Catch a Falling Knife

by Alan Cook

  “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 a
ny 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.