“Never took her under your wing?”
“No. Now, Kelly did, Kelly knew her well. You should talk to her about that.”
His wife, Kelly, the girls’ gym teacher and basketball coach.
“Coach, did you interact with Astrid at the reunion?”
“I never ‘interacted’ with her in my life. I didn’t speak to her at the shindig, or nod at her or anything. We barely knew each other. I noticed people making a fuss. That’s it. Still, a fine-looking young woman. What a damn waste!”
Krista knew some man would say that sooner or later. That it was somebody from Bragg’s age group was no surprise.
“What time did you and Mrs. Bragg head home?”
“Ummm, I would say around one in the morning. We hung out awhile with your classmates in the lounge there, threw a few back, had some laughs, shared some old times. A lot of those grown men were my boys on the Pirates. Senior year they were state runners-up.”
“Would you happen to know where you were the second week of August?”
“I do know. But I’d have to think to be exact about the this-and-that of where we went and what we did. Kelly and I have a cabin on the Mississippi, up in Wisconsin, near Prairie du Chien. Spend our summers there. Beautiful country. Go biking, some nice trails.”
She tried to imagine this big man on a bike. “You didn’t go on a trip, a vacation?”
“That is our vacation. We just kick back. Talk to Kelly about it. She’ll fill you in.”
Kelly Bragg, in her vague fifties like her husband, said much the same thing about Prairie du Chien and their cabin on the river. They rarely went anywhere else during the summer. And during the school year, they stole weekends up there, when football and basketball season allowed.
“Do you remember what you did, specifically, the second week of August?”
“Well, I believe that was the weekend we had company. A friend of Bill’s, another coach, stayed with us at the cabin, I think. I’d have to check my calendar, but it was in August. Why do you ask?”
This was the first any of the interviewees had inquired about the significance of the second week in August. And the Logan murder had not yet been connected to Astrid Lund’s in the media.
“Another classmate,” Krista said, seeing no reason to keep a lid on it, “who you may recall... Sue Logan?”
“Yes, I remember Sue. She was on the basketball team when you were, Krista. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes. Well, she was murdered, too. On the Thursday of the second week of last August. Very similar circumstances.”
The hazel eyes grew large and began welling with tears. “How terrible. How perfectly... is the same person responsible?”
“We don’t know. We think it likely, but we don’t know.”
“So... where we were, what we did, in August... you were asking for an alibi?”
Krista thought about how to answer that, then finally just said, “Yes.”
The gym teacher sat and stared for a few moments.
Then Krista asked, “Did you speak to Astrid at the reunion?”
She nodded. “Yes. Just briefly.”
“What did you say exactly?”
“Just... that I was proud of her.”
The woman began to cry.
Krista handed her a tissue and waited for a while. Then: “You and Astrid were close, I believe.”
“We... we were. I guess you could say I was a kind of... mentor.”
Krista took air in and let it out. Sat forward.
“Mrs. Bragg, I’m going to ask you about something, and if it makes you uncomfortable, I understand. I won’t ask you about it again, unless it becomes a necessary element in the investigation.”
The gym teacher swallowed. Her eyes were red. “That sounds rather... ominous.”
“There’s a rumor, and it is just a rumor... for now... that you and Astrid were seen in the shower together, in the gym dressing room.”
The woman’s face turned white as a blister. But she did not deny it, instead saying, “The girls shower together frequently. On occasion I’m among them. If I’ve... worked up a sweat.”
“This wasn’t a group of girls. Reportedly, it was just you and Astrid. You were soaping her back. Though nothing overtly sexual was seen, there was a shared intimacy.”
Her chin came up, but trembling. “You were one of my girls. Did I ever... touch you or say anything to you, inappropriate?”
“No.”
“Every girls’ gym teacher has these kind of mean things said about her. It’s a cruel cliché. I’m a married woman!”
“You would characterize your relationship with Astrid as...”
“It was not a relationship! She was a girl who needed support after a... after a troubling incident. I joined her in the shower and washed her back and comforted her. This was after an evening practice where she hadn’t shown up. Astrid came in late, after all the girls were gone and I was just getting ready to take a shower myself. She came in, crying, and I helped her. Helped her undress. Took her into the shower and, yes, I washed her and I comforted her.”
“What troubling incident?”
“It was what you would probably call... date rape.”
Eighteen
The Coq D’or, midafternoon, was not hopping, which was okay with Keith. Drinks and casual meals shared here with Karen over the years were enough to keep him company, the kind of memories that could warm a cold, windy February day. The narrow, low-ceilinged bar, snugged away on the ground level of the Drake as if to utilize a spare hallway, claimed to have been the second such establishment to open for business the day Prohibition ended. He believed it.
He had two dates here tonight. One was later, with a beautiful woman. The other wasn’t.
Keith walked past the low-riding tables with their white tablecloths and red leather chairs and selected a high-backed stool at the long, half-a-wall’s worth of bar. An ancient bartender in a black vest, white shirt, and black tie nodded in recognition, though it had been a year since Keith and Karen had last visited.
“Heineken?” the white-haired relic asked.
“No Carlsberg?”
“Still no Carlsberg, sir.”
“Heineken.”
The bartender went to get that and Keith glanced around. The familiar place comforted him — the wainscoting, the French murals, the red leather banquettes.
The Heineken arrived and the bartender poured it. “Alone today?”
“A friend is joining me.”
“Not the lovely lady?”
“Passed away last September.”
“... Life is sweet, life is cruel.”
“Who said that?”
“Me.”
The two men exchanged weary smiles. They didn’t make bartenders like this anymore. Of course, the old boy could be both sweet and cruel himself, as Keith had seen him treat many a customer down the bar with surly resignation.
The man in a trench coat — style topcoat came in looking like a detective, a well-dressed one, which is what he was, and how he intended to look. Lt. Barney Davis of the Chicago Homicide Bureau — some years ago a detective with Keith in Dubuque — might have been Sam Spade in pursuit of a dame or maybe Eliot Ness after a keg to empty, one way or another.
As if that weren’t enough, Barney looked a little like Jack Webb, in the fading days of Dragnet — a sixtyish, slightly puffy-faced guy who’d seen every awful thing men could do to each other and had traveled from the moral indignation of the young to the contemptuous boredom of the middle-aged.
The homicide detective settled onto the stool. “You know what they charge for beers in this rarefied dive?”
“I’m paying.”
“That helps.” Then a smile blossomed on the lumpy face and Barney slipped an arm around Keith for half a hug. “You look skinny.”
“You don’t.”