Catch a Falling Knife

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.