Funeral for a Friend

15

Stride found Andrea’s sister, Denise, smoking outside the fence that bordered the runway at the Duluth airport. Crisp air blew across the hillside, making the long grass flutter. An F-16 from the National Guard unit was lined up for takeoff, and Stride waited to approach her until after the jet screamed into the air with a roar that he could feel under his feet like an earthquake. As the waves of noise faded, he crossed to the fence, and smoke from the woman’s cigarette enveloped him.

He only met Denise a couple of times when he and Andrea were married, but he recognized her immediately, despite the years in between. Unlike Andrea, Denise had inherited the Forseth family height. She was several inches taller than Andrea and three years older, making her nearly fifty. Denise didn’t color her hair; it was gray and short. Her physique was lean, with leathery skin heavily inked with tattoos. She wore a loose black T-shirt over camouflage cargo pants and work boots. Wire-rimmed sunglasses covered her eyes.

Two sisters who’d grown up in the same household couldn’t be more dissimilar.

“Hello, Denise,” he said.

She looked at him when she heard his voice. “Stride. What do you want?”

“Andrea told me you moved back to Duluth this year.”

“So what are you, the rep for the welcome wagon?”

“I just wanted to talk,” he said.

“Well, I’m not really interested in talking to you, Stride. You’re not exactly one of my favorite people, given what you did to my sister.”

“I understand that. I hurt Andrea, and I won’t pretend otherwise.”

“Do you expect to get points for honesty?”

“No.”

She whipped off her sunglasses. Heavy bags sagged under her blue eyes. “Why’d you do it?”

“What?”

“Why’d you cheat on her?”

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” he admitted. “I fell for someone else, and I made a mistake. Things between me and Andrea were bad, but that doesn’t excuse it. I know that.”

Denise put her sunglasses back on. She inhaled deeply on her cigarette, then coughed raggedly. “Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m a hypocrite to be blaming you.”

“How so?”

“I cheated, too. A lot. Repeatedly, in fact. My husband finally got sick of it and threw me out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, he was no prize, either. I wanted custody of our daughter, and he said, sure, fine, take her. Father of the year, that one. So Lexi and I moved back here. Thirty years away, but Duluth is still home.”

“You left the Air Force?” Stride asked.

“Years ago. I put in my twenty.” She gestured at the runway. “Sometimes I still miss it, though. I like to come up here and watch the jets.”

“I went to your house. Your daughter told me you’d probably be here.”

Denise turned around and leaned against the fence. She bent one leg and propped her boot against the mesh. “So why’d you want to talk to me?”

“Has Andrea told you what’s going on?” Stride asked.

“About that body being found? Ned Baer? Yeah. She called me. Is she a suspect in the murder?”

“Actually, right now, the top suspect is probably me.”

Her thin lips curled into a smile. “I heard that, too. Did you do it?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Sounds like that asshole deserved what he got.”

“I have to ask, do you know why Ned Baer was interested in Andrea?”

Denise tossed her cigarette butt to the ground and put her boot down and crushed it. “You mean, do I know about her and Devin Card? Yeah.”

“Did she tell you about the assault when it happened?”

“Back then? No. She never said a word. I didn’t have a clue.”

“When did she tell you?”

Andrea’s sister sighed and lit another cigarette. “Seven years ago, I got a strange call from her. She was asking me about the summer before I left for basic training. She made it sound casual, sort of nostalgic, but she was asking about parties we went to and where they were and who was there and what I remembered. I don’t know, it sounded forced. I didn’t think much about it, but then a few weeks later, I saw the news about Devin. Someone made an anonymous accusation that he raped a girl at a party that summer in Duluth. I put two and two together. I called Andrea and asked if she was the one behind the allegation, and she admitted it.”

“Did you tell anyone else about it?” Stride asked.

“Not a soul.”

“Do you know if Andrea told anyone else?”

“About being the one to make the accusation? I doubt it. She said our parents were the only ones who knew about the rape back then. She told them a few weeks after it happened, but my parents would have thought their daughter being raped was too shameful to admit to anyone. I’m sure they encouraged her not to talk to the police. Anyway, they’re both dead, and I imagine they took it to their graves.” Denise folded her arms across her chest. “Why are you asking me all this anyway?”

“I’m trying to figure out how Ned Baer found Andrea and who else knew the truth about her. That might give me a clue about who killed him.”

“You think Andrea did it, don’t you?”

“Actually, I don’t,” Stride replied. “On the other hand, I know it wasn’t me, and Andrea was desperate to keep the secret concealed. But as far as I knew, she didn’t have a gun. I don’t think she even knew how to fire one.”

Denise was quiet as he said this. He saw an uncomfortable expression on her face, and then she said, “Actually, that’s not true.”

“What?”

“Andrea knows how to shoot. Sometimes when I came home on leave, I’d take her to the range. I made her get a gun, too, for protection. That was long before the two of you met. She was single and living alone.” Then Denise rushed on before Stride could say anything more. “But if you’re asking if I think she killed him, the answer is no.”

“Did she talk to you at all about Ned Baer?”

“Yeah. She called me in Miami, and she was pretty freaked out about him. She said this reporter knew it was her; she said he’d broken into her house and seen all of her private records. But she never said a word to me about killing him.”

“Would she?”

Denise shrugged. “Probably not.”

“What about the summer when she says she was assaulted? What do you remember from back then?”

“Come on, Stride. That was thirty years ago.”

“I know, but whatever happened was important enough that it led to murder years later.”

Denise waited through the roar of another plane taking off. Then she stared at the sky, as if she could clear her head and bring the memories back. “Andrea talked about a party crawl that summer. If that’s when she was raped, I’m pretty sure I know when it was. I was heading out to basic in a few days, so that night was kind of a last hurrah with my friends. Go to a big concert, get drunk, stay out all night, whatever. I encouraged Andrea to come with us. She didn’t go out very often, never did anything except run her science experiments. I pushed her to have some fun. If something bad happened to her that night, I feel responsible.”

“If?” Stride asked. “Are you not sure she’s telling the truth?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see her lying about it. Plus, it would explain a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“How she is. So closed off. After that summer, she barely talked to me for years. Her marriage to Robin failed. Her marriage to you failed. When she finally told me what she’d been through, her life began to make sense. And yet... I don’t know.”

“You still doubt her?” he asked.

Denise hesitated. “It’s not that I doubt her. She’s my sister. It’s that I knew Devin. I can’t picture him doing something like that.”

“Take a college kid and add alcohol,” Stride said.

“Oh, I get it. I’m not naïve. Believe me, I dealt with my share in the service. But Devin was a friend. I knew him pretty well throughout high school. He was a stud. No matter what party he was at, there were a dozen girls who would have spread their legs if he asked. He never had a reputation for pushing it too far, because he didn’t need to.”

“A kid who doesn’t hear no very often might not think a girl is serious when she turns him down.”

“Yeah. I get that.”

“Do you remember who went with you on this party crawl? Or the houses you went to? I’d like to talk to some of your friends and see what they remember.”

“Why?”

“To prove what really happened. And to figure out who murdered Ned Baer.”

“In other words, you want to save your own neck,” Denise said.

“I suppose that’s part of it. But I also think Andrea deserves some closure.”

Denise shrugged. “I can text you a few names. But honestly, the crowd got pretty big as the night went on. A lot of strangers joined us along the way. Plus, everybody drank a lot. Most of it’s a blur. I wouldn’t count on anyone being too clear about what happened.”

“Are you sure Devin Card was there that night?” Stride asked.

“Oh yeah. Him and Peter both. They were there.”

“You sound pretty certain for something that happened so long ago.”

“I am.”

“Why is that?”

Denise laughed bitterly to herself. “Like I said, we were all really drunk. Devin and Peter had a reputation for doing outrageous things at these parties. They were always trying to top the other, coming up with wild new dares. And me, well, I had just broken up with my boyfriend, and I was heading into the military, so I didn’t much care what I did or who I did it with.”

“What did you do?” Stride asked.

“Peter said he’d give me two hundred bucks to have sex with him and let everybody watch. Let’s just say we put on quite a show.”

Peter Stanhope laughed. “Denise said that?”

“Yes, she did,” Serena replied. “Stride talked to her, and that’s what she told him. Are you saying it didn’t happen?”

“Oh, no, no,” Peter said, shaking his head. “If Denise said it happened, I believe her. It certainly sounds like a stunt I would have pulled. But honestly, I don’t remember it. I’ve blacked out a lot of those days.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be laughing, Peter. According to Denise, Devin Card was with you at the same party. He was egging you on. Not many women voters are going to find stories like that amusing.”

Her comment erased the smile from his face. Peter shoved his hands in his suit pockets as he stared at the lake. The bright sun glistened on his swept-back silver hair. The two of them stood in the Harbor Side Ballroom inside the DECC, Duluth’s convention center, next to a wall of windows that overlooked the towering lift bridge that led to the Point. Boats dotted the expanse of blue water. The vast room was empty of furnishings, and no one else was inside. Their low voices echoed between the walls. In another two days, hundreds of people would be squeezed into the space for Devin Card’s town hall meeting.

“You’re right,” Peter replied after a long stretch of silence. “I only laughed because that person is so far away from who I am now that I hardly even recognize him. I was twenty-one then. I’m over fifty now. Kids turn into adults, Serena. That’s true of Devin, too.”

“Maybe so, but it doesn’t change what the two of you did back then.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’ll be the first to admit it. Devin and I were both first-class pricks in college, and I’m sure he’d agree with that. Anyway, I appreciate your candor. I also appreciate your agreeing to an off-the-record meeting.”

Serena shrugged. “If you hadn’t called me, I was going to call you.”

“I suppose that makes sense. I’m sure you weren’t terribly surprised to hear my name in conjunction with this business. When you worked for me as a private investigator, I know you learned things about my past that didn’t give you a very good impression of me. I don’t suppose Stride is a fan, either.”

“You’re right, he’s not,” Serena replied. Then she added, “What did you want to see me about?”

“First of all, I wanted to tell you personally — and I hope you’ll share this with Stride, too — that I find the whole idea of him killing Ned Baer to be completely ludicrous. I don’t believe it for a moment. I know him, and he’s not capable of anything like that.”

“Thank you.”

“I also wanted to pass along a very clear message that neither I nor Devin Card had anything to do with Baer’s murder, either. That’s equally ludicrous.”

Serena’s voice was cool. “Is it?”

“Yes. I know it’s a stretch, but I’m asking you to trust me. You may not like me, Serena, but murder? I’d never do anything like that.”

“Even if it meant saving Devin Card’s career?”

“Yes, even then. Besides, it’s a moot point. Neither Devin nor I ever met Ned Baer, so we had absolutely no reason to kill him.”

“He never approached you?” Serena asked.

“No.”

“He didn’t tell you that he’d identified the woman behind the accusations?”

The smallest flinch crossed Peter’s face. “He told us nothing, because we never met him. And if he’d actually found the woman, we would have been fine with him publishing the story. We wanted the name out there.”

“Really,” Serena said, not believing him.

“Really. It’s easier to discredit a real person than an anonymous source.”

“And by discredit you mean tear her life to shreds. Turn her into a whore. Make her wish she’d never been born.”

Peter shrugged. “Basically.”

“What if her story was convincing? What if Ned had proof?”

“He didn’t, because the story wasn’t true.”

Serena shook her head. “I’m having a lot of trouble believing you about any of this, Peter. If you really had no connection at all with Ned Baer, then why are you so concerned with this investigation?”

“Because there were rumors and conspiracy theories floating around back then, and I know there will be again, now that we know Baer was murdered. People are going to call Devin a suspect. They’ll say what you just did, that Devin must have been trying to keep the woman’s name out of the papers. I want to get ahead of this story on his behalf and make it clear that the rumors are false. We had nothing to do with Ned Baer, and we had nothing to do with his death. Given the political sensitivities of the campaign, I’d like a little consideration.”

Serena studied Peter’s expression, but she knew from experience that his poker face told her nothing. The one thing she remembered from her work with him was that he was always too smooth. He could mix lies and truth so easily that it was impossible to tell one from the other.

Was he lying to her now? She didn’t know.

“You realize that Stride and I aren’t working on this case,” Serena told him. “Officially, we’re out of it.”

“Yes, but I also know both of you well enough to assume that you’ll find a way to stay in the middle of it anyway.”

Serena nodded. “Okay. You’ve passed along your message. I’ll make sure it gets to the police. Now I have a question for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“What about the rape?” Serena asked.

Peter stared back at her, and she thought again: Too smooth.

“I already told you, it never happened,” he said flatly.

“The woman’s lying?”

“I have no idea. Maybe the whole thing was a setup to take down Devin. Or maybe she’s misremembering events from decades ago. Regardless, Devin is innocent. He didn’t do it.”

“You just told me about having blackouts, Peter. You didn’t remember what went on between you and Denise. Isn’t it possible that the same thing happened to Devin? He raped that girl while he was drunk and he doesn’t even remember it?”

“No.”

“That’s not possible?”

“No. It’s not.”

Serena shook her head. “Maybe you don’t want to believe that your best friend was capable of something evil.”

Peter took a long time to reply. She tried to read his face for the truth, but if he had doubts, he would never admit them to her or say them out loud.

“You’re right, Devin’s my best friend,” he told her. “That means I know him. Yes, we did some crazy things back then. Some highly offensive things, I’m sure. And you’re right, I don’t remember a lot of it. But rape? That’s not who he is, and that’s not who he was. I don’t know why this woman thinks it was him, or what got twisted around in her mind, but she’s wrong. If she was really assaulted, then someone else did it.”