“Would he have any reason to kill her?”
“I wish he did. And you’d get him for it. Be nice not to have him around. The minute my ratings slip, my pretty bottom... and it’s still very pretty, I assure you... will be bounced out of here. I’ll be looking for work at a small station somewhere. Is there a station in Galena?”
“No. There’s a couple in Dubuque.”
“Good to know.” She was unpinning her hair. “You know, I had a lot to do with her success, Astrid’s. It was an All About Eve thing. I’m Margo, she’s Eve Harrington. You know that movie?”
“I know all Marilyn Monroe movies.”
“Ha! Anyway, I helped her climb, then she climbed on me, on her way over. I keep my eye on her, believe me.”
“Not anymore.”
She was applying some cosmetics now, from her purse. Leaning into the mirror. “I’m sorry. I sound cold.”
He said, “Astrid may have been a bitch or Eve Harringbone or whatever. But she didn’t deserve to get hacked up by some lunatic, or somebody pretending to be one.”
She turned to him. Her personal makeup was perfectly applied, very subtle, just right for a woman her age. Of course, to him forty-something was a kid. And oh you kid... big blue eyes, lovely carved features, just the face you want to deliver you the news, good or bad.
“I’m the bitch,” she said, “talking about her like that. She was very good at what she did, and she was going places. I don’t resent her that — certainly now I don’t. And it was my ever-loving ex who made the moves on her, I’m sure.”
“He has a motive.”
One eyebrow hiked. “Does he? Well, I know she dropped him. She has the ratings to get away with it. What motive? Getting dumped? Even my ex wouldn’t carve a woman up over that.”
“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?
Seventeen
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.”