Max Collins - Girl Most Likely

As if there were a right one.

“In addition,” she went on, “gather your thoughts about last night. Were you in the bar? How late were you there? Who did you see? Did you gather in rooms or in the lobby sitting areas with friends?”

She didn’t use the dreaded word “alibi,” but it hung in the air.

“Try to have any relevant information ready for the officers,” she said. “We’ll begin soon.”

The assemblage went back to its murmuring, and the waitstaff began doing a land-office business.

David came up to her and said, “I have some information that might be helpful.”

“Good. Share it with my investigators, would you?”

She walked the resort manager over to the table where her father and Booker sat.

They looked up at David as he said, “One guest checked out already — very early this morning. Around five a.m. Alex Cannon. From Chicago?”

Her father got to his feet.

Krista blurted, “Where are you off to?”

“Not the buffet,” he said.

Keith got to his destination by late afternoon. He’d made only one stop, outside Rockford, for gas and a restroom break, and finding the Naperville address on Gatesfield Drive had been easy, thanks to the Toyota’s GPS.

The lawn was vaguely green, like cloth after a few washes too many, with one small bony tree but many house-hugging evergreens, a tall central pine nearly reaching the three-peaked roof of the two-story redbrick Georgian, one peak over a three-car garage. This was less than a mansion but had surely cost its owner more than half a mil.

Two cars were in the wide drive, side by side: a pearl Lexus and a dark gray BMW. Keith pulled in front of the house and got out, wishing he’d brought a topcoat — February was turning cold again. He’d had the chance to grab something, when he stopped back at the house to pack a small bag, just in case this turned into an overnight. But he hadn’t.

He crossed some brittle grass to get to the sidewalk and up to the one-step porch and rang the bell by the inset front door.

A second ring wasn’t necessary — the door behind the glassed-in screen opened halfway, and a pretty brunette looked out, lip gloss her only makeup, her longish hair beautifully styled. She was maybe twenty-three, slender but curvy in a camel turtleneck sweater and dark skinny jeans. Her eyes were big and brown, and a plastic surgeon had given her a nice if overly carved nose. She looked vaguely familiar.

Her rather neutral expression blossomed into a smile of recognition and she opened the door wider. “You’re that police chief’s father!” she said, her voice on the soprano side.

He smiled tentatively. “Yes, my daughter Krista is Galena’s chief. Do you know her? Have we met?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t, we haven’t. But Alex pointed her out, and you, as well. Said you were a police officer, too, or used to be.”

Now he realized he’d seen her at the reunion last night, with her hair up and more makeup, but hadn’t realized she was married to Alex Cannon, who he was here to see. Lodge manager Landry hadn’t mentioned a Mrs. Cannon checking out with her husband, perhaps thinking it unimportant, since this lovely young woman was not a classmate.

Keith got out his wallet, flipped to the badge, held it up casually, not wanting to alarm her. “I’m working with my daughter as a police consultant. Something unfortunate occurred last night, after the reunion, and I’m hoping to chat with your husband.”

A crimson-nailed hand gripped the edge of the front door. “Oh. What unfortunate something?”

“Death of a classmate. I need to inform Alex.”

That should be vague enough to make it sound important but not overly troubling. And mentioning her husband as “Alex” should help.

Her frown wore worry not irritation. “I’m sorry, but a client of his dropped by and I think they’re—”

“Excuse me!”

The voice was male but not Alex Cannon’s, whose wife disappeared behind the open door, like a mouse scurrying to its hole. In her place was a big guy in his thirties in a navy orange-trimmed BEARS sweat suit, looking like maybe he’d once played tackle for them, judging by his Cro-Magnon forehead, oft-busted nose, and thick scarred lips. His hair was blond and short and his eyes blue, like some ancient Viking ancestor of the Larson family.

Only Keith was not getting greeted like a member of the family.

“You need not to be here,” the BEARS sweat suit guy said, his voice breathy, the words almost ridiculous — but not quite, considering the belligerent face they were emanating from.

Keith silently blessed his daughter for giving him that badge, which he held up to show the guy, who squinted at it with a scowl.

Badge still aloft, Keith said, “I need to see Alex Cannon. This shouldn’t take long.”

“That says Galena.”

“Right. Galena, Illinois. This is Naperville, Illinois. Would you like to see some badges that say Chicago on them? Like Barney Davis’s maybe?”

Davis had busted an LCN (La Cosa Nostra) client of Cannon’s and, though the mobster had gotten off, put him through a world of trouble. Of course, Barney knew nothing of the Astrid Lund murder, but the BEARS sweat suit guy didn’t know that, and — after some painful-looking thought transpired — backed away and disappeared.

Mrs. Cannon reappeared and offered up a nervous, embarrassed smile as she held the door all the way open and gestured Keith in.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Alex doesn’t usually do business here, but a few of his clients find it more convenient to, uh... anyway, I’m Ashley Cannon.”

“Mrs. Cannon,” he said with a nod.

Keith kept his billfold with badge in hand as he stood in the foyer from which open stairs rose. To his left was a formal living room with gleaming hardwood floors and expensive but bland maple furniture, somewhat countrified to go with views onto the forest preserve. Down a hall to the right of the stairs, the BEARS sweat suit guy was talking to someone Keith had never met, but recognized.

He was Sonny Salerno, grandson of Salvatore Salerno, who had been a Sam Giancana crony back in the bad old days. Sonny’s father was widely thought to be the current Chicago mob chief. This later edition Salerno was small, dark, and almost handsome, also wearing a sweat suit, but a blue-and-red CUBS one. Keith had been similarly dressed earlier and now for some reason was glad he wasn’t.

“It may be a few minutes,” Mrs. Cannon said, leading him into the living room. “Something to drink? Beer, pop, coffee?”

“Diet anything would be great, thanks.”

He slipped his billfold with badge in his back pocket, happy not to linger in that foyer. He had noticed that the guy’s BEARS outfit had a lump where the sweatshirt covered his pants waistband and might be a revolver tucked away.

They moved through the living room, which had the staged look of a Realtor’s open house, and into the kitchen with its shining silver stove and refrigerator and a wealth of maple cabinetry. She sat him at an island on a tall maple chair and served him a Coke Zero in a can.

“Big place,” he said. “Lovely,” he added, not exactly meaning it. He knew he would never live in a house worth half this kind of money, but had no desire to, either.

She leaned over the other side of the island, as if she were working the counter at a diner. “We haven’t been here long. Alex and I were only married last year.”

“Place this size,” he said, “would be perfect for a family.”

“That’s the plan,” she said.

An awkward silence fell as she found herself a chair down from him, leaving one between. She was having coffee.

Between sips, she said, “Do you mind my asking who died? I met quite a few of Alex’s classmates last night.”