Funeral for a Friend

by Brian Freeman

  “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?”

&
nbsp; “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.”

  16

  “It’s him,” Cat told Brayden. “I know it’s him.”

  She picked at the cranberry wild rice French toast on her plate, but memories of the previous night distracted her, and all she could see was the face of Wyatt Miller behind the bar at Hoops. She sat with Brayden on an outdoor patio at a Duluth hot spot called At Sara’s Table. It was almost noon, under a bright sun, and a green umbrella kept them in shade. She faced across the street toward a bus stop built at a corner lot that was overgrown and undeveloped.

  This was a babysitting morning. Cat’s two-year-old son, Michael, slept next to her in a stroller with the sun bonnet pulled down over his forehead. Michael’s adoptive parents, Drew and Krista Olson, had a weekly staff meeting at their Canal Park camping store, and Cat took the boy whenever they needed help. She kept a protective eye on the sleeping child, and her face bloomed with love whenever she studied his face.

  But even her son couldn’t calm her today.

  “He’s taunting me,” Cat went on softly, not wanting to wake up Michael. “He knows there’s nothing we can do to him. This guy gets to stalk me, and I have to sit here and take it, because I can’t prove it.”

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Brayden replied. “Wyatt may be the guy.”

  “But a green marker isn’t enough to search his place, right?”

  “That’s right. I’m sorry.”

  Cat shook her head. “You don’t believe me, either, do you?”

  Brayden reached across the table and put a hand over hers. She liked that his palm was warm, and she liked the calloused feel of his skin. “It’s not that. If Wyatt is the one doing this to you, we’ll find a way to prove it. But I won’t pretend that it’s going to be easy, unless he makes a mistake. I talked to him at Hoops last night. He said the green marker wasn’t his. He said it was lying on the bar and could have come from anywhere.”

  “Sure, it’s just a coincidence,” Cat said sourly.

  “Well, it could be. Or he could be the one. Or the real stalker could have planted it there. The thing is, if Wyatt is the one, now he knows you’ve got protection, and he knows I’m watching him. That may be enough to make him stop on his own. Most of these guys are cowards.”

  “It won’t stop him,” Cat said.

  Brayden eased back in the patio chair. His eyes were always moving, watching their surroundings, which made her feel safe. “Look, after I dropped you at Stride’s house last night, I went back to the department. I was there half the night, doing research on Wyatt Miller. There’s nothing to find. He doesn’t have a record here or in Boulder. No complaints, no assaults, no indications of any kind of violent behavior. Since he moved to Duluth, he’s gotten an apartment, a job, and a driver’s license. His background doesn’t raise any red flags.”

  “I don’t care about his background.”

  “Maybe not, but it limits what a judge will let us do.”

  Cat frowned in disgust. “Can I tell you something without offending you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I hate men. I feel like men should come with warning labels, like they do with cigarettes. Slap a big label on their foreheads. ‘Men Suck.’ I mean, we’ll date them anyway, but at least then we’d know the risks.”

  “You may be on to something.”

  “I’m pissed today, can you tell?”

  “Yes, I can tell.”

  Michael fussed in the stroller and began to wake up. His eyes blinked, trying to find Cat among the strangers on the patio. Quickly, she reached under the boy’s arms and pulled him into her lap. His face scrunched, threatening to cry, but she smoothly distracted him with Brayden’s car keys and bounced the toddler on her knee. He settled calmly against her chest.

  “You’re good with him,” Brayden said. “You’re a natural mom.”

  She blushed. “Thanks.”

  “See, not all men suck. Michael doesn’t suck.”

  “He’s just a little boy.”

  “Well, men start out as boys. What happens after that is mostly because of their parents. So Michael is lucky to have a mom like you, along with his adoptive parents.”

  “You really are sweet.”

  “Was it hard?” Brayden asked with a quiet seriousness. “Did you struggle with letting the Olsons adopt your son?”

  Cat’s eyes never left the boy. “It was very hard. All along, when I was pregnant, I wanted to keep him. I thought if I let him go, that made me a failure. Eventually, Stride and Serena made me realize I had to think about what was best for him, not me. I met Drew and Krista, and I knew they’d be amazing parents, but it was still hard. I cried so much after they took him. But at least I still get to be a part of his life. That helps.”

  “It’ll help him, too.”

  “I just hope he’ll grow up okay. I told you, men suck.” Cat inclined her head at the table next to them, where a woman was reading a copy of the Duluth News-Tribune. “Look at the headline. Everyone is talking about Devin Card. How he raped a high school girl while he was in college. I know so many pigs like that who think they can get away with anything. I don’t want Michael to be one of them.”

  “He won’t be.”

  Cat shrugged, because Brayden was just being kind. “I hope not, but he didn’t exactly win the genetic lottery. His father paid to have sex with a teenager. And then there’s me, the princess of poor choices.”

  “I couldn’t disagree more,” Brayden told her. “That actor who assaulted you? He was rich, entitled, and thought nobody could stop him. But you did. If Michael has half your courage, he’ll make you proud.”

  Cat frowned at the compliment. “I wasn’t brave or anything when I did that. I just jumped in, stupid and terrified. That’s what I always do. I never learn.”

  “Being scared doesn’t change what you did.”

  She looked at Brayden and then looked away. “I don’t usually talk about this stuff with anyone. I’ve never told people how bad it really was. Not even Stride and Serena. But I like talking to you.”

  “What about going to a counselor?”

  “I can’t talk to shrinks. I had a shrink once. He abused me, too.”

  Brayden exhaled loudly. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got the track record, huh? I just hope Michael grows up like Stride. Stride may be the only man I’ve ever met who isn’t a complete and total jerk. And yeah, I know, not every guy is a Dean Casperson or a Devin Card. You’re not.”

  “Devin Card was accused of rape. To be fair, that doesn’t make him guilty.”

  “Don’t tell me you think he’s innocent.”

  “Well, I’m a cop. Everyone’s innocent until proven guilty. I know false allegations happen, particularly in politics. And I know good people can make mistakes in identifying suspects.”

  “Rape victims don’t make mistakes,” Cat snapped.

  Brayden hesitated, as if he were tiptoeing through a minefield. “Don’t hate me for saying this, but yeah, sometimes they do. The wrong men have gone to jail.”

  “Now you sound like a jerk.”

  “Sorry.”

  Cat focused on Michael�
��s face until she was calm again, then she looked up and stared across the table at Brayden and felt herself wrapped up in his eyes. Strands of his blond hair had fallen across his face, and she wanted to reach over and smooth them back. There was something so compassionate and strong about him. If anyone tried to harm her, he’d be all over them. He’d take them to the ground. And yet when he talked to her, he had this soft voice, never getting upset, never getting frustrated with her, always smiling at her jokes and rants. When he looked at her, he saw her. He didn’t look through her as if she wasn’t there.

  The trouble was, she couldn’t be with any man without seeing the other men she’d known in her life. They were all sitting behind Brayden in the cafe, hiding in his shadow. The ones who’d assaulted her, violated her, made her feel like nothing. They never left her. She didn’t know how to send them away.

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Cat said. “You’ve been nothing but great to me, and you’re here giving up your free time to protect me, and what do I do? I call you a jerk.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ve earned that label plenty of times. My father would be the first to tell you that, and he’d be right.”

  “What about your mom?” Cat asked.

  Brayden shook his head, and Cat knew she’d touched a sore spot. “I was lucky like Michael was. The Pells were my adoptive parents. Grace Pell loved me just like Krista Olson loves this little guy. She was great. But she got ALS. Ugly, terrible, horrible disease. When she died, it was just me and Bob Pell. That wasn’t a good fit. He was devastated after losing his wife, and I don’t know, maybe looking at me always reminded him that she was gone. I loved him, he loved me, but we were like two dogs who growled at each other whenever we were in the same room. I had to get out of there.”

  Cat said nothing in reply. She sat there in silence.

  “Cat?” Brayden said. “Are you okay?”

  Still she didn’t answer. She barely noticed Brayden opening up his heart to her. She was too focused on a bus coming and going at the stop on the other side of the intersection. As the bus pulled away from the curb, a man appeared like a ghost on the sidewalk, staring at the restaurant.