Catch a Falling Knife

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