“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.”