howl at the moon'. We went with them, and we lingered outside after they went back in." Amy finally looked back to Jane when the whiskeys arrived in front of them. "Do you remember yet?"

"Yeah," Jane replied hoarsely. She knew the rest of the story. Amy seemed to be waiting for her to tell it, but Jane kept quiet. Amy shrugged, and continued with her version.

"We were laughing about something that I'm sure wasn't really that funny, but it was just such a great night. I pressed you up against the wall and I kissed you. You let me down gently, and then I'm pretty sure you made out with one of the howlers later that night."

Jane grimaced at the recollection. "Yeah, I think I did. You uh… You've got a good memory."

Amy turned not just her head but her whole body towards Jane, swivelling on her barstool.

"Not to brag, but I actually haven't been turned down that much in my life. That's not why I remember it so clearly, though. Do you want to know why?"

Jane was pretty sure she didn't.

"Why?"

Amy leaned in, placed her hand on Jane's upper thigh, and purred, "Because you kissed me back, Jane."

Jane squeezed her eyes shut. The whiskey made her feel like her brain was full of vapour and her tongue was made of bees.

Amy dropped her hand away, and continued. "I really don't think you're upset about a friend, Jane."

"It's not like that." Jane opened her eyes, darting a glance over. Amy shrugged.

"Okay. Then it's not like that." The other woman finished her drink, and threw some bills on the counter. Even through her haze Jane could tell it was more than enough for her own drinks as well. Amy continued. "If I'm being honest, I'm a little too old to be having the 'actually not everyone thinks about their best friends like that' conversation, and I think you are too, so we won't." She stood up, now much taller than the still-seated detective. Jane's head suddenly felt like a hamster ball half-filled with molasses, and with great effort she managed to tilt her face up to look at the other woman. For a brief moment, Amy looked undecided. Then she wet her lips and stared down at Jane with a gleam in her eyes. "Walk me outside?"

Jane was certain she said no. She definitely intended to say no. But her body had carried her and suddenly she was outside, in the back alley behind the bar, and the brisk night air was cooling her cheeks. A fine mist had rolled in with the fog that night. With eyes closed, face tilted up towards the sky, she exhaled oh so slowly, and with her next inhale imagined she was breathing in the ocean.

Jane then felt the firm press of a palm against her upper sternum, and then the uneven hardness of a brick wall against her back. She felt soft lips against hers, and the hand that was pressed against her chest moving up to cup her jaw.

This had happened before.

She kept her eyes closed. Such soft lips. Why were men's lips never this soft? She felt her hands landing lightly on hips, and snaking around further for a firmer grip. She felt herself returning the kiss, angling her head to deepen it. She felt the press of another body all along hers, just like hers.

This had also happened before.

Suddenly it was the cool breeze she could feel against the front of her body. Plus some confusion and, most alarmingly, loss. Jane nearly opened her eyes, but instead squeezed them shut harder because of the next things she felt: deft fingers releasing the button of her jeans, cool fingers somehow white hot against her abdomen and travelling quickly down, a wet mouth against her neck.

This was brand new.

Jane let her head loll back against the brick wall, hummed in pleasure, and allowed it to happen. The next day, if she really wanted to, she could blame the whiskey. That night, she was giving in, both to the moment at hand, and in retrospect. Dopamine flooded her system as the lifetime of hang-ups she'd harboured suddenly felt so stupid and small.

Moments later, for the first time in her life, Jane came undone in a woman's hand. It happened in so little time as to be a little embarrassing, and a lot indicative.

Without a word, Amy left her. And Jane knew it wasn't an act of cruelty, but of mercy. She left Jane against the wall, left her the option to follow or not. It was on Jane to determine whether this was or wasn't the moment in her life when.

Jane opened her eyes and followed her friend home.