Catch a Falling Knife

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.”