Girl Most Likely

by Max Allan Collins

  Astrid Lund was the single most famous person to graduate with their class. Also, the only famous person to graduate with their class. Well, maybe a few others rivaled her. . .

  “I don’t think she’d miss it,” Jessy said. “The chance to lord it over everybody while she pretends to be nice? You should know better than anybody she wasn’t the Ms. Goody-Goody-Two-Shoes she tried to pass herself off as.”

  “Should I?”

  The big brown eyes got bigger and bored into Krista. “Didn’t she steal Jerry away from you, senior year? If I may be so blunt? After all, she stole Josh from me, for a while. Greedy little buh. . . witch.”

  Josh was Jessy’s husband. He ran the All American Popcorn Store on Main, a family business. They’d been married since shortly after graduation, and parents six months later.

  Krista asked, “How many glasses of wine does that make?”

  “Just two. My limit.”

  Their food arrived.

  “You and me, we both got our revenge,” Jessy said with a shrug, before biting into the club sandwich. “Didn’t we?”

  “How so?”

  Jessy shrugged again. “I got Josh, and my girls, and you got Jerry back, didn’t you? Took you a while, but. . . how’s that going, by the way?”

  Matter-of-factly, Krista told her friend about shooing Jerry out of the house to make room for a new boarder.

  “Your dad’s living with you now? Since when?”

  “Since Sunday.”

  Jessy frowned sympathetically. “How’s he doing?”

  She nodded, smiled. “Good. Better than I expected. We’re getting along. He’s a better cook than me, that’s for sure.”

  Jessy was studying Krista the way she might a water-damaged ceiling. “Does he know you booted Jerry out to make room for him?”

  Krista gave her friend a condensed account of how Pop had played detective and brought her to justice. And how Jerry had dropped by the office, with an interview as cover, and how badly that had gone.

  Jessy sipped white zin. “Weren’t you going to the reunion with him?”

  “I was. I guess I’m going stag now, or whatever you call a girl without a date.”

  “Call her a woman with possibilities.”

  They ate awhile. Even Jessy seemed to know having a date was better than possibilities.

  Krista asked, “Who else is coming that you know of?”

  “Reservations came in from quite a few out-of-towners. Chicago contingent includes Alex Cannon—would you believe it?”

  Alex was a top defense lawyer who got lots of media.

  “Mostly it’s the Galena crowd, of course,” Jessy said. “Ol’ Fearless Frank, another of Astrid’s conquests.”

  Frank Wunder managed a Buick dealership owned by his father-in-law, whose daughter, Brittany, was another Galena graduate, though two years behind Krista. Like Jessy, Mrs. Wunder had been a cheerleader.

  “In fairness,” Krista said, and touched a napkin to her lips, “I don’t think Astrid made conquests in the way you might think.”

  “Oh, you mean she didn’t put out? Maybe not, but she had enough on offer to have any boy she wanted. And she really got a kick out of taking a guy away from somebody else—particularly if it was somebody popular, like her.”

  Krista shook her head, chuckled. “Listen to us. We sound like we’re still a couple of kids, talking trash in the cafeteria.”

  Jessy used her napkin and tossed it on the counter. “Nonsense. Like you, I’m a successful professional woman. . . and I can’t wait to throw that in as many faces as I can!”

  They both laughed. Like a couple of high school girls.

  The blonde waitress, perhaps mildly amused at seeing the police chief and well-known Realtor behave this way, came over to see about dessert. The two successful professional women declined, but Krista had another cup of coffee while Jessy worked on her wine—she still had a little left.

  Something passed across Jessy’s face as she looked into the wineglass, swirling the liquid, as if she were trying to read her fortune in it.

  “Terrible about Sue,” she said quietly.

  “Sue? Sue Logan? What about her? Isn’t she a manager at Best Buy somewhere?”

  Jessy sighed and faced Krista with an expression turned suddenly grave. “You don’t know? You of all people. . .”

  “Know what?”

  Now Jessy glanced around, as if someone might be eavesdropping and, if so, that would be disastrous.

  “Sue,” Jessy said very softly, and somewhat melodramatically (this was her second glass of wine), “got killed.”

  “You’re kidding! When was this. . . ?”

  Jessy’s eyebrows went up. “Some time ago, actually. Her mother wrote the reunion committee, several months ago. I looked it up online. Her mother said only that Sue had been killed last August. We thought it might have been a car accident or something, but no. She was murdered.”

  Krista reared back. “Murdered? Sue?”

  “I know. She’s not the type.”

  As a police officer, Krista knew that there was no “type” when it came to homicide victims; but she let that pass.

  Instead she asked, “What did you learn online?”

  Jessy leaned close. Disturbingly, this felt even more like two silly girls talking in the cafeteria or maybe study hall. “It was terrible. Somebody stabbed her, a bunch of times. Left her bleeding on her own doorstep.”

  “Who did it? Did they catch him?”

  Wrong to assume it had been a man, she knew, but that was what came to her lips.

  Jessy shrugged. “No one knows. No neighbors saw anything. It’s terrible. Horrible! And none of us knew till way later. No one could go down to the funeral. . .”

  “Down?”

  Jessy nodded. “She was in Florida. Clearwater. She did work at Best Buy, and also at some big theater down there. Not movies—plays and concerts.”

  Krista nodded, too. “She was into that. Always into that. Liked working backstage, remember?”

  Jessy’s chin trembled. “And we didn’t even send flowers or anything.”

  Krista shrugged a shoulder. “We didn’t know to.”

  But she also realized that none of them would have gone to Florida for the funeral, even if they had known. Maybe the class would have sent flowers—the reunion committee, that is.

  Or maybe not. Life goes on. Death, too. More than life.

  “I’ll make a few calls,” Krista said, like that would do any good.

  “The police down there think it’s some maniac.”

  You think?

  Krista, straightening, asked, “Have we lost any of our other classmates?”

  Jessy nodded. “Two in Iraq. One in that car crash, remember?”

  Krista remembered, all right. She’d worked the scene.

  “Well,” Krista said, “we need to do a memorial for Sue and all the rest of them, Saturday night. Say a prayer or something.”

  “The reunion committee’s doing that,” Jessy said, just a little defensive. “We’ll be releasing balloons with each name. We were going to do floating luminaries. You know, sky lanterns? But the fire marshal nixed it. Lot of trees out at Lake View.”

  The two women, their giddy girlishness turned glum, paid their checks and went out together. At Jessy’s car, Krista asked, “Are you okay to drive? Do I need to have you walk a straight line or something?”

  “No, really. I only had the two. I’m not lying. I have no wish for you to take me in a back room at the station and work me over or anything.”

  They smiled, laughed. Neither meant it. The discussion of death was lingering.

  Still, Krista watched Jessy drive off, noting that her friend seemed to be driving quite normally. Then she got in her own car—she didn’t make use of department vehicles on personal business—and within five minutes was across the bridge over the trickle of river and onto Main. Two minutes or so later she was pulling into the PD lot.

  She got out of the
car, locking it with her key fob, and took the steps up to the Bench Street sidewalk. Leaning against the gray rock wall near the front door, in the shadow of the overhang, his arms folded, his weight on one leg, was Jerry.

  He was in a navy field jacket, light blue polo, jeans, and running shoes. He gave her an embarrassed grin, held his hands up in surrender.

  “I’m not stalking you,” he said, “I promise.”

  Now she was the one with folded arms, though she had her weight evenly distributed on her two feet. She said nothing.

  “And I’m not going to make a habit,” he said, “of ambushing you at the station.”

  “. . . Good.”

  “I think maybe I’ve been kind of a dick.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I’ve been kind of a dick. You’re just trying to do right by your dad. That’s a good thing. That’s the right thing. So I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “I wondered. . . you haven’t been returning my calls. Is why I came here like this.”

  “I didn’t feel like talking to you,” she said. No emotion in her voice.

  His smile tried too hard; he gestured awkwardly. “Reunion starts tonight. Casual get-together. . . Will probably be more fun than the more formal thing tomorrow.”

  “Probably.”

  “How would you feel about still going tonight?”

  “Well, I am going tonight.”

  He winced. “I mean, with me. I’ll pick you up at seven, if you’re up for it. Are you? Up for it?”

  She nodded, and went in, leaving him there.

  FIVE

  After almost a week back home with his daughter, Keith Larson was already settling into a routine.

  And “back home” was how he thought of it. He and his late wife had lived here for many more years than in the Marion Street ranch-style across the river. This was where he and Karen had raised Krista, and when the couple turned the house over to their daughter—what, seven years ago now?—they had left many of their things behind.

  The big house was furnished mostly with Karen’s hard-fought collection of mission-style furniture, particularly vintage Stickley things—chairs and a sofa and tables and cabinets with that distinctive stained oak finish, the metal fittings, the leather coverings, the boxy designs. To this she’d added touches—lamps with stained-glass shades, beaten-copper candlesticks, and hand-turned earthenware. Karen often said the contents were more valuable than the house.

  He and Karen had been pleased when Krista restricted her additions to modern mission-style things, from her computer table to the TV stand in the den. And when she’d thought about upgrading the guest bedroom with a new Arts and Crafts–type, but more comfortable, king-size bed, Krista had taken it well when her mother asked her not to. The bed was real Stickley, and anyway (Keith had added), why encourage guests to overstay their welcome?

  That was the bedroom he’d slept in the first two nights. But he’d had trouble sleeping, and found himself wandering in the wee hours into the bedroom he’d shared for so many years with Karen. Both nights he wound up sleeping on top of the covers. On the third night, he started out in that room and, at some point, crawled under the covers.

  That felt better to him. That felt right. Was it odd he always seemed to end up on her side of the bed?

  Yes, things were going well, but there was no question about it: Krista was trying a little too hard. His daughter had spent God-knew-how-much at Walmart buying a 65-inch TV, one of the new 4K models (whatever that was), for the basement rec room, specifically to encourage him to fix the space up as a man cave (awful term!) so he could invite his buddies over for Cubs, Bears, Bulls, and Blackhawks games—also Hawkeyes football and basketball, since so many of his old cop cronies lived over in Iowa.

  He’d tried to get her to take the monstrosity back—it seemed ridiculously large to him—but she refused, claiming she thought it would be fun to watch movies on.

  This was patently untrue, because the rec room was in no shape for regular viewing, and anyway they had a perfectly good flat-screen half that size in the den where the family had always watched TV. The room was cozy with a two-seater overstuffed couch that was definitely not Arts and Crafts, though the built-in bookcases were (albeit not designed for the collection of DVDs and Blu-rays that lived on those shelves now, Krista’s British shows, and his own John Wayne–centric collection).

  Anyway, Krista was clearly overthinking his circumstances, as if she were afraid if he wasn’t kept busy, he’d stick the barrel of his Smith & Wesson M&P nine in his mouth again.

  The very first day she had presented him with a list printed out on her computer. It said:

  Things that need fixing (easy to harder):

  bathroom faucet dripping (also tub)

  wall switch in upstairs hallway

  replace stained ceiling tiles in basement rec room

  fireplace damper won’t always close

  add more shelves in the linen closet

  replace old kitchen sink with stainless steel (cast iron too heavy and expensive, though it would look very nice—DISCUSS)

  patch where the squirrels are entering the attic (you may have to get up on the roof—so BE CAREFUL)

  repaint rooms that need it (check with me first on color!)

  sand and refinish wood floors downstairs (later upstairs can be done)

  re-caulk the outside windows (many need new glazing)

  Going over that list, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe suicide wasn’t such a bad option.

  But he would chip away at the list. He was up for all of it, although he might leave the sink and the squirrels to more experienced hands.

  On Wednesday he’d put the Smith & Wesson M&P nine millimeter automatic in the top drawer of the guest bedroom where he’d at first been sleeping. On Thursday, he decided to move all his things back into that master bedroom he and Karen had shared for so long. When he first opened the drawer, to start the move across the hall, he thought Krista had removed the gun, maybe hidden it from him. But then he realized he must have covered up the weapon inadvertently, just getting into the drawer for his drawers.

  He chastised himself for thinking ill of his daughter, but when he hefted the S&W, the weapon felt light. Upon closer examination, he realized it was unloaded.

  And his box of nine millimeter shells, which he’d tucked in one corner among his underwear, was MIA. He searched the drawer and then, somewhat ridiculously, all the other drawers, even the nightstand ones.

  So she’d left him his gun, but stolen his bullets.

  He could confront her, of course—“Even Barney Fife got one bullet!”—and she would undoubtedly cave and give them back to him. But he would rather find them. If discovering her previous housemate’s recent presence wasn’t enough to convince her of his detective abilities, he would further demonstrate.

  As George W. Bush had once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”

  He tried her underwear drawer, figuring she might stash the cartridges where she figured he’d be too embarrassed to look. A cop should have known better than that. And maybe she did, because he found no bullets stored among her bras and panties and lacy unmentionables, leaving him with nothing but the red flush of embarrassment.

  Still, he figured he was on the right track. An intuitive flash sent him to the upstairs bathroom near Krista’s bedroom. He opened the supply closet onto shelves of towels, Band-Aids, Q-tips, bubble bath, hair spray, deodorant, toothpaste, bathroom cleaners, toilet paper, and. . . Tampax.

  Three boxes, one in front of the other.

  He just stared at them for the longest time—maybe five seconds. Couldn’t quite bring himself to look inside. So he shook the first one. Nothing but a gentle, papery rattle. He shook the second one. The same. He shook the third, which had already tipped its hand by its weight, and heard a clunk.

  The previously opened, and otherwise empty, feminine hygiene box contained his bla
ck box of 147-grain Speer Gold Dot nine millimeter cartridges.

  He reclaimed them.

  Then, with a smile, he went to his daughter’s room, where she had a notepad by her nightstand phone, and wrote: If you need to borrow ammo, just ask. This he tore off the pad, folded, and put inside the empty feminine hygiene box.

  If she’d found the note, it hadn’t come up at any of their subsequent regular evening meals. Or at their breakfasts, which she was fixing, the same as her mother always had—scrambled eggs, toasted English muffin, butter not jam, and orange juice. He had never been a coffee drinker and she got hers at work.

  As the week progressed, he settled into a routine. On Tuesday he’d arranged for a membership at the local fitness center, where he would exercise three mornings a week and swim any day he felt like it. He had always enjoyed the many restaurants a tourist town like Galena offered and would, unless he got tired of it, take lunch somewhere downtown. So far he’d tried the Victory Café, the Golden Hen, and the Green Street Tavern. Liked them all.

  In the afternoon, he would chip away at Krista’s list of things for him to do. And, so far at least, he would by midafternoon be preparing supper for his daughter and himself. He had planned the whole week’s menu, and driven on Tuesday afternoon back to Dubuque for meat at Cremer’s Superette, and Hy-Vee for everything else.

  Today, he made skipperlabskovs—veal again, a pound and a half of it, onions, peppercorns, medium-size Idahos (peeled and cubed), chives, bay leaves, and plenty of butter. This would make more than one meal for them, and the smell of the stew was sheer ambrosia.

  Oh, how nice it was to be back in this kitchen again. He could almost feel Karen peeking in to see how he was doing, or sense her creeping up on him to give his ass a friendly pinch. But she’d always known not to hover.

  When Krista came home, she knew immediately from the warm, wonderful aroma what her father was cooking. He knew it was another favorite of hers, and a couple of times a year (after he and Karen moved across the river) they would have their girl over for the stuff.