Funeral for a Friend

8

The two-story house on 8th Street with the beige siding hadn’t changed at all since Stride had last been here. Neither had the woman who owned it. When Andrea answered the door, he felt as if he’d gone back in time.

In that first moment seeing her again, he found himself reliving the ups and downs of their four years together. He remembered the first time they’d met, when he was up at Central High School investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl. Andrea was a chemistry teacher taking a break behind the school, with a cigarette in her hand and a cynical smile on her lips. The attraction between them had been immediate. She’d been pretty then and she still was, a pert, blue-eyed blond with a trim figure. He did a quick calculation in his head and realized that she must be forty-six years old now. She still looked young for her age and probably always would.

Young. Athletic. Unhappy.

In the early days of their marriage, he’d blamed Andrea’s depression on being abandoned by her first husband. Then he’d blamed himself for not being able to give her what she needed. Finally, seven years ago, he learned the truth about her past, but the revelation had come too late to save their relationship.

“Hello, Andrea,” Stride said.

She stared back at him and didn’t say anything. Her face was distant. He’d wondered whether she would be angry at seeing her ex-husband again after so many years, but then he remembered: this was Andrea. She was the coldest woman he’d ever met. Cold in love. Cold in bed. She kept her emotions buried in a deep hole, like a prisoner she wouldn’t set free.

“Hello, Jon,” she said finally. “Long time.”

“A very long time. How are you?”

“Same as ever. You?”

“I’m okay. I’m good.”

“I heard you got married again,” Andrea said.

“I did.”

“The Vegas girl. Serena. The one you cheated on me with.”

He frowned. “Yes.”

“Well. Isn’t that fucking terrific.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

“Do you want to come in?” Andrea asked.

“I do.”

She opened the door just far enough for him to squeeze past her, and he walked into the house where he’d lived while they were together. It was much bigger than his cottage on the Point, but being here again made him feel claustrophobic, stuck inside bad times. She’d changed almost nothing over the years. He recognized the same furniture and the same art on the walls. She’d recarpeted and repainted, but she hadn’t even changed the colors. Andrea was like a cat, anxious and scared if anything disrupted her routines.

“Come back to the kitchen,” she said.

He followed her. The kitchen was small, and there was an alcove where she had a dinette table near the windows. From there, he could barely see the lake like a gray smudge on the horizon. That was what he remembered about the house, how far away the lake seemed when he was in it. Stride could usually measure his own happiness by how close he was to Lake Superior.

“I made margaritas,” Andrea said, pointing to a half-full pitcher on the table. “You want one?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Too ironic?” she asked.

He let out a short, humorless laugh to tell her that he understood the joke. They’d gotten drunk on margaritas on their first date, and then they’d had sex on his back porch. That was how their relationship had started. For a long time, he’d regretted everything that followed that night — the marriage, the loneliness, the affair, the divorce — but there had come a point in his life when he had to make peace with his mistakes. It was obvious to him that Andrea had yet to do the same.

They both sat down at the table. She sipped her drink, licking salt off her lips each time. He noticed that the window behind her was decorated with suncatchers made of stained glass. They were all shaped in different designs, with a rainbow of colors. A hummingbird, a lighthouse, a rose, a frog, a mother and child, a sun, a heart, a butterfly, a dragonfly. As far as he could tell, they were the only decorations that had been added to the house since he left.

“Are you still teaching?” he asked.

“I switched to Denfeld when Central closed.”

“Sure. Makes sense.”

“I’m head of the department now.”

“Good for you,” he said.

“It’s a little more money.”

“That always helps.”

“And a lot more school politics,” she added.

“I’m sure. I try to steer clear of that.”

“I remember.”

“How’s your sister?” Stride asked. “Is Denise okay?”

“She’s fine. She moved back to Duluth this year.”

“Really? Miami too hot for her?”

“Divorce,” Andrea said.

“Sorry to hear it. Still, it must be nice having her closer.”

Andrea shrugged. “It is. Except when it’s not.”

“Yeah. I get that. What about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

His ex-wife took another sip of her drink without answering, and he could see the manicured tips of her fingernails. Her blue eyes drifted away. He heard the thump of basketballs in the park next to the house. He remembered how the noise had driven him crazy when he lived here. And he remembered how he would find Andrea staring out the windows, watching the kids play.

“We really don’t need to do the whole small-talk thing,” Andrea said. “Just tell me what you want, Jon.”

“Okay.” Stride watched her face carefully. He was back to being a cop now, looking for the tiniest reactions. “I don’t know if you heard, but Steve Garske died.”

“Steve? Really? I’m sorry. I know you two were close. He was awfully young. What happened?”

“Cancer,” Stride said.

“How sad.”

“You used to go to him, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, but I switched doctors after you and I split. I figured staying with Steve would be uncomfortable for both of us.”

“Sure.”

“Is that what you came here to tell me? About Steve’s death?”

“No. There’s more.”

Andrea tried out a false smile, but he could see the anxiety in her face as she wondered what he would say next. “Well, don’t leave me in suspense, Jon.”

“Steve did something bad a few years ago,” Stride told her. “I only just found out about it.”

“What did he do?”

“Actually, I thought you might already know,” Stride said.

“Sorry, I don’t.”

“We found what we believe is the body of Ned Baer on his property,” Stride went on. “Steve buried him there.”

Andrea inhaled sharply. A little quiver rippled through her body. Her reaction definitely wasn’t rehearsed. She took the pitcher of margaritas and refilled her glass to the top, and she shook the ice to chill the drink. “I see.”

“He’d been shot in the head. Murdered.”

Andrea put the glass down on the table. “Good.”

“It’s better if you don’t say things like that.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going to pretend he wasn’t a terrible human being. Ned Baer was trying to destroy my life. He was stalking me, following me wherever I went. He broke in here, do you remember that?”

“I remember that’s what you told me.”

“He was going to expose me, Jon. He was going to drag my name, my life, my past, through the dirt.”

“I know.”

Andrea stared at Stride. “Did you kill him?”

It was Stride’s turn to be surprised. “Of course not.”

She looked almost disappointed by his denial. “Really? I mean, to be totally honest, I always wondered if you did. We never talked about it after Ned disappeared. Although, I suppose we never talked about anything, did we? Ned just... went away. It always seemed way too convenient to me, the idea of him being lost in the Deeps. I thought that was just a story you made up to hide the truth. And you know, I never blamed you. That was probably the only time in our marriage when I began to think that you actually loved me. I mean, if you would do that... if you would go that far to save me...”

“I didn’t kill him,” Stride said again.

“No. I guess I was foolish to think that. You would never sacrifice yourself for me. For Cindy, definitely. For Serena, maybe. But not for me.”

“We don’t need to rehash the past, Andrea.”

“No. We definitely do not. Well, if you didn’t kill him, Jon, who did?”

Stride said nothing. He stared back at her and waited. She sipped her drink, as if she had no idea what he would say and why he was hesitating. Finally her eyes widened as she understood. Then she did something he didn’t expect. She laughed.

“Oh, my God!” Andrea exclaimed. “Oh, my God, you think I did it! That is too funny.”

“It’s not funny at all, and it’s not such an outrageous thought,” Stride pointed out sharply. “Is it?”

Her laughter dissolved. She chewed on her lip in silence for a while. “No. You’re right. I’m only saying it’s funny, because this is like a symbol of our whole marriage. I thought you killed him. You thought I killed him. And neither one of us said a word to the other.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t kill him?” Stride asked.

“That’s what I’m saying, Jon.”

Stride saw no deception in her eyes. Even so, he wondered if she was lying. After all these years, he knew her well, or at least as well as any man could. And he knew from experience that if Andrea was pushed to a breaking point, she was capable of anything. She could be hysterical. She could be violent. That was how she’d been when she told him about Ned Baer. Desperate, out of control, willing to do anything to protect her secret.

“Do you have any idea who did kill him?” Stride asked.

“Maybe it was Steve,” she suggested.

Stride shook his head. “No. He didn’t do it.”

“I don’t think you can rule it out, Jon.”

“Why? Steve had no motive.”

Andrea leaned across the table. “I called him. That night, after you called me from Ned’s motel, I called Steve.”

“Why?”

“I was scared. You were so angry. I didn’t know what you would do. I mean, I was frantic, and I told you to do whatever it would take to shut Ned up. But I didn’t know how far you’d go, and I didn’t want you to throw your whole life away. So I called Steve. I told him to go after you. I wanted him to cool you down and make sure you didn’t do anything stupid.”

“He knew about—?”

She nodded. “Of course, he did. He was my doctor. I told him everything. Later, after Ned disappeared, I asked if he knew what had happened. He said no. He said he never saw you at the Deeps. There was nobody there, not you, not Ned, not anybody. But I always wondered in the back of my head if he was protecting you.”

Stride rubbed his fingers against his forehead, trying to push back a headache. “He was protecting me. Or that’s what he thought.”

“Maybe he protected both of us,” Andrea said. “Maybe he killed Ned himself.”

“Steve wasn’t a murderer.”

“Well, then I don’t know what happened.”

Stride nodded, because it made no sense to him either. He kept looking for an explanation and not finding one. Then he felt a buzzing on his phone and when he checked his messages, his face darkened with concern. He pushed back the chair and got to his feet. “Sorry, I have to go.”

“Of course, you do. There’s always something with you. Nothing changes.”

“It’s not me. There’s a problem with Cat. She’s a teenager who—”

“A teenager who lives with you,” Andrea said. “Yes, I know about her. I read the story in the paper last winter. Talk about another irony, Jon. You never wanted to have kids, and now you and Serena have a teenager.”

“That’s not true about me not wanting kids.”

“Oh, right. My mistake. You never wanted kids with me.”

Stride’s face clouded with anger, but he didn’t have time for an old argument. “I have to go,” he said again.

“So go.”

He hesitated before he headed to the front door. “Listen, about this thing with Ned Baer. I’m not running the investigation. Maggie knows that I lied to her back then. I haven’t told her what was really going on, but it won’t be hard for her to figure it out. I won’t be able to keep your name out of it this time.”

“I understand, Jon,” Andrea replied. “Believe me, I know what’s coming. As soon as you said the name Ned Baer, I figured my life was over.”

Serena waited in her Mustang, which was parked in the shadows two blocks away from Andrea’s house. Dusk had fallen, but there were kids playing basketball in the waning light. She could see the front of the house from where she was, and she could see Stride’s black Expedition parked outside, under the tall trees.

It confirmed to her that she was in the right place.

Whatever was going on, Andrea was in the middle of it.

Ten minutes after she arrived, she saw Jonny emerge from the house alone. He ran for his truck, fired the engine, and drove away at high speed. She thought about texting him to find out what was going on, but she didn’t want him to know where she was. Not yet. She needed answers before they talked.

Serena steeled herself for what lay ahead. In no universe did she expect the next few minutes of her life to be pleasant.

She got out of the Mustang and headed for Andrea’s front door.