Catch a Falling Knife

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