Girl Most Likely

by Max Allan Collins

  They went upstairs to their respective beds. Krista took a shower first, and Keith got in bed, on his own side (knowing he would drift to Karen’s in the night), and began reading the novel he’d been working on since he got here.

  One of the things his daughter had done, preparing for his arrival, was unpack some of the boxes of his books. In the guest room, where he’d started out, she filled a bookcase with his Civil War collection. He was less than a buff, but when he first came to Galena, the General Grant connection had got him started reading.

  A local used bookstore, Peace of the Past on Main, had fed his interest. Nonfiction titles by Bruce Catton, Garry Wills, Shelby Foote, and more lined the shelves, with fiction by Foote again, John Jakes, and Gore Vidal, among others. As he settled under the covers, in pajamas Karen had bought him, he began in the nightstand lamp’s glow to read the next chapter of MacKinlay Kantor’s Andersonville, his second trip through the novel.

  A knock at the door interrupted him just at the point he was about sleepy enough to put the book down. His daughter, in her blue bathrobe, had reached in to knock on the open door, her smiling expression somehow tentative.

  “Hope I’m not bothering you,” she said.

  “Not at all.”

  “You always got along with my friends, right?”

  He noted his place, closed the book, and set it on the nightstand. “Not as well as your mother did. And of course I loathed Jerry, or really any boy who thought he was good enough for you.”

  She smiled and came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “How would you like to say hello to some of the kids?”

  “Why, are they going to drop by? Tomorrow, I hope. This day is over for me.”

  “Me, too. And I am talking about tomorrow.”

  He sat up straighter. “Honey, if you want to have some of your friends over, and want me out of here, that’s no problem—”

  “No. It’s just. . . I don’t have a date for tomorrow night, now. Since the breakup and all. It’s a chance for you to see the kids, and. . . How about going with me? Filling in for a lousy no good son of a bitch?”

  “I guess I could manage that,” he said. “Maybe not the son-of-a-bitch part. . .”

  “Good,” she said with a little laugh. Then she noticed Andersonville on the nightstand. “Is that what you’re reading? About a nasty Confederate prisoner of war camp?”

  “Seems to be.”

  She slipped off the edge of the bed. “No wonder you almost blew your brains out.”

  She kissed his forehead, and went out.

  EIGHT

  The turn to Lake View Lodge was a left off Highway 20 West just beyond the Galena city limits. Krista and Keith Larson were in her Toyota and she was driving. She’d been out here countless times, but at night the irregular W leading to the lodge, seven slow miles through incredibly scenic landscape, could be a challenge, particularly on an overcast night blotting out the nearly full moon.

  The thickness of largely leafless forest to her left, the rolling golf courses to her right, were mere suggestions, until the world brightened with floodlights upon reaching the lodge itself.

  Lake View was a complex of intersecting modern buildings with rustic touches by way of olive siding and fieldstone chimneys. Its beautiful woodsy setting was in its skeletal winter phase, clumps of snow nestling half-heartedly here and there. Cars already crowded the parking lot—the cocktail party hour before the banquet had been going for half an hour—but out-of-towners had sought places near the front lobby. Krista found a place in the side lot, close to the adjacent convention center where the reunion was being held in the banquet hall.

  They emerged from the Toyota ready for the “dress-up” night, but not ostentatiously so—her father in a nice dark gray suit from Men’s Wearhouse set off by a royal-blue-and-white-striped tie, the GHS school colors.

  Krista was in a little black Ralph Lauren dress, picked up at a Nordstrom Rack in Oak Brook—half off the already discounted price. The black lace dress, with little cap sleeves, hit her just below the knee. The neckline was conservative, too, setting off her mother’s pearls. Low-heeled, comfy pumps and a little pop-of-color red Kate Spade purse on a gold-chain strap completed the effort (half price at an outlet store).

  Chic on the cheap!

  For February, the evening was chilly but not cold, and she braved it rather than bother with a coat. Her father didn’t wear a coat, either, the suit enough. They strolled the outdoor walk past the glassed-in indoor pool and went into the modest convention center lobby, where a few of her classmates were standing around chatting. Krista offered them a collective smile and wave as she and her father started up the wide stairs.

  More classmates, women in cocktail dresses, men in suits (her father’s cleverness dashed by frequent royal-blue-and-white neckties), were in the wide hallway outside the banquet room. Pop took her arm and guided her inside, where perhaps sixty people—classmates and significant others—were engaged in murmuring conversations that added up to a roar, many with phones out to share pictures of kiddies and grab selfies.

  Round tables for six were everywhere in the high-ceilinged, modern, open-beamed banquet room, with a wall of windows onto the lake. No music was playing, but a small stage was set way off to the left, with a portable dance floor already in place. Food stations with servers were set up along the wall opposite the lake view—Italian, Chinese, Mexican, side dishes, meats for carving.

  “Somebody’s popular,” Pop said, giving her a sideways smile. “Looks like three football teams huddling around one quarterback.”

  It did at that, and Krista had a good idea who the “quarterback” was. As they drew closer, heading for the table where Jessy and Josh Webster were seated, chairs waiting for the Larsons, she got a glimpse through the wall of fawning classmates (male and female alike) gathered around the obvious belle of the ball.

  Astrid Lund was smiling, laughing, listening, occasionally answering a question, but only granting a few words at a time, though generously posing for selfies. Tonight she wore a dress Krista remembered from last month’s Vogue—a Dolce & Gabbana form-fitting red satin ruched number with spaghetti straps and a ruffled flounce hem.

  Suddenly Krista felt like she was wearing a potato sack—a frayed one.

  Galena High’s favorite female alum was wearing impossibly high, pointy-toed gold heels—Christian Louboutins, as their red soles announced. Her clutch purse was iconic Chanel, quilted black leather with intertwined Cs on the front flap. The oversize Rolex of the night before had been replaced by a delicate diamond-studded wristwatch—Tiffany? Movado?

  Astrid’s hair, swept up in a French twist, a few carefully selected strands falling loose, made Krista in her short, styled do feel like the tomboy she sometimes feared she was.

  They joined Jessy and Josh at the table. Her friend looked chic in a black tuxedo-style pantsuit, and Josh looked spiffy in a navy suit with, yes, a royal-blue-and-white tie. They both greeted her father warmly, and he and Josh shook hands. Pop, who hated small talk, held the chair out for Krista, putting her next to Jessy and himself between his daughter and an empty chair.

  Jessy whispered, “Hope you don’t mind. I invited Frank and Brittany to join us.”

  “That’s fine,” Krista said, not loving that, but not really minding either.

  “It’s just,” Jessy said, “Frank was on the football team with Josh.”

  “Sure. You and Brittany can talk cheerleading and I can remember what it was like being unpopular.”

  Jessy grinned at that and slapped Krista gently on the arm.

  When Frank and Brittany finally joined them, the jock-turned-car-salesman—that’s right, Frank in a royal-blue-and-white tie—was nice enough to field drink orders for everybody, volunteering to take care of the first round. Krista and Jessy asked for white zins.

  “Get me a zombie, Daddy,” Brittany said to Frank, her eyes and speech indicating some pregame drinking, which had taken the plumply sexy blonde halfwa
y to Walking Dead herself. She was trying a little too hard again tonight, hot-pink mini-spandex dress, plunging neckline, too much jewelry, too much teased hair, over-rouged cheeks, long fake eyelashes.

  Still, Krista thought, most of the men in this room would be drooling over what Frank had at home. And, damn, those were some kick-ass motorcycle boots!

  Pop and Josh got up to accompany Frank and haul back all those drinks.

  Jessy leaned close. “Did you get a load of the Girl Most Likely?”

  “Sure did.”

  “What do you make of that outfit?”

  “I feel like I’m wearing clown shoes.”

  “Oh, sweetie, you look fantastic in that dress! But do you think our Astrid’s all decked out in a knockoff?”

  Brittany, empty chairs on either side of her, looked up with half-lidded eyes and said, “Don’t think so. Bet that’s five grand she’s wearing easy.”

  Jessy said, “Oh, please!”

  Krista said, “Astrid’s on the top-rated news show in Chicago. She must be pulling in real money. Those shoes? A cool thousand. That little purse? Another five thousand.”

  Jessy rolled her eyes. “Maybe I should see if she’d like to buy a little Galena getaway and fight that big city stress. A modest million-dollar mansion, perhaps.”

  The men returned and distributed drinks to the women. Josh and Frank had carried beers over for themselves, and her designated-driver father was having a Diet Coke.

  Various classmates dropped by to say hello, and pretty soon the guys except for Pop, who was sitting glancing around and taking things in, got up to mingle. Girlfriends of Krista’s and Jessy’s would come by and fill chairs for a few minutes, catching up, exchanging cheek kisses and the occasional hugs and selfies, saying they really should stay in touch, then scurrying off not to.

  When the cocktail hour was over, everybody found their chosen tables and went to whichever food stations appealed to them. All the options smelled and sounded good to Krista, and both she and Pop had a little of everything. A second round of drinks, Pop’s turn this time, were acquired to go with the food. It was all very pleasant. Fun. Nicer than Krista might have hoped.

  At one point, Pop asked Jessy, “Is there any kind of program tonight? Nostalgia stuff? Slide show, video of graduation. . . ?”

  Jessy shook her head. “We decided against that. Maybe next reunion. We just haven’t been out of school long enough for that to seem a long time ago.”

  But it kind of was. Krista had the experience almost anybody did at a class reunion—seeing geeky girls who had blossomed into beauties, and beauties now overweight or otherwise gone drab, wearing the same hair and clothing styles as ten years ago. That seemed less true of the men, though now and then she would spot a guy who’d grown older than would seem possible—ex-military and farmers whose hard lives showed in lined faces and prematurely gray hair.

  Brittany, who said very little and was on her third zombie—a potent drink Krista had tried only once in her life—said to Jessy, “Tell me about the band.”

  “They’re from Chicago. The committee drove to a gig of theirs across the river and checked ’em out. They’re called the Cover Band, and that’s spot-on. Play everything from Train to Maroon Five, Foo Fighters to Oasis.”

  Pop, listening to this, looked like a dog trying to figure out what the hell its master was saying.

  Brittany gave up her first smile of the night. Small but easily discernible.

  “Cool,” she said.

  Shortly after that, the band got started—two guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums, five guys in black stocking caps, dark sunglasses, black jeans, and matching jackets. This, apparently, was their version of “dress-up” night.

  They were excellent, nailing every cover song while giving it something of their own, and the dance floor filled up right away. Soon only Krista and her father remained at their table.

  “Cops don’t dance,” Pop advised her, with a raised eyebrow.

  “Well, I do.”

  “You’re a chief. You make your own rules.”

  “I bet you danced with Mom.”

  “She was chief of the household.”

  “Don’t be so old.”

  “I try not to be. Starts with maintaining my dignity and never dancing in public.”

  They both laughed a little. The size of the hall, and the band restraining themselves, meant conversations like this were possible.

  Pop was looking past her. “Look who found a date.”

  She glanced where his eyes indicated. Jerry, in a black sport coat, skinny tie, and black jeans, working hard at his hipster persona, was guiding a young woman toward the dance floor. Krista didn’t know her, but recognized the girl as a waitress from a local Italian restaurant—a slender brunette in a dark green sweaterdress, lots of nice leg showing.

  “Young,” Krista said.

  “Well, maybe he was confused.”

  “How so?”

  “When he heard it was a high school reunion, he stopped by there and made a date.”

  That made her smile. One of her favorite things about her father was the way he could deliver a deadpan joke.

  “You mind if I sit?” a female voice said, pleasant, polite. Alto. Well enunciated.

  Krista turned her head and next to her, leaning in just a little, was the lovely face of Astrid Lund, those ice-blue eyes almost spookily beautiful.

  “Sure,” Krista said, with a smile so awkward it felt it might fall off her face.

  Astrid settled herself and her probable five-thousand-dollar dress where Jessy had been sitting. She smiled across at Pop.

  “Mr. Larson,” she said. “Been ages. You look good.”

  “Thanks, Astrid,” he said. “You don’t look bad, yourself.”

  Her smile turned sad. “I was talking to somebody earlier, I forget who, and they said Mrs. Larson has passed away. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Krista and Pop said, overlapping.

  “She was my third-grade teacher,” Astrid said. “My favorite teacher ever. I think a lot of us felt that way.”

  They both smiled and thanked her for that.

  “Could we talk?” Astrid said to Krista.

  Pop started to get up. “I can go. . .”

  “No,” Astrid said, gesturing him back down. “Please stay. . . It’ll just be silly girl talk you can ignore.”

  Pop got back in his chair and turned it some, to watch the band, as if he were really interested. Maybe he was, in some oddly sociological way. In the meantime, Astrid and Krista conversed in low tones, or anyway as low as possible with a rock band playing in the same room.

  “I wanted to apologize,” Astrid said, “about last night.”

  Krista frowned. “Apologize. . . ? Why? What for?”

  Astrid sighed, perfect eyebrows flicking up and down. “Well, I understand you were there with Jerry Ward. And after he rushed up and monopolized me for a while, you slipped out, I heard. I felt terrible about it.”

  Krista couldn’t resist. “As bad as you did when you went after him back in high school?”

  Astrid flushed. Actually flushed, and with that Nordic complexion of hers, her cheeks seemed to flame. “I was awful to you back then. I don’t know what I was trying to prove, and I’m not going to indulge in cheap self-psychoanalysis.” A sigh. “I owe apologies to half a dozen women in this room, and maybe I’ll get around to that. . . but I wanted to start here. With you.”

  “Why?”

  “We were such good friends, once upon a time. I remember how. . . this was so very long ago. . . in first and second grade, we were BFFs, and then in third grade, they split us up. I was in your mom’s class, but you were made to be in the other third-grade class.”

  “I remember,” Krista said. “There was a section that was half third grade and half fourth, and I got stuck there.”

  Of course, it wasn’t an effort to split the girls up—it was just that Krista couldn’t be in a class taught by her mother.
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br />   “But the next year,” Astrid was saying, “we were back together. All through middle school, and high school, too. . . most of high school. Till I got between you and Jerry, anyway.”

  “Maybe you did me a favor.”

  “Aren’t you. . . back with him?”

  Krista shook her head. “No. He’s here with some girl who just reached puberty. My escort is my father.”

  Pop didn’t react to that, apparently fascinated by the Cover Band, currently playing “Monkey Wrench.”

  Astrid frowned just a little; judging by the smoothness of her skin, she didn’t do that much. “I hope I wasn’t the cause of—”

  “You weren’t. Jerry being an ass was the cause.”

  That made Astrid smile. She nodded. “Okay. Good. Listen, I wonder how you might feel about me doing a piece on you. About you. For WLG—TV, not radio.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  Astrid flipped a hand. “You’re the youngest female police chief in the nation. I haven’t checked it thoroughly, but you may be the youngest, period. Plus, Galena with its tourist trade is unique, and a place people in Chicago know of, even if they haven’t been here. Would you, please? Let us bring a camera crew here?”

  “Well. . . sure. I guess.”

  The reporter smiled big. “I’m staying at my folks’ place. They’re in Florida. Are you going to the class brunch tomorrow?”

  “Not sure,” Krista admitted.

  “Me either,” Astrid said. “Maybe you could stop over first thing in the morning—say eight? And we can talk over coffee. It’s still the same address.”

  How many times, from grade school through GHS, had Krista been in that house? She had a sudden pang for their lost friendship.

  “I’ll be there,” she told Astrid.

  “Great!”

  After they’d exchanged cell numbers, Krista sighed and smiled. “You really seem to be going places.”

  Astrid rolled her eyes. “I’d like to. It’s a rough business. I’ve been promised a co-anchor spot this fall, and if I do well there. . . who can say?”