Max Collins - Girl Most Likely

“She was doing an investigative piece on sexual misconduct, presumably in the workplace.”

Both eyebrows hiked. “Was she? I heard she was looking into something more dangerous than that.”

“What?”

She stood. One nice leg peeked out from the dark blue silk dressing gown. “I’m going to put the rest of my clothes on now. This conversation is over, and I have things to do this afternoon. If you’d like me to answer that question, and really answer it, maybe we could... how long are you in town?”

“Probably just tonight.”

“Staying where?”

“The Drake.”

“Ever eaten at that little old-fashioned bar on the lower level — the Coq D’or?”

“Many times.”

“Good. It’ll be my treat.”

“What?”

“I’ll meet you there at seven. Can you wait that long to eat? You have that Midwestern meal-at-five kind of look, but I like you anyway. Now shoo.”

She got up and literally shooed him out and the door closed on him.

He looked at it.

Did he have a date?

Krista had returned to Galena High School a number of times as a patrol officer, but this was her first visit in the uniform of chief. Like many former students walking the halls of a school they’d attended long ago, she felt like a ghost haunting the place, particularly since these halls were largely empty. This was an in-service day and teachers were holed up in committee meetings and training sessions, temporary prisoners of their own classrooms.

GHS hadn’t changed much. The building dated back to the mid-1950s, but the interior had been updated and renovated over the years. On the fringes of Galena’s west side, an educational oasis in a fast-food and Walmart wilderness, GHS was well maintained, with a small, handsome campus serving 260-some students. The local sports teams were well supported by the community, and the school itself was highly rated nationally.

She felt lucky to have gone there.

At a table at one end of the otherwise deserted library, Krista interviewed one by one the teachers who’d attended the reunion Saturday night. All were cooperative and happy to get out of training sessions they seemed to find redundant and committee meetings they appeared merely to endure.

First up was Chris Hope, the drama teacher, handsome as ever in a crisp white shirt and dark jeans, his short blond hair perfectly parted above his dark brown eyes. He sat back casually with an elbow on the arm of the hardwood chair.

Krista indicated her cell phone on the table. “I’ll be recording this.”

“Fine. Anything I can do to help.”

“You’re aware this is an inquiry into Astrid Lund’s murder.”

“I am.”

“Are you up for answering a few questions about Saturday night and early morning?”

“Certainly.”

“This is an informal interview.” Which was her way of saying he would not be read Miranda rights.

His grin was a little uneasy. “I’m starting to feel like a suspect.”

“We just need to establish a few things so we can eliminate you in that way, and also to see what you may know or may have seen.”

“All right.” He shifted in the chair, leaned forward, resting his forearms on the wooden table. “Astrid Lund was a gifted young woman, who in my small way I helped to get off to a start. I was fond of her. You can bet I’ll do anything I can to help you here.”

“That’s appreciated, Mr. Hope.”

His grin, a charming thing, lost its uneasiness. “I’m not your teacher now, Krista. You can call me Chris.”

“All right, Chris. Before we get into the specifics of Saturday evening, why is it you say you gave Astrid her start? I understand she almost certainly considered you an influential teacher of hers. But she was president of student council before she got into drama, outgoing and very popular already.”

He frowned just a little, as if she’d struck him a glancing blow. “She was, but... you knew her pretty well, didn’t you, Krista? I got the impression you’d been friends since forever.”

“That’s right,” Krista said, a little thrown that the questioning was turning back on her. “Since childhood.”

“She was a tubby little thing then, wasn’t she? Didn’t she blossom fairly late?”

“Yes. But she made up for lost time.”

Chris laughed. “Yes, she ran through her share of boys. I don’t think she was very popular with some of the other girls. You two had a falling out, didn’t you, over that Jerry Ward, boy reporter?”

“Yes.” How had the grill-er become the grill-ee?

“Well, you may recall I always went out of my way to talk to students, one-on-one, and see what had drawn them to drama, or music, if they were going out for the musical that the two departments mount together annually. To see what a student hoped to accomplish. To derive from the experience.”

“I remember,” she said. “I was not outgoing.”

“No, you weren’t. Not shy exactly, and I would say fairly self-composed. But drama allowed you to express yourself, come out of your shell.”

“Astrid wasn’t in a shell,” Krista said.

“She was as a girl, though, wasn’t she? In grade school? In early middle school?”

“That’s right. I guess I hadn’t really thought of that.”

Chris gestured with an open hand. “Well, inside the lovely young woman, who seemed so self-confident, was the unhappy overweight child who often overcompensated for a lack of self-worth. She could speak in public, but it was contrived, artificial, wooden. In drama, we worked toward a naturalness, a composure that, frankly, Krista, you already had. And where did it lead Astrid? To great success as a performer, which is what a newscaster is. That’s where it led.”

And to her murder, Krista thought.

“Which is why,” Chris went on, “her role in Into the Woods was a perfect sort of coming-out party for the realized woman she would become — Cinderella.”

Krista smiled at the drama teacher. “We’ll save why I made a good Little Red Riding Hood for later.”

“Why wait? Someone among us may be pretending to be Grandma when she or he is actually a monster.”

They both got quiet. Glib conversation had turned into something troubling... and accurate.

Krista asked, “Did you have a chance to speak with Astrid at the reunion?”

“Yes, briefly,” he said. “A lot of people wanted to talk to her, and I would have liked to’ve had some quiet, quality time. We did talk about getting together soon — not reunion weekend, but soon.”

“Soon meaning...?”

“She said she was working on a story, an investigative piece that would be bringing her back to Galena. She’d give me a call ahead of time so we could arrange a lunch or drink or something.”

“What story?”

“She didn’t say. Not a hint.”

“Astrid left the event rather early.”

He nodded. “Yes, I noticed her going. The band was still playing. I don’t know exactly when that was.”

“When did you leave?”

“Tyler and I stayed around till last call and beyond — mostly in that lounge, but also there’s a little area by a fireplace where a lot of the ‘kids’ sat and chatted. I don’t imagine we headed out till well after two a.m.”

“Did you see anything at the reunion that caught your attention where Astrid was concerned? An argument maybe? Anything at all?”

“No. In fact, I was struck by how classmates of yours would, frankly, suck up to her. She’s kind of famous and was obviously even more beautiful now than then.”

“Would you happen to know where you were the second week of August?”

“I do. I don’t have to check a calendar or anything. I attended the National Teacher’s Council of Language Arts in Atlanta. That covers the language arts as well as journalism, debate, and drama. Anything to do with the written or spoken word. Big affair.”