Catch a Falling Knife

Alan Cook

Chapter 1

My cell-phone rang while I was deep into a game at the Silver Acres Chess Club. I swore silently and mumbled an apology to my opponent, Wesley, who was trying to fork my king and rook with his knight. This was not the time for interruptions, but since only a few people knew my cell-phone number and they had been warned not to use it short of a dire emergency, on threat of disinheritance, I figured I’d better find out who was calling.

I located the phone in my purse and said hello.

“Lillian, it’s Mark.”

The voice of my granddaughter’s happy-go-lucky boyfriend sounded so strained that I was immediately concerned. Anyone who saves my life, as Mark had, earns the right to have my cell-phone number and also my full attention, day or night.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, gripping the plastic phone tightly and hoping I could make the problem go away with a wave of my hand.

“Yes. I…it’s…”

Mark made a few more sounds, but didn’t produce any intelligible sentences. This must be serious, indeed, since he had never been at a loss for words as long as I had known him. I looked at my watch. Four o’clock. “Can you meet me here for an early dinner?” I asked.

“I’ll be in the front lobby in an hour.”

I said goodbye and disconnected.

“Is there a problem?” Wesley asked. He had started exercising since his wife had died, several months ago, and he had lost some weight. He didn’t look too bad for an old guy.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I’m going to have to cancel dinner.”

“I heard. That’s okay. I’ll eat with Tess.”

If Wesley meant to make me jealous, he failed. Tess, my best friend at the Silver Acres Retirement Community, had no interest in Wesley, except for conversation and tax advice.

“Let’s finish the game,” I said, turning my attention to the board. But my concentration didn’t return. Wesley not only succeeded in grabbing my rook, he soon launched an onslaught against my king. I resigned, not very gracefully. I am a bad loser. I excused myself and went back to my apartment.

***

Mark was true to his word. He came through the doorway into the retirement community’s lobby promptly at five o’clock and gave me a hug, but not his usual smile. As we walked the short distance to the dining room he said, “I needed somebody to talk to.”

Meaning that he hadn’t talked to Sandra, my granddaughter. And he didn’t say anything more to me before we arrived at the dining room a few minutes after it opened for dinner. Only a handful of the residents had preceded us and we should be able to converse without interruption. I chose a table for two, which would further assure our privacy.

I observed Mark as he absently glanced at the day’s computer-printed menu. Lines had appeared on his handsome face where I had never seen lines before. When our waitress, a pretty and petite black girl in a ponytail and a dark miniskirt, came to fill our water glasses, I watched him again. He had an eye for the ladies, but he barely glanced at her.

We went to the salad bar and returned to the table with plates loaded. I couldn’t contain myself any longer. “Mark, what is the matter?” I asked.

He looked as if he was trying to think of what to say, then blurted out, “I’ve been accused of sexual harassment.”

“Harassment?” It took several seconds before I processed that. “By whom?”

“By a student at Crescent Heights College.”

He had just started teaching at the small private college north of Durham at the beginning of the second semester a few weeks before.

I sat there with my mouth open, not knowing what to say.

“Lillian, I didn’t do it.” Pain showed in his dark eyes.

“Of course you didn’t.” Mark was a flirt, but he would never do anything to hurt a woman. I asked, “What, specifically, are you accused of?”

“I…I haven’t seen the actual charges, but I think they include rape.”

“When did you find out about this?”

“Today. The school has established what they call the Sexual Misconduct Office of Crescent Heights. The students call it SMOOCH. The head of this office called me in.”

In my long teaching career, I had never heard of such a thing. I said, “What happens next?”

“I have a week to prepare my defense.”

“We’ve got to get you a lawyer.”

“I can’t have a lawyer with me at the hearing.”

This was getting worse and worse. “At least you need a lawyer to discuss your defense with and to educate you on courtroom procedure, such as cross-examining your accuser.”

Mark shook his head, morosely. “I can’t face my accuser.”

“What about your constitutional rights? What about trial by jury?”

“Since Crescent Heights is a private school they make their own rules. The Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to them. And this is billed as an informal inquiry, not a legal procedure.”

“But it can get you suspended.”

“Or possibly fired.”

“Did you know about this…policy when you went to work there?”

“Yes, but I didn’t think I would have a problem. Besides, I needed the job.”

Mark had completed work on his Ph. D. at the University of North Carolina last fall. His preference would have been to get a job at UNC, here in Chapel Hill, or Duke, in nearby Durham, where I had taught, but he wasn’t able to land a teaching position with either of them.

“Do you at least know who filed the charges?”

“Yes. But I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t? Or won’t because you think I would make trouble.” I have not been known to sit idly by when things go wrong.

“I’m under a gag order.”

“I assume your accuser is a woman. At least you can tell me that.” Start with the basics.

“Yes, a female student in my beginning Physics class.”

Our waitress came and served the main course, halibut for me, a beef dish for Mark. We both took the fried apples, which were very good here; they smelled and tasted of cinnamon. I let Mark take a few bites of his food. He needed the nourishment. A disaster like this could end his teaching career almost before it started. But it wasn’t going to happen without a fight. Mark wasn’t a quitter, and besides, I wouldn’t let him give up. But first I had to find out what had happened between him and this…ungrandmotherly epithets came to me.

I picked at my food, not eating much. Finally, I said, “Tell me as much as you can about this girl.”

Mark finished chewing his mouthful. “She’s a sophomore. I believe she’s twenty. I think she’s bright, but she’s cut class a couple of times. The lecture is at eight o’clock and not all the students are early risers. At least once I noticed her sleeping in class.”

“What does she look like?”

“Like our waitress, only lighter.”

He had noticed her. He wasn’t dead yet. “Lighter in weight or in color?”

“She’s white.”

“Rate the looks of this white girl on a scale from one to ten.”

“That’s politically incorrect.”

“Don’t make jokes, Mark. This is serious.”

“She’s an eight, easily. She might be a nine, dressed up, especially later in the day.”

That wasn’t good. The story of a beautiful girl was more likely to be believed than that of Raggedy Ann. Or was it? Perhaps the plain girls got more sympathy. “Tell me what happened between you two.”

“Up until last week I had just answered questions for her in the lab. Of course I do that for everybody. But last week she came to my office.”

“Lil, you didn’t tell us you were going to have dinner with Mark.” I looked up at Tess and Wesley, who had just come into the dining room together. Tess had an eye for younger men. I didn’t blame her; I do too. Since they both knew Mark, handshaking and air-kissing went on for several seconds.

“So why are you keeping Mark all to yourself?” Tess persisted.

I love Tess dearly, but sometimes she can be awfully nosy. “We’re talking about family matters,” I said, hoping she would go away.

“Are there wedding bells in the future?” Meaning between Mark and Sandra. I said, “I’ll tell you all about it later.” Tess looked miffed, but at least Wesley could take a hint. He guided her to another table.

“Where were we?” I asked, turning back to Mark. “Oh, yes, you were telling me about the time the white girl went to your office.”

Mark collected himself. “She came in just as my office hours were ending.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Uh…jeans. And a sweater, I think. And a jacket. It’s still winter.” He paused.

“Okay, go on. I won’t interrupt again.”

“She came in and closed the door. I told her my office hours were over. She said she just had a quick question. I said I kept my door open when I had visitors.”

“Especially female visitors.”

“One of the tenured professors told me to do that. But she ignored the hint and sat down.”

I remembered I wasn’t going to interrupt, so I kept quiet as Mark took a breath.

After a few seconds Mark continued. “She did ask a question, but nothing very earth-shaking. In fact, I don’t even remember what it was. Then she stood up and I thought she was going to leave. I was sitting in front of my computer, but I got up to see her out the door. She went to the door and turned around. I was a couple of steps from her. She came toward me and…” Mark faltered, then continued, “She kissed me hard-on the mouth.” Mark stopped, unable to continue.

“What did you do?”

“I pushed her away-gently-and said something stupid like, “I’ve already got a girlfriend.”

“That wasn’t stupid.”

“When I pushed her my hand may have brushed against her breast. Anyway, she stood looking at me, and with a straight face she said, ‘Now you know how I feel about you.’ Then she turned around, opened the door and went out, closing it behind her.”

“Did you try to follow her?”

“No. In fact, I didn’t move for about five minutes. I had that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one you get when you’re sure something terrible is about to happen. Unfortunately, I was right.”

I had the same feeling. I asked Mark a few more questions about the incident to try to find out whether he had forgotten any details, but apparently he hadn’t. What now? I said, “Have you told Sandra about this?”

Mark shook his head, looking miserable. “I’m afraid she won’t understand.”

With reason. Sandra had shown annoyance with Mark’s flirting in the past. No telling how she would respond to this. Still, she had to be told. I said, “What’s your current status at Crescent Heights?” You haven’t been suspended yet, have you?”

“As of right now I’m still teaching. In fact, I have two classes to teach tomorrow. The eight o’clock and a one o’clock.”

We needed a plan. I knew some lawyers, but I didn’t see what a lawyer could accomplish in the short run. And apparently, we didn’t have a chance of getting the policy declared unconstitutional. What could we do immediately? “Take me with you, tomorrow,” I said. “I want to sit in on your class. And look around the campus. And maybe talk to some people.”

Mark hesitated. “I leave here at 6:30.”

“I’m an early riser. You can pick me up and jump on the Interstate.”

“What about King?”

King was my part-husky dog. I had named her after the lead-dog of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, the Mountie on the old-time radio show, in spite of the fact that she was female. I usually walked a mile with her in the morning. “I’ll take her for a short walk and leave her outside with food and water. The cold doesn’t bother her. I’ll ask Tess to take her for a walk later. King likes Tess because Tess gives her cookies.”

Mark acquiesced. He knew I wasn’t completely useless, as I had proven before. But I wanted to make sure he was going to do the right thing. I said, “Now you go home and explain the situation to Sandra.” Mark had been living in Sandra’s condo for a while, with Sandra and her two-year-old son, Winston. “And, hopefully, everything will work out.”

Mark smiled, wanly. “But first, can I have some dessert? I saw on the menu they have do-it-yourself sundaes tonight.”

Chapter 2

I waited for Mark in the parking area near my apartment, shivering in the cold and wishing spring would spring. He still hadn’t arrived five minutes after our agreed-upon time. That wasn’t like Mark. I waited a few more minutes, wondering whether I should call Sandra’s condo from my cell phone. Maybe he had forgotten me.

Then his old Toyota appeared around the curve of the rim road, easily recognizable in contrast to the newer cars of the residents who still drove. As soon as I got into the car I could tell that his outlook hadn’t improved since last night. If anything, he looked and sounded more depressed as he greeted me with a weak hello.

As we drove away I tried to think of something to say to cheer him up. Finally, I said, “We’ll lick this thing. Don’t let it get to you.”

Mark looked straight ahead at the road and said, “Sandy kicked me out.”

The first thoughts that came into my head were words that you can’t say about your granddaughter. Sometimes she seemed to have her head on backwards. With an effort I got myself under control and said, “She shouldn’t have done that.”

“I can understand why she did it.”

Maybe Mark was too understanding. But I didn’t have to be. I would have a talk with Sandra. But for right now he needed a place to stay until this could be resolved. He had buddies at UNC who would undoubtedly put him up on a temporary basis, but I didn’t want him separated from our family. He was too good a catch to let him get away, even if Sandra didn’t realize it.

My son, Albert, Sandra’s father, had plenty of room on his farm a few miles from here, but of course he couldn’t show favoritism toward Mark, even though I knew he liked him. Rules like that didn’t apply to me, though. I said, “You can stay with me and sleep on my spare bed.”

Mark protested, but his heart wasn’t in it. I’m sure he saw the wisdom of keeping in contact with the family. I emphasized that and the convenience of my location, between Sandra’s condo and Albert’s farm. He had to agree with me. I glanced at the back seat of the car. It was filled with his personal belongings.

***

From my seat in the corner of the front of the lecture hall I turned and looked up to watch the young men and women file in through the doorways in the raised back of the room. A goodly number of students were taking beginning physics. As a retired mathematics professor I was glad to see that. It boded well for the future of our country. Of course, if you looked and listened more closely you could tell that some of them had come to the U.S. from other countries to attend college, but many stayed after they graduated.

I wore my blue pantsuit and hoped I looked like an observing professor, but I suspected from the dress of the students, which had deteriorated from my days at Duke, that I needn’t have worried about my clothes. Mark, however, looked sharp in creased slacks and a sweater.

I spotted Mark’s accuser as soon as she entered the hall, even though my eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be. Mark had said he didn’t know whether she would show up, but I hadn’t been able to think of any reason why she wouldn’t, since if he said or did anything to her he would probably be fired on the spot.

I had no doubt that it was she. Although Mark hadn’t told me her name, and thus hadn’t violated his gag order, he had given me enough information to recognize her. He and I had communicated in code before. We were attuned to each other’s thought processes. I glanced at Mark, who was already standing at the podium, but he was going through his notes, or pretending to, and he apparently hadn’t seen her.

She took an aisle seat in the very top row. She wore jeans and a jacket, like many of the other students, women and men alike, but the combination of her delicate face, luxurious dark hair and slim body set her apart. Would she also have the audacity to attend the next Physics lab, which was in a much more intimate setting, if Mark still had his job then?

The raised seating in the small auditorium reminded me of a story I had heard several times in my teaching days. Male architects, the story went, designed most buildings and they made the angle of ascent in these raised classrooms such that the male professors had the optimum opportunity to look up the coeds’ skirts. This was probably an urban legend, but in any case it didn’t take into account today’s relaxed dress code. Most of the students, female and male, wore jeans in winter so there wasn’t much leg for Mark to see.

Mark started the lecture promptly at eight. Before he had a chance to say many words, a young woman in the middle of the front row raised her hand. Mark recognized her. She stood up and said in a loud voice, “Dr. Pappas, I just want you to know that a lot of the students support you. We believe that you have been wrongly accused. We will do everything in our power to help you.”

She sat down and applause broke out. Mark looked flabbergasted, the way I felt. Wasn’t this Star Chamber proceeding supposed to be secret? I looked at the audience; about half of the students were applauding. I craned my neck to see Mark’s accuser in the back row. Her eyes were cast down. One curious thing: I was the only one looking at her. Could it be that they knew about the charges but not who had made them?

Mark continued with his lecture, stumbling a few times before he got a rhythm going. My heart went out to him.

***

Somehow, Mark got through the lecture in one piece and even impressed me. He gave a coherent presentation that I understood. He told a couple of jokes and elicited some chuckles from the audience. When he finished he received another round of applause, again from about half the students. He didn’t acknowledge it, pretending to be busy putting his notes into his attache case. By the time I stood up and looked around, his accuser had disappeared.

The students filed rapidly out of the lecture hall. Mark remained occupied until they were gone and then looked up. In answer to my unspoken question he said, “Nobody is supposed to know about this. They told me it was completely confidential.”

“Somebody didn’t get the word,” I said. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Bad news has a way of leaking out, especially if someone has a reason for wanting it to be public.

As we walked up the sloping aisle toward the exit I heard loud, human-sounding noises coming from outside the hall. Now what? We reached the back and could see outside. A bunch of students, mostly women but also a few men, paraded in front of the entrance, carrying placards and shouting. I couldn’t make out what they were shouting because they drowned each other out, but the placards had words written on them.

Samples were: “RAPISTS ROT IN HELL,” “HARASS THE HARASSER,” and one particularly nasty one carried by a coed who looked like a sumo wrestler: “DO UNTO OTHERS: FUCK MARK PAPPAS.”

The signs reminded me of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the sixties, but the words on these signs were intensely personal. Did they have constitutional protection here at Crescent Heights College? Was it only Mark who didn’t?

Mark clearly wanted to get away from this. I said, “Go on. I’ll see you later.” He gave me a questioning look, but I said, “I’ll be all right.” I didn’t think the students would attack me, but I didn’t have the same confidence in regard to Mark.

He left the scene at a fast walk. Some of the students followed him, but they had to practically run to keep up. The number thinned and when there were only a few left he stopped and confronted them. He talked to them for a few seconds. Apparently, whatever he said made an impression because when he went on and disappeared around a building they came back to the group.

The others had stopped chanting now that the object of their wrath was gone. I went up to the sumo wrestler and said, “What’s going on?” She looked at me suspiciously. I didn’t know whether she associated me with Mark because we had come out of the hall together. I said, “I’m Professor Morgan.”

“Hi, Professor,” she said. “Dr. Pappas has been charged with sexual harassment.”

“How do you know that?”

“Everybody knows it.” She waved her hand in a big circle, indicating the whole world.

“Do you know the specifics of the charges?” I asked, trying to sound professorial.

“Uh…no, but harassment is harassment.”

“Who preferred the charges?”

“That information is confidential.” She looked shocked that anybody would even ask. She obviously didn’t know.

I wanted to ask her why the name of the harassee should be confidential if the name of the harasser wasn’t, but that would just get me tied up in my underwear. Instead, I said, “To summarize, you know that a charge has been filed against Dr. Pappas, but you don’t know who filed it. You also don’t know the nature of the charge. You have no idea whether Dr. Pappas is guilty of the charge. And yet you have the right to harass him with your obscene shouting and obscene signs.”

A circle of placard-carrying students formed around me as I spoke, and the expressions on their faces were not pretty. I looked from one to another and tried not to panic. They wouldn’t hurt an old woman-would they?

The sumo wrestler appeared to be their ringleader. She spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “We will not tolerate male pigs on this campus. You have been oppressed your whole life and are used to being oppressed, but our generation isn’t. Do you understand me?”

I didn’t know I had endured a lifetime of oppression. I also couldn’t picture anybody oppressing her, but I understood her all too well. I also understood that it was time for me to leave. Mustering all the dignity I could, I walked between her and another student and on toward the administration building. I resisted the desire to run and tried to heed the words of Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back because somebody may be gaining on you.”

As soon as I had put enough distance between me and the demonstrators so that I could breathe I started to look around. Mark had given me a map of the campus, which had modern buildings and was set among hills that would be green as soon as leaves appeared on the trees. The well-kept lawns were already green. Yellow forsythia and yellow daffodils had started to blossom in flowerbeds beside the walks.

The bright greens and yellows put me in a better mood. I walked up marble steps and through doorways with glass doors into the Administration Building.

Chapter 3

A functional and impersonal counter greeted me as I entered an office directly opposite the entrance. A student type sat behind the counter, busily staring at a computer monitor. I wondered what she was looking at. I had used computers when I was a professor, but I had never owned one and I didn’t derive much pleasure from watching a screen. I preferred reality.

She reluctantly dragged her eyes away from whatever enthralled her and said, “Can I help you?”

I repressed a desire to say, “I don’t know, can you?” and to give her a lecture on the difference between “can” and “may,” but that job belonged to an English teacher. I said, “Yes. My name is Professor Lillian Morgan. I would like to speak to Priscilla Estavez.” Mark had given me her name.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“ No. I just need five minutes of her time.”

“What’s it in regard to?”

“I would like to ask her some questions about your sexual harassment policy.” I tried to say that in a positive way.

“She’s in a meeting.”

“That’s okay. I’m in no hurry; I’ll wait.”

“I don’t know how long the meeting will last. You can have a seat if you want to,” she said, doubtfully.

Everybody was always in a meeting. I took a few steps to a chair set against the wall, with thin metal legs and a molded seat and back in one piece. I sat down and noticed that its lack of comfort was not conducive to waiting. I hoped my presence would motivate my helper to contact Ms. Estavez.

After several minutes I heard her talking to somebody on the phone. She spoke softly and the counter intervened so I couldn’t understand what she said. But then her head appeared above the counter and she said, “Ms. Estavez will see you now.”

She directed me down a hallway that started at one end of the counter. I passed several doors until I came to one with a sign beside it that read, “Patricia Estavez, Student Affairs.”

The door was open so I walked in. Ms. Estavez sat behind a metal desk, reading a document, but she looked up and smiled as I entered. She stood and said, “I’m Priscilla Estavez.” She offered me her hand across the desk.

“Lillian Morgan,” I said, as I took it.

She said, “Nice to meet you,” and motioned me to a seat in front of the desk, which I accepted. It was more comfortable than the one in the waiting area. “What school are you with, Professor Morgan?” she asked.

“Duke.” I said it almost without thinking and hoped I didn’t look too old to still be teaching. By contrast, she looked young and earnest. She had pulled her reddish-brown hair back into a knot and she wore frameless glasses. Her white blouse was buttoned up to the neck.

“I attended Duke,” she gushed. “What department are you in?”

“Mathematics.”

“Oh, I could never do math.” She laughed and I smiled in what I hoped wasn’t a condescending manner. She looked me over for a few seconds. “What can I help you with today?”

“I understand that you’re in charge of the Sexual Misconduct Office.”

“That and a few dozen other things. This is a small college. We have to wear many hats. It’s not like Duke.”

I chose my words carefully. “I’m doing a study of harassment policies-on the side, of course-and I’d like to find out something about yours. I’ve heard it’s unique.”

“Oh, is Duke thinking of changing its policy?”

Be careful. I had only a vague idea of Duke’s current policy. “No. That is, not right away. I’m doing this pretty much on my own.”

“Well, let me give you a brief outline. The reason we implemented a new policy is because it was very difficult for a student to file charges of rape or similar abuse. We needed an approach that was more sensitive to the needs of the victims. When you say our policy is unique, it isn’t really. We have modeled it on those of several larger schools. But I believe that we’ve added several features that are logical extensions of the other policies. I like to think that we’re on the cutting edge.”

Said she, modestly, but as if she were reading from a script. I suspected her brief outline might go on for some time. Maybe I could shortcut the process.

“Can you give me an example of something that you’ve added?” I asked.

Ms. Estavez leaned forward, her elbows on the desk. “Well, one thing we decided is that the sexual harassment policy for students should apply equally to the faculty. We don’t want our students protected halfway. Faculty members are in a position of power and you know what they say about power corrupting. Our students come here, still innocent of the outside world-innocent and impressionable. A faculty member with the wrong attitude can do immeasurable damage to a student.”

I tried to remember how many students I had damaged in my career. I noticed that her words so far had been gender-neutral. I said, “It’s interesting that you’ve extended the policy to faculty members. Have you had occasion to use the policy with a faculty member yet?”

Ms. Estavez peered at me, but I had an innocent look on my face. “As a matter of fact, we had a complaint filed just this week. Of course, you understand that I can’t tell you any specifics about it. It’s a test case for us, to see how the policy works with regard to a faculty member. If we can nail this one, we’re on our way.”

“I’ve heard that the defendant isn’t allowed to confront his accuser or to cross-examine witnesses. Aren’t those provisions unconstitutional?”

Ms. Estavez looked at me sharply. “This is a private school. The constitution doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

The voice of the girl from the reception area spoke to Ms. Estavez from the doorway behind me: “Your 9:30 is here.”

“Thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.”

I had one more thing to say before she dismissed me. “On my way over here I saw students carrying signs, apparently as part of a protest. The signs contained messages about harassment. The name Dr. Pappas was mentioned on some of them. Is Dr. Pappas the faculty member who is accused?”

Now Ms. Estavez looked at me with open hostility. She didn’t say anything.

“I guess my question is, if the harassment proceedings are confidential, how did the name of the defendant get to be public knowledge?”

She abruptly stood up. “This discussion is over,” she said.

I decided not to paste Ms. Estavez in the face, but to retreat as gracefully as I could. I stood up and offered her my hand across the desk, as I said, “Thank you very much for your time, Ms. Estavez. You’ve been very helpful.”

At first I thought she wasn’t going to shake hands with me, but I kept my hand out and kept a smile on my face. She resisted for a few seconds, but then she quickly shook my hand, sat down and started fiddling with some papers on her desk.

Feeling the thrill of a minor victory, I walked out the door and back down the hall to the reception area. There, standing at the counter and chatting with the receptionist, was Mark’s accuser. Like the first time I saw her, I didn’t have any doubt about her identity. She glanced at me without interest, but I took a good look at her.

Close up, she was striking. The vivid contrast between her dark hair, dark eyes and white face was enough to turn any man’s head. A touch of red on her lips added just enough color to the picture. I was sure she wasn’t wearing any other makeup. She had unzipped her synthetic jacket and I got a hint of a shapely body underneath, but I couldn’t tell specifics because of the bulkiness of the sweater she wore. However, her jeans were tight and skinny.

I had a sudden urge to ask her why she wanted to destroy Mark’s life. I hesitated in front of her. She looked at me again and it occurred to me that speaking to her here would blow any chance Mark had for redemption. But I almost couldn’t resist. I had to physically shake myself into moving again.

I headed out through the front doors of the Administration Building, knowing that Ms. Priscilla Estavez would shortly summon this girl into her office to plot the demise of Mark Pappas.

***

As I retraced my path down the marble steps I considered lying in wait for Mark’s accuser and having it out with her on the spot. I am a direct sort of person and I like to face difficulties head-on. I saw a bench sitting beside the walkway she would take when she left the building. It would be easy to spot her from there when she appeared and then intercept her.

If I could get her to admit that she had framed Mark, maybe she would drop the charges. Whatever the specific charges, there couldn’t be any truth to them. When she saw the error of her ways my impetuousness would be justified.

On the other hand, if she refused to drop the charges it would be curtains for Mark when my relationship to him became known because Ms. Estavez would be able to say that he had revealed his accuser to me, despite the gag order. And although that could be argued, I knew what chance we had of winning the argument. Zero.

“Professor. Professor.”

The voice behind me called twice before I understood that I was the one being hailed, among all the people walking by, perhaps including other professors. I stopped and turned around as the girl from the Administration Building reception area ran up to me, panting.

She was dressed in a style similar to Mark’s accuser, wearing jeans and a sweater, but no jacket. I couldn’t help comparing them. They were about the same height, but her hair was an indeterminate brown color, her eyes and face normal but unremarkable, her body slightly chunkier than the other. Small differences, perhaps, but huge in the way the world would treat her.

“Professor,” she said again, somewhat out of breath. “I wanted to talk to you.” She gulped some air and continued, “When I poked my head in Priscilla’s office to tell her about her next appointment I heard you mention Dr. Pappas.”

She hesitated and I figured I’d better not say anything.

After a few seconds she continued, “I’m taking a class from Dr. Pappas.”

She hesitated again so I said, “How do you like him?”

“He’s great. He’s the best.”

I didn’t know whether she referred to his teaching style or his looks so I waited.

“I think he has been unjustly accused.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he’s too nice a guy. I talked to him in his office and he was a perfect gentleman. He didn’t come on to me.”

No surprise there, but I didn’t see how this would help Mark. I said, “Perhaps you could be a character witness for him.”

She laughed, shortly, and said, “I don’t think they allow character witnesses. But I was wondering if you know Dr. Pappas.”

My guard immediately went up. I said, “I think I’ll make it a point to meet him.”

“If you do meet him could you pass on a message? Just don’t tell him I gave it to you.”

“What’s the message?”

“Tell him that he should go to the Club Cavalier and look for the Shooting Star.”

“Why should he do that?”

“He might find out something that would help him.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

She looked nervous. “I can’t get involved. Please, would you do it?”

“You could send him an anonymous note.”

“Notes can be traced. Please.”

She wouldn’t be satisfied until I promised. “If I talk to him I’ll tell him.”

“Thank you. Remember: the Shooting Star at Club Cavalier.” She turned to go.

“Wait,” I said. “What’s your name?”

She raced back toward the Administration Building without answering. I couldn’t catch her; I could follow her into the building, but I decided I’d better not risk running into Patricia Estavez or Mark’s accuser again.

Mark’s accuser. This girl must know her name. She had announced her to Ms. Estavez and she had chatted with her. Again I was tempted to go back into the building. But if I nosed around too much it could only hurt Mark. I restrained my impulse for the second time.

As I strolled among the students I thought about what she had told me-that she had heard me mention Dr. Pappas. I tried to reconstruct the sequence of events and was positive that I hadn’t mentioned Mark until after she had passed on her message and left the office. That meant she had been listening outside the door.

***

I pondered what to tell Mark about my activities as we drove back to Chapel Hill late that afternoon. I hadn’t seen him since the morning class. He had been tied up with office hours and other appointments. He had also started a research project and had been busy at lunch.

After leaving the Administration Building I had strolled around the campus for a while, nostalgically remembering my days in academia and wondering whether I still had the stamina to teach. I didn’t see any more demonstrations against Mark, for which I was thankful.

When I became tired of walking I repaired to the library and found a book on chess to while away the time. I had started to carry a miniature chess set in my purse because it bugged me that Wesley played a better game than I did. I used my set to work through some problems in the book.

I ate lunch in a cafeteria full of laughing and shouting students and remembered that one of the reasons I had retired was to gain some peace and quiet. I did one more thing: I found a telephone book and looked up the address of Club Cavalier.

“I hoped you weren’t bored out of your mind all day,” Mark said, interrupting my reverie.

Some of his normal good spirits seemed to have returned. I envied him because he never stayed depressed for very long.

“Answer some questions for me yes or no,” I said, still not sure what to tell him. “Was your accuser present in class this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Was she sitting in the top row?”

“Yes.”

“Was she wearing…? Never mind. All the girls were wearing the same damn thing.”

Mark actually laughed.

“What will you do if you get suspended or fired?”

“Go back to bartending. I made good money as a bartender.”

Bad question. I tried another one. “What do you know about Club Cavalier?”

Mark took his eyes off the road to look at me. “Where did you hear about Club Cavalier?”

“I heard some people talking about it. What kind of a place is it?”

“It’s a local topless bar. A hangout for students, among others.”

“And girls dance there?”

Mark looked at me again. “Why the sudden interest in topless bars?”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Lillian! What kind of a question is that?”

“An unfair one, but, nevertheless, humor me and answer it.”

“No, I’ve never been there. I won’t try to make you believe that I’ve never been to a topless bar, but I figured that a brand new instructor should conduct himself in an impeccable manner. A lot of good that did me,” he added, bitterly.

“Well, if you get fired you can always tend bar there,” I said, trying to cheer him up.

“Yeah, wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? But you still haven’t told me what you did all day.”

“Oh, I hung out,” I said, using a student expression I had overheard. “Walked around, played some chess. Nothing very exciting. Oh, I did have a nice meeting with Patricia Estavez.”

“I’ll bet. Tell me about it.”

Chapter 4

“The meeting will come to order,” I joked, striking my coffee cup with my spoon in lieu of banging a gavel. It was Saturday, the day after my visit to Crescent Heights College with Mark.

I was holding the meeting in my apartment at Silver Acres and the participants included Mark, Tess and Wesley. We sat at my small dining table, drinking coffee and eating carrot and celery sticks. Wesley’s health kick since his wife had died included an improved diet as well as exercise. Tess and I often ate dinner with him in the main dining room so we were influenced by his diet. Thus the veggies instead of gooey rolls or cookies.

King circled the room, placing her nose on one lap after another, begging to be scratched behind her ears. I should have chained her outside, but these people were all her friends and she enjoyed the attention.

I quickly outlined Mark’s predicament to Tess and Wesley. Then I had Mark tell about the meeting that had occurred between him and his accuser in his office. He told it the same way he had told it to me, almost word for word. Tess exclaimed, “I don’t believe it,” from time to time and Wesley got a very concerned look on his face.

After Tess and Wesley had been filled in on the facts, I said, “Our purpose here is to help Mark come up with a plan of action. We discussed getting him an attorney, but he can’t have an attorney present at his hearing and he can’t face or cross-examine his accuser so there doesn’t seem to be much point to him having one.”

“When is your hearing?” Wesley asked Mark.

“The exact date hasn’t been set yet,” Mark said, “but probably sometime next week. I gather that there is a separate hearing first for my accuser.”

“And who is present at these hearings?”

“A panel of about five people. One of them is Patricia Estavez, who Lillian met yesterday.”

“I don’t mean to sound negative,” I said, “but if she is the deciding vote your goose is cooked. And I suspect she leaked the information about you to the protestors to create a negative buzz. Presumably, that will make your firing easier for your students to accept.”

Mark grimaced in agreement.

“If the policy states that information about the case is confidential, the leak may be grounds for an appeal,” Wesley said.

“Except that an appeal is handled by basically the same group,” Mark said. “It’s called the adjudicating panel. In addition to Ms. Estavez, it also includes two deans and a faculty member, all specially trained in sensitivity to sexual misconduct.”

“Which apparently means sensitivity to women but not men,” I said.

“What kind of testimony can you give?” Wesley asked. He was a CPA and had been an accountant in the world of business, so he took a practical approach to problem solving.

“Basically, all I can do is tell my side of the story. That’s about it. There won’t be any witnesses because there weren’t any. As I said, I can’t question my accuser. She won’t be present when I am.”

“So it’s your word against hers,” Tess said. “I would believe you before some dippy girl.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Unfortunately, none of you can attend the meeting.”

“How about character witnesses?” I asked, remembering the girl from the Administration Building.

Mark shook his head. “I asked about that. I was told that I might produce a dozen witnesses and they would turn the proceeding into a farce.”

“I’m sure you can produce a hundred character witnesses, but the proceeding is a farce anyway,” Tess said. “And since it’s done in secret, it will be impossible to appeal or correct any bias, intentional or otherwise, on the part of the panel.”

Speaking of bias, it was obvious that we all had the same opinion. I should have invited Priscilla Estavez to give her side of the story. I felt I had a moral obligation to stand in for her. I said, “I understand that the reason for the policy is that students-meaning coeds-had previously found it difficult to file rape charges. They had to cut through a lot of red tape and the college officials tried to downplay problems.”

“But now they’ve swung the pendulum too far in the other direction,” Wesley said, “Out the window go due process and other protections our country is grounded on. Does the charge in your case include rape?”

“I don’t see how it could,” Mark said, “but Ms. Estavez implied that it did. I guess rape is as good as any other charge because I can’t understand how any charge could have been made. But the policy is worded so loosely that what actually happened might be used against me if my accuser had some kind of mental and/or physical impairment that I should have been aware of.”

“Such as having a crush on you?” I asked.

Mark shrugged. He wasn’t conscious of his attractiveness to women, which of course made him that much more attractive.

“All right, this is what we’re going to do,” Tess said. “We’re going to write a script for Mark to use when he testifies. Lillian, do you want to take notes? No, I’d better do it because my handwriting is better than that of anyone else here and I have experience because I acted as Lillian’s secretary when she solved Gerald’s murder.”

Tess produced a yellow pad and her glasses from her purse, which she put on, being careful not to disturb her perfectly coifed white hair. She had come prepared.

“In many enterprises, the secretary runs the company,” Wesley said, with a smile. “I’m sorry; I should have said administrative assistant. I understand that there aren’t any secretaries any more.”

“I may not have a lot of work experience, like the rest of you,” Tess continued, “but I was a member of my local school board and I ran into people like those who are likely to be on the panel. I had to deal with issues like school busing to achieve integration, so I understand the politics of victimhood.”

“Who are the victims here?” Mark asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? The women students. They are so fragile that they have to be protected from their tormentors and can’t even be in the same room with them. Now Mark, you’re going to tell what happened pretty much as we heard it, but you’re going to do it in a sensitive manner. For example, when you tell about pushing your accuser away you’re going to say that you were trying to protect her because you understood that she might have a crush on you that could affect her judgment.”

Although Tess had not held a job most of her life-her career had been that of a housewife-she had a truckload of common sense and she was a lot better at the sensitivity thing than I was. My advice to Mark might have been to tell everybody involved with the case to go to hell, which wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere except thrown out on his ear. Knowing my weakness, I was happy to let Tess take the lead.

As the others talked and Tess took notes, I thought about my next step. I needed a man to help me. Ordinarily, I would have asked Mark, but I had to disqualify him because he was the defendant. Wesley was too old. He didn’t drive much at night and he was too far removed in years from his youth to be able to think like a young man. I had only one logical choice-my son, Albert.

Chapter 5

Albert had some of the same flowers blossoming on his farm that I had seen at Crescent Heights College, including daffodils and forsythia. In addition, he had flowering quince, star magnolia, plum trees and some early roses. A warm spell at the end of February had followed a snowstorm and prompted the flowers to make their appearances, causing the earth to look and smell like spring. I hoped that the quick freezes we were subject to wouldn’t kill them all off.

The four generations of our family had a tradition of eating Sunday brunch at the farm. I brought baked goods while Albert and Sandra prepared the main meal. Sandra’s two-year-old son, Winston, brought his charming and inquisitive self.

As I drove along the mile-plus length of the gravel road leading to the farm I couldn’t help but shiver when I passed the spot where I had almost been killed the previous summer in order to keep me from exposing the murderer of Gerald Weiss. But as time went by the shivers decreased and I could look back on the experience from a distance, as if it hadn’t really happened to me.

Mark had been a regular at these brunches for many months, but he had declined to come today, saying that if Sandra didn’t want him to live with her she wouldn’t want him to eat with her, either. Instead, he went to the Durham restaurant where he had been a bartender while attending the University of North Carolina to see about getting his old job back. He wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence about the outcome of his “fact-finding procedure,” as the Crescent Heights College policy manual called it.

The only vehicles parked beside the large brown house were Albert’s pickup truck and Sandra’s red Toyota. Albert got razzed by his colleagues about being a college professor who drove a pickup truck, but he shrugged it off. He often invited one of what seemed to be an endless stream of girlfriends to brunch, but perhaps we would be alone today. I hoped so.

Romper, Albert’s yellow Labrador retriever, came bounding up to the car to greet King and me. I let King out of the back seat and she immediately ran off with her friend. Here on the farm was the only place I allowed her to run free without a leash.

I entered the house by the door near the kitchen, carrying an apple pie, and found my three descendants busily working on brunch. Albert and Sandra cooked while Winston ate. I got hugs from Sandra and Albert. This gratified me because I had been a little worried about Sandra’s reaction to my harboring of Mark.

Albert was his usual cheery self, but Sandra had a grave expression on her beautiful face and her long blond hair looked as if it hadn’t been brushed.

I kissed the soft cheek of Winston, which would much too soon be rough with whiskers. He said, “Great-grandma, do you have your car keys?”

He checked out everybody’s car. I gave him my key case and he promptly picked out my car key from among the others. Then he snapped it shut and said, “We don’t want your keys to get lost.”

I determined not to be the first to bring up the subject of Mark. No one mentioned him until we were eating. Then Albert said, “All right, you two. Tell me what’s happening with Mark. I’ve only heard bits and pieces.”

Sandra and I looked at each other. He was her boyfriend. She spoke, somewhat reluctantly. “Mark has moved out.”

Albert said, “The way I heard it, it sounds as if you kicked him out.”

Mark had called Albert yesterday from my apartment, but I hadn’t heard their conversation.

“We came to a mutual understanding.”

That was baloney. But I was only the grandmother and I wasn’t going to interfere.

“Let’s not run around the bush,” Albert said. “Tell me what you know about the charges against him.”

“Charges, not conviction,” I said, unable to hold my tongue.

I saw tears in the corners of Sandra’s blue eyes. But she remained silent. So I told Albert what I knew while the tears ran down Sandra’s cheeks.

When I finished, Albert said, “That is the worst harassment policy I’ve ever heard of. It could ruin his career and there doesn’t appear to be anything he can do about it. It sounds like a modern version of the Spanish Inquisition.” Albert taught history at the University of North Carolina.

“It’s his word against hers,” I said. “And I’ll give you one guess as to who will be believed. It’s even more unfair than that. Somebody tipped off a radical group on campus about Mark, and they staged a nasty protest in front of the building where he was lecturing.”

Albert turned to Sandra and said, “Honey, if Mark gets convicted, you’re still not going to know anything more than you know now. And we won’t ever know whether he received a fair trial. It’s a question of whether you trust Mark or not.”

Sandra’s tears now fell freely. She struggled to speak and finally said, “I don’t know what to do. Why would somebody accuse him falsely?”

“Do you want me to tell him to find somewhere else to stay?” I asked.

Sandra shook her head and barely uttered the word, “No.”

At least she was emotionally involved. I believed she loved him. That thought afforded me some relief. On the other hand, her mental state precluded her taking him back. But I had the motivation to do what I had been thinking about.

I volunteered to wash the dishes and hung around until Sandra was ready to leave, saying that she had some papers to grade. She taught English at a local high school. When I kissed her goodbye I said, “Don’t give up on Mark. He’s as torn up about this as you are. He needs you.”

She said, “Gogi, I can’t make a decision right now.”

“I understand. Maybe something will turn up.” I tried to appear more cheerful than I felt.

“Take care of your blue car,” Winston said to me as he left with Sandra.

I promised him I would. When they had driven into the woods and disappeared I walked back to the kitchen with Albert. I didn’t know of any way to edge into this topic, so I said, “I want to check something out that may have a bearing on this case, but I need your help.”

Albert was instantly on his guard. “If you need my help, it’s probably illegal, immoral or involves driving at night.”

“The latter,” I said, “and possibly one or both of the formers. Have you ever heard of a place called the Club Cavalier near the Crescent Heights campus?”

“No, and I’m wondering why you have.”

I told him about the girl in the Administration Building.

“What is her relationship to this case?” Albert asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “In fact, I don’t even know her name. But she does work-part time, since she’s a student-in the same area with Ms. Priscilla Estavez, head of the Sexual Misconduct Office.”

“That proves nothing, except that she isn’t very loyal to this Estavez person. Why would she be giving you information that might help Mark?”

“You’re asking good questions. It proves that when I trained you in analytical thinking, it took.”

Albert had to smile and he used a softer tone when he said, “I suppose what you want me to do is go to this bar and look for this Shooting Star, whatever or whoever it is.”

“It’s a club, not a bar. And the Shooting Star is a she.”

“How do you know that?”

“I called Club Cavalier and said I had a friend who wanted to see the Shooting Star. I was told that she would be performing Monday evening. And I want to go with you.”

“Mother, that’s not going to happen.”

Albert put on his most defiant attitude. He thrust his chin forward, just as he had when he had been a boy, questioning the authority of his parents. He had looked cute then. He still looked cute, even with an expanding waistline and thinning hair.

“Do you want Mark’s career to be over before it starts?” I asked.

“Bars are rowdy places where men get drunk, use bad language and behave in a disgusting manner. It’s been years since I’ve been to a strip joint. And you’d be as out of place there as a cat at a dog show.”

“Do you want Sandra and Mark to get back together again?”

We went back and forth like that for a while. Finally, I wore him down. He said, “If we don’t go and Mark’s hearing ends up badly, you’ll blame me. At least we’ll take my truck. That’s more macho than your old Mercedes.”

Chapter 6

Albert and I arrived at Club Cavalier about 7:30 p.m., after dark. A scattering of vehicles inhabited the parking lot in front of the building, leaving plenty of room for more. Well, it was a Monday evening. Albert’s pickup truck didn’t look out of place among the older cars and trucks, although I also saw a couple of late-model cars and a SUV. However, I didn’t see a vintage Mercedes, like mine.

One side of the building was painted with pictures of scantily clad women in alluring poses, but nothing you couldn’t see on TV or in women’s magazines. I wondered if places like this were having trouble keeping their clientele with all the other options available. I had heard stories about what was on the Internet.

Albert led the way inside and paid the cover charge for both of us. The overweight man who took the money glanced once at Albert and decided not to check his ID. He didn’t even look at me. We stood for a few seconds just inside the door, letting our eyes grow accustomed to the dim light.

Smoke from a dozen cigarettes curled lazily upward, creating a smog layer that stung my eyes and my nostrils. For many years now smokers had been banished to hidden corners where they furtively inhaled and I had forgotten how obnoxious the smoke could be. Loud noises that I guessed passed for modern rock music filled the room and a spotlight highlighted a girl who went through a series of contortions on a raised stage, involving a vertical pole rising from the stage to an overhead beam.

As my vision improved I saw that she wore nothing above the waist and only a G-string below. The G-string didn’t look much different from the thongs that girls today wear under their clothes and even in plain sight on the beach, except it was decorated with sequins. On her feet she wore the tallest heels I had ever seen.

Her ample breasts bounced in time to her movements, which were supposed to be erotic, but to me looked humorous. The platinum-blond color of her hair led me to believe that she wore a wig since only a few people, mostly from Scandinavia, have hair naturally that color. Even Sandra’s hair was a few shades darker.

Men sat at small tables near the semicircular stage, which had a brass rail around its edge. It would have been difficult for them to touch the dancer, had they an inclination to. However, customers reached out and placed bills on the stage from time to time.

Albert took me by the elbow and led me to one of the small tables well away from the dancer. I guess he didn’t want me putting money on the stage. A young waitress, clad in a short skirt and a low-cut top, instantly appeared. She eyed me as Albert shouted an order at her; I stared calmly back at her. She made her way through the tangle of tables, changing direction like a frightened rabbit, but returned quickly, carrying two glasses of beer on a tray. Albert gave her several bills. I couldn’t hear her thank-you because of the din.

The song ended and the dancer bowed to weak applause-the room was sparsely populated-and a few cheers masquerading as catcalls. She picked up the bills from the floor, held them up in acknowledgment and disappeared behind a red curtain at the back of the stage.

The noise level was greatly reduced with the music gone, for which I was profoundly grateful. I looked around at the other patrons. They were all men-I was apparently the only woman customer-but I had expected that. Their ages ranged from college-age to grizzled, with most in between. I realized that I had too small a sample to draw inferences from, but I suspected that most of the college boys came on Friday and Saturday nights.

Some men sat alone and stared into their beer glasses; others sat in groups of two or more. I felt sudden pity for the loners. Was this their idea of a social life? Were they living in a fantasy world because the real world was too-sad? Judging from some of the expressions on their faces, the fantasy worlds couldn’t be much better.

All the men were well behaved, almost docile. Even when the dancer had been on stage I hadn’t seen anything approaching rowdy behavior. It wouldn’t do me any good to watch Albert’s reaction; he wouldn’t lift an eyebrow with me there. The place must get a lot livelier later on. But between the brass rail on the stage and the doorman, who probably doubled as a bouncer, I suspected management was prepared to handle anybody who misbehaved.

I happened to see the dancer reenter the room through a doorway on one side of the stage. In addition to her G-string she now wore a skimpy top. She swaggered directly over to one of the tables, took a middle-aged man by the hand and led him back through the same doorway. I quickly nudged Albert to get him to look in her direction and said, “Where is she taking him?”

Albert looked over in time to see them together, thought about what to tell me for a bit, then said, “She’s probably going to do a private lap-dance for him.”

“Is that what it sounds like?”

“Yes, but there are specific rules. The dancer can touch the customer, but the customer can’t touch the dancer.”

“Or he’ll get his arm broken.”

“At least he’ll get kicked out.”

“So it’s completely under her control.”

“Yes.”

Just as men were becoming more and more under the control of women in all phases of life. As exemplified by the sexual harassment policy at Crescent Heights College.

The ticket-taker picked up a microphone and announced the next dancer. As dissonant music reverberated around the room a clone of the first dancer popped out through the curtain and started to gyrate. Her blond wig wasn’t as blond, but if anything, her breasts were larger. Did the customers become bored watching different versions of the same girl?

As eight o’clock approached more customers arrived. The tables around us filled up. I began to wonder what I could learn by watching the girl called the Shooting Star. If I had dragged Albert all the way here for no reason, he would be upset. He was upset about having to bring me here, anyway, although I had a hunch he secretly enjoyed the dancers.

The clock over the bar showed two minutes after eight when the ticket-taker picked up the microphone and announced in a loud voice, “And now, what you’ve all been waiting for. Club Cavalier proudly presents the Shooting Star.”

I guess I was expecting another big blond Barbie-doll, but the girl who came through the curtain was petite, with bright-red hair-and she wore a mask. My next surprise was that she was dancing to a song I recognized: an old Perry Como tune from the fifties called “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.”

Even though the laid-back barber sang it in an upbeat tempo, it was as out of place here after the music of the other dancers as a hotrod would have been in the parking lot, but she made it work. She glided effortlessly around the stage, barefoot, and then did a series of gymnastic maneuvers, ending in an aerial back-flip. I noticed that when she unhooked her bra, shrugged it off and tossed it back toward the curtain, all eyes were on her, including Albert’s.

Her breasts were smaller than those of the other girls. They were obviously her own. They were the breasts of the girl next door, but these days the girl next door had probably eaten too many Big Macs to have the body definition she had. She reminded me of when I had been in school and almost all the girls were thin.

The Shooting Star got on the pole, twisting around it like a snake while flashing colored lights painted her body. At one point she did an upside-down split while hanging onto the pole, completely off the stage. Then she did the same thing facing the other way. She mesmerized the audience. These moves revealed most of the mysteries of being a woman, in spite of her scanty G-string.

I studied her red hair, which was probably the only false thing about her, and wondered how it stayed on. Then I looked at her mask, which covered not only her eyes but also her forehead and the upper part of her cheeks. Was that just for show, to add to the intrigue, or was she really trying to hide her identity?

She finished her act with another gymnastic run and another back-flip. I held my breath, fearing that she would either hit the pole or catapult herself into the audience, but she had complete control of her movements. She received the loudest applause and most cheers of any of the dancers. There were so many bills on the stage that it took her a while to collect them all. While she did several men yelled, “Take off the mask.”

Her brightly lipsticked mouth smiled, she waved to the audience, money and bra in hand, and the curtains swallowed her. I looked at Albert. He stared after her, his mouth slightly open. She had affected him so much that he had forgotten to hide it.

“I’m going to the restroom,” I said, and stood up before he recovered enough to respond. I made my way to the doorway with signs indicating that men’s and women’s rooms (thank goodness) existed in that direction. It was the same doorway I had seen several of the dancers take men through for lap dances.

I used the women’s restroom-the beer was getting to me-and as I came out I noticed another door, leading to…where? The lap-dance area and the dressing rooms? I opened the door and entered a dimly lit hallway with music blaring from hidden speakers.

I closed the door behind me and glanced to the right. I saw what looked like openings to several cubicles. The head and bare back of one of the girls suddenly appeared out of the first one, her hair flying, her body gyrating. She disappeared and then reappeared and bent over backwards until her hair touched the floor. Her naked body was toned with muscle, but still feminine, and I had to admit that she exuded an animal eroticism. I hoped her victim-or customer-was enjoying her attentions.

I turned the other way and saw brightness. I went around a corner and found myself at the entrance to the dressing room. I looked inside; the walls were hung with the traditional mirrors, surrounded with naked light bulbs. Several of the girls sat in front of mirrors, in various stages of undress, working on their faces. I looked around for the Shooting Star, but none of them had her body type, with or without a mask.

One of the blond dolls spotted me in the mirror, turned around and said, “Well, howdy, Grandma. Are you the new dancer?”

The others guffawed and I smiled, saying, “I’m looking for the Shooting Star.”

“You and the rest of the whole friggin’ world,” the girl who had greeted me said. “She ain’t here.”

“But she just came offstage a few minutes ago.”

“She came through here just like her name-ssswishhh-she almost always does that, and went out there.” She pointed to a door with an Exit sign over it.”

“Isn’t she doing another show tonight?”

“Oh, she’ll be back. She comes waltzing in here about ten minutes before her gig, wearing this gigantic jacket with a hood and her mask. Underneath, she’s wearing her costume so all’s she has to do is take off the coat and she’s ready to go on.”

“Do you know her name?”

“Honey, nobody knows her name. She’s about as friendly as a mud fence. I don’t think even Lefty knows her right name.”

“Lefty? Is he the guy who takes the money and announces the dancers?”

“Naw, Lefty’s the boss. Stays in the back and counts the money. When he’s not in here copping feels.” The girls laughed. “Makes sure we always get screwed out of our rightful share. Why are you so interested in the Star, anyway? She’s just a stuck-up little slut, getting her jollies by provoking the customers we worked our asses off to get. She’ll be gone in six months when something else grabs her attention.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I think you’re all great dancers. And thanks for your help. My name is Lillian, by the way.”

“I’m Cherub,” the blond said. “This here’s Francie, Dixie and Jewel. Sounds like a friggin’ law firm.”

They all laughed and I joined them. “Do you have a…business card or something, Cherub?” I asked.

“Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact.” She dug around in her purse and produced a slightly creased card, which she handed to me. “You writing a book or something?”

“It’s an idea. In any case, I need to talk to the Shooting Star. If you learn any more about her, would you give me a call?” She agreed and I wrote my name and phone number on the back of another of her cards. Then I said, “Well, I’d better get back out there. My son will be wondering where I am.”

“Not many mothers would bring their sons to a place like this,” Cherub said. “Is it his birthday or something?”

“Something like that. At the age of 49 I think he’s old enough to start noticing girls.”

Chapter 7

I spent every spare minute on Tuesday trying to figure out how to get back to Bethany and Club Cavalier. I was convinced that the Shooting Star was Mark’s accuser, but how could I prove it? And if I did prove it, how would it help Mark? He certainly couldn’t bring it up in his own defense because the reasoning of the adjudicating panel would go something like this: Mark knew victim was a topless dancer, thus thought she was “easy” and had no qualms about harassing her.

If what Cherub said was true, Club Cavalier needed a harassment policy-to protect the girls from the owner. Perhaps Priscilla Estavez should take that up as a cause.

I had vague thoughts of blackmailing Mark’s accuser so that she would drop the charges against him. Evidently, she didn’t want her identity known, for whatever reason. It probably wasn’t only because she was a student, although that must be a contributing factor. I had heard of other girls who had worked their way through college as strippers and even as prostitutes. I suspected that most of them didn’t tell any more people than necessary about their secret lives.

I couldn’t impose on Albert again. When I had returned to the table after talking to the girls, I hadn’t told him where I had been because I knew he wouldn’t approve. And he certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with lying in wait for the Shooting Star to try to prove her identity.

It had been a wasted evening, as far as he was concerned. At least that’s what he said. I wondered, however, if seeing the Shooting Star, with her youth, freshness and unabashed eroticism, had fanned some dormant spark of manhood inside him, which apparently couldn’t be reached by his girlfriends, none of whom seemed to particularly excite him. I could always hope that he would find somebody to love, and get married again-and not end up a lonely old man.

In mid-afternoon the phone rang. I immediately recognized the voice at the other end as Albert’s. Since he rarely called me during the day I wondered whether something was wrong. “Where are you?” I asked.

“At work,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you that our innocent little foray last night got me into trouble.”

“Trouble?” I said, puzzled. “What kind of trouble.”

“I got an e-mail from one of my colleagues. It seems that some guy in Bethany has created a website for the sole purpose of posting the license plate numbers of people who visit the strip clubs there.”

“Huh? I don’t understand. What in the world would he do that for?”

“I guess he doesn’t like strip clubs or the men who patronize them. Probably considers himself morally superior to the rest of us.”

“I don’t like people who feel qualified to tell me what to do.”

“I know that, Mother. But you’re not the one with the problem. I am.”

“Does anyone really care what you do with your free time? I can see that it might elicit a few laughs around the water cooler, but what can they do to you? After all, you have tenure. There isn’t some policy at UNC that says you can’t go to nightclubs, is there?”

After blowing off some more steam, Albert had to admit that being caught going to Club Cavalier wouldn’t really do him any harm. I guessed he was just using this as a way to try to put me in my place, whatever that was. However, he gave me an idea. “I take it you know how to find this website? Could you give me the information?”

“But you don’t know anything about the Internet.”

“Maybe it’s time I learned. Mark can reach the Internet from his laptop computer. I’ll get him to help me.”

“All right, I’ll forward the information to Mark’s e-mail address. But you’ve done all you can for Mark. There’s nothing more you can do to help him. So don’t go getting into trouble on his account.”

***

“There it is,” Mark said. “Nice graphics.”

We looked at the screen of his laptop together. I had just fed him a hearty dinner of pork chops and a baked potato, with a salad and veggies to keep him healthy. For myself, I had eaten a takeout dinner from the Silver Acres dining room. Since I had to pay for one meal a day, anyway, I didn’t want to waste it.

I wasn’t interested in the pink background on the web page or the small, animated figures of women, moving their hips and continually taking off and putting on their tops. I was interested in the heading that read, “March Patrons at Club Cavalier,” and the list below it that contained license plate numbers plus make, model and color of the vehicle associated with each one.

Mark showed me how we could do a search on any of those items of information if we were looking for a particular vehicle, using Albert’s pickup as an example. It was there, all right, and we could find by searching on any combination of “Toyota,” “Tacoma,” “blue,” and his license plate number.

“So,” I said, “if you are a suspicious wife, mother, girlfriend, employer, minister, whatever, you can check this site periodically to see if your guy is straying.”

“Exactly,” Mark said. He chuckled. “Talk about Big Brother. But, according to what you told me, it isn’t keeping the young studs of Bethany in line. You said Club Cavalier had quite a crowd there last night.”

I had told him everything I had done, if not everything I was thinking of doing. I did it in such a way that I knew he wasn’t going to go running off to Club Cavalier to confront the Shooting Star. In fact, he was more or less resigned to what he considered to be his fate. He had agreed to return to work on the weekends at the restaurant where he had been a bartender, figuring that he would probably be suspended from his teaching job sooner or later.

“What do we know about the person who created this website?” I asked.

“We have his e-mail address. In fact, he’s so proud of what he’s doing that he even listed his name. Here it is: Eric Hoffman. Probably a pillar of the Bethany community.”

“You must know the young woman who gave me the information about Club Cavalier. She said she was taking physics from you, but not the same course as your accuser. And she works in the Administration Building. You may have seen her when you went to talk with Priscilla Estavez.”

Mark thought. “Yes, I did see her and yes, I do know her. If you give me a moment I’ll remember her name. It’s Donna…Donna Somerset. She’s taking my advanced class. Quite smart, actually. But I don’t know of any connection between her and…my accuser.”

“Perhaps she gave me a bum steer. Who knows why? Maybe it’s her idea of a joke. She did tell me not to tell you the information came from her. In fact, she seemed to be afraid of being found out.”

“If she’s really trying to help me, I can understand why she’s afraid of being found out. Helping me might be a hanging offense. At the very least, she would lose her job in the Administration Building. And speaking of my accuser, she showed up for Chemistry lab today.”

“How did it go?”

“We ignored each other.”

Mark had more forbearance than I did. Next topic. I asked, “When is your appointment with Burt Brown?” Burt was a lawyer friend of mine. I wanted Mark to speak to him, even though he couldn’t be present at Mark’s hearing.

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Say hello to him for me. I hope he can help you.”

“At least he won’t make things any worse.”

Chapter 8

“Don’t go too fast, Lillian. Give me a chance to read the numbers.” Tess had a road map in her lap and held a piece of paper containing directions she and I had written down before leaving Silver Acres.

“It shouldn’t be far from town,” I said. We had turned off the main street of Bethany onto one of those side roads that permeate North Carolina, barely two lanes wide, with no shoulder. My eyesight was fine for driving during the day, except that I had trouble reading road signs. Tess had come along to act as my navigator.

“We’re getting close.” Tess eyed the curbside mailboxes as we drove by, many of which had addresses on them.

I slowed some more and tried to read the numbers, myself, but by the time my eyes focused on one we had passed it. At least the weather cooperated. It was cloudy and cool but the predicted rain had held off. It seemed that weather forecasts were particularly inaccurate in this part of the country.

“Stop; this is it,” Tess said.

I pulled my old Mercedes into the gravel driveway because there wasn’t any room to park it on the street. I glanced at Tess, who looked neat and put-together in a casual dress that said she wasn’t a casual person. I had told her not to dress up, but this was about as dowdy as she got. I wore slacks, which I preferred because of my varicose veins. We both had lightweight coats to protect us from the breeze and possible rain.

“Let’s review,” I said. “We’re with the Institute for Family Values. We’re interested in Mr. Hoffman’s website, on which he publishes license-plate numbers of the strip-club patrons. Let me do the talking.” Tess didn’t keep silent if she had something to say, which was most of the time.

“Don’t worry about me,” Tess said. “I’m not terribly anxious to interact with this Mr. Hoffman. The only reason I’m going in is to protect you.”

That comforted me. We exited the car and crunched along the 100-foot driveway toward the house, which was small but tidy; it had known the feel of a paintbrush. A thick oak tree stood tall in the center of the front lawn, with smaller trees surrounding it. All were still winter bare. A couple of old cars sat on the other side of the driveway. We walked around a pickup truck, not unlike Albert’s. I felt right at home.

A loud bark stopped us in our tracks. We hadn’t seen the huge dog because it had been hidden by the truck. It growled at us from the end of a chain attached to something like a clothesline. If the dog decided to come after us I wasn’t sure the line would hold it.

“It’s okay; we’re friends,” I said to the dog but I stayed carefully out of its reach.

“I don’t think it agrees,” Tess said, looking as if she wanted to retreat to the car.

The front door of the house opened and a man came out, using a cane. “Monster, sit,” he yelled at the dog.

Monster didn’t sit, but continued to growl at us. The man limped over to him and took hold of his collar. “He won’t hurt you,” the man said.

Famous last words. “Hello, I’m Lillian Morgan,” I said. “This is Tess Upchurch. We’re with the Institute for Family Values and we’d like to talk to you about your website.”

“Well, come on in.” The man beamed. “I’m Eric Hoffman.”

Mentioning the website had done the trick. He held Monster by the collar while we gingerly walked past them to the front door. Then he followed us, his limp giving an irregular cadence to his steps. Once we were all inside, he said, “May I take your coats?”

We took off our coats and handed them to him. At least he wasn’t going to kick us out right away. He hung them in a closet and ushered us into his comfortable living room, filled with furniture that had been around for a while. My nose told me that mildew lurked in the corners.

Mr. Hoffman had also been around for a while, but not nearly as long as we had. He wore unfashionable khakis and a flannel shirt. His once-dark hair was streaked with gray and his face was lined with living. The most pronounced thing about him was his limp.

He offered us coffee, which we refused, although I don’t ordinarily refuse coffee, but I wasn’t used to the role of impostor and didn’t believe I’d earned the right to have it.

“I’m sorry my wife isn’t here,” Mr. Hoffman said. “She’s at work. I’m on disability. Mr. leg flared up about a year ago. I got hit in Viet Nam and it hasn’t been right since.”

We expressed our sympathy for his leg. Then I said, “On your website it stated that you worked out of your house, so we took a chance that you’d be here.”

“Well, I’m here a lot of the time,” Mr. Hoffman said, “except at night, of course, when I’m out on patrol.” He smiled a grim smile. “I do that from my truck so I don’t have to walk much.”

“You’re performing a valuable service for the community,” I said, trying to keep from biting my tongue.

Mr. Hoffman beamed again. He did have a nice smile. “We believe so. By the end of the 20th century, families had been rent asunder by the temptations of modern life. Our group is trying to promote family values before the human race spirals downward to catastrophe. If we don’t save the family unit at the beginning of the 21 ^ st century, we won’t be around for the end of the century.”

“So you think that keeping men out of the strip clubs and home in the bosom of their families is part of the solution.” I was beginning to talk like he did.

“That is where I am concentrating my efforts. The first step is to gather the license plate numbers. Then we can find the owners of the cars and contact their families and friends. We also urge the men who frequent these bastions of sin to seek professional counseling.”

A family portrait stood on the table beside the sofa where I sat. The three people in the picture were Mr. Hoffman, a woman who must be his wife and a girl, perhaps teenage. “I take it you have a daughter,” I said.

“Yes, a wonderful girl. She is the pride of my life.”

“What would you do if a boy came to date your daughter and he had been to a strip club?”

Tess, sitting beside me on the sofa, made a sudden movement. I glanced at her and saw that she was desperately trying to keep from what-laughing?

Mr. Hoffman’s expression darkened as he scowled. He said, “If a young man came here to see my daughter and told me he had been to a strip club he had better run fast in a zigzag manner.”

“I have a question for you about your patrol Monday night,” I said, quickly. “When you were at Club Cavalier did you happen to see a young lady dressed in a jacket with a hood and wearing a mask come out the back door and get in a car?”

Mr. Hoffman looked at me in a funny way so I continued, “You’re trying to save the patrons. Our organization is trying to save the dancers. This particular dancer always wears a mask and we’re not sure who she is.”

“Oh. No, I can’t say I did. What time would that have been?”

“Around 8:15. And again at about 10:15.”

“We didn’t arrive there until almost 8:30. And later we were covering other clubs. They are usually the most crowded between 8:30 and 10:30 on weekdays.”

“Well, you might have recorded the license plate of the car, anyway. You said you find out who owns the cars. She could be a student. Did any of the cars belong to students at Crescent Heights, do you know, possibly a female student?”

“None belonged to female students. I believe a couple of the owners had dormitory addresses. Of course, it’s possible that other cars might belong to students living in apartments or to their parents. But I’d be glad to give you the information on the ones I’m sure of.”

“We would appreciate that.” Maybe she was being chauffeured by a male student. Take what you can get. “Would you like some coffee now?”

I accepted, eagerly, Tess with less enthusiasm. I felt I had earned some coffee, although I almost regretted accepting when I saw what a struggle Mr. Hoffman had getting up from his chair.

While he was in the kitchen I picked up the framed picture from the end table and looked at it more closely. I sucked in my breath sharply and Tess said, “Lillian, what’s the matter?”

“This girl-Mr. Hoffman’s daughter,” I said, trying to keep my voice down but in danger of hyperventilating at the same time. “She’s the one who accused Mark of sexual harassment.”

“Are you sure?”

“Almost positive. She has the same dark hair. Same eyes. But she’s smiling in the picture and I haven’t seen her smile.”

Mr. Hoffman limped back into the room and said, “Coffee will be ready in a few minutes. And I’ll get you the addresses from my computer.”

“Your daughter is lovely,” I said, still trying to control my voice and my breathing. “How old is she?”

“Isn’t she a beauty? She’s twenty. She attends Crescent Heights College.”

“What’s her name?”

“Elise.”

“Elise Hoffman. Pretty name. Does she live at home?”

“No, she lives in an apartment near the campus. She won a scholarship. Smart as well as beautiful. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to afford to send her to Crescent Heights. She would have had to go away to a state school and she’s too young to do that.”

I tried to think of the right question. “Is she having any trouble adjusting to college life?”

“In her first year she was always coming home on weekends. Now we rarely see her, except on vacations, even though she’s so close.” He sighed. “They grow up so fast.” He went back into the kitchen.

“I need to get her address,” I stage-whispered to Tess.

“Well, don’t go tearing up the place,” Tess whispered back. She knows me too well. “Why don’t you just ask him?”

Brilliant. Mr. Hoffman soon returned with the coffee and offered us cream and sugar, which I refused and Tess accepted. I took a couple of grateful sips from a mug with “Durham Bulls” printed on the side, being careful not to burn my tongue, and said, “One of the things we’re doing is talking to young women on college campuses because some of them have been known to work as strippers to earn extra income. Although I know your daughter would never do that, perhaps we could get her to introduce us to some of her friends.” I had trouble getting that speech out and when I had finished I held my breath.

“I think it’s excellent that you’re approaching this problem from the other side of the coin, so to speak.” Mr. Hoffman was smiling again. “Of course Elise would never consider such a thing. She is very supportive of my work, however, and I’m sure she would be glad to help you. Would you like to contact her?”

Yes, yes, I cried, silently, but outwardly I merely said yes. I pulled a small notebook and a pen out of my purse. Mr. Hoffman gave me Elise’s phone number. “What’s her address?” I asked, in an offhand manner. He gave it to me and I started breathing again. Well, why shouldn’t he give us information? We were just two harmless old women.

Chapter 9

“Mr. Hoffman doesn’t know much about his daughter,” I said as we drove back toward downtown Bethany.

“You don’t know that,” Tess said. “There’s no reason he would discuss a sexual harassment charge with strangers. Particularly since the proceedings are confidential.”

“Even if that’s true, she’s his little angel and would never work in a strip club.”

“Again you’re making an assumption. You haven’t proved that Elise Hoffman is the Shooting Star.”

Why did Tess always throw cold water on my theories? Maybe her role in my life was to keep me honest. At least I had found out the name of Mark’s accuser without him telling me. Of course it was pure luck, but as a statistician I can tell you that if you want to succeed in life it helps to be lucky. But I would have found out her name in due course, anyway.

Now it was time for action. “I’m getting hungry,” I said. “If you can stand the noise and confusion, let’s eat lunch at the Crescent Heights College cafeteria. It’s a small school and there’s a chance we’ll see Mark there.” Or Elise.

***

We didn’t see either Mark or Elise at the cafeteria, but we did get some tasty pizza. They don’t serve pizza at Silver Acres and I have been known to talk my younger relatives and friends into going to a Pizza Hut upon occasion.

After we had eaten I asked Tess if she wanted to take a stroll on the campus, but she declined. She is not a stroller. I said, “Let’s go find Elise’s apartment.”

Tess gave me her look that means she’s on to my schemes and said, “She probably won’t be there.”

“No, but at least I’ll know where it is. For future reference.”

“You’d better be careful about contacting Elise. You could get Mark into more trouble than he is already.”

“I know that. I’ll be careful. I’m always careful.”

Tess snorted. But she assumed her duties as navigator and guided me to the apartment building. It had one story and all the apartments faced the street. We found Elise’s number with no trouble and I parked on the street in front of it.

“I think I’ll go ring the doorbell,” I said.

“Big surprise,” Tess said.

I rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. I returned to the car.

“Well, what should we do now?” I asked.

“We wait,” Tess said. “I know that’s what you want to do. I blocked out the whole day for you so it’s no problem with me. We missed pool aerobics this morning. I knew we’d never make it back for the Bridge Club. In fact, I brought along a book to read.” She pulled a paperback copy of a Sue Grafton mystery out of her purse. She started reading mysteries after we solved a murder last summer. “We’re two detectives on a stakeout.”

But Tess’ idea of a stakeout was to read a book, not to watch for anything. I had to do that. After a few minutes I knew the meaning of boredom. And then Tess fell asleep, leaving me completely alone. This was not a glamorous job. I had trouble staying awake, myself. Several times I dozed off and woke with a jerk. After an hour I was ready to give up.

I heard a car pull up behind me and stop. I glanced in my rearview mirror. I got a quick look at the face of a young woman. It wasn’t Elise, but it looked familiar. She got out of the car and I could no longer see her face in my mirror. She walked around the back of my car and up the sidewalk to Elise’s apartment. From the back she reminded me of the girl from the Administration Building, the way she had looked as she had run away from me after telling me about Club Cavalier. What was she doing here?

She went up to the door, but instead of knocking or ringing the doorbell it looked as if she was using a key. The door opened and she went inside and shut it after her. She must be Elise’s roommate. Donna. I remembered her name. I pulled out my spiral notebook and checked my notes. Donna Somerset. I had learned not to rely on my memory.

I had to see her face again to make sure. I could knock on the door, but she would recognize me. If I waited, maybe she would come out. But I couldn’t wait here, because she had undoubtedly noticed the two of us sitting in my car, even though only the backs of our heads had been visible to her. If we stayed here she might get suspicious and take a closer look. And she could see the car from her front window.

I started the car and pulled ahead, intending to park a short distance up the street.

“What’s going on?” Tess asked, sleepily.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said. I had a thought. “I need to get the license plate number of the car behind where we were just parked. I’m going to turn around and drive by it. You can help me read the license.”

I pulled into a driveway on the other side of the street and backed out, reversing our direction. Then I cruised slowly past the other car. It was some sort of Chevrolet model, not new, not old. Between us, Tess and I read the license plate and she wrote it down.

“There’s a girl coming out of that apartment,” Tess said. She was looking back over her shoulder.

“Damn,” I said. “I need to get a good look at her.” I pulled into a second driveway and turned the car around again, as quickly as I could, with Tess helping by warning me not to back into a parked car I wasn’t going to hit, anyway. As I drove past the girl’s car she was just opening the driver’s side door and I had to steer wide to miss her. She looked up and we stared at each other for a split second. I had no doubt that she was Donna Somerset.

I turned right at the next corner.

“She didn’t look like Mr. Hoffman’s daughter,” Tess said.

“She’s not. But I know who she is. I’ll explain later. Right now, we have to get back to that street.”

Easier said than done. The streets didn’t necessarily run in straight lines, I found out, and it took me about ten minutes to return to the vicinity of the apartment. When I did I parked about 50 feet from it instead of directly in front. Donna’s car was gone.

“This would be a lot more fun if I knew what was going on,” Tess complained.

“All will be revealed in good time,” I said. “Right now, we have to watch for Elise. We’ll give her ten minutes and if she doesn’t show up we’ll get out of here.”

To keep Tess interested I decided to tell her about Donna, and we were pondering the relevance of the fact that Donna and Elise were apparently roommates when I noticed that something looked different about the apartment window.

“It looks as if the drapes behind the white curtains have been opened,” I said. “They were closed before.”

“Donna might have opened them,” Tess said.

“I don’t think so. I’m going to the door again.”

“Be careful.”

As I walked up the sidewalk to the front door I confirmed my observation about the drapes. Somebody was inside and it wasn’t Donna. As I rang the doorbell I felt a lot tenser than when I had tried it the first time.

I heard a noise from within and the door opened. I looked into the stunning eyes of Elise Hoffman.

For a few interminable seconds I lost the power of speech. Then I said, “Hello, are you Miss Hoffman?”

She nodded and gave me a look that said, “And what are you trying to sell?”

“I’m Lillian Morgan-Professor Morgan. May I come in a minute?”

Whether it was the “professor” or the fact that I looked harmless, she reluctantly stepped aside and let me in, closing the door behind me. She remained where she was, with one hand on the doorknob, and didn’t offer me a seat. Unless I could thaw her quickly this would be a short interview. I knew I couldn’t mention her father so I had to find another way to break through her reserve.

I took a look around at the sparsely furnished front room, complete with posters on the wall. And pictures. Several of the pictures were of Elise in a leotard, doing gymnastic routines. I said, “You’re a gymnast, aren’t you?”

Elise nodded again.

“Were you on a team in high school?” I didn’t know whether Crescent Heights College had a gymnastics team.

“Yes. We went to the state championships two years in a row.”

She stated it as a fact, without bragging. She had warmed up a few degrees. “It’s wonderful to be so athletic. I was always too tall for gymnastics, but I played tennis.”

“I play some tennis too. But I wasn’t good enough to make the team in high school. And I don’t have time for any sports here.”

I had been prepared for Elise to be a conniving bitch, but she didn’t appear to be malicious or scheming. She didn’t seem hard or emotionally distant. I was sure her reticence now was normal when talking to a stranger. I decided to be frank with her.

“Elise,” I said, “I need to say some things to you. Listen to me for two minutes and then you can ask me to leave if you want to. I am a friend of Dr. Pappas, but he didn’t give me your name or ask me to come here. I discovered your name by luck. He hasn’t violated any part of the sexual harassment rules.”

Mark’s name had registered in her expressive eyes. If I had had any doubts about whether she was his accuser before, they were gone. As I paused to collect my thoughts, I waited for her to kick me out, but she didn’t say anything.

“Dr. Pappas-Mark-is a good person,” I continued. “He would not intentionally hurt anybody. I have heard his version of what happened between you two. I haven’t heard your version and I won’t make a judgment about who’s right and who’s wrong, but let me say this. If Mark is found guilty by this panel, this committee, or whatever it’s called, it will destroy his career. He will never work as a college professor again.”

I paused for breath. “You’ve seen how the procedure works and you know by now that it is completely unfair to him. He can’t face you or question you, he can’t call witnesses; he can’t even hear the complete testimony against him. This is not how a free country is supposed to work. I know you didn’t write the rules, but ask yourself whether or not you want to be a party to his ruin.”

I stopped, trying to think what else I should say. The eyes of Elise were locked on mine; they disconcerted me. If they bothered me, what must they do to men? I didn’t want to cheapen what I had already said by repetition, so I finished, “That’s all I have to tell you. I’ll leave now.” I took a step toward the door.

“Wait,” Elise said. “I want to talk to you. Please sit down.”

I picked a beanbag chair to sit in and immediately wished I hadn’t. It was too low and too squishy and I would have a hard time getting up from it. Elise didn’t sit, but paced nervously back and forth in the small room. She had the graceful movements of an athlete, even though she appeared to be going through some sort of internal battle.

She stopped in front of me and said, “I knew I’d seen you before. You came out of Priscilla’s office just before I went in. And I believe you were sitting in on Dr. Pappas’ class that morning.”

I didn’t try to deny her statements.

“You probably saw the demonstration that was going on that day. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I was told the complaint procedure was confidential. I assumed that meant that both of our names would be protected. I don’t have any association with those…those people. Please tell Dr. Pappas that.”

“I’ll tell him”

“This hasn’t gone the way I thought it would. I thought he would get off with a reprimand, but that doesn’t appear likely.”

“Even if he does, the whole world will know about it.”

“Yes.”

Elise paced some more. Jeans weren’t becoming to many girls, but she looked good in them. Still, whatever happened to dresses? When she stopped in front of me again, I saw a tear on her eyelid.

“Tell Dr. Pappas…”

She paused for so long I thought she wasn’t going to say any more.

“Tell Dr. Pappas…I’m sorry.”

Chapter 10

I was eating breakfast and casually glancing at the Raleigh News and Observer when I saw the story. King was tied up outside, resting after our morning walk. Mark wasn’t there; he hadn’t returned last night, but I wasn’t worried about him. He had said he might be late. I assumed that he was either with Sandra or a friend of his. I hoped he was with Sandra.

The headline at the bottom of the first page of the newspaper caught my eye: “Coed Slain at Crescent Heights College.” The name of the school jolted me into full alertness. I shifted my focus to the first line of the story.

“A student at Crescent Heights College in Bethany was found dead in her off-campus apartment last night. Elise Hoffman, a sophomore, had apparently been stabbed repeatedly with a sharp instrument.”

I read on in increasing horror as the story detailed how her roommate, Donna Somerset, who had returned to the apartment after studying late with a friend, had found the nude body of Elise. It said Elise was an honor student and told about her activities at Crescent Heights, which included singing in school musical productions. It listed her parents as Eric and June Hoffman, of Bethany.

The initial investigation showed that nothing had been taken from the apartment. However, the front window had been broken and the assailant had apparently gained entrance through the window.

I read the story several more times, barely comprehending it. I had talked to Elise yesterday afternoon. She had been so young, so beautiful. Who would want to kill her? The telephone rang. I staggered to it in a daze.

“Have you read this morning’s paper?” Tess asked, and without waiting for a reply, “Elise Hoffman has been murdered.”

“I’m just reading it now,” I said. “I can’t believe it.”

“Me, neither. Although I didn’t see her I was right outside her apartment yesterday afternoon. But you must be devastated. Does Mark know?”

“I’m not sure where Mark is. He didn’t come home last night.”

Tess didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time. Then she said, “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“What?”

“He’s a suspect.”

“Mark? It can’t be Mark. Mark wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“You know that and I know that, but the police don’t know that. You’re going to need some support. I’ll be right over.” Tess hung up.

Still in a daze, I called Sandra’s number. Of course she didn’t answer. She dropped Winston off at a daycare center before she went to the school where she taught so she had to start early. I didn’t leave a message. I couldn’t think of a comprehensible message to leave.

I called Albert’s home number. After three rings I thought he had also left for work, but then he answered.

“Hello.”

“Albert, have you seen Mark?”

“Good morning, Mother. I’m fine, thank you. No, I haven’t seen Mark. I thought he was staying with you.”

“He hasn’t been here since yesterday morning. Did you read today’s paper?”

“I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll pick it up on my way to Duke.”

The newspapers for the houses on Albert’s road were dumped on the ground beside the mailboxes, which were just off the main road, over a mile from his house.

“A female student at Crescent Heights College was murdered last night,” I said.

“That’s terrible!” Albert, who usually took everything in stride except some of my trespasses, sounded shocked.

“Worse than that. She was the one who accused Mark of harassment.”

“How do you know that? I thought you didn’t know her name.”

“I found it out.”

While I was listening for Albert’s answer, Tess knocked on the door and then came in. I always leave the door unlocked when I’m home during the day.

Albert said, “Mark couldn’t have done it.”

“Of course not, but the police are still going to want to talk to him. If you hear from him, would you call me, please? I’m sure I’ll be talking to the police today, also.”

“Mother, I’ll try to find out where Mark is, but I want you to stay out of this.”

“I’m already in it. I talked to the victim yesterday afternoon.”

Albert spewed a string of obscenities, which was unlike him. Then he told me not to do anything rash and hung up.

Tess had poured herself a cup of coffee in my kitchen and sat down at my small dining table. She said, “I take it that nobody knows where Mark is.”

I tried to look on the bright side. “Of course he might be at the college. I’m sure he’s teaching at least one class today.”

“If he is, the police will find him there. Well, I guess we’re back in the detective business, whether we want to be or not. If for no other reason than to help Mark. Anyway, I came prepared.”

Tess pulled out her yellow legal pad and placed it on the table. “Is there anything you should mention about your meeting with Elise that you didn’t tell me on our way home yesterday? You were in there quite a while. I was about ready to send the dogs in after you.”

“Nothing of substance. She seemed to be genuinely sorry about the problems she had caused Mark. I don’t think she anticipated them at all. She said several times that she hadn’t had anything to do with the demonstration. I suspect that Priscilla Estavez knows how the information leaked out about Mark, but of course I can’t prove it. However, I’d like to wring her neck, just on general principles.”

“Did Elise tell you her side of the harassment story?”

“No. But just as I was leaving she did say one thing that puzzled me. She said, ‘I should have figured out a better way to do it.’”

“Do what?”

“Deal with the harassment, I suppose. Or what she imagined to be harassment.”

We chatted for a few minutes while I tried to remember anything of relevance that Elise had said. Then I thought of something else. “I should check my messages. I don’t think I checked them after I returned from dinner last night.”

“In spite of the fact that you might have a message from Mark?”

“I meant to check them. But you know how absent-minded us old folks are.”

“Speak for yourself, Lil.”

I went to the telephone and punched in the code for my messages. A female voice told me I had one message, which had been received last night at 6:17 p.m. I had been eating dinner in the dining room at that time. The voice said that the message was from an unknown number, which meant that it was from outside Silver Acres. It must be from Mark. I felt relieved and played the message.

“Mrs. Morgan, this is Elise Hoffman. I want you to know that I am dropping the charges I made against Dr. Pappas. Please tell him that. When I see him I’ll tell him myself. I hope that I can undo the damage I’ve done to him. I wanted you to know about my decision right away because you helped me make up my mind.”

The message ended. I played it again to make sure I had heard it correctly. Then I hung up the phone.

“Lil, you look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

“I just heard a ghost.” My hands were shaking. I told Tess about the message.

“How did she get your telephone number?”

“I gave it to her…that is she asked for it. I wasn’t sure why. She said she wanted it in case she needed to get in touch with me.”

“She must have been thinking about dropping the charges even while you were still there. We have to save that for the police.”

“The police, right. And I want Ms. Priscilla Estavez to hear it.”

***

The police arrived sometime after lunch, or I should say one policeman in the person of Detective Julius Johnson. Detective Johnson wore civilian clothes-a suit and tie-but he did have an authentic-looking badge so I let him in. He was fairly small in stature and his dark skin probably helped to make him look more authoritative than if he had been white. He was young, without any hair to speak of. They used to call that a buzz-cut.

I escorted him inside and introduced him to Tess, who had kept me company through the morning and through lunch while we waited in vain for word from Mark. I offered him a seat on the roomy sofa, beside Tess, but he remained standing so I did, too.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” he said to me.

Instead of a southern accent, he had what I would call a universal accent, as exemplified by many of the residents of California.

“Lillian Morgan.”

“Good. You’re the owner of this apartment, right?”

I acknowledged that fact.

“And Mark Pappas has been staying with you?”

“For the last few days, yes.”

“Where is he now?”

I had to admit that I didn’t know. He asked me when I had seen him last and the other usual questions. After he had determined beyond the shadow of a doubt that I didn’t know where Mark was, he said, “Do you know what this is in regard to?” “The murder of Elise Hoffman.” “What do you know about Elise Hoffman’s murder?”

“What I read in the paper. But I may have some additional information for you because I talked to Elise yesterday afternoon.”

“You did?” Detective Johnson’s eye twitched. “I certainly do want to talk to you.” “And Tess can verify what time that was because she was in the car with me. But she didn’t actually see Elise.” “What kind of a car were you driving?” Detective Johnson asked.

“An old Mercedes, 1986. Blue.”

Detective Johnson flipped back a couple of pages in his spiral notebook. “You were the ladies that Elise’s roommate saw.”

“Donna? We saw her but we didn’t speak to her.”

“Okay, I need to sort all this out.”

He looked tired. I wondered if he had been up since midnight. He asked several questions of Tess, and then realizing that he had exhausted her fund of information, he turned back to me and said, “You’re the one I need to talk to. But I want to talk to you alone.”

“I have some chores to do, anyway,” Tess said. She got up, painfully, as her feet hurt her when she stood after she had been sitting for a while. Then she hobbled out the door.

I invited Detective Johnson to sit down again, and this time he did. I asked him if he wanted a drink. He said he drank coke. Fortunately, I had bought some cokes for Mark so I got him a can along with a glass with ice in it. Then I sat down on the other end of the sofa. Detective Johnson looked young and I suspected his experience was limited so I decided to help him as much as I could.

“Do you want me to tell you about my whole day, yesterday?” I asked. “It all has some connection to Elise.”

He agreed with that approach. I started by telling him that Tess and I had gone to Eric Hoffman’s home.

“Why did you want to talk to Mr. Hoffman?” he asked.

“It’s complicated to explain,” I said, “so bear with me.” First I told him about Mr. Hoffman’s website. He acted as if he hadn’t known about it before and he scribbled notes as I talked. Then I said, “I assume you know that Elise had filed a charge of sexual harassment against Mark Pappas. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be looking for Mark.”

Detective Johnson nodded and I continued, “I think that Elise may have been working as a stripper nights at Club Cavalier.”

“You just told me her father posted license plate numbers on the Internet for Club Cavalier, as well as other strip joints.”

“I know.” I told him about the tip I had received from Donna on the Shooting Star and how Albert and I had gone to see her. He took copious notes. “I thought if I could prove that Elise was the Shooting Star, that fact would help Mark’s case, somehow. So I hoped that Mr. Hoffman had connected one of the license plates to somebody who could be connected to Elise. Because, you see, I didn’t know at the time I went to see Mr. Hoffman that he was Elise’s father. In fact, I didn’t even know her name.”

It took us ten minutes to sort that out. It became more and more obvious and Detective Johnson was suffering from sleep deprivation and was having trouble comprehending what I told him. His eye twitched on a regular basis. To help him out I took Tess’ pad-she had left it on the table-and on a blank sheet of paper I made a timeline showing what I had known when. After a while I think he got it.

“All right,” he said, finally, “I understand why you went to see Mr. Hoffman. When you discovered that Elise was his daughter, did you discuss the harassment case with him?”

“No, because I wasn’t sure he knew about it.”

Detective Johnson thought for a minute. “Of course, he was all broken up about Elise’s murder, but when I mentioned the harassment charge to him and his wife after Donna told me about it, they seemed puzzled. I’ll bet they didn’t know about it. Did you mention the Shooting Star to him?”

“Heavens, no. I’m sure he hadn’t heard about that.”

“Yeah. It appears that Elise hid a few things from her folks. So why did he give you Elise’s address?”

“I’m afraid I lied to him.” I told the detective about the organization to save girls from becoming strippers. I hoped he didn’t think that because I had lied about one thing I would lie about others.

He didn’t interrupt and after taking some more notes he said, “So after you left Mr. Hoffman’s house you went to Elise’s apartment.”

“We ate lunch first. And when we got to the apartment nobody was there.”

“How long did you wait?”

“Almost an hour. And then Donna showed up.”

“And you knew who she was because she had given you the tip on the Shooting Star.”

“Right.” He was brighter than I had given him credit for.

“She identified you, too. She didn’t remember your name, but she said she had seen you in the Administration Building. She said you’re a professor.” He looked at me suspiciously.

“I was a professor. I’m retired.”

“But she didn’t say anything about the Shooting Star.”

“Maybe she forgot.” I explained how we drove around the block and found Elise there when we returned.

“Why did you want to talk to Elise?”

That was a good question. What had I hoped to accomplish? Blackmail? I decided to stick to the bare facts. “I wanted to talk her into dropping the harassment charge against Mark.”

“Did Elise admit to being the Shooting Star?”

“The subject didn’t come up.”

“What did you talk about?”

“I told her how much damage she was doing to Mark.”

“And…?”

“She said she was sorry.”

“And that’s how it ended?’

“At that time, yes.”

“What do you mean by ‘at that time.’”

“Elise left me a voice-mail last night.”

“What?” Detective Johnson jerked his head up so fast I was afraid he would hurt himself. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“Because I had so much to tell you. Would you like to hear it?”

“Of course.”

Detective Johnson listened to Elise’s voice-mail, turned to me and said, “Has Pappas heard this?”

“I don’t think so. As far as I know, he hasn’t been here since yesterday morning.”

He listened to it at least half-a-dozen times. Then he said, “Don’t erase that. I want to have the our lab make a permanent copy of it.”

Our voice-mail is centralized so there was no tape that Detective Johnson could take with him.

Mark walked through the door with a cheery, “Hi, Lillian.”

Detective Johnson heard him and came around the corner from the den where the phone was located. I said, hastily, “Mark, this is Detective Johnson. Mark Pappas.”

“Detective?” Mark asked as they shook hands. “Is something wrong?”

“Have you been at the college today?” I asked.

“Uh, no.”

“Have you heard the news?”

“Not really.”

“Let’s not play games,” Detective Johnson said. “Elise Hoffman was murdered last night.”

I could tell from the way Mark’s face crumbled and how he grabbed my small bureau for support that this was the first time he had heard about Elise.

Chapter 11

I didn’t have a chance to speak to Mark until much later. I had volunteered to leave my apartment while Detective Johnson questioned him. I went to Tess’ apartment, taking King with me, and called Albert and Sandra. I told them Mark had shown up, but that I didn’t know where he had been. I told them about the message from Elise. Sandra seemed to be more interested in trying to refute a possible murder charge against Mark than that Elise had said she was going to drop the harassment charge. I was relieved to hear her talk like that. I promised to keep them informed.

Tess and I ate an early dinner in the dining room while the questioning continued. It was close to 8 p.m. when Mark called me and told me that Detective Johnson had left.

Mark looked so haggard and wrung out when I returned to my apartment that I was afraid a breeze would blow him away. His face had scratch marks. For one awful moment I wondered if Elise’s fingernails had done that. No, it couldn’t be. I immediately got my thoughts under control and went about fixing something for him to eat, especially after he told me that he had only eaten once since yesterday. Mark was a three-meals-a-day person. Minimum.

“Go in and sit down, Mark,” I told him when he offered to help me. “You look completely beat.”

“No, I need to talk to you, Lillian,” he said.

He wouldn’t be persuaded to relax so I got him a beer from the refrigerator. Beer was another food item I had stocked up on when Mark came to stay with me.

“I guess you know by now that the murdered woman is the one who filed the charges against me.”

I said yes, figuring that a long explanation at this point was inappropriate.

“I swear I didn’t know she had been killed until I walked through that door.”

“I know,” I said. “It was obvious from your reaction.” “I want to tell you what happened to me.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“But you’re wondering where I’ve been for the last 36 hours,” Mark said. “You’ve probably been worried about me. After, all, I didn’t call you or anything.”

“You can tell me later. I assume you’ve told the story to Detective Johnson. That’s what counts.”

“I tried to. But he doesn’t believe me. And there’s no reason why he should.”

“Okay, you’d better start at the beginning.”

“I left here yesterday morning, fully intending to go to work.”

He had left before I had.

Mark took a sip of beer and continued, “When I got near Sandy’s condo I had an overwhelming urge to talk to her. Of course I knew she would probably be gone already, but the urge overpowered me so I stopped at her condo, anyway. Sandy wasn’t there. I let myself in with my key. I wanted to take a look at the things I had left. Among them were a pack, hiking boots and other hiking gear.

“It suddenly occurred to me that I needed to get away for a day…to clear my head and get some perspective on my situation. That idea got a boost from the fact that I dreaded going to the college, even though I didn’t have any classes scheduled and so would have to face a minimum of people.”

I wondered if Detective Johnson had played Elise’s message for him, but I decided I’d better not interrupt him.

He took a few more sips of beer. “On impulse, I took the hiking gear and put it in my car. Then I drove west toward the mountains. After a while I realized that I was headed toward Mt. Mitchell, one of my favorite places.”

“The highest mountain east of the Mississippi,” I said.

“And it also has a road going up it. I thought I would drive up the road and, somehow, the solution to my problems would come to me in the thinner air, like a bolt of lightning. I forgot that the road might still be closed from the storms we had in February. Well, it was.”

“Let’s continue this in the dining room,” I said, exaggerating the grandeur of the area where I eat. You can start on this salad. You need to get some food in you before you waste away to a grease spot.”

Mark thankfully took the salad and we sat at the dining table. After a few bites, he started talking again.

“I had driven all that way and I had my hiking gear with me so I put on my boots, took my pack and began hiking up the trail, figuring that I would go for a couple of miles and then turn back. But even after I got to the snowline I was able to follow the trail and I wasn’t cold so I kept going. Then it started to snow some more. I still kept going because I thought I was near the summit. Then a cloud dropped on top of me and I couldn’t see past the ends of my fingers.”

Mark held out his hand to demonstrate.

“I’m beginning not to like this story,” I said.

“Wait, it gets better. I was finally smart enough to start back down the mountain. Except that the snow, which was now coming down hard, had obliterated my tracks, and visibility was so poor that it was impossible to spot any trail markers. At one point I slipped and tumbled down a slope. I got banged up and scratched, but it also knocked some sense into me. By the time I climbed back up I had admitted to myself that I was lost.”

“Hang on to that thought while I get the rest of your dinner,” I said, wishing that this were a television show I could turn off. Mark could have died, although he obviously hadn’t, but I still wasn’t sure I could stand to hear any more. However, I returned with his dinner, wanting him to get on with the story so that he could get to safety. From then on, the story and the food competed with each other for his attention.

“On top of everything else, it was starting to get dark,” Mark continued. “I knew the smartest thing to do was to spend the night right where I was rather than to go crashing around, get hopelessly lost and perhaps hurt myself.”

“But weren’t you cold?”

“The water in my canteen froze. But snow, after all, is water, so I didn’t have any trouble getting water to drink because I just melted snow in my mouth. I also made myself a snow fort for a shelter. I didn’t have thermal underwear, although I had been smart enough to take gloves and a wool hat, as well as my winter jacket. I also put on two pairs of socks. But, to answer your question, yes, I froze. I didn’t really sleep, but spent the night trying to maintain feeling in my arms and legs and eating the few bites of food that were left from my lunch.”

“You poor thing,” I said, the mother instinct in me rising to the surface. “How did you find your way out?”

“When it started to get light I knew I had to move before my hypothermia completely immobilized me, even though at that point the thought of moving was almost too much to bear. In fact, I was starting to feel comfortable, probably because I was almost numb. I was drifting off into another world. I even asked myself whether it was worth the effort to save myself because of what I was facing here.”

I held my breath. I definitely didn’t want to hear this.

“But I forced myself to come out of my cocoon-the snow had pretty much covered me and, in fact, gave me some protection from the cold-and found that the storm had passed and the sun was coming out. After a few minutes of careful searching I spotted a trail marker and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“I know you’re glossing over a lot, but even though you’re sitting here I’m relieved to hear that you got out safely. When did you manage to get something to eat?”

“I returned to my car, started it, and turned the heat on full blast, until I stopped shivering and my body started functioning well enough to drive. Then I drove until I found a cafe. I went in and ate enough food to feed a good-sized elephant. I’m sure my waitress had never seen anybody eat so much. In fact, she made a few remarks about my eating.”

“And then you drove back here?”

“Yes.”

“You could have called me from the cafe.”

“I could have…but at that point I still sounded pretty awful and that would have worried you more, possibly, than you were worried already. And nothing against you, but in my weakened state I just wasn’t ready to reenter the hassles of civilization.”

“When you came through the door you appeared to be in a good mood.”

“By the time I got here I had solved all my problems. I was ready to get on with my life. And then…”

“I know,” I said, softly, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Did you tell Detective Johnson the same story you told me?”

“Yes, but of course I have no witnesses, so as an alibi it sucks.”

“How about the waitress at the cafe?”

“Shirley? Yes, I did read her nametag. And I did give her name to the detective, as well as the location of the cafe, although I can’t remember its name. Do you know what he said?”

“What?”

“Even if she verifies my story, that still doesn’t give me an alibi for last night.”

“Did Detective Johnson tell you about a message from Elise?”

“Message from Elise? No, he didn’t tell me much of anything. He just kept firing questions at me. I know the basic story, that she was apparently stabbed last night in her bed, but that’s about all.”

“I won’t go into detail because what you need more than anything else right now is some sleep, but I have a little good news for you. I talked to Elise yesterday, and last night she left me a message saying she was going to drop the harassment charge against you.”

Mark showed surprise, then some relief. After thinking for a bit he said, “But since I didn’t know about that it doesn’t invalidate my motive for killing her.”

Chapter 12

“Whew,” breathed Wesley. “No wonder you and Tess missed the Bridge Club on Wednesday and you missed Chess Club yesterday. I knew it had to be something serious, but I didn’t figure on anything like this.”

Wesley and I were the only residents of Silver Acres who were members of both the Bridge Club and the Chess Club. I had just finished telling him about Elise Hoffman and Mark, while Tess sat poised with her pad and pencil, in case I said anything significant that we hadn’t noted before.

“I’d like you both to help me clear Mark,” I said. “You were a big help when I was working on Gerald’s murder, but of course this is more personal because I hope that Mark will be a legal member of the family someday. But that won’t happen if he ends up in jail.”

“Where is Mark now?” Wesley asked.

“He went to the college as usual this morning. He teaches two classes on Friday. Since he hadn’t heard anything different, he assumed he was still on the payroll.”

“When was he last there?”

“Tuesday. He took Wednesday off, as I said, and because he got lost he never made it yesterday.”

“Mark wasn’t mentioned in the article about the investigation in this morning’s paper,” Tess said, glancing at the Raleigh News and Observer.

“Probably because the sexual harassment charge hasn’t been made public,” I said. “The college has done a good job of protecting Elise, if not Mark. And the police apparently haven’t mentioned it to the press yet. But if he gets arrested, it will certainly come to light.”

“It does say that, judging from the state of the body, the murder weapon was probably a sharp knife, maybe a carving knife. ‘There were approximately a dozen stab wounds in the chest area,’” Tess read.

“It sounds like a crime of passion,” Wesley said. “Especially since she was naked.”

“Which definitely rules out Mark,” I said.

“In your eyes,” Tess said. “The front window of the apartment was broken. That’s how the killer got in. No fingerprints were found, except those of Elise and her roommate. And no weapon has been found.”

“Is there a local newspaper published in Bethany?” Wesley asked. “If so, we should subscribe to it. It might give more details about the case than the Raleigh paper.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Tess…”

“I’m writing it down.”

“That’s a good idea, Wesley, especially since I don’t think we’ll get much information out of Detective Johnson. And I’m not sure we can depend on him to make a thorough investigation. He seems to have his mind set on proving that Mark did it. So…let’s get organized. First we need a list of suspects.”

“Unfortunately, Mark is at the top of the list,” Tess said, “since we can’t prove he didn’t do it.”

“Next would be Elise’s father, Eric Hoffman,” I said.

Tess wrote his name down and said, “Motive?”

“What if he had found out that she was the Shooting Star? After his crusade to keep men out of the strip clubs, his own daughter was luring them in.”

“What about her mother?” Wesley asked.

“I haven’t met her, but we can’t eliminate her yet. Her name is June.”

“And the roommate,” Wesley said. “She found the body, right?”

“Donna Somerset. Yes. About eleven o’clock Wednesday evening, she says.”

“Motive?” Tess asked.

“I don’t know at this point,” I said. “In addition, it could be somebody from Club Cavalier, I suppose. The owner is a man named Lefty. Then there are the other dancers, although they didn’t seem to have much contact with her. What time is it?”

“Ten forty-seven and 30 seconds,” Wesley said with the precision of an accountant.

“Club Cavalier opens around noon,” I said. “I’m going to give them a call.” I suited action to the word.

A male voice answered the phone, “Club Cavalier.”

“May I speak to Lefty, please,” I said.

“Who should I tell him is calling?”

The voice was low and guttural, and sounded like that of the bouncer/ticket-taker/announcer. “Lillian.”

“Hang on.”

I hung on. The “hold” music sounded like traditional stripper music, but not what the girls actually danced to.

“This is Lefty.”

This voice had more class than that of the man who had answered the phone.

“I have a friend who wants to see the Shooting Star,” I said. “Can you tell me if she is dancing tonight?” I had mixed feelings about the answer I wanted to hear. No answer would bring Elise back to life.

I heard a background conversation at the other end of the line between Lefty and someone else. Then Lefty said into the phone, “I don’t know if she is or not.”

“When did she last dance there?”

“Wednesday. She was supposed to dance last night, but she never showed. Stupid broad. I thought she was more reliable than that.”

“You’re sure she danced Wednesday, though.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Who the hell is this, anyway?”

“I’m…a friend of hers.”

“A friend? If you’re on the level, I need to talk to you.”

“I need to talk to you, too. Are you going to be there this afternoon?”

“Yeah, I’m always here.”

“All right, I’ll see you about 1:30.”

When I hung up the phone, Wesley said, “You’re going to Club Cavalier, aren’t you? I’m going with you.”

“All right.” As a protector, I wasn’t sure Wesley would be much better than Tess, but at least he knew how to read maps and road signs. His fitness regime included working out in our equipment room three or four times a week, lifting weights and walking on the treadmill. He had lost weight and some of the florid color in his face and looked years younger, but I still couldn’t picture him as a threat to the bouncer at Club Cavalier.

“The Shooting Star danced there Wednesday night,” I said so that Tess would write it down. “What do you think that means?”

“According to our timetable,” Tess said, “she could have danced as late as ten and still made it home in time to get herself killed.”

***

Club Cavalier appeared less exotic in daylight than it did at night. It would have looked like just another restaurant if it had had windows and hadn’t had girls painted on one wall. The parking lot held a sprinkling of cars. As we entered the lot in Wesley’s car I looked around to see if anyone was taking down license plate numbers. It was too early in the day and I assumed that Eric Hoffman had stopped doing that, at least temporarily, after his daughter had been murdered. I didn’t think Wesley was in any danger of being exposed on the Internet.

I preceded Wesley into the building and noticed that no music was playing. There was a lull between dancers. That meant I wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of Wesley-and he wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of me. Also, I could make myself heard by the ticket-taker-the same one as the other time I had been there-as I told him that we had an appointment to see Lefty.

He picked up a phone beside him and pressed a button. After a very brief conversation he motioned for us to follow him and led the way across the room to the hallway where the restrooms were. The few patrons nursed their beers and didn’t look interested in us. Then he went through the doorway to the lap-dance area. I would have really been embarrassed if anything had been going on there, but thank goodness the place was quiet.

We passed the dressing room; a couple of girls were sitting in front of the mirrors. I didn’t look at Wesley so I didn’t know whether he saw the girls. We came to a closed door. Our guide knocked and we heard “Yeah” from behind it. He opened the door and stood aside for us to enter.

I went in first. The room was cramped because it contained two gray metal desks at right angles to one another that took up most of the room. At one desk sat a woman not much younger than I was, I would be willing to bet from her wrinkles, but with bleached blond hair. I had stopped applying any color to my hair and had reconciled myself to its natural gray. Her off-the-shoulder top let me see more of her wrinkled skin than I wanted to.

The occupant of the other desk must be Lefty. He wasn’t as big as the ticket-taker, but almost as heavy, with more fat than muscle. He had a big nose and a wide mouth. He wore a white shirt and a smashing, multi-colored tie. I wondered who bought his ties. He also wore cufflinks. His slicked-back, black hair was neatly trimmed and combed, and made him look like an old-time Italian movie star.

He stood up and said, “Hello, I’m Lefty,” extending a beefy hand across the desk.

“I’m Lillian,” I said, shaking his hand. “This is Wesley.”

He shook hands with Wesley, gave him a quick once-over, apparently dismissed him and turned back to me. “Have a seat.”

Two wooden chairs were crowded into the space between the desk and the wall. I sat in one and Wesley in the other. The woman was working with a calculator and rows of what must be figures on bookkeeping paper. She ignored us.

Lefty sat down and said to me, “So you’re a friend of the Shooting Star.”

I hesitated, not wanting to overplay my hand. “I’ve met her.”

“Perhaps you can tell me why she didn’t show up last night,” he said, issuing a challenge with the tone of his voice.

“Did you try to call her?”

He looked at me, appraisingly. He said, “You don’t look like a cop, unless the police are recruiting from old folks’ homes these days. I know all the local cops, anyway. Here’s the deal; I don’t know anything about her, including her name. She gave me a false ID when I interviewed her.”

“Her name is Elise Hoffman,” I said, “and she’d dead.”

“Dead?” Lefty’s eyes drilled into me. “You’re making fun, right?”

“No. She was murdered Wednesday night.”

“Murdered? You mean she’s the babe from the college who got herself knifed? Maud, where’s yesterday’s paper?”

Maud, who had finally looked up when I said Elise had been killed, swiveled her chair around and produced a newspaper from a pile of papers and magazines on the floor. She handed it to Lefty and said, “I told you that girl was bad news. Maybe next time you’ll listen to me.”

This must be the local paper. The story was on the front page, complete with a picture of Elise.

Lefty skimmed the story, nervously drumming his fingers on the desk. He said, “She was killed not that long after she left here, if it’s really her.” He looked at the picture for a few seconds. “Yeah, that could be her. The mouth looks familiar. I never saw her without a mask and a wig. I wouldn’t forget those eyes if I saw them, but the Star’s eyes were always covered. When she came in here I told her to go play dress-up someplace else because she looked ridiculous. But she bugged me to give her a chance. I usually have the girls strip for me so I can see what kind of bodies they have, but I could see there wasn’t any point with her. She didn’t have anything up here.”

He cupped his hands over imaginary breasts. “I let her go on during the afternoon when the place was empty so she wouldn’t get stage fright. I figured she’d chicken out, anyway, either before or after. But she had the moves and she exuded such charisma that the few guys who were here loved her immediately. She had ‘em inside her g-string right from the start. So of course she was hooked. No girl can resist that kind of power.”

“So she packed them in,” Wesley said.

“Yeah, word got around. Look, I’m in this to make a buck, so what am I supposed to do, show her the door just because she’s got idiosyncrasies? She wanted to be paid in cash, she wouldn’t give me her phone number, but she always showed up when she said she would-until last night. So what’s your connection to her?”

Lefty looked at me. I decided to be partially honest. “She was taking a class from my granddaughter’s boyfriend. He teaches at Crescent Heights. It’s a long story, but he’s a suspect in her murder and I’m trying to clear him.”

“Did he do it?”

“No.”

“That’s tough. What can I do to help?”

“First, I suspect the police are going to want to talk to you. A Detective Johnson is handling this case.”

“Johnson. I think I know him. He must have got promoted. He used to drive a patrol car. All right, I can handle him.”

“Did she have any enemies here?”

“No. But she didn’t have any friends, either. Never stuck around long enough for anybody to get to know her. She always came in costume, wearing that damned mask. And she’d leave after each show, even if she was going on again the same night.”

“How about the patrons? Do you think anyone might have been stalking her?”

“Not as far as I know. She never complained. Like I said, after each show she’d charge out of here like she had to catch a plane. I guess she had a car down the street. At least, she never parked in the lot.”

Speaking of the parking lot rang a bell. “Are you familiar with a website on the Internet that posts the license plate numbers of patrons of the clubs here in Bethany?”

A broad grin lit up Lefty’s face, making his mouth wider than ever. “You mean the site that old guy Hoffman maintains? That guy is a piece of work. But he’s good for business. The young dudes brag about getting their plates on his site.”

Talk about unintended consequences.

“He’s the father of Elise.”

“No.” Lefty looked dumbfounded. “You’re shittin’ me. If he knew about her dancing here…”

“He would have killed her? I’m going to look into that possibility.”

“Look, if there’s anything I can do to help you, let me know. I’m sorry the Shooting Star bought it. I liked that girl, in spite of her idiosyncrasies. She had guts.”

Chapter 13

“How long did you wait the other day?”

Wesley was clearly getting restless, and because he had insisted on driving I couldn’t hold him here against his will. We were sitting in his car across the street from Elise’s apartment, waiting for Donna Somerset. I wanted to express my condolences to her. “Let’s wait ten more minutes and then we’ll go.”

We only had to wait five more minutes. Donna’s car pulled to a stop directly in front of the apartment. I was thankful we were in Wesley’s car because she wouldn’t recognize it, and I was on the passenger side, where she couldn’t see me. I decided not to accost her in the middle of the street, but waited until she had entered the apartment. Then I followed her to the door, telling Wesley to wait for me. The broken front window was covered by a brown packing box that had been flattened out.

Donna opened the door at my ring, looked at me and said, “It’s you. What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Elise,” I said. “My name is Lillian Morgan, by the way.”

“Did the police talk to you?” She looked ready to close the door in my face.

“Yes, I talked to Detective Johnson. I confirmed what you told him, that I was here on Wednesday. I don’t know if you know it or not, but I actually talked to Elise on Wednesday. But I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Donna considered this and then said, “Come in.”

I followed her into the now-familiar front room. I noticed that the pictures of Elise had disappeared from the wall. When Donna offered me a seat I avoided the beanbag chair and sat in another one. She looked somewhat the worse for wear. Her hair was messy and her blouse was wrinkled, as if she had slept in it. She flopped into the beanbag chair, with one leg underneath her.

“It’s been a madhouse around here,” Donna said. “The police kept coming in here and looking around and taking pictures and looking for clues and all that stuff. I couldn’t sleep here the last two nights. In fact, I didn’t get any sleep at all Wednesday night because Detective Johnson and other people kept asking me questions. Then my folks called and asked if I wanted to go home for a while. I said no. They offered to help me find another apartment, but I like this one. I want to stay here. The police let me back in this morning, but it’s going to be too weird sleeping in the same room where Elise got killed, so I may sleep out here.”

She motioned toward an old couch. After her outburst she deflated deeper into the chair. I sympathized with her, making the small talk that I’m not great at because I wanted her to view me as a friend. When I thought she had softened toward me, I said, “May I ask you a question, Donna?”

“Go ahead.”

“Last week you asked me to tell Dr. Pappas to go to Club Cavalier.”

“That was a crazy thing to do, wasn’t it?” Donna giggled.

“Why do you say that? Didn’t you want Dr. Pappas to find out that Elise was the Shooting Star?”

“Elise wasn’t the Shooting Star,” Donna said, quickly.

“What? What do you mean?”

“No. Elise wasn’t the Shooting Star. I was the Shooting Star.”

I stared at her. “I saw the Shooting Star. You couldn’t be the Shooting Star.”

“I am. Come on, I’ll show you.”

I followed her into the single bedroom. It contained twin beds, against opposite walls, plus dressers, bed stands and two wardrobe closets. One of the beds had been stripped down to the innerspring. The mattress had been taken. Donna went to the other side of the room, opened a drawer in the dresser and started pulling things out.

“Here are a couple of my g-strings and bra tops. Here is my mask and here is my wig.”

Everything looked familiar, but so what? “Since you shared this bedroom with Elise, having those things doesn’t prove that you were the Shooting Star and she wasn’t.”

“Watch.”

Donna put on the mask and the wig. Then she took a lipstick from the top of the dresser and with the aid of a mirror on the wall above it, colored her lips bright red. She turned toward me.

“Ta-da!”

I had to admit that from the neck up she looked like the Shooting Star. At least her face looked like the face I had seen in the spotlight as I sat in the back of the room. But what about her body? She weighed more than Elise, and I was sure it would show with her clothes off. Also, breasts are unique to a woman, as well as nipples. Like fingerprints. But again, I might not be able to spot any differences because of my imperfect view at the club. How could I satisfy my doubts?

“What music did you use?”

“Perry Como. ‘Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.’ It’s from a CD Elise had. I have to admit, Elise had the thing for old music, not me. But when I decided to call myself the Shooting Star, it seemed to fit.”

Donna went into the other room and returned with the CD. The title was something about Perry Como’s greatest hits.

“I took dance lessons when I was young,” Donna said. “I know it was a crazy thing to do, but I always wanted to dance in front of a live audience. I had to wear the mask and wig. If my parents ever found out… I made some pretty good money, though. Look at my haul from Wednesday.”

She pulled an envelope out of the dresser and flashed a wad of bills inside it.

I was having trouble absorbing all this. “You’re speaking in the past tense.”

“Yes. Of course I couldn’t go on last night. And now I think it’s time to call it a career. Short and sweet. It was fun while it lasted. Whatever gave you the idea that Elise was the Shooting Star in the first place?”

“Well, you did. You’re the one who asked me to tell Dr. Pappas to go to the Club Cavalier and look for the Shooting Star. You said it would help him. And since we’d been talking about the sexual harassment case against him…”

“I have a confession to make.” Donna giggled. “I have a crush on Dr. Pappas. When I heard you talk about him with Priscilla I thought, wouldn’t it be great if he came and saw me dance. Of course he wouldn’t know it was me. And I would never have had the guts to tell him.”

“Dr. Pappas didn’t see you dance, but I did.”

“How did you like me?”

She gave no indication that she had seen me, but I couldn’t have expected her to. I had been sitting in the back and the spotlight was in her eyes. “You were…great. You sure held everybody’s attention. I’m told that after each dance you rushed out of the club and disappeared. In order to maintain your anonymity. Did you have your car parked somewhere?”

“A block away. I couldn’t park in the Club Cavalier lot because Elise’s father keeps a website of license plate numbers of guys who go there.”

“I know. My son’s license got put on the Internet.”

“I’m sorry. I hope it didn’t hurt him. Elise and I joked about it-in fact it’s a running joke at the college-but still I figured if I was going to keep my identity secret I’d better not risk it.”

“You owe Lefty a call,” I said.

“Lefty? Oh, you mean at the club.”

“Yes. To tell him you’re not going back.”

“Right. Because of everything that’s happened I haven’t had a chance.”

I looked around the bedroom. All of Elise’s possessions appeared to have been removed already. “You found her, didn’t you?”

Donna shuddered. “It was awful. She was in the bed there, lying on her back, all covered with blood. Blood…blood, all this blood.” She paused. “I had just returned from the club.”

“And the killer got in through the front window?”

“Yes, it was broken so he could undo the latch and open it. There was glass on the floor inside and the window was open. I didn’t notice any of that when I came in. It was dark outside and I didn’t turn on any lights in the living room. And the drapes were closed. The police found the mess.”

Then Mark definitely didn’t do it. He knew how to pick locks.

I must have said part of that aloud because Donna said, “Mark? You mean Dr. Pappas. I don’t believe he did it.”

“Let me clear one thing up. When you and I talked outside the Administration Building you said that he couldn’t be guilty of sexual harassment. You were aware at that time that Elise had filed the charge against him, weren’t you?”

“Of course. Elise and I didn’t keep secrets from each other.”

“Are you saying that Elise filed a false charge?”

“What does it matter now?”

“It may matter a great deal because Dr. Pappas is suspected of her murder. If Elise filed a false charge, Dr. Pappas of course knew it was false and would be less likely to kill her than if the charge were true.”

“Or maybe he would be more likely to kill her because she was trying to hurt him and he didn’t deserve it.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Human nature is complicated. “What did you tell the police about the harassment charge?”

“They didn’t ask me about it.”

“Look, Donna. We’re on the same side. Neither of us believes that Dr. Pappas killed Elise. Why don’t you just tell me what you know about the charge.”

“If I do, will you promise not to tell anybody else?”

“How can I do that? This is a murder case.”

“Okay, not unless you absolutely have to.”

“All right, all right.”

“Elise had a boyfriend named Ted. Ted was handpicked and approved by her father.”

“Were they serious?”

“He was more serious than she was. But I think she had become resigned to marrying him.”

“That doesn’t sound like till-death-do-us-part love.”

“No, but remember, Elise was always trying to please her father.”

Always didn’t sound like the right word. “Even to letting him pick her husband.”

“That’s what it looked like to me. Ted believes that people shouldn’t have sex until they get married. He claims he’s a virgin. But Elise…”

“Wasn’t.”

“She had another serious boyfriend before Ted, one definitely not picked by her father. Last year Elise and I roomed together in a dorm. Sometimes I had to leave the room while she and her boyfriend…”

“I get the picture. I still don’t understand what this has to do with Elise filing a harassment charge against Mark…Dr. Pappas.”

“The fact that she wasn’t a virgin gnawed at Elise because she figured it would be found out when she got married, if not before. She needed to get it excused in Ted’s eyes. She came up with this idea of filing a harassment charge for nonconsensual sex. I told her not to, especially not against Dr. Pappas. But she did it anyway.”

“Why did she choose Dr. Pappas?”

“Because…he’s young and good looking, and because…I suspect Elise fantasized about him, just like I did.”

There’s nothing like living out your fantasies. “So Ted knew about the harassment charge because he was meant to. I gather that her father didn’t know about it.”

“She didn’t want him to know about it because she was afraid he would hurt Dr. Pappas.”

“But the consequences of the charge, itself, wouldn’t.”

“I warned her about that. But she wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t think she thought it would hurt Dr. Pappas as much as it did. Or cause an uproar on campus. The whole thing was supposed to be confidential.”

“Who do you think leaked the fact that Mark was the accused?”

“I’d rather not say. I work in the Administration Building and I don’t want to lose my job.”

“You’ve said enough. I want to talk to this guy, Ted.”

“The police have already talked to him.”

We had been standing in the bedroom all this time. I had noticed a loose-leaf binder sitting on Donna’s dresser. The cover had been hand-decorated with music notes and flowers. The word “Compositions” was written on it in fancy script.

“Are you a writer?” I asked her.

She followed my gaze to the notebook and giggled in an embarrassed manner. “I like to write. I’ve written some poems and stuff. The drama department put on a musical review last fall. I wrote the words to many of the songs they sang, including all the songs that Elise sang.”

“That’s impressive. I read that Elise was a singer. She must have been good.”

“She was great. She was going to have the lead in Carousel, the May musical here at the college. Here death really upset things. They’ve been going crazy trying to recast the part of Julie.”

Speaking of crazy, I had one of my crazy ideas. “Where do your parents live?” I asked.

“In Virginia. Near Washington, D.C. They both work for the government.”

“So you don’t go home weekends.”

“Oh, no. They asked me if I wanted to come home for a while…to get over the shock, but then I’d miss school. I think I can handle it here, but of course it’s hard.”

“On Sundays my family gathers for brunch at my son’s farm in Chapel Hill. You have a car. How would you like to drive down and have brunch with us? Dr. Pappas is a friend of the family, too. I think I can arrange for him to be there.”

She blushed at my mention of Mark’s name. “That…sounds like fun, but I don’t want to intrude.”

I assured her that we brought friends to the brunch all the time.

She consented, thanked me and then added, “Please don’t tell Dr. Pappas that I was the Shooting Star. That would be just too embarrassing.”

I agreed and gave her directions to Albert’s farm. Then I said, “One last question. Who do you think killed Elise?”

“I wish I knew.” Donna looked puzzled. “I know you’re trying to help Dr. Pappas. I’d like to work with you to find the killer.”

“I’ll take you up on that.”

Chapter 14

The office of Burt Brown, my attorney friend, was plush considering his age, early thirties, and the fact that he had been out of law school only a few years. His parents had been friends of Milt, my late husband, and me, although they were younger than we were. We had known each other since before Burt was born.

Burt’s firm handled cases ranging from murder to immigration and I wanted him to be in at the start with Mark, even though Mark hadn’t been charged with anything yet. He had agreed to meet us on Saturday morning before his golf game, because of the family friendship.

Burt met us in the lobby of his firm’s offices, which were in a new office building in Durham.

“Hi Aunt Lillian, it’s good to see you,” he said, greeting me with a warm smile and a hug.

Of course I wasn’t really his aunt. He wore a golfing sweater and casual slacks. He was about the same height as I am and his exotic good looks, caused by his mixed ancestry, had to attract females, although I wasn’t aware that he was involved in any romantic entanglement. His mother was Malaysian. His parents had met while his father served with the military in Asia during the Viet Nam war.

I introduced Burt and Mark to each other, and Burt led us into his office. In addition to his desk and some shelves filled with law books, the furniture consisted of a sofa, several functional chairs and a large, antique rocking chair with giant arms and a hand-carved back. The seat had been recently recovered. Burt waved us to the couch.

“Sorry, Aunt Lillian,” Burt said, “there’s no coffee because it’s Saturday, but I have soft drinks and fruit drinks. Can I get you something?”

I asked for water and Mark requested a coke. Burt got a fruit-flavored drink for himself and a bottle of designer water for me; all the drinks came from a small refrigerator in the corner of his office. After he had served us, Burt produced a yellow legal pad, the same kind Tess had been using to record notes for me. I was glad to see that Tess used official legal stationery. He sat down in the rocking chair and rocked gently back and forth.

“This chair is over 100 years old,” Burt said. “It still has the original buggy springs in the seat.”

“Almost as old as I am,” I said, looking at it with new respect.

“So, Mark,” Burt said, in a conversational tone, “I understand you’re involved in the case of the coed murder at Crescent Heights College. I read about it in the paper. What’s her name…Elise something-or-other?”

“Hoffman,” Mark said. “Elise Hoffman. I haven’t been accused of anything yet, but the detective questioned me for several hours on Thursday afternoon.”

“And Aunt Lillian tells me you’ve been suspended from your teaching job.”

“That’s right. I found out yesterday morning. The reason it happened so fast is because Elise had previously brought a sexual harassment charge against me.”

“In fact, you were supposed to see me about the harassment on Wednesday, if I recall correctly.”

“I apologize for not showing up.” Mark looked contrite. “That was the day I fell apart.”

Burt had said that with a twinkle in his eye, but we owed him for wasting his time.

“All right, tell me about your relationship with Elise and then tell me everything you did on Wednesday.”

Burt took notes with a Mont Blanc pen as Mark told his story, which went on for half-an-hour. Burt interrupted, occasionally, with questions. I was impressed with his thoroughness and his professionalism. Any time you watch a child grow up you tend to still think of him as a child, even after he has become a fully functioning adult.

When Mark had finished his story, Burt rocked in his chair and stared at the pictures on the wall of him playing golf with people who looked to me like celebrities I should recognize. I would have to take a closer look at those pictures. I wondered whether Burt was thinking about Mark or about playing golf.

“Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” Burt said, returning his gaze to Mark and me. “We’re going to take very seriously the possibility of Mark being charged with murder. Mark, you’re going to carry on with your life and look the picture of innocence. You’re not going to go out of town or do anything that might arouse suspicion. It’s okay for you to work as a bartender. That’s what you were doing before you started teaching and you’ve got to eat.

“You’re going to try to get your suspension at the college lifted. Find out the exact reason for the suspension. If it has anything at all to do with Elise’s murder, I’ll be on top of it like a linebacker sacking the quarterback because, since you haven’t been charged with anything in connection with her murder, they can’t legally suspend you for that.

“If the suspension is for the harassment, I can’t intervene directly because of their own rules, but you can take this approach. Try to get the harassment charge dismissed because Elise is no longer available to testify. Play the recording for them in which Elise said she was going to drop the charges against you. If these people have any humanity at all they’ll dismiss the charge and reinstate you.”

“Everything you’ve said makes sense,” Mark said.

“I’m not through,” Burt said, with a smile. “Mark, I don’t want you talking to the police. If they ask you any questions, refer them to me. I also don’t want you running around playing detective. I don’t want you going to Club Cavalier or talking to anybody connected with Elise, including her roommate, her parents or her boyfriend. You’re going to leave that sort of thing to the police. And to me.”

“What about me?” I asked, feeling guilty because I hadn’t told them that Donna claimed to be the Shooting Star. Maybe I shouldn’t have promised her to keep quiet.

“Aunt Lillian, you’re the last person I would try to tell what to do. Nobody can tell you what to do. You’re irrepressible. In fact, I encourage you to continue your own investigation because you might find something that the police don’t. I heard about your previous exploits as a detective and I’m impressed. If you’re even a little bit careful I don’t think the police will be bugged by what you’re doing because you can fly under their radar. They don’t expect you to be out there and you can accomplish things without them noticing.”

***

With Burt’s blessing I drove to Bethany again Saturday afternoon. Tess rode shotgun with me and watched the map.

“How do you think I should play it with Ted?” I asked, as we turned onto the main street of Bethany.”

“Maybe I should go in with you,” Tess said. “It sounds to me as if Ted is a very religious person and you’re about as religious as a vulture.”

“That’s not fair,” I protested. “Just because I watch the ceiling whenever I’m inside a church to see if it’s going to come crashing down doesn’t mean that I can’t talk to religious people. And besides, I try to increase harmony in the world.”

“I never said you weren’t a good person. Being a good person isn’t the same as being a religious person.”

“Amen to that.”

“Turn right at the light.”

A few more turns and we were on the street where Ted lived, in the basement of a residential house. Donna had given me his address and told me that we were likely to find him home even on a weekend because he spent a lot of his time studying, although his routine would understandably have been interrupted by Elise’s murder. Tess spotted the house and we parked 100 feet past it. My recent experiences had taught me it’s a good thing to be somewhat devious when one is a detective.

I decided that Tess might add some leavening to my vulture-like approach (using her words) and so we walked back to the house together. The long driveway was asphalt, instead of the gravel of the Hoffmans’ driveway, and thus easy walking. Our walk took us past the house, itself, an older wooden model with odd shapes projecting from the walls, forming, I suppose, nooks inside where the inhabitants found sanctuary.

The door in the back was right where Donna had said it would be so I didn’t hesitate to knock on it. There was no doorbell. My knock was followed by silence for so long that I suspected Ted was not in residence, but eventually footsteps sounded behind the door and it opened.

The young man who looked out at us was tall and quite thin, with short, blondish hair and aviator-style glasses, which gave him a studious look.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, practicing my compassion, “but I knew Elise, and I wanted to express my condolences to you. I’m Lillian Morgan and this is my friend Tess.”

“Er, thank you,” he said, looking from one of us to the other. And then, as an afterthought, “Uh, won’t you come in?”

As he turned to lead us inside I detected a whiff of what might be alcohol on his breath. Did religious people drink alcohol? There were a number of steps going down to what was clearly the basement. I hung onto Tess, whose walking was somewhat wobbly under the best of conditions. We made it all right and followed Ted into a messy room with a few pieces of furniture and two small, ground-level windows, high up on adjoining walls.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asked, lifting a pile of clothes from an old chair and throwing them into a corner. I suspected this was his only room, except for a small kitchen and smaller bathroom that I could see through open doors.

I let Tess take the closest chair because it looked firm and she had the hardest time getting up. I sat on the couch, which I was sure had a hide-a-bed hiding beneath the pillows. Ted sat in a chair with a footrest, facing a television set that was broadcasting a basketball game. A lit lamp on a table beside him didn’t help much to relieve the gloom. Neither did the dim light coming in through the windows. An open beer can and a half-eaten sandwich sat on the table. He turned off the TV with a remote.

“So you knew Elise?” he said to me.

As usual, I was conscious of the possibility of digging myself into a hole. “I knew her slightly,” I said. “She was such a bright and beautiful girl. It’s such a shame what happened.”

“Who would do a thing like that?” he said.

He slurred his words a little and looked as if he might be close to tears. Maybe he had been drowning his sorrows.

“You can take comfort in knowing that she’s in a better place,” Tess said.

Ted looked at her for a moment and said, “Right,” as if he wasn’t completely convinced of that.

“Elise told me she had filed a charge of sexual harassment against one of the professors,” I said, plunging in.

He looked at me, not showing comprehension, and I wondered whether Elise had told him about the charge. Maybe Donna had given me the wrong scoop. I wondered how to extract my foot from my mouth and why I wasn’t home in my apartment reading Reader’s Digest.

Just as I was about to retract my statement, Ted said, “First that and now this. The whole world is going to hell.”

I hoped he wasn’t going to deliver a sermon, but he became quiet again. I said, “She also told me that she was going to withdraw the charge.”

“Withdraw the charge? Why would she withdraw the charge? The man abused her, sullied her, dirtied her. He’s probably the one who killed her. He should be the one to die.”

Uh oh. I had woken him up. “If she was going to withdraw the charge, maybe that meant she…she was mistaken.”

“No, there was no mistake. She definitely wasn’t a virgin.”

Tess and I looked at each other. What made him an expert on virgins? Unless the two of them… I said, “I know how you feel. Marriage is a sacred union and should be treated as such.” When he didn’t respond, I said, “It must have been awful for you. How did you hear about…Elise?”

“Mr. Hoffman called me at about 1 a.m. from her apartment. Of course I rushed right over there.”

“Do you have a car?”

“No, it’s only about a mile. I ran all the way. I couldn’t believe it was true. I hoped it was just a bad dream.”

“And you had been here studying the evening before?”

“I…you sound just like a detective.”

Now I had really woken him up.

“I’ll bet Detective Johnson asked you that question.”

“Yeah. I guess I was upset that he would consider me a suspect.”

“Did he say that you were a suspect?”

“No. He said Dr. Pappas had probably done it.”

“He said that to you?” Tess asked, astounded.

“Yeah. I bet he did it, too. That guy’s a dirty…skunk.”

I didn’t want to argue with Ted about Mark, so I said, “I heard that you and Elise were talking about getting married.”

“Who told you that?”

Woops. “Maybe I misheard. But you have been going together for a while, haven’t you?”

“Since September. I…wanted to marry her, but she hadn’t agreed. Sometimes I got the idea she thought I wasn’t good enough for her. But she who casts the first stone…I was willing to take her, in spite of her transgressions.”

Big of you. “What are you studying?”

“Right now, liberal arts.”

“And what do you want to do when you…graduate?” I almost said, “…when you grow up.”

“I plan to go on to graduate school and study to be a minister.”

Chapter 15

Mark and I arrived at the farm early because I wanted to be present when Donna got there. At first, Mark didn’t want to go, but I gave him the old “we’re all in this together” speech and he finally acquiesced. He hadn’t seen Sandra in over a week and it was time they talked to each other.

One of the devious reasons I had invited Donna was to attempt to strike a spark of jealousy in Sandra. If Sandra became aware of the fact that Mark had his groupies, she might value him more. I also wanted to come up with a plan of action that everybody in the family could agree on and I figured that Donna could make suggestions and would also stick up for Mark, in case Sandra or Albert had any doubts about him.

Technically, Mark was violating the rules laid down by Burt about not talking to anybody connected with Elise, but this was a family gathering and he wouldn’t be alone with her so I had justified this meeting to myself.

Mark drove King and me in his car. He said it was an old car and he didn’t mind getting dog smell and dog hair on the back seat. When we arrived at the farm we released King to run off with her playmate while Mark and I went into the house. I was glad to see that Mark and Sandra hugged each other, although they didn’t kiss. At least they were acting civilly. Winston was happy to see Mark and promptly asked him about his car. We busied ourselves with food preparation.

Albert said, “Tell us about Donna.”

“As you know, she was Elise’s roommate,” I said. “She was also the one who discovered Elise. I’m hoping she might have some information that might lead to the killer.”

“Haven’t the police already questioned her?” Sandra asked.

“Yes, but the detective in charge of the investigation is young and I’m not sure he’s doing a thorough job.”

“Don’t trust anybody under 50, is that it?” Albert said.

“Couldn’t Donna be a suspect?” Sandra asked.

“That’s a possibility, of course, but she doesn’t seem to have a motive, except…” I looked at Mark, wondering how much I should say.

“Except what?” Albert prompted.

“Except that Donna appears to have a crush on Mark and she was upset when Elise filed the charge again him.”

“That’s hardly a motive for murder,” Sandra said, coldly.

“Probably not,” I agreed, quickly.

Mark wisely kept silent. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to talk about his groupies. Maybe getting Sandra together with Mark and Donna was a mistake. Sandra knew about Elise’s phone call to me so there wasn’t anything else we could say to convince her that the harassment charge had been false. And we certainly didn’t want her to start picturing Mark carrying on with other women.

I decided to mention something that might be in Mark’s favor. “The Bethany paper states that the autopsy showed Elise probably hadn’t had sex before she was murdered. Since she was found without any clothes on…”

“It still may not have been a lover’s quarrel,” Albert said. “Although the front window was broken, as I recall, indicating forced entry. But didn’t you say her boyfriend didn’t believe in sex before marriage?”

“Yes.”

“Then by backward reasoning, it could have been him. And he could have covered the murder by breaking the window.”

“Here comes a car,” Sandra said.

We watched through the large front windows as a car that had just appeared out of the woods came slowly along the meandering driveway past acres of lawn to the house.

“That’s Donna’s car,” I said.

I went outside to meet her and to try to prepare her for what lay ahead. She pulled to a stop beside Mark’s Toyota.

“Your directions were great, Mrs. Morgan…or I should say Dr. Morgan,” Donna said as she got out of her car. “I only went astray once and I immediately recognized my error and turned around.”

She wore a skirt and sweater and was dressed more formally than the rest of us. She looked wholesome, but Sandra was prettier, if a grandmother can be permitted an opinion. And Elise had been too.

“I’m retired,” I said. “Why don’t you call me Lillian? Everybody else does.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. Here, I brought some rolls.”

“That was nice of you.” I usually baked rolls from scratch so she had infringed on my territory, but she was a guest and didn’t know any better. I led her along the narrow sidewalk to the front door, quickly going over the names and relationships of the people present. We went inside and into the kitchen, the center of activity, where I introduced her to the people she didn’t know.

Mark formally shook hands with her, acting very professorial in front of Sandra. Albert shook hands with her and welcomed her to his home. Sandra said hello from the stove and didn’t shake hands. Winston asked her if she had new tires on her car.

We sat down to eat at the round table just off the kitchen. With just six people it was a lot easier than carting food into the formal dining room. And that applied to getting seconds, also, which I allowed myself one meal a week. Donna got seated between Albert and Mark, more or less by accident since we didn’t have place cards.

The conversation while we ate started off as small talk. Albert asked Donna how he liked Mark’s class.

“Dr. Pappas is great,” Donna gushed. “Advanced Physics is tough but he explains everything so clearly.”

“I wish he’d explain it to me,” Sandra said. “I almost flunked beginning physics in college.”

“Do you want to be a scientist?” Albert asked Donna.

“Well, I’ve been told I have an aptitude for science. And that more women should go into it.” She paused, reflecting. “But I’d like to become a writer.”

“What do you like to write?” Mark asked.

“I write short stories and poetry. But if I could do what I really wanted I would be a lyricist.”

“You mean a song lyricist?”

“Yes. As I was telling Dr. Morgan, I wrote a bunch of songs for a musical review presented by Citrus Heights College last fall.”

“Some of which were sung by Elise,” I said.

“How long had you two known each other?” Albert asked.

“Since the beginning of the last school year, when Elise was a freshman and I was a sophomore. We both lived in the dorm, but we became friends because we had common interests. And then we decided to get an apartment together for this school year.”

“I would guess that the demand for lyricists is not great,” Sandra said, not unkindly. “I’ve written some poetry in my time and I can tell you that you can’t make a living as a poet.”

Donna sighed. “How true. Of course it’s also difficult to make a living as a singer, but Elise sang with a rock group last summer-a Christian rock group-and was going to have the lead in our May musical. At least she was getting some recognition.”

“Mark has written some poetry too,” Albert said.

“Yes, but Mark can do everything,” Sandra said, “so he doesn’t count.”

Sometimes it did seem as if Mark could do everything. “Donna brought a book of her compositions with her,” I said. I had asked her to do that. “Perhaps she can read some of them to those of us who are on dish duty.”

Before she had a chance to do that the conversation shifted to the murder. Fortunately, we had all finished eating. Sandra told Winston to go play with his car in the family room where she could keep an eye on him but he wouldn’t follow the conversation. He sat in the plastic car, supplied car noises with his voice and power with his feet as he practiced steering and driving forward and backward. He would be asking for a real car in another few years.

Donna retold the story of how she had found Elise. Although she had told it a few times already it was still traumatic for her and she had to pause to avoid being overcome by emotion as she recalled the events of that evening. Sandra gasped when she heard about the amount of blood on Elise and the bedclothes, Albert looked grim and Mark pressed his lips tightly together.

“We know Mark couldn’t have done it,” Sandra said when Donna had finished. “He knows how to pick locks.” The looks she got prompted Sandra to continue, “Well, you picked the lock of the apartment of that woman at Silver Acres last year.”

“I asked him to,” I said, quickly, “and before Donna gets the impression that she has fallen into a gang of thieves let me add that we were trying to solve another murder.”

“Did solve another murder,” Albert said, “but remember that you said you were going to retire from being a detective.”

I had promised with my fingers crossed, but to keep the peace I said, “All I’m doing right now is trying to help Mark.”

“According to the newspaper accounts,” Sandra said to Donna, “you must have just missed the murderer. Elise hadn’t been dead long when you got there.”

“No,” Donna said. Then she blurted out, “I may have seen his car.”

We became suddenly quiet, waiting for her to say more.

“As I went up the walk to the door of the apartment I saw…I saw a car pull away from the curb and drive away. The driver seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Had you seen the car before?” Albert asked. “Do you know what make it was?”

“It was dark, of course, and I didn’t get a good look, but…I don’t think I’d seen it before. It was a compact, but I’m not sure what make it was, either.”

“Another reason it couldn’t be Mark,” Sandra said, “is because he doesn’t own a carving knife. Or any other knife, for that matter. In fact, he didn’t own much of anything when he moved in with me.”

It sounded as if Sandra was trying to protect her turf-meaning Mark-from Donna. That was good news to me. If this kind of talk bothered Donna, she didn’t show it.

Albert and Sandra wanted to know about other possible suspects because the papers hadn’t yet mentioned anybody as a suspect. Donna and I gave a description of Eric Hoffman. From what she said I gathered that Donna liked him. Albert didn’t wish him well since he had placed Albert’s license plate number on his website, but we couldn’t come up with any reason why he would kill his daughter, unless she had been the Shooting Star.

I had promised Donna I wouldn’t tell Mark that Donna was the Shooting Star so I didn’t participate in the speculation about Eric Hoffman’s motive. Donna didn’t say anything, either.

We also talked about Ted, Elise’s boyfriend. Any reason that he might have for killing her was probably connected with her virtue or lack thereof, which might in turn be connected with the harassment charge against Mark. Donna soft-pedaled this, for which I was grateful since I didn’t want to upset Sandra. But we ended up without a prime suspect.

On that note we cleared the table and started to wash the dishes. Donna went out to her car and came back with her book of compositions. She read us several of her poems and song lyrics. I was pleased to hear that they had both rhyme and rhythm. I am not a great fan of what passes for poetry these days.

When I commented on this, Donna said, “As I mentioned before, I think my talents are best suited to writing song lyrics. And in general they have rhyme and rhythm. I write limericks too. Here’s one…oh my God, I can’t recite this one.”

I had seen Donna blush before like she was doing now and I guessed that the limerick was about Mark. She didn’t turn the page fast enough and Albert put his hand on it and read the poem over her shoulder.

“It’s instructive,” Albert said. “Let me read it out loud.”

“I’ll die,” Donna said, but somehow he took the book from her hands and read:

A physics professor named Mark

Had always been scared of the dark.

Said Elise, “‘It’s not dire,

Marky boy, light my fire.

We’ll banish the dark with my spark.

Everybody looked uncomfortable, so I said, to cover the silence, “Why did you use Elise’s name?” before I realized I probably shouldn’t have said anything.

“Because ‘Donna’ wouldn’t scan,” Sandra said, dryly.

Donna recovered her composure enough to say, “Elise was always saying, ‘Dr. Pappas this, Dr. Pappas that,’ as if she owned him. After all, I was taking a course from him too.”

“Do all of your students go bonkers over you?” Sandra asked Mark.

“Only the smart ones,” Mark said.

***

Elise’s funeral was Monday. Although I wanted to talk to her father, and her mother, if possible, this wasn’t the day to do so. I didn’t go to the funeral. Since I wasn’t a friend of Elise or her family, I didn’t think it would be appropriate. Mark didn’t go, either; Burt Brown had specifically told him not to.

I read a number of poems that I had copied, with Donna’s permission, from her book. Albert had recently purchased a new-fangled printer for his home computer that also acted as a copier and a fax machine so I made the copies on that. One of the poems went like this:

Each morning you wake with a smile.

Love came; soon you’ll walk down the aisle.

In school you excel,

Show business, as well.

Egad! You’re becoming a trial.

I suspected that Donna had written this poem for Elise, although it had no heading. However, it seemed to fit her. I assumed it was written tongue-in-cheek. The one thing that puzzled me was the use of the word, “egad,” a word that my grandfather might have used.

I stared at the poem for a while and then figured out what Donna was doing. When Tess came by to go to pool aerobics class with me I showed her the poem, saying, “Here’s a test for you, Tess. A test for Tess. Look at this poem, which was written by Elise’s roommate, Donna, and tell me how we could tell she wrote it for Elise, assuming we didn’t know anything about her.”

“Lil, you know I can’t do puzzles,” Tess complained.

“At least it’s not a math puzzle,” I said, knowing that Tess hated math puzzles. “It’s a word puzzle. Word puzzles are not my strong suit, but I figured it out so you should be able to.”

“Why do you always have to be so competitive? All right, I’ll look at it.”

Tess read the poem and said, “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a limerick. But in limericks the third and fourth lines are usually indented.”

“Clue number one.”

“And a college student doesn’t say ‘egad.’”

“Clue number two.”

Tess looked at the poem some more, complaining all the while. Finally, she said, “All right, I get it. If you say the first letter of each line you spell Elise.”

“Brilliant. Go to the head of the class.”

“Now tell me what is so important about this discovery.”

“It tells us that Donna is clever. She’s not only smart, which we already knew, she’s also clever.”

“Most college students are smart. And I’m not sure what the distinction is between smart and clever.”

“Maybe it has something to do with guile. There’s more to Donna than appears on the surface. Here’s another poem Donna wrote.” We studied the poem, which read as follows:

Will I shoot seven or eleven?

Will I find a jewel that gleams?

Will you lend your wand to me

So I can wave it at my dreams?

Keep it, Lady Luck.

Each lass is Satan’s earthly prize.

He makes angels run amuck

And blinds them with his laser eyes.

“Beats me,” Tess said, shaking her head. “Something about having luck, of course. But Satan, and angels running amuck? The girl needs help, I think.”

I didn’t have a ready explanation so I showed Tess the “light my fire” poem, saying, “Read this poem that she wrote about Mark and Elise and tell me what you think about it.”

Tess read it and said, “It sounds as if Elise had a thing for Mark.”

“Either that or Donna has a thing for Mark. In fact, Donna told me she has a crush on Mark. Maybe both of them had a crush on Mark. If you recall, Mark said Elise made some sort of a declaration of adoration to him during the session that resulted in the harassment charge.”

“The eternal triangle-or rectangle. Does Sandra know all this?”

“Not all of it. But she’s smart enough to know that whatever the girls felt, it wasn’t reciprocated. Mark wasn’t part of it.”

“So has Sandra taken him back?”

“Well…no. Although they seemed to get along all right yesterday. They even went for a walk together. But Mark is still staying with me. Right now he’s at the college trying to get his suspension lifted.”

Tess shook her head. “Remind me never to give any money to Crescent Heights College. But to get back to the murder, which is what we’re really talking about, are you surmising that Donna killed Elise because Elise had a crush on Mark-or because she filed a harassment charge against Mark?”

“I’m not surmising anything yet. But it does appear that Donna and Elise had their differences.”

Chapter 16

On Tuesday the wind blew and it rained. A cold rain. Although it rained hard only sporadically, it rained constantly. It reminded me of a trip I had taken to northern Scotland once when it rained for several days without stopping, making sightseeing difficult and the prospect of sitting in front of the cozy fire at our Bed and Breakfast place attractive.

Mark drove to Crescent Heights College early to meet with the people who were deciding his fate. They had granted him a hearing on his suspension. I wanted to get to Bethany, myself, but it wouldn’t have done any good to ride with Mark because I needed my own car and because I didn’t know how long I would be there.

Tess and Wesley were both busy this morning so I went to my pool aerobics class alone. Sandra and Albert were working. The only option I had was to drive myself to Bethany. I hated to leave King alone for long, which I had been doing too much recently, but duty called. Because of the rain I left her inside. I did get Tess to promise that she would check on King when she got back from wherever she was going and let the dog out to pee.

Because of my problem reading signs I don’t like to drive out of Chapel Hill by myself. I also don’t like to drive on Interstates and freeways. But since I had been to Bethany several times recently I knew the way. I drove with my lights on-a North Carolina state law when it rains-and stayed to the right on the faster roads, particularly I-85, which I took north from Durham. I also slowed down because of the rain, although nobody else seemed to adjust their driving for the weather. I tried to keep out of the way of the trucks and the large SUVs. At one stop sign I pulled up behind a Lexus SUV, which sounded like an oxymoron to me-a luxury sport utility vehicle? Traffic had increased over the years in the research triangle area-Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh. This was a sign that the area was booming. But it also made driving more difficult.

Once in Bethany I found the road to Eric Hoffman’s house without any trouble and was proud of myself. I spotted his place because of the gravel driveway with the pickup truck parked in it that looked like Albert’s. Another car stood in the driveway that I didn’t remember seeing before. I parked behind them and walked gingerly on the gravel toward the house, holding an umbrella.

A deep growl reminded me of the presence of Monster, the dog. He came out of the open garage where he had been sheltered from the rain and stationed himself between me and the front door. He may have been a Great Dane; he was certainly big enough. I decided that since I might be coming here again I should try to make friends with him. “Good dog, Monster,” I said. I repeated this several times.

He seemed to recognize his name and stopped growling. I advanced slowly to the limit of his leash so that he could sniff me, although I kept my hands behind me, not wanting to lose one in case his intentions weren’t honorable. I wasn’t able to hold the umbrella up so the raindrops, given force by the wind, became tiny stinging projectiles pelting my face and neck.

In addition, I realized that my throat was exposed to Monster so I stepped back, beyond his reach, until he calmed down. I had King’s scent on me and he investigated this with his nose. Then I carefully reached out one hand and patted him on his head.

“I see you’ve made a friend of Monster,” a female voice with a southern accent said from the front door.

I turned and saw a woman of about Mr. Hoffman’s age. She looked familiar, probably because of the family portrait in their living room. She had the same dark hair and dark eyes as Elise, but her body showed the signs of good living, or at least a life in which food had not been scarce.

I had prepared a speech for Mr. Hoffman, and seeing someone else took me by surprise. Of course I shouldn’t have been surprised to see his wife. I stammered for a bit, then remembered that talking about people’s pets is usually a safe thing to do. “He’s quite a dog,” I said. “He makes about two of my dog and she’s not small.”

“He’s eating us out of house and home,” the woman said. “But my husband insists we need him for protection. Some protection. He barks a lot, but I don’t think he’d ever bite anybody.”

“At least he scares people. My dog doesn’t even bark. A burglar could steal me blind and she would just watch and wag her tail. My name is Lillian Morgan, by the way. Professor Morgan. I knew your daughter slightly and I wanted to come and tell you how sorry I am about what happened.”

“I’m June Hoffman. Where are my manners? Come on inside out of the rain.”

At least the rain had helped me gain entrance to the house. As I walked toward the door I could see the dark circles under her eyes. It looked as if she had been crying recently. She wore dark clothes. As she led me inside she said, “Usually, I would be working, but I just couldn’t face it the day after Elise’s funeral. In fact, I haven’t been to work since last Wednesday.”

“I’ve met your husband,” I said, trying to revise my approach to Mr. Hoffman to suit the current circumstances. “In fact, I talked to him early last week.” Actually, on the day Elise had been murdered, but I didn’t mention that.

“Well, he’ll be glad to see you. He’s really broken up about this.”

She took my wet coat and hung it on a hanger. We left the umbrella open in the entry. I took a handkerchief from my purse and blotted some of the water on my face so I didn’t look so much like a drowned rat. As we entered the living room I spotted Mr. Hoffman sitting down, his cane leaning against his chair. A book lay unopened on the table beside him, with a bookmark in it. He started to get up when he saw me, but remembering what a struggle this was for him I said, “Please don’t get up, Mr. Hoffman. I just wanted to come by to tell you how sorry I am about Elise.”

Mr. Hoffman relaxed his efforts and said, “Please sit down, Mrs.

…I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Professor Morgan,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “You’ve met her before.”

She said this the way one would speak to somebody whose memory was impaired.

“Morgan,” Mr. Hoffman said. Yes, that’s it. But I didn’t know you were a professor.”

Mrs. Hoffman went into the kitchen to make some coffee.

“I’m a retired professor,” I said. “I met Elise after we talked last week. She was a lovely young lady.”

Mr. Hoffman choked back what sounded like a sob and couldn’t talk for a few seconds so I continued, “We had a nice chat.”

“What day was that again?” Mr. Hoffman asked.

What should I say? I couldn’t lie because, after all, I was part of a murder investigation and anything I said could be used against me. “It was Wednesday, I believe,” I said, as if I had just remembered.

“The day she was killed.”

“In the afternoon.” Meaning not in the evening.

“You were going to get her to help you talk to other girls at the college about why they shouldn’t become strippers.”

There was nothing wrong with his memory. Mrs. Hoffman brought in a tray containing coffee paraphernalia and cookies. We went through the ritual of pouring coffee and adding cream and sugar-although I drink my coffee black-while I tried to plot my strategy. After a couple of bites of a sugar cookie I decided I should get to the point.

“I owe you an apology. I didn’t level with you last week. When I came here I was actually trying to track down Elise because of…well, because of the sexual harassment charge she made.” That was as close to the truth as I could get without saying I had suspected Elise of being the Shooting Star.

Their expressions were pained, as if this was one just more thing they had to cope with.

“We never knew about that…before,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “She never told us.”

“What is your connection to the harassment thing?” Mr. Hoffman asked in a guarded manner.

I had gone this far. “I’m a friend of Dr. Pappas.”

They both looked stunned.

“But he’s the man who killed her,” Mrs. Hoffman blurted.

“He harassed her,” Mr. Hoffman added. “If he ever shows his face here I’ll let Monster loose on him.”

My minutes here were numbered unless I could make a breakthrough. I said, “When I talked to Elise she told me she was sorry that she had filed the charge. And then she left me a message for me saying that she was going to withdraw it.”

“But why would she do that?” Mr. Hoffman asked. “My baby wouldn’t accuse anybody falsely.” He grasped his cane and looked as if he was about to get up.

“Your daughter and Dr. Pappas are both good people,” I said, hastily. “I can assure you about Dr. Pappas because I’ve known him for quite a while. They are also both charismatic and attractive people. It’s not inconceivable that they were attracted to each other. In a case like that, a professor and a student, things can get confusing. Elise may have gotten confused.”

“Are you insinuating that Elise was agreeable to whatever happened between them?” Mr. Hoffman leaned forward on his cane. “She’s engaged to another fellow.”

“She’s not engaged to him yet,” Mrs. Hoffman said. And more softly, “Now, she’ll never be engaged to anybody.”

“I don’t know exactly what happened between them,” I said. “We’ll probably never know. But I can tell you this: Dr. Pappas did not kill Elise. He was lost on Mt. Mitchell when she died.”

“I read that cock-and-bull story in the newspaper,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “He’s got no witnesses. And his face was scratched. How did he explain that?”

The local newspaper had found out about Mark and done an article on him. “Elise didn’t scratch him,” I said. “He fell on the mountain. There was no skin under her fingernails and they had not been broken. They had fresh nail polish on them.” I had read the newspapers too. “Look, we can help each other because we want the same thing. We both want to find out who killed your daughter.”

“Whether or not he actually killed her, if you’re representing a rapist, I want you out of this house,” Mr. Hoffman said, straining to rise from his chair.

“Sit down, Eric.”

The sharpness of the command caused Mr. Hoffman to fall back into his chair. He and I both looked at Mrs. Hoffman.

“Getting rid of the professor won’t make the problem go away,” she continued. “She’s right; we want to see justice done. If she can help with that we should support her.”

“Call me Lillian,” I said.

“I’m June. He’s Eric.”

“Let me tell you what I know. I’ll try not to gild the lily. Something happened between Elise and Dr. Pappas and she filed a charge of harassment. She had decided to withdraw the charge before she died. Now it’s true that Dr. Pappas didn’t know that, but I’m convinced that he was many miles from here that evening. Although his teaching career could have been ruined by the charge, I’m also convinced that he would never kill anybody.”

I stopped, expecting a reaction from June or Eric, but they looked attentive and said nothing. I continued, “If Dr. Pappas didn’t kill her, somebody else did. It’s the job of the police to investigate all possibilities. Maybe we can help them. They think it was somebody who knew Elise because there is no sign of a burglary. Nothing was taken. Isn’t that right?”

“We don’t know of anything,” June said. “Her purse was there, with money and credit cards and all the stuff young people seem to need these days. It didn’t look like anything else had been touched. And Donna-that’s her roommate-said her own stuff was all there.”

“Let’s talk about the people who knew her. First, as you said, is her roommate. She found Elise.”

“Donna is a nice girl,” Eric said, accenting “nice.” “She wouldn’t hurt a fly. In fact, she wanted to help Elise with her singing.”

“Donna wrote songs for Elise,” June said. “The words, not the music. When Elise was in the review last fall, Donna wrote the songs she sang.”

“She wanted to do more of that,” Eric said. “She told me she pictured her and Elise as a team and she thought they could go far together. In a good way, of course. I don’t like a lot of what passes for modern music-rap and garbage like that. It’s junk, with terrible words, about sex and violence against women…killing cops, disrespect for authority. But Donna wrote nice words. I think she was a good influence on Elise.”

“I didn’t know you had talked to Donna all that much,” June said.

“She came here during the day, when you were at work. Just once or twice, of course.”

“You never told me that.”

“Didn’t I? Must have slipped my mind.”

“It must have. What did you two talk about?”

“I told you; we talked about the possibility of Elise and Donna teaming up after college. Donna would write the songs and Elise would sing them. They would be good songs, with Christian values, providing a positive influence on kids, instead of the junk they hear now.”

“What did Elise think of this idea?” I asked.

“She was open to it. I talked to her-Donna asked me to-and she said anything was possible.”

“Elise had a good voice,” June said. “If I may say so she had an excellent voice, but that doesn’t mean she could have had a career as a singer. You know how hard it is to do that. I think she was realistic about it.”

“So Donna and Elise got along well together,” I said.

“Very well,” Eric said. “They’ve known each other since the beginning of Elise’s freshman year at Crescent Heights.”

“I understand that Elise lived in a dormitory last year, even though your house is only a few miles from the college.”

“She needed to spread her wings,” June said. “We don’t have all that much money and for a long time it looked like she would have to live at home and maybe go to community college. Or take on large student loans. But we’ve always been thrifty and we didn’t like that idea. But then this scholarship came through…”

“Elise was the smart one in the family,” Eric said. “But she was awful young to live away from home. Maybe if she had been living at home, this would never have happened.”

“And then there was her boyfriend,” I said, hoping to keep Eric from dissolving, which it appeared he might do.

“His name is Ted,” June said. “He’s a nice enough boy, but he’s a bit of a wimp, if you ask me.”

“Ted is no wimp,” Eric said. “He’s just got good values. He’s even gone out with me on patrol.”

“That’s what I mean,” June said. “That’s a strange occupation for a 21-year-old. Do you know about this patrol business, Lillian?”

“You mean the website and the license plates. Eric told me about that.”

“He tells everybody who will listen. If you ask me, there are better ways he could spend his time. Such as earning some money.”

“Nobody asked you, woman.”

“How did Ted feel about the harassment charge?” I asked.

“He didn’t like it, of course,” Eric said. “Who would? He knew about it before we did. Just like you. It seems like we were the last to know.”

“Elise didn’t want you to go out and hunt down Dr. Pappas,” June said. “You’re so volatile.” She turned to me. “It isn’t all his fault. His leg pains him a lot. But as far as Ted’s reaction, I think that could be a problem. He was funny about things like that. He thinks everybody should be a virgin when they get married.”

“Girls should be virgins when they get married,” Eric said.

“Don’t get started on that,” June said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

She quickly mentioned other peculiarities that Ted had. We chatted about Ted for a few more minutes, but I didn’t learn anything more.

When that subject had exhausted itself I said, “How did you hear about Elise? Did the police come here in the middle of the night?”

“Donna called,” June said. “It was awful. She was hysterical. I was here but Eric was out on patrol. I had been asleep. I have to get up early to go to work. What a phone call to receive when your husband’s not here.” She looked at him, accusingly.

Eric looked guilty for a moment, but then he said, “It’s not my fault if the best pickings at the bars are in the late evening. But I agree it would have been better if I had been here. When I returned she was all collapsed on the couch. She could hardly tell me what happened.”

“And then you went to Elise’s apartment?” I asked.

“They wouldn’t let us look at her,” June said. “It was probably just as well. I don’t think I could have stood it, the way they said she looked. They said Donna had identified her.”

“Did you call Ted?”

“That wasn’t until later,” Eric said. “The police talked to us for a long time first. And some newspaper people. We were even on TV. When something bad happens all the sharks gather, attracted by the blood.

“Eric, don’t talk about blood.” June looked pale.

The talk wasn’t doing me any good, either. I thanked them for their time and got up to leave.

Chapter 17

“Lillian, come look at this.”

“What are you doing up so early?” I asked Mark as I hung up my coat. I had just finished taking King for her morning walk around Silver Acres. It wasn’t yet 7 a.m. Thankfully, the rain had stopped.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Mark had worked as a bartender the night before and must have gotten home very late. I walked back to my sunroom, where he maneuvered the mouse on his computer. I asked, “How did your hearing go yesterday?”

“Impossible to tell. I told my story to a sea of expressionless faces. They didn’t give me any feedback. I felt as if I were talking to a wall. I gave them a taped copy of the message Elise left for you. They said they had already heard it. The police evidently played it for them. They told me they’d let me know their decision.”

“Great. What have you found on the Internet?”

I decided to check today’s Bethany Bugle to see if it had anything new. And look what I found.”

When we had investigated getting a subscription to the Bethany Bugle Mark had found out that they published on the Internet as well as in print. That meant we could have immediate access to each edition-they published twice a week-instead of having to wait for mail delivery since we were outside the geographical area for home delivery.

Mark still wore his nightclothes, which consisted of an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He had extended my telephone line from the study, which also contained the spare bed where he slept, to the sunroom, and hooked it up to the modem inside his computer. That allowed the computer to dial up the Internet, as he had explained to me. I sat on the sofa beside him and said, “Is there something new on the investigation?”

“Not exactly on the investigation, but it certainly concerns one of the players. Read this headline.”

The headline for the article read, “Crescent Heights Coed Moonlights as Stripper.” The article started out, “Not many science majors have a part-time job like the one that Donna Somerset had until last week. In addition to maintaining a 3.5 grade-point average, Donna worked nights at Club Cavalier as an exotic dancer, which means she danced topless, with not much on the bottom, using the alias of the Shooting Star.”

There was a picture of her, but not in her dancing outfit. I skimmed the rest of the article. It told how she had disguised herself with a wig and a mask because, as she said, she didn’t think her parents and some of her friends would approve of what she was doing. When asked why she went public about her job, she said that the police had received a tip that Elise Hoffman had been the Shooting Star. Donna felt she had to set the record straight because this could have an effect on the murder investigation and also because she wanted to protect Elise’s reputation. Elise had been a good girl.

At one point in the article Donna was quoted as saying, “The only time I feel in control of my life is when I’m dancing.” What did she mean by that?

“Well, her secret is certainly out,” I said, as I finished skimming the article.

“It sounds as if you already knew about this,” Mark said, eyeing me, suspiciously.

“Donna asked me not to tell you about it. She said it would be just too embarrassing if you knew. She has a crush on you, you know.”

“In today’s world, crushes can only get the crushee into trouble,” Mark said in an irritated voice. “Well, I realize that you’re way ahead of me on this, but how does the fact that Elise wasn’t the Shooting Star affect the investigation?”

“Unfortunately, probably adversely for you because it eliminates some of the suspects. For example, anybody connected with Club Cavalier. And Elise’s father.”

“Are you saying that Elise’s father would only be a suspect if Elise had been the Shooting Star and he had known about it?”

“That’s about right. As far as the harassment issue, he apparently didn’t know about that until after she was killed. And he would have been more likely to kill you than her, based on that alone.”

“That’s comforting. Do I need a bodyguard?”

“Just don’t go near his dog. He’s big enough to eat you in a couple of bites.” I gave him a brief rundown on my visit to the Hoffmans’ place the day before.

“What do you think of Elise’s mother as a suspect?”

“June? Unlikely. She had no discernible motive. Her thinking is less rigid than her husband’s. In fact, she doesn’t seem to approve of his website.”

“So who does that leave?”

“You.” I immediately saw how bad my joke was when Mark’s face fell, so I tried to soften it. “Actually, we need to take a closer look at Ted and Donna. Ted is a strange duck and he knew about the harassment, apparently because Elise filed the complaint in order to excuse herself in Ted’s eyes for not being a virgin. It’s possible that this backfired on her.”

“Are you saying that Ted may have become so incensed about the fact that Elise wasn’t a virgin that he killed her?”

“Stranger things have happened. He seems to be really hung up on virginity. Although he didn’t admit it to me, he may be a virgin, himself.”

“Does he have an alibi for the night of the murder?”

“Hopefully, Detective Johnson has been better at getting that information out of him than I have. He doesn’t have a car, but he only lives a mile from Elise’s place. And her father didn’t call him until some time after the murder. At which time, of course, he was home.”

“So Detective Johnson talked to him?”

“Yes, but I don’t know whether he searched his place.”

“Like for a weapon?”

“Or bloodstains on clothes. Or a diary detailing the dark deed.”

“Are you saying that we have to do that?”

I hesitated. “I admit that the thought has crossed my mind. Otherwise, I doubt that anything will be pinned on Ted unless a witness comes forward. But I promised Albert that I would be careful about breaking the law this time around, so let’s explore some other possibilities first. Let’s talk about Donna.”

“Newly exposed as the Shooting Star. But what reason would she have to kill Elise?”

“We may have to put some pieces together,” I said, carefully. “Something Eric Hoffman said gave me a glimmer of an idea. I think I need to go back and talk to him again. But when June isn’t there.”

Mark grinned. “Won’t you get eaten up by his dog?”

“Monster and I are friends now.”

My doorbell rang. Who could it be at this hour of the morning? Tess was the only person I could think of who would have the nerve. And she would probably phone me first. I walked to the front door while Mark made the article we were reading disappear from the computer monitor just in case it was somebody we didn’t want to know what we were doing.

I opened the door and saw Detective Johnson standing beyond the outside door, which still had the winter storm window installed. He was approximately the last person I wanted to talk to, but I opened the outside door and said, “Good morning, Detective,” in a voice loud enough for Mark to hear. “You’re just in time for breakfast.”

“I didn’t come here to eat, Mrs. Morgan,” he said, stiffly. “May I come in?”

“Of course. Mi casa es su casa. ” I opened the door wide enough for him to enter. I led him into the living room and I called, “Mark, Detective Johnson is here,” in case he hadn’t heard before. The detective was neatly dressed for so early in the morning, in a suit and tie. Perhaps he was one of those people who didn’t need much sleep.

“It’s you I want to talk to,” Detective Johnson said to me.

I didn’t particularly want to talk to him on an empty stomach, but I allowed him to sit down on my nice new couch. I sat beside him. He didn’t acknowledge Mark, clearly visible in the next room, so Mark wisely decided to stay there. If I spoke up he would be able to hear what I said.

I offered coffee to Detective Johnson, which actually wasn’t made yet, but he declined, so I couldn’t use that as an excuse to duck his questions for a bit. I remembered that he drank coke, but I decided it was too early for him to indulge in that vice.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Detective Johnson said, his eye twitching. “I’ve had a complaint about you.”

I raised my eyebrows and tried to look innocent as he continued, “Ted Ulrich says that you went to his place and browbeat him.”

“Browbeat Ted?” I said, using my outside voice so that Mark could hear. “That’s strong language. I was just asking him some questions.”

“It’s my job to ask the questions, not yours. It’s your job to stay out of this and let me do my job.”

“I hope you are doing your job.”

“I’m serious, Mrs. Morgan. You know, I can arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

I would have to call Burt and find out what the legal definition was for obstruction of justice. I said, “If I promise not to browbeat Ted, will you answer a question for me?”

“It depends.”

“Okay, the question is this. Have you considered Ted as a possible suspect?”

Detective Johnson looked at nothing for a while and then said, “All friends of Elise are possible suspects. Although we haven’t eliminated the possibility that a stranger murdered her, either. We have investigated Ted along with everyone else. As I’m sure you already know, he’s a pretty clean-cut guy.”

I wasn’t sure clean-cut was the right word for Ted. “It appears that he may have been more clean-cut than Elise. Perhaps that led to some differences of opinion between them. For example, because of his views on marriage, if he was a virgin and Elise wasn’t. Have you searched his room?”

“If we did that we should search your apartment, too, since Dr. Pappas is staying here.”

“You have my permission to search my apartment any time you wish.”

“They’ve already searched my office at the college and my car,” Mark said, strolling into the room. “And what did you find, Detective Johnson?”

“Nothing,” Detective Johnson admitted. “All right, since you two obviously don’t think I’m doing my job, I’ll take you up on that, Mrs. Morgan. I’ll search your apartment. I have another officer in the car and he’ll help me.” He produced a cellular phone, called the other officer and told him to come in.

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” Detective Johnson said to us. “We did search Ted’s room and we didn’t have to browbeat him or get a warrant to do it. He volunteered.”

“And you found nothing,” I said. I could tell by his smug smile.

“Correct. And by the way, Elise Hoffman was not the Shooting Star. Donna Somerset was.”

“You’re talking about the article in the Bethany Bugle this morning.”

“That’s old news. Donna told me, herself, last week. It eliminates any suspects that had anything to do with Club Cavalier.”

His look said that he was quite capable of digging out information without assistance. I suppressed a desire to say that Donna had told me the same thing. He would just accuse me of obstructing justice again.

When he couldn’t get a rise out of me, he said, “And here’s something else you don’t know. Elise tested positive for marijuana.”

Now that was news. “And you didn’t find any marijuana at Ted’s place?” I asked.

“It was clean.”

“Did you find any marijuana at Elise’s apartment?”

“No. It appears that she had been smoking somewhere else earlier that evening.”

But probably not with Ted. “Maybe she had another boyfriend,” I said, “and she was out with him.”

“There’s nobody either her parents or her roommate knows about.” Detective Johnson turned his gaze on Mark. “But we’re still working on it.”

“I heard she had a boyfriend last year. Could that still be going on?”

“I talked to him. That was over last June, almost a year ago. And besides, he has an ironclad alibi for the night of the murder.”

Who did that leave? Was Detective Johnson implying that she had gone out with Mark? I found myself wondering whether or not Mark had ever smoked marijuana. But that had to be irrelevant.

My thoughts were interrupted by the other officer knocking at the door.

Chapter 18

Mark didn’t have to show up at his job as bartender until late in the afternoon and so he was at loose ends. Since he didn’t like the idea of me driving myself to Bethany, he insisted on taking me to Eric Hoffman’s home. It wasn’t because he had anything to do at Crescent Heights College; he had made his appeal for reinstatement and his fate was in the hands of the committee that decided such things. They would issue a ruling when they were good and ready.

When I asked him what he thought his chances were, he said, “What are the chances of a lion and a zebra signing a non-aggression pact?”

“That bad, eh?”

“Let’s just say that I should have decided on a career as a burglar when I had the opportunity.”

I didn’t say much more on that subject. I figured that the best way I could help lift Mark out of his depression was to solve the murder of Elise. We agreed that he shouldn’t talk to Eric Hoffman so he dropped me off at the Hoffman driveway and drove away. I would call his beeper with my cell phone when I was ready to be picked up. He used the beeper in conjunction with his bartending job.

I had called Eric from my apartment to make sure that he was going to be there and June wasn’t. She had returned to work. I told him that after talking to Detective Johnson I had some more ideas I wanted to discuss with him. He seemed to be willing to talk to me. I didn’t tell him that the detective had threatened me and I didn’t plan to tell him about Elise’s marijuana use. Let Detective Johnson do that. After all, that’s what he got paid for.

I carried a dog treat for Monster; King loved them so I hoped Monster would too. Monster growled a little when he first saw me, but then he must have recognized my scent because he stopped and came amiably forward. The treat cinched it. We were buddies for life. I scratched him between the ears and told him I had to talk to his master.

Eric acted surprised when he answered the doorbell and found that I had gotten past Monster without him hearing. He appeared to be agitated as he invited me to come inside and sit down. He served us coffee that was already made. He declined my offer to help, saying that he could carry the tray with one hand and wield his cane with the other.

He could, although the tray shook slightly and the contents chattered as he placed it on the coffee table. But he was still strong. I took a sip of coffee and was preparing what to say when I noticed a copy of the Bethany Bugle sitting on the table beside the coffee tray. That was my opening

“Have you read today’s paper?” I asked, indicating the Bugle.

Eric looked startled. “You don’t get that paper, do you?”

“I was told there was an article in it about Donna.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“I do want to talk about Donna, yes. How do you feel about the article?”

“How do I feel about Elise’s roommate working as a stripper at Club Cavalier? How do I feel about her best friend corrupting my baby? I’ve dedicated my life to stopping the sin and the shame of this sort of thing. How do you think I feel?”

The words were there, but the passion wasn’t. It sounded as if Eric were reading the scripture lesson in church. Maybe it was because Donna was the sinner, rather than Elise. Eric opened the paper to the article and handed it to me. I pretended to read it, going “tsk-tsk” at appropriate moments.

“I guess this changes things,” I said, handing the paper back to him.

“It throws a monkey wrench into my feelings about Donna. When she came here she seemed like such a nice girl, well brought up…”

Eric seemed to run out of things to say. When he paused, I said, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You said that Donna came here several times when you were alone.”

“Twice. Maybe three times. No more.”

“What did you two talk about?”

“I believe I told you. She wanted to team up with Elise. She would be the songwriter, Elise would be the singer.”

“Who would write the music? I believe Donna writes words but not music.”

“Elise wrote some music. And I think she knew somebody who wrote music.”

“Of course, singers usually sing songs written by many songwriters. For instance, Frank Sinatra was partial to Cole Porter, but he sang songs written by many other songwriters, as well. I guess my real question is, why did Donna discuss this with you? Why didn’t she talk to Elise about it?”

“Oh, she did. All the time. But she felt that Elise was distancing herself, putting on airs, as she called it. I got the impression Donna thought Elise thought she was better than Donna. Of course she was…”

I had better get to the point. “So what did Donna want you to do? I mean, she didn’t just come here to cry in her coffee, did she?”

“You’d make a good detective,” Eric said, with a smile. “Donna asked me to convince Elise that they belonged together. She wanted me to go to bat for her.”

“Which you did?” I waited for Eric to tell me something new.

“I talked to Elise. I put in a word for Donna. Donna was nice to me. Don’t take this the wrong way, but she would sit on my lap, being careful not to hurt my leg, of course. She had beautiful…manners. She recognized my needs. June just treats me like an invalid. Say, you won’t tell June I told you this, will you?”

This was new, but I had better not dwell on it. “Of course not. But tell me more about how you think Donna felt about Elise-about their relationship. I know they were friends and all that, but if Donna came to you it must have been because there was a problem between them, or at least in her mind there was a problem between them. Elise was pulling away; isn’t that what you said? Okay, that sort of thing happens. If Elise didn’t want to team up with Donna she just had to make other plans.”

“Donna envied Elise…maybe she felt she was nothing without Elise. She almost seemed to be desperate to hold onto her.”

“That sounds like a love affair gone wrong.”

“Donna isn’t one of those lesbian dykes, if that’s what you mean. And my baby was normal too. But…I can’t ever be friends with Donna again. Not after what she did at Club Cavalier. Seducing men, breaking up families…”

In another minute the human race would be doomed to an early extinction. I said, “Donna is smart and talented, in her own right. She doesn’t need Elise for validation.”

“I’m no headshrinker. I don’t know what Donna needs. But she’d better watch out.”

***

We ate lunch in the Crescent Heights College cafeteria. Mark said that as far as he knew he hadn’t been suspended from using the cafeteria. Several students said hello to him as we went through the line and one wished him well. After we sat down I told him about the conversation I had had with Eric. I wanted his opinion about Donna.

“Donna appears to be a manipulator,” Mark said as he swallowed a bite of hamburger. “Strippers manipulate men. And she certainly has old Eric where she wants him.”

“He told me Donna sat in his lap,” I said. “She must have been watching the lap-dancers at Club Cavalier. Or maybe she participated.”

“And don’t forget the possibility that Eric may be impotent. That leg injury may be more than just his leg. Maybe she keeps Eric on her side by letting him taste her strawberries. Maybe that’s all he can do.”

I laughed. “Which may be one game more than June will play. But the real question about Donna is whether her ‘desperation’ about Elise, as Eric called it, was enough for her to kill Elise.”

“It’s possible. And in spite of what Eric told you, there may be more to their relationship that we don’t know about, or that he doesn’t know about.”

“Implying what?”

“Nothing. Or everything. Young women, even well brought up young women, sometimes go through periods of experimentation. At least that’s what I’ve heard. But even if there was nothing physical between them, it’s possible that Donna thought Elise was snubbing her. That could be very upsetting to her.”

“Eric also said that Donna had better watch out. I wonder what he meant by that.”

“It occurs to me that the time these people should have watched out was before Elise was killed.” Mark had been glancing around the noisy and crowded room. He gestured with his eyes and said, “Look three tables to your left.”

Speak of the devil. It was Donna, all right, sitting alone at a small table, eating a sandwich. Her profile was toward us and I didn’t think she had seen us. We studied her for a few seconds and I wondered something I had wondered many times before: How can people recognize their relatives and friends out of the billions of people in the world, many of whom must look like them? In Donna’s case she was very average looking; her features did not single her out and yet I was completely certain it was she from her hair, her head and arm movements, and other cues, however minor, that when taken together, added up to a complete picture. But as easy as it was to spot Donna, I knew it would have been easier to spot Elise, sitting at the same table.

“Stay here,” I said to Mark. “You’re not supposed to talk to her, but I’m going to.”

Mark looked concerned. “Be careful what you say.”

“I’m always careful.”

I took a circular route to Donna’s table, walking behind her so that when she saw me she would be facing away from Mark. I approached her from her other side and said, “Is this seat taken?”

“Oh…hi, Professor,” Donna said, startled, as she looked up from a book she was reading.

“I don’t mean to interrupt. I spotted you across a crowded room and wanted to say hello.”

“No, please sit down.” Donna had recovered her composure. “It’s good to see you. And I wanted to thank you again for inviting me to Professor Morgan’s…” she laughed, “…the other Professor Morgan’s farm. I had a great time.”

“I’m glad you could come,” I said. “We all enjoyed having you,” including Mark at least by implication, figuring that his opinion would weigh heaviest with her. “What are you reading?”

“Oh, this. It’s poetry. Emily Dickinson. It doesn’t have anything to do with any of my classes. I should be reading my physics book. Which reminds me, the class really missed having Dr. Pappas give the lecture yesterday. He makes everything so understandable. The professor who took over the class is an old guy-excuse me, I didn’t mean that in a derogatory way-who talks in long sentences and I couldn’t follow him well enough to take good notes. I hope Dr. Pappas gets his job back soon.”

I looked over at Mark’s table, but he had disappeared. I said, “So do I. Do you like Emily Dickinson?”

“Well, as you know, I fancy myself to be somewhat of a poet so I figured I should learn from the greats. But what I really want to be, as I think I told you, is a lyricist. That’s the only way you can make any money as a poet.”

“But of course that’s a difficult profession to break into. Incidentally, I talked to Eric Hoffman this morning. He said the two of you are friends.”

Donna looked startled at the mention of Eric’s name. She giggled, nervously, and said, “Yeah, I guess you could say we’re friends. He’s a sweet man.”

“And someone you can talk to about your dream of being a lyricist?”

“He’s a good listener.”

“And he might have had some influence with Elise and helped her to see that you and she belonged in a partnership together.”

I must have been very witty because Donna laughed again.

She said, “I didn’t need anybody to speak to Elise for me. We got along just fine.”

“Did she want to sing professionally?”

“She was thinking about it. She was talking about singing with the rock group again this coming summer.”

“And you were going to write lyrics for them?”

“Well…they are looking at some words I wrote to see if they can put them to music.”

“When did you decide to disclose your secret identity?”

Donna looked puzzled so I said, “I read the article about you in today’s Bethany Bugle.”

“Oh, that.” Donna laughed again and looked around, apparently to see if anybody was listening. “The police knew about it and you knew about it. I figured it would come out, anyway, in conjunction with the investigation, so I decided, what the heck, when a reporter called, asking questions about Elise.”

“What has been the reaction of your friends?”

“My female friends all say they wish they had the guts to do it.”

“And your parents?”

“With any luck they won’t find out.”

Chapter 19

King and I were taking our morning walk when the police arrested Mark. Maybe Detective Johnson planned it that way. He knew something about my habits and he didn’t want to get into a gunfight with me. Of course, I hadn’t owned a gun since the days of my youth spent on a farm where I had plinked tin cans and the occasional woodchuck with my . 22.

The police car passed me on the loop road around Silver Acres and I had immediate concern for Mark, but I rationalized that Detective Johnson drove an unmarked car so this must be somebody else. I didn’t see the car leave Silver Acres. I must have been on the other half of the loop when it did. However, when I returned to my apartment Mark was gone. I found a scribbled note that read, “I’ve been arrested.” It was signed, “M.”

I immediately called Sandra, but I got her answering machine. I left a message. I called Albert and caught him at home. I told him what I knew, which was almost nothing, and he said to keep him informed. I was glad that he appeared to be very concerned, although there wasn’t anything he could do at the moment. But at least I wasn’t alone in trying to defend Mark. Outside of our family Mark didn’t really have anybody to turn to because he was an orphan with no close relatives.

Next I called Burt Brown, the attorney. He wasn’t in his office yet so I left a message on his machine. I found the business card that Detective Johnson had given me and called his number, but of course he didn’t answer either so I left a message on his machine. With modern technology you could spend most of your life talking to machines.

***

At 9:30 I finally got a call from Burt. He apologized for the delay and said that he had gone to court early to get a client out of jail.

“Well, now you’ve got another client you have to get out of jail,” I said.

“Okay, Aunt Lillian, let’s take this one step at a time,” Burt said. “First we have to find out what he’s charged with.”

“I assume he’s charged with murder.”

“But on what evidence? As far as I know, the police don’t have enough evidence to charge him with anything. And if they can’t charge him they have to release him. If they have new evidence, as his attorney I’m entitled to know what it is.”

“How soon can you find out?”

“It may take some time. Until I do, I’m going to have to ask you not to talk to anybody connected with the case. Can you do that for me?”

I promised, reluctantly. The most difficult thing for me to do was nothing.

***

I had no reason not to attend the Thursday afternoon chess club. In fact, it would keep me out of trouble-trouble defined as involvement with anything to do with Elise’s murder. I had not heard from anybody since morning. Burt hadn’t called me again and Detective Johnson hadn’t called me at all. I guessed he wouldn’t call me unless he thought I could give him some information.

Wesley was at the chess club and I challenged him to a game. I wanted to get revenge for the defeat I had suffered at his hands two weeks before. I drew the black pieces so Wesley moved first. He liked to establish a solid position before he launched an offensive. I countered by setting up my defense as I looked for an opening. If he wasn’t going to attack, I would.

I started my offensive before I had my pieces positioned properly. I led with my queen too early in the game and it became vulnerable to attack by inferior pieces. While fighting to save my queen I had to give up material. Then we traded pieces and I played better, but Wesley ended up with two pawns on the board to my none. We each had our queen and king.

I had lost my chance for a win. All I could do was attempt to salvage a draw. With Wesley’s pawns threatening to become queens, themselves, I couldn’t afford to trade queens with him. I needed to be creative. I moved my king into the corner toward which his pawns were advancing in tandem and played cat-and-mouse with his king, checking him with my queen but backing off when he placed his queen between his king and my queen.

My opportunity came when he moved his queen into a position that shut off my king from all movement. I moved my queen next to his king, checking him and forcing him to capture my queen with his king. Ordinarily, losing the queen is disastrous, but in this case I was stalemated-not in check but not able to move without being in check. A stalemate is a draw.

Wesley threw up his hands and said, “They say a draw is like kissing your sister, but when you should have won it’s far worse.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t have a sister.” The game had been a lesson to me. Something like “patience is a virtue.” When do we get old enough so that we’ve learned all the lessons? “Are you free for dinner?” I asked. “I’m sworn not to do anything about the murder right now, but I’ll feel better if I can talk about it.”

***

“Are you sure this young fellow has enough experience to defend Mark adequately?” Wesley asked when I had given him a rundown on what I knew.

We were sitting alone at one of the small tables in the dining room. Tess was off somewhere with one of her children and we hadn’t invited anybody else to eat with us.

“He’s been defending murder cases for several years,” I said, “as well as other felonies: armed robbery, drugs, the everyday crimes. If he needs help there are attorneys in his office with more experience than he has. I think he’ll do fine. What rankles me is not being able to participate. I hate doing nothing.”

“Tell me about it.” Wesley smiled. “You are the original ‘I’d rather do it myself’ person. Did you ever let your husband do anything for you?”

“I let him buy me flowers once in a while. And other presents, as long as I picked them out. Seriously, though, we were a partnership. He had an independent streak, also, but we worked very well together. Just ask Albert. We always agreed with each other on how to raise him so he could never play one of us against the other.”

“Well, since you’re grounded for the moment, would you like to come over to my place? I’ll show you the latest calligraphy I’ve done.”

“That sounds suspiciously like inviting me over to see your etchings.”

“You may have seen the statistics that show more than half the men over 60 are impotent. At my advanced age, you don’t have much to worry about.”

“As a statistician, what worries me is people who use statistics to promote their own causes.”

“I’ll give you a flower from my Easter rose and I’ve got some delicious liqueurs. We can get pleasantly warm together and tell each other lies about great bridge and chess games in which we’ve played.”

So this is how seduction is carried out in a retirement community.

Chapter 20

“Thanks for coming, Aunt Lillian,” Burt Brown said as he gave me a hug and ushered me into his office. “I want to tell you everything I’ve found out and get your opinion. You know these people better than I do.”

That corresponded perfectly with my wishes because I had been starved for information since yesterday morning and wanted desperately to get back in the loop.

“When can you get Mark out of prison?” was my first question.

“Not so fast.” Burt smiled, running his hand through his dark hair. “It may take a few days. Murder is a serious charge. There will be a bail hearing, but I’d better warn you, it’s possible that the judge will deny bail or set it impossibly high.”

“And then Mark would have to stay in prison?”

“It could happen. Of course, if we can prove that somebody else killed Elise…”

“The Perry Mason approach.”

“Perry Mason, the idol of all defense attorneys. He never lost a case.”

“I guess I am trying to move too fast. That’s how I almost lost a chess game yesterday. Why don’t you tell me about the new evidence.”

“That’s what I want to do. It seems that this girl Donna went to the police Wednesday afternoon.”

“Donna?” I exclaimed. “Donna testified against Mark? Donna likes Mark. Donna has a crush on Mark.”

“That’s what she said in her testimony,” Burt said, glancing at some computer-printed pages. “In fact, that’s the reason she gave for not telling this before. Evidently, she was trying to protect Mark and hoped somebody else would be arrested for the murder. But her conscience got the better of her.”

“I talked to Donna Wednesday at noon. Everything seemed to be hunky-dory with her then.”

“Why don’t you let me tell you what she said and then we can discuss it. As I said, Donna went to the police. Detective Johnson and somebody else took her testimony. She said that on the evening Elise was murdered she, Donna, was getting ready to go to Club Cavalier to perform as the Shooting Star. Elise was also getting dolled up, as if she was going out.

“Donna asked what she was doing because Elise usually studied in the evenings during the week. According to Donna, Elise hemmed and hawed for a while and then said she had a date with Dr. Pappas.”

“But that’s impossible. Mark was lost on Mt. Mitchell at the time. And Elise had filed a sexual harassment charge against him so why would she go out with him? Besides, Mark has a girlfriend-Sandra.”

“All good points,” Burt said, smiling, “and we will address them. As to the harassment charge, Elise confided to Donna that she was dropping it and that it had been a mistake for her to file it in the first place. And of course Elise left a message for you saying somewhat the same thing.”

I couldn’t deny that. But it did seem to take away Mark’s motive for murdering Elise.

Burt continued, “Elise said Dr. Pappas was crazy about her and she was crazy about him and that’s all there was to it. Now let me finish Donna’s story. She said that she left for Club Cavalier before Elise left. When she returned a little before 11 p.m., as she pulled up in front of the apartment she saw another car pull away. She didn’t know who it was at the time, but a few days later she saw the car of Dr. Pappas and realized that the car she had seen looked a lot like it.”

“She saw Mark’s car at Albert’s farm because I was stupid enough to invite her there to brunch. Great. I gave her the ammunition for her story.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve saved the worst for last. When the police arrested Mark yesterday they searched his car, using a warrant, and found a carving knife in the trunk, wrapped in a towel. There was dried blood on both the knife and the towel. The police lab is matching the blood with that of Elise.”

It took me a minute to recover from that one. Finally, I said, weakly, “Donna could have put the knife in the trunk at the farm. Mark doesn’t usually lock his car-he jokes that he wishes someone would steal it-and you can open the trunk with a latch inside the car.”

“So you think Donna is the murderer?”

“She could be making accusations to save her own skin.”

“Actually, her skin didn’t seem to need saving before because there wasn’t any evidence against her, other than the fact that she discovered Elise’s body. Could somebody else have put the knife in the trunk when it was parked at the college?”

“Possibly. But I remember now that the police had searched Mark’s car before and hadn’t found anything.”

Burt made a note and said, “Of course we will explore all of this.”

“When can I see Mark?” I asked.

Burt smoothed his hair with his hand again. He said, “As his attorney, I can see him. I’m going to talk to him this afternoon. At the place where they’re holding him at the moment, they have a funny system. They’re not set up for visitors so friends and family members can’t actually visit him, but they can talk to him on the telephone. They have sort of an intercom setup.”

“Do we have to go to the jail to use it?”

“Yes.”

“May I hitch a ride with you when you go?”

“Of course. And don’t worry. We’ll get Mark out of this. But we should eat first. Are you up for lunch?”

“Always.”

***

It wasn’t actually a jail. The Bethany Police Station had several holding cells and Mark was in one of these until they sorted out what to do with him. His arraignment hearing was scheduled for Monday.

I only got as far as the waiting room inside the main entrance. It wasn’t the sort of place where you would choose to spend a lot of time. It was clean enough and the walls were painted in pastel colors. Large bulletin boards had notices about the benefits of joining the police force. Computer printouts contained alerts on recent local crimes and several posters had graphic propaganda about the dangers of taking drugs. I didn’t see any of the “wanted” posters that one associates with places like this. Maybe all the known bad guys were behind bars.

People kept coming in and going out. Several uniformed police officers passed through; others not in uniform appeared to be police employees. It was the other people I saw who made the place depressing. Some were there to report problems to the officer at the counter. Others came to talk to inmates, as I did. They looked worried or bewildered or upset. Family members clung together. None of them smiled.

When my turn came the officer instructed me to pick up the phone. I pressed it to my ear and said hello. Although the noise in the waiting room wasn’t overly loud, conversations between the desk officers and civilians created a constant hum and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear Mark. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.

“Hello, Lillian,” Mark said. “Burt told me you were here. It was nice of you to come.”

He sounded all right; Burt must have given him encouragement. I said, “I wanted to let you know that we’re working for you.”

“At least you are. You’re my most faithful friend.”

I hoped that wasn’t true. I would make sure that Sandra came here tomorrow. I couldn’t talk long so I had to get to the point. I said, “When do you think the knife was put in the trunk?”

“I don’t know. I had the trunk open the day before-that’s the day you and I went to Bethany-but I didn’t see the knife. However, the police found it in the wheel well underneath the mat so I wouldn’t have looked there unless I had noticed something suspicious, such as the mat being out of place. But everything looked all right to me.”

“Have you kept your car locked for the past few days?”

“I lock it when I’m working at the restaurant. I never lock it at Silver Acres because that’s such a safe place.”

“How about at the college? For example, when you and I were there.”

“No, I didn’t usually lock it there.”

That corresponded with my memory. Donna-or somebody-could have placed the knife in the trunk at the college. Mark had parked the car in the faculty parking lot where it would have been easy to find. He still had a sticker that allowed him to do that.

“What about this new story of Donna’s?” I asked.

“It’s a complete fabrication. I don’t know why she told it, unless she’s trying to protect herself.”

I knew that already, but I wanted to hear Mark say it. We chatted for a few more minutes until our time was up. I promised to get him out and tried to raise his spirits. He thanked me for caring.

As he drove back to Durham in his leased Lexus, Burt told me that the stains on the knife and the towel had definitely been identified as the blood of Elise.

“So that’s the murder weapon,” I said, abandoning a ray of hope I now realized I had been clinging to, subconsciously.

“It appears that way.” Burt glanced at me, having heard the disappointment in my voice. “But don’t let that get you down. There were no fingerprints on the knife. We can use the fact that Mark rarely locked his car as evidence of how easy it would have been to plant the knife in his trunk. The case against him is circumstantial, at best. I hope you wouldn’t mind going on the witness stand to verify that he didn’t usually lock his car.”

“Of course not. But I hope it never gets that far. How did you find out that the blood was Elise’s?”

“I ran into Detective Johnson and waylaid him long enough to get him to tell me that.”

“Speaking of Detective Johnson, I need to talk to him too. But I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me when he finds out what I want him to do. You’re going to have to help me with him.” “Anything for you, Aunt Lillian. And to help prove that Mark is innocent.”

Chapter 21

The temperature soared on Sunday as we gathered at Albert’s farm for brunch. After several weeks of cool and sometimes rainy weather, I welcomed the change. The heat and humidity of the North Carolina summers get to me after a while, but I like an occasional hot day in the spring. Spring had officially sprung, as we had just passed the spring equinox.

I had invited Burt to come, thinking that this was an ideal opportunity to hold a family conference about Mark, with Burt’s input, and hopefully agree that we would do everything in our collective power to clear Mark of the murder charge. Sandra and Albert had driven to Bethany the day before, Saturday, at my urging, and talked to Mark on the internal telephone at the police station. That was a step in the right direction.

After arriving at the farm, I released King from the back seat of my old Mercedes so that she could play with her friend, Romper. Winston trotted down the sidewalk as I retrieved the rolls and pies I had baked from the car.

“Hello, Great Grandma,” Winston said as I gave him a kiss. Always one to keep his relationships straight, he eschewed use of the name Gogi, which is what Sandra called me.

“How are you, Pumpkin?” I asked, wondering how long he would allow me to call him that. He certainly didn’t look like a pumpkin, having lost his baby fat. He would grow up to be tall and thin, like most members of the family, except Sandra, who was short and thin. Albert was tall, but his thinness had thickened in recent years, in spite of his exertions on the tennis court.

“How are your tires?” Winston asked, surveying them with a practiced eye. He had been born at the age of 40 and already had the cares of the world on his shoulders.

“They’re fine. I had them checked recently.” I couldn’t remember how recently.

“Look, there’s a car,” Winston said, pointing to the edge of Albert’s woods, where Burt’s Lexus had just appeared out of the trees. Cars were Winston’s staff of life.

“That’s Mr. Brown’s car. What color is it?”

“White,” Winston said, with the assurance of one who has long known his colors. “There’s another car.”

Sure enough, right behind the Lexus came a less flashy model, one I didn’t recognize. As Winston announced that this car was green, I was more concerned about who was inside it since I had hoped there wouldn’t be any extra people to interfere with our discussion.

We waited for the two cars to negotiate the long driveway and pull up beside mine. Burt got out first and gave me a hug. I introduced him to Winston and they gravely shook hands. A good-looking blond woman, prematurely wearing a short summer dress, got out of the other car. She showed a lot of leg as she did so, but if Burt saw the show he diplomatically didn’t let on. She was somewhere in her thirties, an age range Albert preferred for his women, so I assumed that he had invited her.

“Hi,” she said, brightly, to the three of us. And zeroing in on me, “You must be Dr. Morgan, Albert’s mother. “I’m Daisy Templeton. I work with Albert.”

We shook hands and I introduced her to Burt and Winston. After a brief hello she ignored Winston, leading me to infer that she probably didn’t have any children of her own.

Albert appeared from the house and after kissing me and shaking hands with Burt, reintroduced Daisy to us and reinformed us that Daisy and he were colleagues. Apparently not yet kissing colleagues, at least in front of other people. Albert took my pies and Daisy my rolls and he and Daisy led the procession along the sidewalk to the front door. Winston, Burt and I followed. By the time we entered the house Winston had Burt’s key case and had identified the key to the Lexus.

The remaining member of the party, Sandra, met us in the kitchen, with kisses, hugs and handshakes, as appropriate. At one time I had had visions of Sandra and Burt getting together, but that had never happened. Sandra hadn’t met Daisy before, and I saw her surreptitiously eyeing the graceful newcomer as we prepared brunch, probably wondering the same things I did: How much older than Sandra was her father’s new girlfriend and was she wearing any kind of support beneath the spaghetti-strapped top of her dress, because, if not, she had a lot going for her.

We sat down at Albert’s round table, the six of us fitting snugly, and ate a delicious meal, the main course consisting of an omelet concocted by Albert, which had some ingredients that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in an omelet, but which tickled the palette. He was a good cook.

Daisy, it turned out, was an associate professor in the Women’s Studies program at the University of North Carolina. Albert looked hard at me when he gave us this information because I sometimes make inappropriate comments on subjects like women’s studies.

Today, however, I was on my best behavior. But I couldn’t find a way to bring up the subject of Mark with Daisy present, and had resigned myself to discussing him later in smaller groups.

Then Sandra said, “Burt, I’m glad that you’re defending Mark. I feel a whole lot better now that you’re on the case.”

“Thank you,” Burt said, bowing his head slightly in the Sandra’s direction. “I’ll do my best.”

I think they would have made a good match. But Mark was a good substitute for Burt, if we could get him out of jail. From Daisy’s expression at this exchange, I gathered that she hadn’t been clued in about Mark. Fortunately, Mark’s arrest had been buried in the Raleigh News and Observer. Albert gave her a quick overview of why Mark was in jail, skipping very lightly over the details and hinting broadly that Mark had been framed. He didn’t mention sexual harassment.

There didn’t seem to be anything else we could say about Mark so the talk turned to other topics, including, somehow, global warming. Daisy apparently accepted global warming as an established fact. And it was obvious from what she said that she blamed men for it.

“Yes,” I said, casually, “global warming is a possibility. The earth has been getting warmer and cooler for billions of years without the help of any men. It would be very surprising if it weren’t doing one of those right now.”

The group ignored this remark as the ramblings of an old lady, except for Albert who gave me another hard look, but then Daisy started documenting all of the horrible results that would undoubtedly accrue from global warming and again implied that the male members of the human race were responsible for the forthcoming catastrophe.

Sometimes the devil makes me do things. I said, “Chaos theory suggests that the effects of global warming are completely unpredictable.”

This time Albert glared at me, but this too might have gone unnoticed by Daisy, as I suspect they don’t spend a lot of time on chaos theory in women’s studies. However, Sandra took up the ball and said, “With all the obvious problems in the world, does it make sense to pour billions of dollars into something that may not be a problem?”

“You’re asking for a lot if you expect government policy to make sense,” Burt said, with a smile, apparently not taking the attack on his sex too seriously.

“Mother,” Albert said, firmly, “could we serve the pies now?” And turning to Daisy, “Mother makes the best apple pie you ever ate.”

That effectively cut off the discussion before Daisy could answer us and we got into a real brouhaha. I could picture Albert saying to us later, “Can’t you children behave yourselves when I bring somebody home?” Maybe not those exact words, but he sometimes lectured me as if he were the parent and I were the child.

I managed to get Albert’s attention, briefly, while we were washing the dishes and Burt was talking to Daisy in the family room. She was actually quite charming and I could see why Burt would be attracted to her. I told Albert that Mark had a bail hearing tomorrow and that, if possible, I planned to put up his bail.

This got his attention since he was the executor of my estate and my principal heir. I also said, “You’re welcome to come along. I always welcome your advice on financial matters. Besides, Burt and I are going to try to talk to Detective Johnson and you could help us with that.” I briefly outlined what I had in mind.

Albert was clearly uncomfortable telling me not to guarantee Mark’s bail because it would make him sound disloyal to Mark. I had counted on that. We called Sandra over and I told her what I had told Albert. She was all for getting Mark out of jail and wasn’t concerned that he might skip town. It appeared to me that she still loved him. Neither of them could get off work to go with me.

“Well, you’ll just have to trust Burt and me to do the best we can,” I said, somewhat relieved that they weren’t coming. We would have a free hand.

When Albert went to join Burt and Daisy, Sandra said, “Gogi, do you still believe Mark is innocent?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do you?”

“Yes. Things were going so well between Mark and me. I wish all this had never happened.”

She had tears in her eyes. I gave her a hug and said, “Don’t worry, Honey. Everything’s going to be all right.” I hoped that was a true statement.

Chapter 22

The chief impression I have of courtrooms is dark wood: wooden benches for the spectators, a wooden wall separating the spectators from the participants, a wooden barrier around the jury box, wooden tables where the attorneys and defendants sit, a large wooden desk for the judge and smaller wooden desks and tables for the other court employees, including the bailiff and the court reporter. And wooden walls. I wondered what would happen if somebody threw a match into the middle of the courtroom.

Fortunately, Mark didn’t look like a defendant as he sat beside Burt at the defense table. Since he had been kept in the holding cell over the weekend, instead of being transferred to the county jail, he still wore his own clothes. Burt had taken him a suit from my apartment and the two of them, dressed alike and sitting side by side, could have been fellow attorneys.

The prosecuting attorney was a pretty young lady. I felt initial relief when I saw her, I suppose because she didn’t look like someone who would throw the book at Mark, but then she got up and proposed a bail amount so high that I couldn’t possibly afford it. My feelings about her changed abruptly and I wished that a California-style earthquake would send the ceiling crashing down on her.

Burt argued in a logical manner that Mark wasn’t dangerous, nor was he a threat to skip town. His family resided here. At least his surrogate family, I thought. Burt said that Mark had no prior criminal record and he had always been a model citizen. Well, except for the harassment charge. However, Burt was able to get the bail amount reduced to a figure that I could handle, but high enough so that if Mark did decide to take off Albert would probably become a bounty hunter and go after him.

***

“Stay in the car, Mark. Your presence might prejudice the results we hope to get.”

Mark reluctantly acquiesced to Burt’s request, acknowledging that he would be more of a hindrance than a help.

Burt had parked a few doors from Donna’s apartment because he didn’t want her to be able to look out her window and see Mark. Detective Johnson, on the other hand, parked right in front of her door and he was waiting for us when Burt and I walked up.

“Donna’s car is here, so she must be home,” I said, pointing the old Chevy out to the two of them.

“I called her and made sure she would be home,” Detective Johnson said, the coldness in his voice indicating what he thought of my reservations about his competence. “You just better not be wasting my time.”

He rang the bell and as we waited I noted that the broken front window had been replaced. Donna opened the door; she seemed surprised to see me and even more surprised to have Burt introduced to her as Mark’s attorney. However, she shook hands with Burt and led us into the main room of the apartment.

When she offered us seats, Detective Johnson said, “We’re not going to stay long. We want to talk to you briefly about your role as the Shooting Star.”

“Is that going to be brought out at the trial?” Donna asked, looking from one of us to another.

“Your own testimony will bring it up,” Detective Johnson said. “That’s where you were the night of Elise’s murder. Right?”

“But if you answer our questions now,” Burt said, smoothly, “maybe we can downplay it. Do your parents know you were the Shooting Star?”

Donna shook her head.

“How long did you dance as the Shooting Star?” Detective Johnson asked.

“About…three months. I started in December.”

“How did you get to and from Club Cavalier?”

“I drove my car. But I didn’t park in the parking lot.”

“How did you get along with Lefty?” Burt asked.

Donna hesitated. “You mean the owner? Fine…we got along fine.”

“But you didn’t give him your correct name. And you asked to be paid in cash.”

“That was…I didn’t want people to know I was doing it.”

“It also allowed you to avoid paying taxes on your earnings.”

“I…”

“We’re not going to rat to the IRS on you,” Detective Johnson said, irritably, looking at Burt. “We just want the truth. Could you please put on your wig and mask?”

“Why?”

“Because Mrs. Morgan saw you dance. We just want to verify that it was really you.”

Donna looked at me, warily. “I’ve already put on my mask and wig for her.”

“I’d like to see you in them again,” I said, trying to placate her. If she refused, could Detective Johnson force her to wear them?

Donna hesitated, and said, “I’m not going to take off my clothes.”

“That’s okay,” Burt said, with a smile. “We have good imaginations.”

Actually, I wondered if I would be able to verify her identity better with her clothes off, but when she turned and went into the bedroom I figured we’d take it one step at a time.

Donna returned two minutes later with the mask and wig in place and she did bear a striking resemblance to the Shooting Star from the neck up. Below the neck she wore jeans and an oversized sweatshirt and that completely spoiled the picture. I wished Burt hadn’t said it was all right for her to leave on her clothes.

“Can you play the music you used?” I asked.

“I’m not sure where the CD is.”

Donna stalled, but the three of us looked at her, expectantly, and the force of our wills eventually impelled her to search through a stack of CDs until she found the correct one. She placed it in the player and soon the up-temple notes of Perry Como filled the room: “Don’t let the stars get in your eyes, don’t let the moon break your heart…”

“Do some of your routine for us,” Burt said.

“There isn’t enough room.”

“Would you like to do it outside?” Detective Johnson asked.

“No.”

This was like pulling teeth. I could understand Donna’s embarrassment at doing a strip routine under these circumstances, even with her clothes on, but we were trying to find out the truth and didn’t have time for sympathy. Again the force of our collective will did battle with hers.

“Okay, okay. The kitchen. I’ll do it in the kitchen.”

The kitchen was small, but at least it wasn’t cluttered with furniture. The three of us crowded into the doorway to watch. Donna kicked off her sandals and started doing some dance steps in time to the music. I had to admit that she looked plausible. She did know something about dancing and she did have a sense of rhythm. Still, it would have been much easier to compare her performance with what I saw at Club Cavalier if she hadn’t been wearing all those clothes.

This was a strange situation because since she had taken her clothes off in front of men before, it shouldn’t be a big deal, but the clients of Club Cavalier were anonymous and there had at least been a psychological distance between her and them. Maybe if I shooed Burt and Detective Johnson out of the apartment…

I said, “But can you do a split while hanging upside down on the pole?”

Donna immediately went into a split on the floor.

“I could never do that,” Burt said, with a shiver.

She wasn’t on a pole, but still… I had another idea. I said, “Do a back-flip.”

“A what?”

Donna stopped dancing and stared at me. So did the others.

“A back-flip, like you did at Club Cavalier.”

“You’re out of your mind. I never did a back-flip at Club Cavalier. You’re trying to get me because I told what I knew about Dr. Pappas. You won’t admit I’m the Shooting Star. Well I am the Shooting Star, damn it. You want me to take off my clothes and prove it? Okay, I will.”

Donna grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt with her arms crossed and started to pull it over her head. Detective Johnson took hold of her arms and stopped her, probably thinking of the trouble he could get into for having a witness strip.

“Is this your idea of a joke?” Detective Johnson asked me.

In the background, the song “Don’t Let the Stars Get Into Your Eyes” ended, and Perry launched into another star song: “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away…”

I was on to something. I tried to remain calm as I said, “Hundreds of people have seen the Shooting Star dance at Club Cavalier. They include my son and the owner and the other dancers. And thanks to Eric Hoffman, we have the license plate numbers of many others. It would be easy to find a dozen witnesses who will tell you that the Shooting Star did two back-flips in her routine. All I’m asking is that you do one for us now.”

“I can’t do a back-flip in here,” Donna said, her voice suddenly reasonable. As you can see, the apartment is too small. And the ceiling’s too low.”

“How about outside on the grass?” Burt said.

“I need a firm surface to take off from.”

“Okay, the sidewalk.”

“It’s too uneven.”

“This is what we’re going to do,” Detective Johnson said, reaching the end of his patience. “We’re going to the field-house, where Crescent Heights plays its basketball games. A basketball court has the same kind of floor as the stage at Club Cavalier, right? Or at least it’s close enough.”

“Or we could go to Club Cavalier, itself,” I said. “Then you could show us how you work on the pole. There aren’t many patrons at this time of day and I’m sure Lefty would be glad to see you again.”

A look that might have been panic briefly crossed Donna’s face. It passed, but she remained silent for a bit. When she spoke her voice was soft. “I did it for her,” she said. “I did it for Elise. Mr. Hoffman was so into this morality thing with strip clubs that I couldn’t let him remember his daughter as a stripper.”

“So Elise was the Shooting Star and not you?” Detective Johnson demanded.

Donna nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Detective Johnson turned to Burt and me. “Out,” he said. Both of you, out. I want to talk to her alone.”

Chapter 23

“But I had a lot of questions to ask her,” I said from the back seat as Burt pulled away from the curb.

“Let Detective Johnson do his job,” Burt said, laughing. “At least give the poor guy a chance. He’s not going to be very cooperative if you take over the case from him.”

“What’s happening?” Mark asked, sleepily from the passenger seat in front. He had been dozing when we returned to the car, not having had much sleep in jail.

“Lillian proved that Donna wasn’t the Shooting Star,” Burt said. “Elise was the Shooting Star.”

“Oh,” Mark said, trying to grasp the significance of this information. “That means…”

“That means Elise danced at Club Cavalier the night she died. She couldn’t have been out with you.”

Mark whistled. “Lillian, I owe you one.”

“You’re not out of the woods yet,” I said. “Donna can still contend that she saw your car drive away when she came home from wherever she was that evening. That’s something we’ve got to find out.”

“Hopefully, Detective Johnson will find that out,” Burt said. “Donna isn’t going to stand in line to talk to you again soon.”

“How did Elise get to and from Club Cavalier if she didn’t own a car?” Mark asked. “If somebody drove her home, isn’t it possible that person is the murderer?”

“It’s certainly possible,” Burt said. “If not, that person may have been the last to see Elise alive, aside from the murderer, that is. And Elise may have smoked some weed with him…or her, which means they knew each other pretty well.”

“I’d like to talk to the guy who owns Club Cavalier,” Mark said.

Burt glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to be getting back to the office.” He stopped for a red light. “On the other hand, Lillian probably saved me several days’ work by uncovering Donna’s lie about the Shooting Star. If I can make a couple of phone calls, I should be all right. How do we get to Club Cavalier?”

“Turn right at the next corner,” Mark and I said, in unison.

We arrived at Club Cavalier in under five minutes. Bethany is not a big place. The parking lot was almost empty. I warned Burt that if he parked in the lot he might find his license plate number on the Internet, but he just laughed. He parked the Lexus and made a couple of calls on his cell phone while Mark and I waited outside the car.

“I won’t ask you if you’ve ever been in a place like this,” I said.

Mark chuckled. “In my misspent youth I did a lot of things. And I’m not sure I’ve outgrown my misspent youth.”

Burt joined us and said, “This looks high class compared to some of the dumps I’ve seen. But hey, this is a college town and everything is high class.”

Music blared as Mark opened the door. One of the dancers gyrated onstage. I hoped the men wouldn’t be embarrassed by having me with them. The usual guy was selling tickets, but if he recognized me he didn’t let on. I yelled at him, “We need to talk to Lefty,” hoping to avoid paying the cover charge.

He yelled something back; I assumed he was asking my name so I said, “I’m Lillian, the friend of the Shooting Star.”

This seemed to impress him. At least he picked up the phone and had a brief shouted conversation, which I couldn’t hear. Then he motioned for us to follow him. Our path took us near the stage. I recognized the blond dancer as the girl named Cherub. She did some impressive things with the pole, but she didn’t have the fluid movements of the Shooting Star. Perhaps nobody would ever be that good again.

Our guide led us through the doorway into the area where they did the lap-dances. I saw some movement coming from one of the cubicles and averted my eyes. Burt and Mark had lingered slightly behind, watching Cherub. I hurried past the lap-dancer, who gyrated on some invisible man inside the cubicle, before they got there.

We passed the dressing room door, but it was closed. A knock on the door of Lefty’s office brought a “Yeah” from the other side. Lefty sat at his desk inside the cramped room, but the older lady who had been running figures the last time I was here was nowhere to be seen.

Lefty stood up as I entered and stretched out both hands across the desk. He wore another beautiful, multicolored tie. For that reason alone I would have gone out with him.

“Lillian, right?” he said, capturing my hand with both of his. “It’s good to see you again. “And who are these, your bodyguards or your groupies?”

I introduced them. After they shook hands Lefty offered us seats. There were only two chairs in front of his desk so Mark sat in the old lady’s chair at the other desk.

“I’ve been following the case of Elise in the newspapers,” Lefty said. “I read that some guy was arrested for her murder. Guy named Mark, or something like that.” He turned to Mark. “You. You’re the guy. What are you doing here?”

“He’s out on bail,” Burt said, hastily. “I’m his attorney. But he didn’t do it.”

“He better not have or I’ll kill him with my own hands.”

Lefty demonstrated a chokehold with his big hands and I had no doubt they could do the job. Mark leaned back in his chair, away from Lefty.

“Elise-the Shooting Star-was the best dancer I ever had. She didn’t have a voluptuous figure, but she sure packed them in. An innocent girl-next-door body, but how she could move it. Erotic poetry. What a combination.”

“For a while we thought the Shooting Star was another girl,” I ventured.

“No way. After you came here I started reading the newspapers. One story described her as having a tattoo on her lower abdomen-a little heart with an arrow through it. Just like the Shooting Star.”

I hadn’t seen the tattoo on the Shooting Star, although I did have a vague recollection of reading about it in the newspaper. I must have figured from the description that her g-string would hide it.

“Elise danced here the night she was killed,” Burt said. “We’d like to find out how she got home.”

Lefty shrugged. “Beats the hell of out me. She always took off right after her number. I figured she had a friend waiting for her someplace. Either that or she had a car. Whether she went in her car or somebody else’s, it was never parked in the lot.”

“She didn’t have a car,” I said. “And she would leave, even if she was dancing again later the same night. At least, that’s what she did the night I was here.”

“Yeah, she did that most of the time. Occasionally, she hung around the dressing room between shows, but she wasn’t very friendly with the other girls and she never took off her mask.”

“Did she do lap-dances?” Mark asked.

“She was too high-class for lap-dancing,” Lefty said, but not as sarcastically as I would have thought. “She said it was demeaning.”

“But you tried to get her to do them?”

“Hey, I’m here to make a buck. A lot of guys wanted her. She could have made big money.”

The door opened. Cherub stuck her head in and said, “Hi, Grandma. Ain’t you the one who was here looking for the Shooting Star a couple of weeks ago?”

“Cherub, how many times do I gotta tell you to knock?” Lefty growled.

Cherub ignored him and squeezed into the room. She wore a thin robe over her costume-or lack of costume. She looked at Burt and Mark and said, “You got good taste in men, Grandma. I would do a lap-dance for either of you-for free.”

She was standing right next to Burt. She plopped herself down on his lap before he had a chance to react and put her arm around his shoulders. He sat there, embarrassed, wondering what to do with his hands. I could feel the warmth emanating from her body, generated by her dancing.

“You see the usual class of broad I get in this place,” Lefty said. “That’s why the Shooting Star was a breath of fresh air, even if she wouldn’t do lap-dances.”

Cherub gave Lefty a death-stare and said, “What I want to know is, did they find the asshole who killed her?”

Cherub looked at me and then at Lefty. Apparently, everybody at Club Cavalier had been sure that that Elise was the Shooting Star.

“Did Detective Johnson ever talk to you?” I asked Lefty.

“He came about a day after you did,” Lefty said. “He didn’t seem convinced the murdered girl was the Shooting Star, even after I told him I was sure of it. He said it was her roommate. I told him to bring the roommate down, that I could tell by talking to her, but he didn’t seem to think it was important.”

“I could have told him, too,” Cherub said. “I talked to her a few times. But the detective never asked me.”

“So who killed Elise?” Burt asked of the room in general, with as much dignity as he could muster, considering that Cherub was playing with his tie.

“Whoever drove her home that night,” Lefty said. “It sounds like the work of a lover. Did she have a lover? I didn’t see anything about one in the papers.”

“She had a boyfriend,” I said, “but I would hardly call him a lover. He didn’t believe in sex before marriage.”

“Yegods!” Cherub exclaimed, jumping up from Burt’s lap. “No wonder she was so skittish. A boyfriend who doesn’t believe in sex.” She went out the door, but then stuck her head back in and said, “Let me know when you find the asshole. The Star acted strange, but she danced good and she didn’t deserve to die.” Cherub shut the door behind her.

I said, “Excuse me. I’d like to go talk to her for a minute.” I stood up and followed Cherub out the door and to her dressing room. I caught up with her inside. Nobody else was there.

“You’re doing all right, Grandma,” she said, turning around when she heard my footsteps. “I hope I have handsome men to escort me when I’m your age. Like Mae West.”

I smiled and said, “I want to ask you a question, Cherub. Did you know about Elise’s-the Shooting Star’s-tattoo?”

“Lefty told me about it. That’s why he was sure that the murdered girl was the Star.”

“But you never saw it?”

“No, it was covered by her g-string.”

“Then how come Lefty knew about it?”

“Lefty? You can’t keep a secret like that from Lefty. He probably got in her pants.”

“But…”

“But what? But she was a good girl? Listen, Grandma, on a night when you’re dancing good and you’ve got the guys eating out of your hand and ready to die for you, it makes you horny as hell. And if all she had to look forward to was a boyfriend who didn’t like sex, she needed something more.”

“But she always left right after her number.”

“Not always. Sometimes she’d go to Lefty first to get paid. Did you see the door in the corner of his office? That leads to a small room with a bed in it. He says it’s so he can take naps. Ha. I know what it’s for because I’ve been there.”

I was learning more than I wanted to know.

“One other thing,” Cherub continued. “The Star and I, we didn’t talk that much, but she did tell me one thing I can relate to. She told me the only time she felt in control of her life was when she was dancing.”

Chapter 24

“I have a confession to make,” Mark said between two bites of bacon as we were eating breakfast the next morning.

Uh oh, I thought. I said, “It’s too early in the morning for confessions.”

“You’ve been so good to me, I’ve got to tell you this. I know one reason you’re helping me is because you hope that Sandy and I will get back together, and I hope with all my heart that we do, but I don’t want you helping me under false pretenses.”

Having said that in one breath, Mark’s body collapsed in his chair like a ventriloquist’s dummy without the ventriloquist.

Get it over with. I said, “I can see that you’re not going to be happy until you say whatever it is that you want to say, so go ahead.”

“I knew about Elise’s tattoo before I read about it in the paper.”

I choked on a mouthful of coffee. Mark watched me worriedly as I coughed and tried to catch my breath, wondering whether he should slap me on the back or call 911, but I waved him off and eventually I recovered. All I could do was whisper, hoarsely, “Tell me about it.”

“When I told you about the time Elise came to my office, I didn’t tell you everything that happened.”

He paused and I said, “I’m listening.”

“When Elise got up to go that day she turned around at the door and faced me. I stood up from my computer. Before I took a step toward her she unzipped her jeans and pulled them down in one quick motion. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Then she said, ‘What are you going to do about this?’ At first, I couldn’t do anything; I just stared. Then I saw her tattoo. It was small but I couldn’t miss it. Then I said, ‘Pull your pants up.’”

I took another sip of coffee to prove that I could do it without my hands shaking, and swallowed it very carefully.

“Elise didn’t move; she just looked at me, taunted me with her half-smile. I cracked first. I moved toward her without a clear plan. I guess I was going to try to pull her pants up, myself. When I got close to her she grabbed me and kissed me.”

“And you pushed her away.”

“Well, it’s not that simple. Elise was not the kind of girl who was easy to push away.”

“I’m beginning to find that out.”

“I’m afraid we…messed around for a minute. And believe me, she was willing. When I finally came to my senses and realized what I was doing, I pushed her away so hard that she fell down because her jeans had trapped her legs. Her head hit the door. That scared me. I apologized several times, but she looked dazed and didn’t respond at first. I wondered whether I should call for help, but then she started to move. After a minute I asked her if she was okay. She said her head hurt, but she would be all right. She pulled up her jeans; then I helped her to stand up and she left.”

“Did she say-what was it-‘Now you know how I feel about you?’”

“Yes, she did say that as she left.”

Tess poked her head in the door and said, “Lil, are you going to pool aerobics this morning?”

I had forgotten all about that. I stammered for a few seconds and then said, “I don’t think so. Not today, Tess.”

“You’re letting yourself go.” Tess shook her head, disapprovingly. She said to Mark, “Are you going to let her get away with this?”

Mark tried to focus on Tess. He said something that wasn’t apropos.

Tess looked at each of us in turn and said, “You two are a pair this morning. Is there some new calamity I should know about? Or anything I can do to help?”

“No.” Mark and I said together.

I tried to soften it by saying, “Thanks for offering, but there are some things we have to do today that I’m afraid you can’t help with.”

Having been rebuffed, Tess strode toward the door, carrying her large towel. She turned and said, “Let me know when you can use the help of a friend.”

“Eat dinner with us and we’ll fill you in,” I called after Tess as she went out the door and disappeared. I rose from my chair and said, “First, true confessions and now this. I’ve had about all the talk I can stand for one day. Come on; we’ve got work to do.”

***

We stopped first at the Hoffman house in Bethany. Eric Hoffman had become a suspect again in my eyes when we confirmed that Elise was the Shooting Star. If he had known this, that would have given him a possible motive for her murder. But how could I find out whether he had known?

Mark was acting as my chauffeur, but I didn’t want him to go in with me. He dropped me off at the head of the driveway. I made my way past a couple of vehicles and responded to Monster’s barking with a goody I had brought for him. He recognized my scent and subjected himself to my petting with an eagerness that belied his regal bearing.

“Somehow I thought that might be you.”

The voice was that of June Hoffman, not Eric. I said hello and she said, “When Monster stops barking that fast, it’s because he knows whoever is coming. And after reading this morning’s paper, I figured you might drop by.”

“You know about Elise being the Shooting Star then,” I said, walking up to the front door, where June stood.

“I can’t say I’m surprised. Come on in and sit a spell. I’ll get some coffee. Eric’s not here. I’m taking a vacation day today. I’m still an emotional wreck.”

I followed June into the living room and sat in a chair I had occupied before. The comfortable room was beginning to feel like home. June went into the kitchen and returned with the coffee. I repeated her remark about not being surprised to find out that Elise was the Shooting Star, and placed a question mark at the end.

“No, I wasn’t. Not really. She had an independent streak and the more Eric tried to make her conform to his ideas about how a girl should act, the more she rebelled. She reminded me of me when I was young. I was a rebel too-I did some pretty wild things I won’t go into here-but after I married Eric I had to suppress all that.”

“Did you have any idea that Elise was…dancing?”

“Now that you mention it, I should have guessed something was going on. And when Donna proclaimed that she, herself, was the Shooting Star I was flabbergasted. I mean, how ridiculous can you get? You’ve seen Donna. She’s not ugly, but what man would look at her twice? Now, Elise, she was a beauty. Of course she got her looks from me, although you wouldn’t know it to look at me now.”

“Did you have any clues about Elise before Donna admitted she was the Shooting Star?”

“That’s what I was going to tell you. Elise was here one day and I told her I was going to visit an old friend of mine in Bethany that evening. He’s a man, maybe your age, who acted like a father to me when I was growing up. My own father was an alcoholic and he did bad things…anyway, I stayed away from him as much as possible when I became a teenager.

“When Elise heard I was going to see Frank, she said she had been invited to a costume party and she might need a ride back to her apartment. She told me the party was near Frank’s house and that she would meet me there about…eleven, I guess it was. Well, she came waltzing in wearing this big jacket with a hood, but her legs were bare. I remember, distinctly, because it was cold out. I asked her what her costume was and she said she had gone to the party as a dancer, but she wouldn’t take off her jacket, even in Frank’s house. At the time I thought it was from modesty because of Frank, but now I suspect that she didn’t want me to see her costume.”

“Did she have a wig or a mask?”

“Not that I saw, but she was carrying a bag with her.

“Does Frank live near Club Cavalier?”

“That’s the point. Club Cavalier is only a few blocks from his house. He doesn’t live in the best part of town, but it’s all he can afford. He lives mostly on Social Security and he has some health problems. I take him food once in awhile.”

“I am curious about one thing,” I said. “How do you feel about Elise having been a dancer at Club Cavalier?”

“How would you feel if your daughter was a stripper?”

“Well, in my case, it would be my granddaughter, and the answer is, at first I would be appalled, but on thinking it over there might be some advantages to stripping over teaching, which is what she does. For one thing, the pay is probably better, what with the condition of schools in North Carolina, and the job may even be safer. I’ve seen…strippers dance, and I’ve been amazed at the power they have over the men in the audience.” I’d almost said I had seen Elise dance. I thought about the effect she had had on Albert, who should be old enough to be immune to that sort of thing.

June smiled. “That was a longer answer than I expected, but it’s kind of the same with me. On the one hand it sounds degrading, but it also sounds exciting. I guess I can’t blame her for doing it.”

I took a sip of coffee and said, “What I really want to know is how Eric reacted to the news that Elise was the Shooting Star?”

“Badly. In fact, so badly that it laid to rest any fears I might have had that he…”

She didn’t continue and in my blunt manner I said, “Did you think he might have killed her?”

June drew in her breath and said, “If he had found out before…relations between them were sometimes edgy…he’s so volatile and I’ve never been quite sure what he would do in a situation like that. But he was so astounded at the article, I knew this was the first time he had heard about it. He got very agitated and told me he had to go somewhere. He wouldn’t tell me where. He limped out of the house and got into that old pickup truck of his and roared off. I just hope he doesn’t have an accident.”

***

The parking lot at Club Cavalier was fuller than it had been yesterday. This must be the lunch crowd, which Lefty catered to by offering sandwiches. He attracted some of the local office workers this way. I was getting to know the business pretty well.

I didn’t feel like going in the front entrance and running the gauntlet so I said to Mark, “Let’s see if we can go in the back way.” Lefty had escorted us out the back door-actually the side door, yesterday.

We walked around the building and Mark tried the door. Sure enough, it opened. It led into a hallway near Lefty’s office. We walked to his door and I knocked.

“Yeah,” a familiar voice growled from within.

Mark opened the door and I stuck my head in, not knowing how Lefty would react to having us show up unannounced. He was talking on the phone, but when he saw me he waved me inside. Mark and I squeezed into the small room and closed the door behind us.

The old lady with the bleached-blond hair was here today, in her seat at the desk adjacent to Lefty’s, underdressed as before. She glanced at me and then took a longer look at Mark, running her eyes down his body in a way that might have embarrassed him, if he had noticed. Lefty waved for us to sit down, but we continued to stand. This would be a short meeting.

He hung up the phone and said, “Well, Lillian. I didn’t think I’d have the pleasure again so soon.” He stood and swallowed my hand in both of his, then shook hands with Mark, saying, “Mark, right? You’re the guy who killed the Star, but you haven’t confessed yet. Just don’t leave town.”

We let that remark pass. I said, “Lefty, I have just one question today. On the last night the Shooting Star worked here, how many times did she dance?”

Lefty thought a moment and said, “That was a Wednesday, right? I’ll never forget it. During the week the Star did two numbers, about eight and then again at ten.”

“Did she disappear between her numbers?”

“That’s two questions, already, but seeing that it’s you… Yeah, she did. She came to me first and got her pay, then she took off.”

“And did she leave immediately after her last number?”

“That’s three questions. And again, the answer is yes.”

“What time was that?”

“Four questions. It would have been about 10:15, 10:20, something like that.” “Thanks, Lefty. No more questions.”

“Now you sound like a prosecuting attorney.”

“I have a question,” Mark said.

“You?” Lefty looked at Mark as if he really believed Mark had murdered Elise. “Yeah, what?”

“You said you knew about Elise’s tattoo. Since it didn’t show when she was wearing a g-string, the only way you would have known about it was if she had told you about it or you had seen her without her g-string.”

Mark was repeating what Cherub had told me. Maybe I shouldn’t have passed it on to him. It was too late for him to protect Elise’s virtue. Lefty stared at Mark and I became conscious of the fact that the blond was staring at Lefty. It occurred to me that she might be his mother.

Lefty glanced at her and said, “We were talking together one time, about how most of the dancers had tattoos, and I said something like, ‘But a good girl like you wouldn’t have a tattoo,’ and she said she did and I said prove it so she pulled down her g-string a little and showed it to me. It was all kind of innocent, really.”

“Then you didn’t take her into your back room,” Mark said, indicating the door that Cherub had told me led to a room with a bed in it.

Mark was pushing the envelope and I thought Lefty would come around the desk and deck him, but the presence of the blond, whoever she was, apparently kept him in check. He finally said, “Maybe you don’t know this, but the Star really was a good girl. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me. That’s the reason I liked her.”

Chapter 25

We went to the house where Ted, Elise’s boyfriend, lived in the basement, and parked a little beyond it, on the other side of the street, where we had a good view. Mark said he would save my feet by going and checking on whether Ted was there. He returned in a few minutes and told me he had not received an answer to his knock.

“Do you mind waiting?” I asked. Fortunately, Lefty had fed us sandwiches before we left Club Cavalier, so at least he wasn’t hungry.

“I should ask you that question. I have a bigger interest in solving this than you do.”

“Don’t say that. While we’re waiting I’ll call Burt and see if he has found out what Detective Johnson learned by talking to Donna.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and called Burt’s number. A woman answered and said he was with a client. I asked her to have him call me and gave her my cell phone number. I don’t give it to many people. He called me back within ten minutes.

“Aunt Lillian,” Burt said in his inimitable way. “What’s happening?”

“Mark and I are staking out the house where Ted, Elise’s boyfriend lives. Other than that, we’re pretty sure that her father didn’t know she was the Shooting Star and that she didn’t have sex with Lefty at Club Cavalier.”

Burt laughed and said, “It sounds like you’re on the ball. Well, I did talk to Detective Johnson this morning. He’s cooperating with me because he’s no longer completely convinced that Mark did the dirty deed. He talked to Donna for quite a while after we left to try to get her to tell a straight story. If she keeps changing it I can have a field day with her in court. So now her story is that she was studying with a male friend. Johnson is trying to confirm this with the friend.”

“That was her original story, if I recall correctly. Even if she was with a friend, isn’t the timing of when she left him key? She claimed she returned to the apartment, found Elise’s body and immediately called 911. Of course, there’s a record of when the 911 call came in.”

“I’m sure the good detective will get all that information. I’ll beat on him until he does.”

“Does Donna still claim she saw Mark’s car when she returned to the apartment?”

“Apparently so. But, as I say, I think we may be able to nullify her testimony, as far as a jury is concerned.”

I asked Burt to call me back if he learned anything more and hung up.

Mark pointed out a tall and thin young man wearing glasses who was walking toward us on the other side of the street. At the distance he was from us he looked familiar, but I couldn’t be sure. When he got close enough for my old eyes to focus, I saw that it was indeed Ted. Mark and I agreed not to accost him outside where it would be easier for him to slip away than in his apartment.

Ted went up the driveway to the back of the house. We decided to give him three minutes before we went in. We didn’t want to make him too suspicious. I looked at Mark’s watch. My adrenaline starts pumping when I am waiting for something to happen and it was difficult for me to sit still.

Finally, after an eternity, the second-hand circled Mark’s watch three times and we got out of the car, crossed the street and followed him up the driveway. I remembered that before Mark had been arrested, Burt had told Mark not to do any detective work. But on the phone Burt hadn’t said anything. And Mark had been to Club Cavalier with Burt so I could rationalize having Mark talk to Ted with me. Ted gave me the creeps and I didn’t want to talk to him alone.

Mark knocked loudly on the door and then stepped away from it so that Ted would see me first. Considering that we had just watched him enter he took a long time to answer. Could he have spotted us in the car and was avoiding talking to us? I didn’t think so; he hadn’t even looked in our direction.

I was wondering about the propriety of breaking down the door when I heard footsteps on the stairs leading up from the cellar. He opened the door a crack and I said, “Hi Ted, remember me, it’s Lillian Morgan. May I speak to you for a minute?”

He didn’t move, apparently expecting me to say my piece, so I said, “May I come in?”

He reluctantly opened the door wide enough for me to enter. That’s when he spotted Mark. Ted looked startled, but it was too late for him to keep us out, if that’s what he wanted to do. We both had our feet planted firmly in the doorway. Facing the inevitable, he led the way downstairs.

When we entered his room I said, “Ted, this is Dr. Pappas.”

Mark offered his hand, but Ted didn’t take it. He said in a flat voice, “You’re the guy who harassed Elise.”

I noted that he said harassed rather than killed. I was about to say that Elise had been going to drop the charge when I remembered that we had had this conversation before. I said, “Did you read this morning’s paper?”

“I don’t get a paper.”

Ted hadn’t offered us seats so the three of us were standing. We wouldn’t be here long unless we could get something going. But the fact that Ted didn’t read newspapers might be to our advantage. I said, “Are you aware of any extracurricular activities that Elise took part in?”

“She was a singer. She sang in shows.”

“Anything else? Something that you might not have approved of?”

“No, unless you count getting herself harassed.” He looked at Mark.

“So you didn’t know that she was a dancer at Club Cavalier.”

“A what?”

I tried to frame the words for maximum effect. “Elise danced topless at Club Cavalier several nights a week.”

This time he got the message. His eyes opened very wide behind his glasses. He looked from one of us to the other. He finally sputtered, “That can’t be…I don’t…you’re making this up.”

Now I wished we had a copy of the newspaper with us. We did have one in the car, but I didn’t want to lose Ted’s attention. I said, “I understand that you sometimes patrolled with Mr. Hoffman, taking license plate numbers of patrons at the places like Club Cavalier and putting them on the Internet.”

He neither confirmed nor denied it.

“When you were doing that, did you ever read the publicity information in front of Club Cavalier? One of the dancers was known as the Shooting Star.”

Ted reacted. Or rather, he exploded. “The Shooting Star was Elise? My God, it couldn’t be. But if it was…oh my God.” He continued to look distraught.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Mark said to Ted.

Mark led Ted to the chair with the footstool and he plunked down in it, automatically. Mark and I both sat down, also. We knew a Pandora’s box had been opened, but we didn’t know what was inside.

Ted looked as if he had gone into a trance so I said, “Ted, tell us what you know about the Shooting Star.”

He collected himself and said, “That night…the night that Elise was killed, I went on patrol with Mr. Hoffman. When we got to Club Cavalier we recorded the license numbers, as usual, and then he said that in order for me to understand the reason for doing this I should see what went on inside. I was shocked; that didn’t sound like Mr. Hoffman. But he kept insisting. He said that after I saw how the men behaved it would make me more determined that ever to wipe out places like this. The devil’s playground, he called them.”

“Had you ever been inside a strip club before?” Mark asked.

“Of course not.” Ted looked indignant. “And I didn’t want to go then. Finally, I agreed to go in for a few minutes to get him off my back. Mr. Hoffman paid and we sat in the back. He bought us beers. I didn’t know he drank beer. We watched a couple of girls dance. They were disgusting, but the men watching them were even more disgusting. They yelled and whistled and put money on the stage.

“I wanted to leave, but Mr. Hoffman said we would see just one more girl. And then the Shooting Star came on the stage. She was different than the others and she looked familiar, in a way… If anything, she made the men wilder than before.”

“What time was that?” I asked.

“It must have been about ten.”

“Had you ever seen Elise without her clothes on?”

“Never.”

“Do you know whether she had a tattoo?”

“If she did, I wouldn’t have had anything to do with her.”

“Let him tell the rest of the story,” Mark admonished me. “What happened after the Shooting Star danced?”

“Mr. Hoffman turned to me and said, ‘Do you know who she is?’ I told him I didn’t know. He said we had to get out of there. He immediately drove me home and said he had to go somewhere. He appeared to be in a big hurry.”

“And you didn’t talk to him again until he called you at 1 a.m.,” I said.

Ted shook his head. “Do you think that Mr. Hoffman…?”

“Killed Elise?” Mark finished. “It’s certainly something we’re going to look into.”

“Did you tell this story to the police?” I asked Ted.

“I told them about going on patrol with Mr. Hoffman, but not about going into Club Cavalier. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.”

“Are you prepared to tell them the whole truth now?” The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Ted nodded.

“I think we’d better get out of here,” I said to Mark.

He stood up and said, “Let’s go.”

Chapter 26

“Where do you think Eric Hoffman went this morning?” Mark asked me after we had gotten into the car.

That was a key question. Should we go directly to the police or should we try to find Eric? I said, “If he’s skipped town the sooner the police are on it the better. But I’m wondering if that’s what he did. The way June talked he was more irate than scared. I have a hunch he may have gone to see Donna.”

“Because she blabbed about Elise being the Shooting Star?”

“Yes, because it undermines his piety. He is no longer holier than we are.”

“It won’t hurt to check to see if he meant Donna any harm.”

“If he did, it could be too late.”

With that impetus, Mark gunned the engine of his stick-shift Corolla and we made it to Donna’s apartment in record time. Her car was parked in front of the building. Mark had trouble finding a place for his car and finally had to park around the corner. This never happens in the movies when the hero is racing to save the victim, but in a movie I guess he would have had no qualms about double-parking.

We walked briskly back to the apartment and rang the bell. No answer. Mark and I looked at each other. I had my cell phone in my purse. Was it time to call 911? He tried the door; it wasn’t locked.

He opened the door and we went inside. Silence reigned. Nothing looked out of place in the main room. Everything was deceptively normal. The beanbag chair slouched, invitingly. The CD player showed a light; it had been playing.

“Donna,” I called. “It’s Professor Morgan.”

No answer. I had a mental picture of Donna lying on her bed, engulfed in blood, a replay of Elise. Gingerly, we made our way toward the bedroom. I poked my head around the corner, dreading what I would see. And then I saw her, on her bed, with her back to me.

“Donna,” I said.

Donna didn’t move. Mark followed me into the bedroom and also called her name. No reaction. I went over to her and touched her shoulder. She flinched and I jumped back, startled, my heartbeat accelerating. Dead bodies aren’t supposed to move.

Slowly, Donna rolled over and looked at us. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been sleeping.”

She sat up on her bed. She wore a white bra and white panties. She brushed back her hair from her face and rubbed her eyes. They looked red. Except for her eyes, she looked the most attractive that I’d ever seen her. Then she became aware of her state of undress. Mark did too, and apologized.

“That’s all right,” Donna said as he turned to leave the room, but he went out anyway. I picked up a T-shirt and a pair of shorts that were lying on the floor and handed them to her. I wasn’t going to abet her in her seduction of Mark. She pulled them on and Mark returned.

“Has Mr. Hoffman been here?” I asked.

“How did you know that?” she asked.

“Just a guess. He left his house this morning, very angry. We thought that he might have been mad because you identified Elise as the Shooting Star.”

“I need a drink of water,” Donna said. She led the way out of the bedroom to the main room and then into the kitchen. She asked, “Would you two like something?”

Mark chose a coke; I took a glass of water. We reassembled in the main room where I carefully avoided the beanbag chair.

After a few sips, Donna said, haltingly, “You guessed correctly. Mr. Hoffman was here. Actually, I think he came this morning when I was in class, but I didn’t get back here until after lunch. Anyway, he returned after I got home. You are also correct about the reason. He was mad because I had to admit that Elise was the Shooting Star.”

“So he was the one who convinced you to impersonate the Shooting Star,” Mark said.

“Oh, no. That was my idea. He didn’t know that Elise was the Shooting Star until I told him. But then he went along with me pretending I was. He said that Elise had suffered enough, having been murdered, and he didn’t want her reputation tarnished. That’s what he said, but I know what the real reason was. He didn’t want his reputation tarnished.”

“When did you tell him Elise was the Shooting Star?” I asked. Did Donna really not know that Eric had known before the murder?

“A few days after she was killed. I figured he ought to know the truth about her, his precious baby that he had put on a pedestal.”

“How did he react?”

“He was…upset, I guess. I don’t really remember. But that’s when he told me he wanted me to keep impersonating the Shooting Star.”

“Did Mr. Hoffman hurt you?” I asked.

“Hurt me?”

“Today.”

“No…he didn’t hurt me. He made me cry, but he didn’t hurt me.”

“When did he leave?” Mark asked.

Donna looked at her watch. “About an hour ago. I was so upset that I collapsed on the bed. I must have fallen asleep. When you first called I was disoriented and thought I was having a dream.”

“Do you know where he went?” I asked.

“No. Home, I guess.”

I had the feeling Donna wasn’t telling us everything, but I might have that feeling because of her propensity to change stories. There was nothing to be gained by talking to her further. I think she was relieved to see us go, but then I would have been too, in her shoes.

***

“I hope you’ve come to confess, because that’s the only reason I want to talk to you two.”

With that opening salvo, Detective Johnson led us to a bleak conference room, with a table and several chairs. After we were seated he opened his spiral notebook and said, “Okay, I’m ready to take down your confession.”

“We have new evidence,” I said. I figured I had to act as Mark’s defense attorney, in Burt’s absence. That meant defending him from Detective Johnson’s verbal blows.

After the detective asked us what we had, in a voice that showed his skepticism, I said, “We talked to Ted Ulrich, Elise’s boyfriend.”

“I told you to stay away from him. Now he’s going to come running to me, complaining that you’re harassing him again.” His eye twitched. Then he relaxed a little and a smile played on his lips. He said, “You know, that guy’s a wuss. I don’t think he had the balls to kill the girl.”

“We don’t think so, either. But he did tell us something I don’t think he told you. On the night that Elise was killed, he was out on patrol, as they call it, with Eric Hoffman.”

“He told me that.”

“But did he tell you that he and Eric went into Club Cavalier?” I paused to let that sink in.

Detective Johnson didn’t give us the satisfaction of showing his surprise, if any. He said, “I’m listening.”

“They drank beer and saw several dancers, including the Shooting Star.”

Now Johnson’s expression changed from skeptical to surprise to calculating. “So you’re telling me that the boyfriend saw his girlfriend stripping and the dad saw his daughter stripping.”

“Not only that,” Mark said, unable to keep silent, “but Ted claimed that he didn’t recognize her because he had never seen her naked before. In fact, if you can believe it, he didn’t know Elise was the Shooting Star until we told him today.”

“And Hoffman?”

“According to what Ted told us about his reaction, he must have recognized her. But he didn’t let on to Ted.” Mark told how Eric had immediately taken Ted home and then left in a hurry.

“And where do you suppose he went?”

“To Elise’s apartment, where else? He probably got there the same time she did.”

“And in his rage and humiliation he stabbed her.”

“That’s certainly a possibility.”

“Since Elise probably wouldn’t lock her own father out, how did the window get broken?”

I said the obvious. “He might have broken it to make it look like a robbery.”

“And then left before Donna got there.”

Mark and I looked at each other. I said, “Yes. I don’t know of any reason why she would cover for him. In fact, it could have been dangerous for her if she had arrived while he was still there. We talked to Donna today after we talked to Ted, by the way. Eric came to see her this morning after he read in the paper that she had admitted that Elise was the Shooting Star.”

“You’ve been flitting all over the place, haven’t you?” Detective Johnson said. “So what did Eric Hoffman want with Donna?”

“To chew her out for revealing the identity of the Shooting Star,” Mark said. “According to Donna, he really lambasted her.”

“Because it makes him a suspect.”

“Although, if we can believe what Donna told us, she still doesn’t know he knew before the killing…”

“And thus, she doesn’t know he had a motive.”

“Second reason he’s mad at Donna is because this revelation subjects him to public humiliation,” I said, using Johnson’s own word. “His daughter is revealed as a stripper, which goes against everything he stands for. Donna can appreciate that. She said so. In her mind, that’s reason enough for him to be mad at her, even if he didn’t kill Elise.”

“So he’s the killer but she hasn’t been covering for him because she doesn’t know it,” Detective Johnson said. “Poor guy. He’s the salt of the earth, but his kid lets him down.” His voice registered equal parts skepticism and sarcasm. “Assuming everything you’ve told me is true, what about the knife? How did it get into Mark’s car?”

“The last time I visited Eric Hoffman, Mark drove me there. Mark didn’t stay while I talked to Eric, but I beeped him when I was ready to leave and he returned. Eric walked out with me and got a good look at Mark’s car, although they didn’t talk to each other. Since he was in the habit of taking down license plate numbers, he probably wrote Mark’s down. He knew my address at Silver Acres and he knew Mark was staying with me. When he went out on night patrol, he could have driven to Silver Acres and found Mark’s car.”

“Figuring that since Mark was a suspect, anyway, this might seal his fate and get Eric off the hook.”

A reply to this remark didn’t seem necessary, so Mark and I kept silent.

Detective Johnson wrote some notes and carefully studied them for a time, without looking up. Then he met our eyes and said, “If you’re expecting a thank you, forget it. I would have found this stuff out, sooner or later. Now I’ll follow up. I want you two to keep out of it.”

Chapter 27

I still didn’t have at least one piece to the puzzle. How had Elise gotten home from Club Cavalier? Detective Johnson didn’t seem to know, or if he did he didn’t tell Mark and me. It’s possible that Eric Hoffman had returned to Club Cavalier after he had taken Ted home, but by then Elise would have been gone.

She might have left even faster if she had seen her father and her boyfriend in the audience, but there was no way of knowing whether she had. From what I remembered of the lighting in the Club, it probably would have been difficult for her to recognize anybody sitting in the back, especially with the spotlights shining in her eyes.

In any case, according to Lefty she had left immediately after her show. So who had given her a ride? That person could possibly be a material witness. Or even the murderer.

In addition, where had Elise smoked marijuana? There hadn’t been a trace of any drug in her apartment, according to the police report. I was not naive enough to believe that nothing like that ever happened in the dressing room at Club Cavalier, but she didn’t stick around long enough to do it there. The obvious conclusion was that she smoked on the ride home. So she must have been with somebody she knew quite well.

What about her old boyfriend from last year, the one Donna said she had slept with? I didn’t know his name and Detective Johnson had never mentioned him. Maybe it was time we started looking for him. But I wanted to do something else first and Detective Johnson could have no objection.

On Wednesday morning I went to pool aerobics with Tess. Then she went off on some errand. By the time I returned to my apartment, Mark had left for a daytime shift as bartender at the restaurant in Durham. I took my car and drove to Bethany. I knew how to get to Club Cavalier by now, without referring to a map or having somebody give me directions. Once there, I parked beside the Club and studied the street map I had brought with me, using a magnifying glass I carry to help me read small print.

I had to go only a few blocks. I memorized the turns and was proud of the fact that several minutes later I pulled up in front of the house of Frank Scott, June Hoffman’s friend and surrogate father. I had asked June for his address. His house must have been elegant 80 years ago, but now it needed a paint job and some repairs, as did most of the neighboring homes.

I went up several creaky wooden front steps, carefully, holding the handrail. I noted that a wheelchair ramp had been built beside the steps as an alternate path. I rang the doorbell and heard a chime of the first four notes that I associate with Big Ben, in London.

After a wait a male voice asked, “Who is it?”

“I’m a friend of June Hoffman,” I called in my most innocuous voice.

The door opened. I was surprised when I didn’t see anybody on my level. I looked down and saw a man of my vintage, sitting in a wheelchair, still holding the door handle. What hair he had was white and his glasses had thick lenses. He had some ugly black spots on his face that looked like the melanomas I had had removed from mine.

“Mr. Scott?” I said. “I’m Lillian Morgan.”

“It isn’t often I get a visitor from my generation,” he said in a husky voice. “Come on in. In fact, it isn’t often I get a visitor from any generation, anymore.”

He swung the door farther open and moved his wheelchair to give me room to enter. I had a speech prepared, but he told me to follow him. He propelled his wheelchair through a wide doorway into a large room. It had a genuine hardwood floor, but not much furniture, and most of that was along one wall. He gestured to a sofa, underneath four windows.

I sat down and he said, “Do you drink tea, Mrs…? I didn’t catch your name.”

“Lillian,” I said. “Sure.” When in Rome…

“I’m Frank. Good, because I was just having some. Wait here while I get another cup.”

I protested that I could get it, but by that time he had wheeled himself with surprising efficiency into the next room and disappeared around the corner. The elegance of the hardwood floor was accented by the high ceiling. A graceful archway opened in the wall between this room and the next, which appeared to be the dining room. This must have been a classy house in its time.

Example of male humor: A colleague of Albert’s liked to point out the old and the infirm people to Albert and then state, “That’s you in three years.” I hoped that Frank Scott wasn’t me in three years.

Mr. Scott returned, carrying a cup, spoon and a sugar container on a small tray on his lap. He transferred the tray to a low table and said, “I didn’t know whether you take sugar in your tea.”

“I drink it straight,” I said.

“Me too. I hope you’ll excuse the lack of furniture and the bare floor, but it makes it easier for me to get around.”

“Do you live alone?” I asked. I was used to the multi-level support services of Silver Acres, designed to care for residents in various stages of need, and wondered how somebody considerably more physically challenged than I was could live without them.

“A woman comes in each morning and helps me with breakfast, a shower and makes my bed. Then I get Meals on Wheels delivered to me. That takes care of lunch and dinner. I manage. Where do you live?” “In Chapel Hill-Silver Acres.”

“I’ve heard of it. From what I’ve heard, it’s a great place to live.”

“I like it.”

“I wish I could afford to live there.”

Although he grinned when he said it I suspected that wasn’t far from the truth. “Let me tell you why I came,” I said, not wanting to talk old folks’ talk. “I…I’m doing some checking into the murder of Elise Hoffman.”

Tears welled up in Mr. Scott’s eyes. He said, “I’m sorry; I can’t help it. This happens to me, sometimes, usually for no reason. But I loved Elise like a daughter…or I guess a granddaughter would be more appropriate.”

He found a handkerchief in the pocket of his flannel shirt, took off his glasses and dabbed at his eyes.

I said, “I didn’t mean to bring back sad memories. It’s just that from something June told me I thought you might have seen Elise fairly often.”

Mr. Scott regained control of his emotions and looked at me. He said, “Yes, Elise came to see me sometimes.”

“Like maybe, in the evenings?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, she had a job near here…”

“Do you know what she did?”

Taken by surprise, I said, “Yes.”

“Well, I do too, so we might as well quit tiptoeing. Elise danced at Club Cavalier. She went by the name of the Shooting Star.”

“So she told you?”

“She practiced her routines here. With the wood floor and the high ceiling, this place was perfect. All I’m missing is a pole. I videotaped her so she could see how she looked. Would you like to see a tape?”

“Uh…no, that’s okay.”

“She was dressed, if that’s what you’re worried about. She usually practiced in a leotard.”

“Well, hold on to the tapes. The police might want to see them.”

“The police? I have nothing to say to the police.”

“Is that why you haven’t contacted them?”

“Look, Mrs… Lillian. I don’t know any of the people Elise knew. I have no idea who killed her. There is nothing I can tell the police that they don’t already know.”

I didn’t want to make an enemy out of him. I said, “Uh, Frank, have you been following the story in the newspapers?”

“Avidly. Although I have to use a magnifying glass to read it. As I said, Elise was like a granddaughter to me and I desperately want the killer brought to justice.”

“Then you must know that until yesterday the newspapers were saying that Elise’s roommate, Donna, was the Shooting Star.”

“But then again, you can’t believe everything you read in the paper. I figured the police knew more than they were giving out.”

There was no point in trying to make him admit he’d made a mistake by not going to the police. I said, “You don’t live very far from Club Cavalier. Elise usually went somewhere between her shows there. I was wondering if there was any chance that she came here.”

Frank smiled and asked, “Are you a detective?”

“By accident, not by profession.”

“Well, vocation or avocation, you seem to know what you’re doing. Elise did come here. She said she preferred my company to that of the people at the Club. And I must say I preferred her company to that of just about anybody. Except, perhaps, her mother. When she came we talked some, of course, but she usually did homework. She was a good student.”

So she came here wearing her costume?”

“Underneath her jacket. If she got too warm she would unbutton her jacket. But her costume covered her at least as much as the bikinis girls wear on the beaches these days.”

Before she started taking it off. “How did you feel about her dancing at Club Cavalier?”

“My next guess is that you’re a psychologist because you’re asking me how I feel. Am I right?”

“Well, actually, I’m a mathematician. I was a professor at Duke.”

“I was a plumber.”

“In many ways, a much more practical type of job. We could use a plumber in our family.”

Frank gave a husky laugh and said, “But getting back to how I felt about Elise dancing. You say you know June. Do you also know Elise’s father, Eric?”

“Yes,” I said, stopping myself from elaborating since I felt he was about to tell me something important.

“Then maybe you know about the relationship between Elise and Eric.”

“I understand they had their differences.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Elise had a mind of her own, something Eric couldn’t tolerate. June did too, but she gave up her independence for Eric. When June has to let off steam she comes to see me. But Elise hadn’t learned how to get along with the people she disagreed with, yet. That comes with age, I guess, if it ever does. Anyway, to get back to your question, dancing at Club Cavalier was a way for Elise to let off steam.

“I told her that the job could be dangerous, but I didn’t want to lose her friendship so I didn’t actively oppose her. As I mentioned, I let her practice here. Somehow, I figured that because I lived close to the Club I could help protect her from any danger associated with it. Unfortunately, I failed to do that.”

Frank got out his handkerchief again and wiped his eyes.

“Did Elise come here the night she…was killed?” I asked.

“She came here between her shows. She was in good spirits. She told me about a singing job she had lined up for the summer with some group. It was the same group she had sung with last summer.”

“But she didn’t come here after her last show.”

“No, she didn’t. That puzzled me because she usually did.”

“So you would wait up for her.”

“That wasn’t a problem; I have trouble sleeping, anyway.”

“How did she get home?”

“Somebody picked her up here.”

“Do you know who picked her up?”

“She never mentioned any names, but I gather her roommate usually picked her up.”

“Donna?”

“Yes, I believe that’s her name. She never came in and Elise never introduced her to me. Elise would sit on the couch, doing homework, and watch out the window. When the car came she would leave.”

“Did you see the car?”

“I caught a glimpse of it from time to time, but my eyesight isn’t that good so I couldn’t tell you what make it was, if that’s what you want to know.”

I had a delicate question. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but did Elise ever smoke marijuana here?”

Frank smiled. “The only drugs I allow in this house are the ones that keep me alive. I read that she had been smoking before she was killed so that isn’t a big shock to me.”

“Did you ever get the idea that she had been smoking it before she got here?”

“No. And I have children who were young in the sixties so I know the odor of pot well. It smells like burning rope. Elise was always on her best behavior with me.”

I refilled our cups from the china teapot and said, “Excuse me for asking all these questions, but you’re being very helpful. Do you mind if I ask a few more?”

“If it will help catch Elise’s killer. I’d rather talk to you than the police.”

Gallantry will win you points, I thought. In spite of his physical problems, Frank had a pleasant way about him. No wonder June and Elise liked him. “Do you know whether June knew that Elise was the Shooting Star?”

“Elise told me neither of her parents knew. And June never mentioned it to me. She usually confided in me so she probably would have said something if she had known.”

“So the night June picked Elise up here you were sworn to secrecy.”

“June told you about that, did she? I was wondering how you had learned about me. Yes, I didn’t like to keep secrets from June, but I also knew it was important that Eric not find out, if possible.”

“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but if Eric had found out about Elise being the Shooting Star, what do you think he would have done?”

“That question has haunted me. I keep forcing myself not to think about it.”

Chapter 28

I still didn’t know for sure who had given Elise a ride back to her apartment the night she was killed. She must have been picked up either in the parking lot at Club Cavalier, or nearby, since she hadn’t gone to Frank’s house.

I was convinced that Eric couldn’t have picked her up. How about Donna? Apparently, Donna was the designated picker-upper. That would help to explain how she knew as much as she did about Elise’s dancing. Of course, just the fact that she was Elise’s roommate explained that.

I had heard from Burt that Donna and her boyfriend disagreed as to when she had left him that evening. It was somewhere between 10 and 10:30 p.m., depending on which one you asked, but that range was wide enough to explain any number of scenarios. They also disagreed on when she had arrived at his place. He said it was later than she did. Burt had also said that “boyfriend” appeared to be too strong a word for their relationship. The guy had told the police they were just friends.

If Donna had driven Elise back to the apartment, Donna would have been there when Eric was there. She would have been there when Eric killed Elise. Why hadn’t Eric killed Donna at the same time? And if Donna had managed to escape, why hadn’t she told the police? Questions for which I had no answers.

Mark was still at work when I arrived back at my apartment so I called Wesley. Wesley had a computer and he was conversant with the Internet. He told me to come on over.

“Okay, what’s the URL of the website?” Wesley asked when we were seated in front of his computer.

“You mean the address?” I was beginning to catch on to the lingo. I produced the piece of paper on which I had carefully recorded the address of Eric’s infamous website.

Wesley typed it in and a screen appeared announcing the crusade against the destroyers of family values. The license numbers of the cars of the offending citizens, the ones who had visited Club Cavalier and other strip clubs in the Bethany area, were conveniently displayed by date.

Somebody had been maintaining the site since Elise’s death because the numbers collected on the day she was killed were posted. Apparently, Eric had found it in his heart to continue his good works.

I had also brought the license plate number of Donna’s car. I had written that down the first time I saw her car. We scanned the list for Club Cavalier on the date of Elise’s murder, but it wasn’t there. We did a search to see if it appeared anywhere in the database for any date. We came up empty.

“What is Mark’s license plate number?” Wesley asked.

The question surprised me. “Why do you ask?”

“Aren’t you even faintly curious as to whether he was at Club Cavalier on that particular evening?”

“I am completely convinced that he wasn’t, but I know his number.”

If I had said anything else I would have had to acknowledge that deep down inside me I had some nagging doubts about Mark’s innocence. And if I didn’t check for his license number now those doubts might not go away. I wouldn’t admit to Wesley that I had any trepidation about making the check, but I hesitated long enough so that he probably had a suspicion.

I had memorized Mark’s license plate number because he had been driving me around some of the time and I wanted to be able to locate his car when it was parked. My mathematical background helps me to memorize numbers, such as those on license plates. I memorize the letters on license plates by making unlikely acronyms out of them. For example, ZUP might stand for “zipped up pajamas.” I gave Mark’s license plate information to Wesley.

“Nope. It’s not there,” Wesley said, after a search.

“That’s good news,” I said, my tone understating my relief. But Eric and Ted had only recorded license plate numbers up to the time they went into Club Cavalier that evening. If either Donna or Mark or anybody else, for that matter, had showed up around 10 o’clock or later they wouldn’t have been recorded.”

“Perhaps you’ve done all you can on this murder,” Wesley said. “Maybe it’s time to rest and let the police handle it. You missed the bridge club again today. The chess club meets tomorrow afternoon. Maybe it’s time for you to get back into society.”

Wesley had taken a greater interest in my well-being since our friendship had deepened. I tended to agree with him. I had helped to dig up enough evidence to point the finger of suspicion away from Mark. What else could I do?

***

Back in my own apartment, I decided to take Wesley’s advice and put the murder behind me. What had I done in the afternoons back when I was living a normal life? Sometimes I took a short nap. I didn’t feel sleepy. I read magazines like Reader’s Digest. I picked up the latest copy, which I hadn’t looked at yet. Maybe it would have a heart-warming story about somebody who had survived a disaster by overcoming overwhelming odds.

I read some of the jokes and anecdotes because I couldn’t concentrate on anything longer. The stories in the “Life in these United States” section didn’t make me laugh. “Humor in Uniform” wasn’t humorous. I tossed the magazine aside and went looking for the poems I had copied from Donna’s personal notebook.

After a five-minute search I found the poems underneath a pile of papers on top of my small desk. I carried them to my sunroom and sat on the sofa, basking in the afternoon rays that streamed through the wall-to-wall windows on three sides. I read all the poems I had copied and then read them again. I came back to one and read it for a third time. It was one Tess and I had puzzled over before. It had no title-none of the poems had-and it went like this:

Will I shoot seven or eleven?

Will I find a jewel that gleams?

Will you lend your wand to me

So I can wave it at my dreams?

Keep it, Lady Luck.

Each lass is Satan’s earthly prize.

He makes angels run amuck

And blinds them with his laser eyes.

There was something wrong with this poem. At least, it wasn’t like Donna’s other poems, which were laid out in neat patterns. For example, the two limericks she had written, one about Elise and the other about Mark. The first four lines of this poem were smooth enough, but the line, “Keep it, Lady Luck,” was jarringly out of place.

Perhaps Donna did that for emphasis, to call the reader’s attention to it. Poets, writers, were known to use various tricks. It was not a happy poem. Apparently, it was about unfulfilled dreams and the lure of sin. Girls had always dreamed; some girls were tempted to do things society didn’t approve of. Some wrote poems about their dreams and temptations. So what was new or different about this poem?

In the limerick about Elise, Elise’s name had been spelled out by the first letters of each line, but no word in my dictionary started with three w’s. My field was mathematics and logic, not literature. I needed help. Sandra taught English. When did she get home from school?

I called her number. She didn’t answer so I left her a message, saying that I was on my way over to her place.

***

Sandra’s condo was located not far from Silver Acres and I had been to it quite often so I had no trouble getting there. The condominiums were wooden, two-story buildings, on a cul-de-sac. They didn’t have garages so the owners parked on the street. Fortunately, there was a space next to Sandra’s little red Toyota; I pulled in there.

I was happy to see that she was home now as I was too antsy to mount a stakeout. I went up the walkway and two concrete steps to the front door. These buildings were quite new and in good repair. Everything worked, including the doorbell, although this one’s ring had only two notes instead of the four notes of Frank Scott’s bell.

Sandra opened the door after a short pause and said, “Hi, Gogi,” as if she was surprised to see me.

She still had her teaching clothes on, consisting of a long skirt and a tailored blouse, and her long blond hair was in a pedagogical bun. She must have just arrived home and not checked her telephone messages yet.

I kissed her, apologized for barging in on her and told her I needed help.

“Give me five minutes to change my clothes and I’ll be right with you,” Sandra said. “Winston can entertain you while you wait.”

She called, “Winston, Great-Grandma is here.”

Sandra went up the stairs and a minute later Winston walked down them, holding on to the handrail, just like a grownup. He had a Dr. Seuss book in one hand.

“Hi Great-Grandma,” Winston said, “how is your blue car?”

“My blue car is fine,” I said, catching him and giving him a kiss. “Would you like me to read you the book?”

He acquiesced to that so we sat on the couch and read about the cat in the hat. In a few minutes Sandra reappeared down the stairs, wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, with her blond hair cascading down to her waist. She looked years younger and more carefree. I finished reading the book to Winston and then gave him my car keys, as a condition of leaving him.

Sandra and I set up shop on her small breakfast table in a nook beside the kitchen. I opened the manila folder in which I had carried the poems and showed them to her. There weren’t that many so she quickly read all of them. They included the limericks about Mark and Elise.

When she had finished she said, “She has an obsession with Elise and Mark. I knew when I met her that I didn’t want her around Mark.”

I thought about telling Sandra that if she wanted to protect Mark she should take him back. “Let’s concentrate on this poem,” I said, finding the one about dreams and the devil. I asked her what she made of it.

Sandra studied it for a minute and said, “She’s upset with what she thinks is her fate and this may lead her to do something she shouldn’t. Of course, you’ve got to understand that poets write about doing a lot of things they wouldn’t actually do. Many of them are rather passive people, but they momentarily escape from their unhappy lives through their words.”

“Isn’t the line ‘Keep it, Lady Luck’ out of place? The rhythm seems to be different.”

“Yes, it has only three feet while the other lines have four. That’s a good observation, Gogi. Maybe you missed your calling.”

Not likely. “You’re talking about something like iambic pentameter.”

“Well, tetrameter, at least for the other lines. But most of the feet are iambic.”

That was more than I cared to know about poetry. “I was searching for a clever idea, like how Donna put Elise’s name in the limerick about her.”

Sandra studied the poem again. Suddenly she stood up, almost knocking over the table, and said, “Look, Gogi. The first letters of the words, ‘Keep it, Lady Luck’ spell out the word ‘kill.’”

“Now that’s the kind of thing I’m looking for,” I said. “I came to the right place.”

“Of course, it might be coincidence,” Sandra said, sitting down again, “but the way she deliberately used that wording…”

“Let’s look at the next line: ‘Each lass is Satan’s earthly prize.’ The first letters of the first five words…”

“Spell out ‘Elise.’ Holy cow, do you suppose Donna killed Elise?”

“It’s never been very far from my thoughts. Look at the following line.”

“He makes angels run amuck.”

“If you take the first letters of ‘makes angels run’ and the last letter of ‘amuck’…”

“It spells Mark. Holy cow!” Sandra said again.

Teachers are conditioned not to swear, especially in the presence of their grandmothers. I said, “Is that too farfetched?”

“No. After all, it’s hard to find a good word that starts with k, especially at the end of a sentence. Gogi, Donna is going to kill Mark.”

“That may have been her original plan. But when he became a suspect she may have backed off, figuring that if he was convicted of Elise’s murder, she would still get her revenge on him for liking Elise instead of her-if that’s what infuriated her.”

“But with the new things you and Mark found out yesterday about Eric Hoffman, doesn’t that change things? Mark isn’t so much of a suspect, anymore.”

“How do you know about that?” I didn’t think anybody else knew what Mark and I had done yesterday.

“Mark called me last night after you were in bed.”

So that’s what the murmuring was that I had heard through my closed door. And I had thought it was the television set.

“We’ve got to warn Mark,” Sandra said, getting more agitated.

She picked up her cordless phone and called my number.

“He’s not there,” she said. She left a message for him to call her immediately.

Sandra couldn’t sit down. She began pacing around the kitchen. I tried to reassure her about Mark’s safety. She called the restaurant and asked if Mark had left. He had.

“He’s probably on the road between the restaurant and Silver Acres,” I said.

“I’m going to beep him,” Sandra said. She called his beeper number and left her phone number.

While we were waiting for Mark to call, Sandra fed Winston some hash for his dinner. He ate it with a spoon while sitting on a booster chair. He had announced some time ago that he was too old for a highchair. He was ambidextrous and could handle the spoon equally well with either hand. He also drank milk from a sippy cup.

I didn’t think Mark was in any immediate danger, but the fact that he hadn’t called was frustrating. I said, “I’ll go back to my apartment and check my messages.”

“Can’t you check them from here?” Sandra asked.

“Silver Acres has its own message system. I don’t think my messages can be checked remotely. If so, I haven’t figured out how to do it.”

“I can check my messages remotely. I’ll go with you.”

“Good. Then all of us can have dinner together in the Silver Acres dining room, You, Winston, Mark and me.”

“If he’s there.”

“I already ate dinner,” Winston said.

“But I bet you would like some ice cream,” I said.

“Can I have chocolate ice cream?”

Maybe this was serendipity because it would bring Sandra and Mark together.

Chapter 29

We took two cars. In spite of local rush-hour traffic we made the trip to Silver acres in ten minutes. We both parked in the parking lot near my building. My building contains four apartments and residents of several buildings use this lot, but extra parking spaces are available for visitors. Mark’s car wasn’t there.

The sun was still up, its rays slanting through the evergreen trees in the small woods between the parking lot and the buildings. The air was pleasantly cool, neither the cold of winter nor the heat of summer. We walked the short distance to my apartment, with Winston checking out several squirrels and a rabbit we encountered along the way.

Once inside, I went to my telephone and punched in the code for the answering service. The female, recorded voice informed me enthusiastically that I had two messages. The first one was from Tess, asking whether I, or Mark and I, were available to eat dinner with her in the dining room. The second message, I was told, was from an unknown number, meaning outside Silver Acres.

Mark’s voice said, “Hi, Lillian. I’m not going to be there for dinner tonight. I got a call from Donna, saying that she had some new information on the case, so I’m going to meet her for dinner. I’ll see you when I see you. Don’t wait up.”

The last was said facetiously. I hung up the phone and turned to Sandra.

“Well?” she said.

“Mark is meeting Donna for dinner because he thinks she has information for him. He’s not supposed to do this. Burt told him not to talk to her.” Of course that was a minor problem if Donna meant him harm.

Sandra’s expression showed pure panic. “Where is he meeting her?”

“He didn’t say. It may be totally innocent.” I didn’t really believe this and was already wondering how we could find them.

“Gogi, you read Donna’s poem. There’s nothing innocent about her. She’s going to kill Mark. We’ve got to stop her.”

But how? “Let’s call Albert and see if he’s free. He and I can run up to Bethany and try to find them.”

“Dad has a date tonight. I know because I talked to him last night. Besides, I’m going to go.”

“What about Winston?”

“We’ll take him with us. Or he can stay here with you and I’ll go.”

“You can’t go alone,” I said. “You don’t know your way around Bethany or where Donna’s apartment is.” I wasn’t about to be left out of this.

“Can we take your car? Mine isn’t running very well.”

“Of course.” My car was old, but it ran well. And it was roomier than Sandra’s.

“We’ll have to put the car-seat in it. Winston, where are you? We’re going for a ride in Great-Grandma’s car.”

Winston appeared from the sunroom where he had been playing with a yellow Volkswagen I had bought him. He was always ready for a ride in a real car.

“Where are my keys?” I asked. “I’d lose my head if it weren’t screwed on.” I kept them in a cupboard, but I evidently hadn’t gotten them that far when we came in. I began a frantic search for them.

“Winston, did you take Great-Grandma’s keys?” Sandra asked.

Winston ran back to the sunroom and returned with my key ring. “I didn’t lose your keys,” he said.

It took us another five minutes to get ready. Most of that time Sandra spent trying to get Winston to go potty even though he said he didn’t need to. Then she transferred the car seat from her Toyota to my Mercedes. Finally, we were ready to go. I asked Sandra to drive.

As we drove, Sandra told me how to check her messages from my cell phone. She didn’t have any. Traffic was heavy but moving. Sandra was impatient and I wanted to warn her about following too closely, but sometimes grandmothers have to keep quiet. I checked her messages again just before we got to Bethany. Still nothing.

Once in Bethany I gave her directions on how to get to Donna’s apartment. We pulled into Donna’s residential street, which was parked solid with cars.

“There’s Mark’s car,” Sandra said.

She stopped abruptly beside the car, our bodies jerking forward as they obeyed a law of physics. I turned around and saw that Winston had fallen asleep, his head leaning to one side. Even the jerk hadn’t awakened him. We were 100 feet from Donna’s apartment.

“I’ll check the car and the apartment,” I said. “You can look for a parking place.”

“I’m going to keep you in sight,” Sandra said. “Don’t go into the apartment without me.”

She remained double-parked after I exited the car. I tried the passenger-side door to Mark’s car. It was unlocked, as usual. I stuck my head inside and saw his beeper, lying on the front seat where it could be taken by anybody who wanted it. So he hadn’t gotten Sandra’s message. I didn’t see anything else of interest.

I looked for Donna’s car as I walked to the door of her apartment, but I didn’t see it. No light shone through the window from her main room. I rang the doorbell, not expecting Donna to answer. She didn’t. Remembering that the door had been unlocked when Mark and I were there, I tried the door handle. It didn’t budge.

Sandra had driven to the front of Donna’s building. I walked back to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. I said, “There’s no sign of life.”

Sandra threw up her arms in frustration. “What do we do now?”

“Put out an APB,” I said, but it was a hollow joke. Then I thought of something more practical. “Drive around the block, slowly, so I can look for Donna’s car.”

Sandra did that, but Donna’s car was nowhere in sight. What now? So far, we had been engaged in a flurry of activity, but not much thinking. It was time to think. For several minutes I tried to get my brain into gear while Sandra chattered, nervously. Then I had an idea.

“I think they might be at Club Cavalier,” I said.

“Club Cavalier?” Sandra asked, incredulously. “Why in the world would they go there?”

“Just a hunch.” I couldn’t explain it in a few words. “But we’ve got nothing to lose. If they aren’t there we’ll check some of the restaurants in town.”

I gave Sandra directions on how to get to Club Cavalier. Traffic had thinned out and it didn’t take us very long.

While we were driving, Sandra said, “I can’t understand why Mark would go with Donna to a place like that.”

“Because he’s trying to get information; because he’s trying to clear himself. Rest assured that if we find them there it’s because Donna suggested it, not him.” Sandra had been showing signs of wanting Mark back. I hoped this trip wouldn’t change her mind because she held a low opinion of strip joints. “Maybe I’m all wet,” I said. “Maybe they’re not there at all.”

When we arrived at Club Cavalier we cruised through the parking lot, looking for Donna’s Chevrolet. It wasn’t near the front door, where most of the cars were parked at this hour. I told Sandra to go around the side of building, to the additional parking.

We found Donna’s car in the back corner of the lot. I verified the license plate number to make sure it was hers. Maybe she was afraid of getting her license plate put on the Internet and thought it would be safe from Eric Hoffman there. I looked around to see if I could find Eric’s pickup truck, but there were no pickups in sight and I hadn’t seen any in the front lot that had looked familiar. It was probably too early for him to be on the prowl.

Sandra pulled into the space beside Donna’s car.

“What are we going to do now?” Sandra asked. “We can’t take Winston in there.”

“We could wait until they come out,” I said. “Donna’s not going to do anything to Mark in the Club. However, I think there’s a chance that we may learn something if we go inside. This is what we’ll do. We’ll go in the side door, which is near the dressing room. Believe it or not, the dancers are real women, with the same maternal instincts we have, and I’m sure they’ll be glad to see Winston.”

“But places like this are so…sleazy. And the nudity.”

“He’s too young to be affected by any of that. But I’ll be glad to go in alone and you can stay out here with Winston, if you like.”

That decided her. Sandra wouldn’t let me go in alone, in spite of the fact that I had been here several times before. We got out of the car and she lifted Winston out, half asleep. His head promptly dropped onto her shoulder. We walked to the side door, which was near where we had parked. I tried the door; it was unlocked. Lefty shouldn’t be so careless. Anybody could walk in.

We went through the doorway into the hall. We could hear the distant but insistent beat of rock music. The door to Lefty’s office was closed, as usual. I didn’t know whether he was in there and I didn’t want to inflict Winston on him so we went on around the corner to the dressing room. That door was open.

I led the way inside, where two of the dancers were sitting in front of the brightly lit mirrors, working on their makeup. The music was louder here; another dancer must be onstage. I recognized one of the two sitting here as Cherub. Cherub saw me in the mirror and swung around on her stool.

“Grandma,” she exclaimed, “what are you doing here? And who’s this?”

She was looking at Winston, still on Sandra’s shoulder, who had his eyes open now. He looked around with lively interest.

I said, “Cherub, this is my real granddaughter, Sandra. And this is her son, Winston.”

Cherub and Sandra said hello to each other. Cherub got up and walked over to Winston.

“Hi, Sweetheart,” she said, patting his head. “Ain’t you the handsome little boy.”

“Do you have a car?” Winston asked her.

“Have I got a car? Sure, I have a cool car.”

“What color is it?”

“It’s yellow.”

“That’s good. Yellow is my favorite color.”

Winston had made a friend. Sandra stood him on the floor, from where he continued to talk cars with Cherub. Sandra looked uncomfortable, which was not surprising, but I got the impression it was partly because of her dress: she still wore longish shorts and a baggy sweatshirt while Cherub had on a rather spectacular, if abbreviated, sequined costume.

When I could get a word in edgewise, I said, “Cherub, is there any way of seeing who’s in the audience without actually going out on the floor?”

“So you’re here on official business?” Cherub said. “Still working on the murder of the Shooting Star, eh? Lefty’s wandering around here, somewhere, up to no good. Let me see if I can corral him. I’ll be right back.”

Cherub went out the door. The other dancer, who was also intrigued with Winston, said her name was Melanie. Winston asked her if she had a car and soon they were deep in conversation.

Cherub returned within a couple of minutes, with Lefty trailing behind her. He wore a suit and one of his beautiful ties. He must be hot; his face glistened with sweat. When he saw me he said, “Lillian. What a pleasure.”

He took my hand in both of his paws, as usual. Fortunately, he had a surprisingly gentle touch or my hand would have been handburger. I glanced at Sandra, who looked as if she was wondering exactly how much time I had been spending here, and I hoped that Lefty’s spectacular tie would impress her. I introduced Lefty to her and Winston.

To Winston, Lefty said, “Take it easy on the girls, you hear? They’re very delicate,” and to Sandra, “So you’re Lillian’s granddaughter. I’ll bet she looked like you when she was your age.”

“Better,” Sandra said, modestly.

“Well, you can have a job here anytime. With that hair and that body, you’d be perfect. You don’t even need a wig. We’ll call you Shooting Star II because you have the same kind of appeal she had. And in addition you’ve got boobs.”

“Don’t pay any attention to Lefty,” Cherub said to Sandra. “He never head of political correctness.”

“In this business I’ve always got to keep my eye open for talent,” Lefty said. “And I know it when I see it. Can you dance, Sandra?”

“We’ll negotiate her contract later,” I said. “Right now, we believe there’s a couple in your audience that we’d like to keep an eye on.”

“No sooner said than done,” Lefty said. “Follow me.”

He led the way out of the dressing room. Cherub said she’d watch Winston and he was willing to stay with her because she had agreed to show him her car keys. Sandra and I followed Lefty along a hallway I hadn’t traversed before and up a flight of stairs I didn’t even know existed. At the top of the stairs I saw a closed door. Lefty opened it and led us into a room with a large window that overlooked the whole club below, including the stage, the bar and the audience.

“It’s a mirror on the other side,” Lefty said. “We can see them, but they can’t see us. It’s for security, but I also use it as a VIP lounge, for folks who don’t want to mix with the riffraff.”

There were several tables in our room, with chairs around them. It took our eyes a minute to adjust to the dim lighting of the scene before us. The spotlit stage, to our left, was the brightest area. We had a good view of a dancer who was doing her best to captivate the multitudes. The pounding beat of the music vibrated the glass of the window. As I became able to pick out the faces of individuals in the mostly-male audience, I noticed that while many of the men were watching the dancer with more-or-less rapt attention, some seemed to be more interested in their drinks and others were conversing and ignored her altogether. What must that do to her self-esteem?

“There they are,” Sandra said, pointing toward the back of the room.

Her young eyes had found Mark and Donna before mine could focus that far away. They were sitting at a small table, side by side, but definitely not touching each other. They had glasses in front of them, probably beer, and Donna seemed to be talking to Mark, in competition with the music.

“I wish we could hear what they’re saying,” I said.

“This has something to do with the Shooting Star, doesn’t it?” Lefty said, as he recognized Mark.

I nodded.

“I’ll tell you what we can do. I’ll invite them up here to the skybox. I’ve got this room miked. We can listen to what they’re saying in my office. I’ll tell them it’s to make the lady more comfortable, since there aren’t many of them in the audience. And drinks are on the house.”

“That will convince Mark,” I said. “He doesn’t have much money.”

“That other window overlooks the lap-dancing area,” Lefty said, pointing to an adjacent wall. Would you like to take a look at what’s happening there before we go downstairs?”

“Thanks, we’ll pass,” I said, quickly, before Sandra figured out what he was talking about.

Chapter 30

The first snatches of conversation we heard were between Mark and Donna and the waitress who had guided them up to the skybox, as Lefty liked to call it. She offered them another round of drinks, free. Mark, who sounded somewhat puzzled as to why they were getting special attention, said they would have one more round.

When the waitress left we listened, intently, for what we didn’t know. Lefty, Sandra and I were standing in his cramped office, too nervous to sit, while he adjusted knobs on an amplifier that projected their voices through several speakers. At first we heard nothing except occasional notes of the music from the main room. Then Donna spoke.

“I’m glad they brought us up here,” Donna said. “It’s easier to talk and easier to see the disgusting things that girl is doing. That’s what Elise did. You can see that any girl who would do things like that wasn’t worthy of your attention. I would never do anything like that.”

Mark didn’t reply at first. Donna prattled on in the same vein.

Finally, Mark said, “If what these girls do is so disgusting, why did you pretend to be the Shooting Star?”

There was a pause, during which we strained to hear.

Then we heard Donna say, “Elise was my best friend. I…was just trying to protect her memory. You know how her father felt. What if he had found out that she was the Shooting Star? I wanted…”

“Now wait a minute, Donna.” Mark’s voice drowned hers out. “You told Lillian-Dr. Morgan-and me that you were the one who told Elise’s father that she was the Shooting Star. So how can you say you were trying to protect her?”

“She changes stories as often as she changes clothes,” I said.

“I got mad at him because he insinuated that I killed Elise. I…wanted to hurt him.”

“But you didn’t kill Elise.”

“I loved her like…a sister.”

“But you also envied her because she was better looking than you and because she was a good singer who didn’t need your song lyrics to be successful and because…well, because you thought that I was attracted to her and not you.”

“You can’t tell me you weren’t hot for her.”

“Let me make one thing very clear. There is only one woman in my life and that’s Sandra. I liked you and Elise, but only as my students, nothing more.”

I looked at Sandra. She listened intently.

Mark spoke again. “I know more than you think I do. I know that Elise’s dad came into Club Cavalier the night she was killed. I know that he saw Elise dance. I know that he recognized her. He was with her boyfriend, Ted. He took Ted home and then he went somewhere. I bet he went to your apartment. I bet Elise was already there. I bet you were already there.” A pause, then, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Mark was doing a high-wire act without a net. During the ensuing silence we held our collective breath. What was going on up there? Did we need to break in on them?

Finally, Donna said, “I might as well tell you the truth. I picked Elise up from Club Cavalier that night and drove her back to our apartment. On the way she smoked a joint in my car to help her wind down. It always took her a long time to wind down and get to sleep after she danced.”

“The police didn’t find any pot in your apartment.”

“I don’t indulge. Somebody gave her the joint-at the Club, I think. Anyway, when we got to the apartment she took off her costume and was kind of wandering around without any clothes on, feeling no pain. She told me about this guy who had put a fifty-dollar bill on the stage. Can you imagine? Fifty dollars to see her boobs? I mean, you’ve seen her boobs. Tell me, are they worth fifty dollars?”

“Donna, I haven’t seen her boobs.”

Mark had just dodged a bullet.

After a beat Donna continued. “Anyway, I kind of dragged her into the bathroom and helped her take her off makeup. Then I got her into bed. She had a nightgown, but I didn’t try to put it on her. She kept talking about this guy and the fifty dollars.”

During a pause that followed I said, “I had always meant to ask Donna whether Elise usually slept in the nude, but, somehow, I never got around to it.” I hoped to distract Sandra from associating Mark with Elise’s breasts.

Donna said, “Soon after I got Elise into bed I heard a loud pounding on the door. It made me jump. I went to the door and asked who was there.”

“Were you still dressed?” Mark asked.

“Yes, because I had been dealing with Elise. Mr. Hoffman yelled to let him in. I recognized his voice. I told him just a minute and ran back to the bedroom and hid Elise’s dance stuff-her g-string, bra and wig-at the bottom of my underwear drawer and put a sheet over her. Then I let Mr. Hoffman in.

“He started yelling for Elise and went into the bedroom. He was raving and waving his cane around. There was nothing I could do to stop him. He screamed at her about being the Shooting Star.”

“What did Elise do?”

“What could she do? She was helpless. She pulled the sheet up around her neck and stared up at him, not saying anything. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. Or his eyes. He swung his cane above her. I thought he was going to hit her with that or start punching her. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I went into the kitchen and got the biggest knife we had, with the idea that if he starting hitting her I would protect her.”

“You didn’t think that he might take the knife away from you?”

“No, but that’s what he did. He saw me behind him and swung around and knocked it out of my hand with the cane so fast that I didn’t know what was happening. The knife fell between us. He warded me off with the cane and picked it up. Then he ripped the sheet off her. He stabbed her-over and over again. It was awful.”

We heard what sounded like sobs coming from the speakers. Sandra, Lefty and I looked at each other. Lefty made a move as if to go for the door, but I raised my hand to stop him. I said, “Let’s hear the rest.”

We heard Mark say, “Why didn’t he kill you?”

Donna’s choked voice said, “I thought he was going to. I was frozen. I couldn’t run or even move. After he stopped stabbing Elise he seemed to calm down a little. He looked at her for a while, still holding that bloody knife. Then he looked at me. He finally told me that he wouldn’t kill me if I would keep quiet and not tell the police anything. But if I didn’t keep quiet he would get me. He scared me out of my wits.”

“Was it his idea, then, that you become the Shooting Star so he wouldn’t appear to have a motive?”

“Well…yes, but he said to do it only if necessary-if somebody associated Elise with the Shooting Star. He said it might not happen.”

“So Ted didn’t realize that Elise was the Shooting Star.”

“He said that Ted never caught on. He didn’t think Ted would be a problem. But then Dr. Morgan talked to me and said she thought Elise was the Shooting Star. That’s when I had to start pretending.”

“What happened to the knife?”

“I got a towel and we wrapped it up, after wiping off any fingerprints. Eric…Mr. Hoffman told me what to do. He took it with him so it wouldn’t be around when the police got there.”

“How did the window get broken?”

“He…he broke it with his cane to make it appear like a robbery. He told me to wait 15 minutes and then call 911. And then to call his house. That would give him a chance to get home so he could answer the phone. Then he would tell Mrs. Hoffman. He didn’t want to have to wait until the police showed up at his door. But I panicked and called 911 after about five minutes. Then I called his house, but of course he wasn’t there yet so I had to tell Mrs. Hoffman what had happened.”

“How did the knife get in my car?”

“Mr. Hoffman gave it back to me after he found out that I knew you. He told me to put it in your trunk since you were under suspicion, anyway. He said it would help me avoid becoming a suspect, myself. I…I’m sorry I did it.”

“You know we have to go to the police.”

“At this time of night?”

“The police operate 24 hours a day. Somebody will listen to your story.”

“If Mr. Hoffman finds out he’ll kill me.”

“The police will protect you from Mr. Hoffman. Come on, let’s go.”

There were sounds of chairs being slid back and then the distant sound of a door closing.

“I got the whole thing on tape,” Lefty said, proudly, pointing to his electronic equipment. “We’ll nail that bastard now.”

Something was wrong. The solution was too pat, too easy. I said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I think we should stop them.”

“I say, if they’re going to the police, let them go,” Lefty said. He extracted a tape from the recorder and held it up. “We can follow them and present the police with this. Then they can compare it with what she tells them.”

“Gogi’s right,” Sandra said, urgently. “Donna’s dangerous. This isn’t the way she wrote the ending.”

Chapter 31

Lefty looked quickly from one of us to the other and said, “All right, I hear you.” He opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a gun. “Do you know where they parked?”

“In the back,” I said. “It’s closest to go out the door at the end of this hall.”

“Good. We should beat them to their car.”

Lefty led the way, with Sandra right on his heels. I followed as fast as I could. By the time I got to the outside door, Lefty and Sandra were already out of sight. As I went through the doorway the cool night air hit my face, refreshing after the closeness of the atmosphere inside. It was dark, but the parking lot was lit by several spotlights on the side of the building.

I looked toward the back of the lot where Donna’s car and my car were parked. Sandra and Lefty were running toward the two cars. I didn’t see Mark and Donna. It would take them longer to come around from the front door. I felt some relief. Sandra and Lefty would intercept them and Lefty would neutralize Donna with his gun, if necessary.

I didn’t want Donna to see me when she and Mark came around from the front so I walked quickly to the back of the building and wedged myself into a fenced-in area, containing trashcans. It smelled like a garbage dump, but I should be safe here, in the dark. And from here I could see the cars. As I watched, Lefty and Sandra ducked down between the cars, out of sight.

Minutes passed. Nobody came to the back of the lot. Since only a handful of other cars were parked back here, apparently the crowd wasn’t large enough yet to need the additional parking. But where were Mark and Donna. They should have been here by now. Had they stopped downstairs for another beer?

I had a strong desire to move to where the air was cleaner. Sandra’s head popped up from the shadows between the cars and she looked around. She and Lefty came out of their hiding place and trotted toward me. I came out of mine so they could see me.

“We’re going to find out where they are,” Lefty said as he ran by, laboring because of his size.

“Stay here,” Sandra said as she passed me, running easily.

They disappeared down the side of the building.

I obeyed Sandra for a few seconds, thankful that the odor wasn’t so strong where I stood now. I didn’t want to return to the trashcans. Instead, I walked to my car. I thought it would be a good idea to move my car away from Donna’s, in case there was trouble. As I approached my car a vehicle came around the other side of the building. It was too late to hide; it headed toward my corner of the lot and nailed me with its headlights. I felt like a frightened deer.

I scoffed at my alarm; this must be a patron of Club Cavalier. I got out my keys and started to unlock my car door, planning to get in, as if I were leaving. Act natural. Instead of parking in a lined space, the pickup truck-I had now identified it as such-pulled up behind my car and Donna’s car. Strange. I took another look; it was Eric Hoffman’s truck.

Eric stuck his head out of the open driver’s-side window and yelled something at me, but I couldn’t hear what he said because of the noise of his engine. Then he shut off the engine and said, “Lillian, is that you? The whole damn world is here tonight.”

I hadn’t heard him swear before. He opened his door while Mark and Donna piled out of the other side of the truck. Eric must have spotted them as they came out of the Club. That couldn’t be good. I stood with one hand on my door handle, waiting to see what was going to happen next.

Mark saw me and came over, saying, “Lillian, what are you doing here?”

Of all the things I could have said, I chose, “Sandra’s here. She wants to talk to you.”

“I can’t right now. I…I’ll explain later. Right now I have to go with Donna.”

I wanted to order Mark to get into my car where he would be safe, but Donna and Eric were listening. Mark started around the back of my car toward Donna’s car. Donna had opened her driver’s-side door and stuck her head into the car. Now she stood up and turned toward Mark.

I saw the gun in her hand before Mark did. I yelled, “Mark, look out!”

Donna fired several shots in quick succession as Mark started to duck. Mark fell behind my car. Donna moved forward, holding the gun awkwardly in both hands, planning to shoot him again. My car was between Donna and me. I couldn’t get to her; I could only watch in horror.

Eric had one foot on the ground and was positioning his cane to help him swing his other leg out of the truck. From this awkward position he launched himself at Donna as she approached to finish off Mark. Eric’s body hit Donna, but his lunge didn’t have much force behind it so he grabbed her as he fell, pulling them both down on the asphalt. He grunted loudly as his body hit the ground.

I finally became mobile and somehow made it around to the back of my car. All three bodies were in the space between the truck and the two cars. Blood was spreading on Mark’s shirt, but Donna was first priority. Being careful not to step on Mark, I picked up Eric’s cane, which he had dropped. Donna had rolled out of Eric’s grasp, into the back wheel of her car, and was struggling to get up. She hit her head on the frame of her car and collapsed. I saw the gun in her hand and remembered what she had said about Eric knocking the knife out of her hand with his cane.

As Donna tried a second time to get up I hit her sharply on the wrist with the cane. The gun came loose and clattered to the blacktop. Using the cane like a hockey stick, I scooted the gun underneath Eric’s truck. Donna made it to her knees, a dazed expression on her face. I stood facing her, cane in hand, holding it like a dueling sword.

She knelt on the ground, not looking at me. She reached into a pocket of her jeans. At first I thought she might have another gun, but then I realized her pocket wasn’t large enough to hold a gun. She pulled out a small plastic container and removed the cap. Before I understood what she was doing she dumped a pill into her hand and popped it into her mouth.

Somehow I knew that I couldn’t let her swallow the pill. I hit her hard in the mouth with the cane. She screamed and blood spurted. I dropped the cane, grabbed her head and tried to pry her mouth open, but she bit me and twisted away.

I heard running footsteps approaching. Sandra and Lefty raced up. I said, “She’s got a pill in her mouth. Don’t let her swallow it.”

Lefty tackled Donna while Sandra bent over Mark, saying his name. Somebody should call 911. I had dropped my purse beside my car. I found it and fumbled for my cell phone.

***

Mark was conscious, lying on his back. He had been hit near his shoulder, apparently only once. Sandra had ripped part of his shirt off with the strength of desperation and used it to stanch the blood. I stood by her, ready to help, but I didn’t want to get in her way.

“I owe you another one, Lillian,” Mark said, slowly. “If you hadn’t yelled…”

“Don’t talk, Sweetheart,” Sandra said. “Help will be here soon.”

After a brief fight, Lefty had extracted the pill from Donna’s bloody mouth. He held her down and kept her subdued. Both of them sat on the asphalt as I explained what she had done.

Eric was sitting up, obviously hurting. He had some scrapes and he required more help than I could give him to get to his feet. I returned his cane.

He said, “I never should have lent her that gun. She said she needed it for self-defense.”

“Defense from whom?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe Mark.”

“You knew she had killed Elise, didn’t you?” I said. “You must have caught her in the act.”

Eric cringed. I had never seen a man look so beaten.

“I don’t know what got into me,” he said. “When I arrived at the apartment I heard screams. The door was locked so I broke the window with my cane to get in. It was a struggle for me to get through the window. By the time I got inside Elise was dead. My first impulse was to attack Donna, but that wouldn’t have brought Elise back.”

“You would have killed her if I hadn’t,” Donna said, from where she sat in Lefty’s grasp, her mouth dripping blood onto Lefty’s beautiful tie. She slurred her words. “Your own guilt stopped you from doing anything to me. That and knowing you could get sexual favors from me in return for your silence.”

Lefty shook his head and said, “Neither one of you can hold a candle to the Star. For two cents I’d do you both in. Maybe I should have let you swallow that pill. What is it, cyanide?” He opened his hand and examined it.

For answer, Donna grabbed the capsule out of Lefty’s hand and threw it backward over the wall that bounded the parking lot. Lefty, who had instinctively clapped his other hand over Donna’s mouth to prevent her from swallowing it, tensed his muscles and appeared to want to do her bodily harm. His body vibrated. Then he slowly relaxed and the tension seemed to drain out of him.

As the only mobile member of the group I made a move to go after the capsule, but Lefty said, “Leave that for the police. It’s their job. You’d never find it in the weeds, anyway.”

“That was the ending Donna wrote to her story,” Sandra said, still pressing the makeshift bandage to Mark’s shoulder. “Kill Mark and then kill herself. That way, she wouldn’t have to face the consequences. She’s a romantic and a pathological liar. With that combination, she can’t stand too much reality.”

Donna dabbed at the blood dripping from her mouth with her bare hand as sirens wailed in the distance, coming steadily closer.

Chapter 32

By Sunday, Mark felt well enough to attend the family brunch at Albert’s farm. Sandra brought him from her condo, where he was recuperating from his wound. That was where he belonged-with Sandra. I would do everything in my power to keep him there. And I was determined to crush any evil forces that might pull them apart, such as gossip about Mark and Elise.

Medically, Mark’s prognosis was good. The damage to bone and muscle was reparable and no organs had been hit. He was somewhat stiff, but the doctor said he would regain full movement of his arm and fingers. Except for a scar, he would be as good as new.

For the first time in the history of the Sunday brunch we had a stripper and the owner of a strip club present. I had invited them, with Sandra’s concurrence. The stripper, or exotic dancer as she preferred to be called, was Cherub, and of course Lefty was the owner. They were on their best behavior. Lefty wore one of his beautiful ties and carried on an intelligent, high-level conversation. Cherub wore more clothes than some of the women Albert had invited to past brunches and talked about cars with Winston.

Mark had been carried off in an ambulance from Club Cavalier without answering any questions. I had talked to him several times since, but not about Donna because he needed peace and rest. Now that he felt better, I debated whether it was a good idea to bring up the subject. Albert beat me to it.

“I thought you were more intelligent than to go on a date with a murderer,” Albert said to Mark, half seriously.

Mark smiled, ruefully. “I didn’t know she was a murderer then. I had bought into the theory that Eric killed Elise. She called me at the restaurant and said she had more information for me. She pushed the right button and I jumped.”

“And it was logical for you to have your meeting at Club Cavalier.”

“Lots of business meetings are held at Club Cavalier,” Lefty said.

“We take good care of businessmen,” Cherub added.

Mark looked uncomfortable and would have welcomed further interruption, but he couldn’t get out of answering.

“Donna said the Club was important. I guess I shouldn’t have let her call all the shots, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“She was trying to convince you that she was good and Elise was bad,” Sandra said, putting a protective arm around Mark. “Before she killed you and then killed herself, which was her idea of a tragic but poetic solution to the mess she was in.”

We had to go through some sort of a catharsis to rid ourselves of our association with Elise’s murder, just as I had had to rid myself of the smell of the garbage I had played in at Club Cavalier. Talking about the murder was perhaps the best way to do that, as long as it didn’t cause any new problems between Sandra and Mark. But Albert, who had been the least involved in the investigation, asked a lot of questions.

He knew about Donna’s poem, but he wanted a more logical and less poetic explanation about why Donna had killed Elise and how Eric fit into the picture. I drew the short straw and had to answer.

“The whole thing is rather complicated,” I said, trying to come up with a reasonable answer. “Donna and Eric had some sort of a relationship before the murder. Donna cultivated Eric, hoping that Eric would convince Elise that she needed Donna’s help to succeed as a singer. Donna worshipped Elise on one level, while at the same time she hated her success with singing and with men such as Mark-remember, this is Donna’s view-because Donna had a crush on Mark.”

“But Elise charged Mark with harassment,” Albert said, puzzled.

I was getting close to things I shouldn’t talk about. “Donna filtered that to fit her own theory, which was that Elise made a play for Mark, something that Donna could never have done, at least at that time. I don’t know what Donna thinks Elise and Mark did together, but I’m sure she thinks that Elise filed the harassment charge because she saw it as a way to explain to her boyfriend, Ted, why she wasn’t a virgin. In reality, Elise had had a previous lover. Donna’s imaginings were probably not that far from the truth, except that of course Mark fended Elise off.” I was glad I wouldn’t have to testify to that in court.

“Since Donna couldn’t be Elise, or at least be her partner, she killed her,” Albert said, thoughtfully.

Good. Now if only Albert had enough sensitivity not to say anything more about Mark and Elise.

“Donna became Elise, temporarily,” Cherub said, “by pretending that she was the Shooting Star.”

“That’s the best explanation I’ve heard yet,” I said, looking at Cherub with new respect. “But as far as events leading up to the murder, Elise had just made plans to sing with a band for the second summer in a row. She didn’t need Donna for anything and Donna knew it.”

Albert looked at Mark and said, “I understand that the harassment charge against you has been dropped.”

“Yes,” Mark said. “Apparently I’m off the hook. I have been asked to resume my teaching duties. Whoopee.”

“Are you going back?”

Mark shook his head. “Apologies to all the educators present, but I’ve been soured on teaching. Although I don’t want to go through life as a bartender, either. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“What about the murder charge against you?”

“We expect that to be dropped shortly,” I said. “Burt is working on it.”

“But we got sidetracked,” Albert said. “What was Eric’s part in l’affaire Donna? Why didn’t he turn her in to the police?”

“I gather that Eric’s wife treats him like a demented cripple,” I said, “and won’t have much to do with him, physically. Donna appeared to like him, at least, and showed him some physical attentions that I won’t go into here because I don’t know the details. When Eric found Donna with a bloody knife in her hand he apparently decided that this was too close for comfort to the urges he had after he discovered Elise was the Shooting Star. He didn’t want to have to explain to the police why he was at the apartment. So he made some sort of a deal with Donna that again I don’t know the details of.” And I suspected that not all the details would come out during Donna’s trial.

“Which brings us to Elise, herself,” Albert said.

“Ah, the Shooting Star,” Lefty said, rapturously. “The purest girl who ever worked for me-and one of the best draws, to boot.”

“You never told me you looked for purity in your dancers,” Cherub said, acidly. “And Elise wasn’t all that pure.”

Sandra chimed in, “Apologies to you, Cherub, but if Elise wasn’t pure, what does that make the others?”

“Elise had a conflict,” I said, saving Cherub from having to answer. “She was trying to escape from her father’s control, but at the same time she had a need to please him. Witness her boyfriend, Ted, who didn’t seem to have much going for him except that Eric approved of him.”

“In other words,” Sandra said, “she was like all girls.” She gave her father a dig in the ribs.

“Her theme-song was ‘Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,’” I said, “but she had stars in hers, I’m afraid. And a Shooting Star glows brilliantly and then flames out. Or, to invoke another Perry Como song, she tried to catch a falling star, but ended up catching a falling knife.”

“I saw a star last night,” Winston said. “It was near the moon.”

“I didn’t know you were a poet, Lillian,” Lefty said.

Sandra said, “I think she’s mixing her metaphors.”

***

“I’ll do the dishes,” Sandra volunteered, when we had finished eating.

“I’ll wash the pots and pans,” Lefty said, heaving his bulk out of his chair. “You can wipe.”

“But you’re a guest,” Sandra protested.

“I started out as a dishwasher. I’m a trained professional.”

Lefty rolled up his sleeves and put on an apron. I suspected what he wanted was to talk to Sandra alone, but he had earned the right. And he didn’t have an icicle’s chance in a furnace of convincing her to become a dancer.

Cherub came to me in the family room while Lefty and Sandra slaved away in the kitchen and Albert and Mark talked about Mark’s future. Cherub hadn’t volunteered for dish duty; she didn’t look like the domestic type.

I had wanted to ask her a question. I said, “Cherub, did you or any of the other girls ever give Elise marijuana?”

She looked startled and glanced over her shoulder at Lefty. The kitchen was three steps higher than the family room and separated from it by a wooden railing. Lefty and Sandra were making too much noise banging pots and pans to hear what she was saying.

Nevertheless, Cherub lowered her voice to a whisper and said, “Lefty don’t allow drugs at the Club. He gave us a hard time after he heard the Star might have got a joint from one of us. Anybody caught with anything could be fired. He likes to think he runs a clean establishment.”

“But…”

“But-and don’t tell him this or my ass will be grass-occasionally somebody might have a little pot. And I liked the Star better than I let on. Like Lefty said, she had class.”

“Thanks. I won’t pry any further.”

“I appreciate that. May I say something to you now?”

“Sure.”

“When I started out as an exotic dancer it was a lot of kicks, you know what I mean? But I’ve been doing it ten years now and I don’t want to end up as a 50-year-old dancer. Every year I stay in it I lose some self-esteem.”

“Why don’t you do something else?” I asked.

“Because I’m scared. And because I have no training for anything else.”

“But you have a lot of good experience you can use in any job,” I said, trying to see the bright side. “Look at all the people skills you’ve acquired. Controlling a roomful of unruly men, that takes a lot of skill. I’ll tell you what. I know a nonprofit organization that helps homeless people prepare to get back into the workforce. They help them find job leads, prepare resumes, practice interviewing-the whole works. You’re not homeless, but you are trying to change careers. I’ll put you in touch with them.”

“I appreciate that, Grandma-Lillian. You know, not everybody treats us like real people, like you do. Some folks treat us like scum. Thank you for your help. And thank you for inviting me here today.”

“You’re welcome. For my money you’re as good as anybody-and a whole lot better than people like Donna, or Eric Hoffman.” And I could go on and on with my list. But I won’t because at heart I’m an optimist. I really believe that the good people in the world outnumber the bad.

Content

Catch a Falling Knife

Alan Cook Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32