“Well, he’ll be glad to see you. He’s really broken up about this.”
She took my wet coat and hung it on a hanger. We left the umbrella open in the entry. I took a handkerchief from my purse and blotted some of the water on my face so I didn’t look so much like a drowned rat. As we entered the living room I spotted Mr. Hoffman sitting down, his cane leaning against his chair. A book lay unopened on the table beside him, with a bookmark in it. He started to get up when he saw me, but remembering what a struggle this was for him I said, “Please don’t get up, Mr. Hoffman. I just wanted to come by to tell you how sorry I am about Elise.”
Mr. Hoffman relaxed his efforts and said, “Please sit down, Mrs.
…I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Professor Morgan,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “You’ve met her before.”
She said this the way one would speak to somebody whose memory was impaired.
“Morgan,” Mr. Hoffman said. Yes, that’s it. But I didn’t know you were a professor.”
Mrs. Hoffman went into the kitchen to make some coffee.
“I’m a retired professor,” I said. “I met Elise after we talked last week. She was a lovely young lady.”
Mr. Hoffman choked back what sounded like a sob and couldn’t talk for a few seconds so I continued, “We had a nice chat.”
“What day was that again?” Mr. Hoffman asked.
What should I say? I couldn’t lie because, after all, I was part of a murder investigation and anything I said could be used against me. “It was Wednesday, I believe,” I said, as if I had just remembered.
“The day she was killed.”
“In the afternoon.” Meaning not in the evening.
“You were going to get her to help you talk to other girls at the college about why they shouldn’t become strippers.”
There was nothing wrong with his memory. Mrs. Hoffman brought in a tray containing coffee paraphernalia and cookies. We went through the ritual of pouring coffee and adding cream and sugar-although I drink my coffee black-while I tried to plot my strategy. After a couple of bites of a sugar cookie I decided I should get to the point.
“I owe you an apology. I didn’t level with you last week. When I came here I was actually trying to track down Elise because of…well, because of the sexual harassment charge she made.” That was as close to the truth as I could get without saying I had suspected Elise of being the Shooting Star.
Their expressions were pained, as if this was one just more thing they had to cope with.
“We never knew about that…before,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “She never told us.”
“What is your connection to the harassment thing?” Mr. Hoffman asked in a guarded manner.
I had gone this far. “I’m a friend of Dr. Pappas.”
They both looked stunned.
“But he’s the man who killed her,” Mrs. Hoffman blurted.
“He harassed her,” Mr. Hoffman added. “If he ever shows his face here I’ll let Monster loose on him.”
My minutes here were numbered unless I could make a breakthrough. I said, “When I talked to Elise she told me she was sorry that she had filed the charge. And then she left me a message for me saying that she was going to withdraw it.”
“But why would she do that?” Mr. Hoffman asked. “My baby wouldn’t accuse anybody falsely.” He grasped his cane and looked as if he was about to get up.
“Your daughter and Dr. Pappas are both good people,” I said, hastily. “I can assure you about Dr. Pappas because I’ve known him for quite a while. They are also both charismatic and attractive people. It’s not inconceivable that they were attracted to each other. In a case like that, a professor and a student, things can get confusing. Elise may have gotten confused.”
“Are you insinuating that Elise was agreeable to whatever happened between them?” Mr. Hoffman leaned forward on his cane. “She’s engaged to another fellow.”
“She’s not engaged to him yet,” Mrs. Hoffman said. And more softly, “Now, she’ll never be engaged to anybody.”
“I don’t know exactly what happened between them,” I said. “We’ll probably never know. But I can tell you this: Dr. Pappas did not kill Elise. He was lost on Mt. Mitchell when she died.”
“I read that cock-and-bull story in the newspaper,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “He’s got no witnesses. And his face was scratched. How did he explain that?”
The local newspaper had found out about Mark and done an article on him. “Elise didn’t scratch him,” I said. “He fell on the mountain. There was no skin under her fingernails and they had not been broken. They had fresh nail polish on them.” I had read the newspapers too. “Look, we can help each other because we want the same thing. We both want to find out who killed your daughter.”
“Whether or not he actually killed her, if you’re representing a rapist, I want you out of this house,” Mr. Hoffman said, straining to rise from his chair.
“Sit down, Eric.”
The sharpness of the command caused Mr. Hoffman to fall back into his chair. He and I both looked at Mrs. Hoffman.
“Getting rid of the professor won’t make the problem go away,” she continued. “She’s right; we want to see justice done. If she can help with that we should support her.”
“Call me Lillian,” I said.
“I’m June. He’s Eric.”
“Let me tell you what I know. I’ll try not to gild the lily. Something happened between Elise and Dr. Pappas and she filed a charge of harassment. She had decided to withdraw the charge before she died. Now it’s true that Dr. Pappas didn’t know that, but I’m convinced that he was many miles from here that evening. Although his teaching career could have been ruined by the charge, I’m also convinced that he would never kill anybody.”
I stopped, expecting a reaction from June or Eric, but they looked attentive and said nothing. I continued, “If Dr. Pappas didn’t kill her, somebody else did. It’s the job of the police to investigate all possibilities. Maybe we can help them. They think it was somebody who knew Elise because there is no sign of a burglary. Nothing was taken. Isn’t that right?”
“We don’t know of anything,” June said. “Her purse was there, with money and credit cards and all the stuff young people seem to need these days. It didn’t look like anything else had been touched. And Donna-that’s her roommate-said her own stuff was all there.”
“Let’s talk about the people who knew her. First, as you said, is her roommate. She found Elise.”
“Donna is a nice girl,” Eric said, accenting “nice.” “She wouldn’t hurt a fly. In fact, she wanted to help Elise with her singing.”
“Donna wrote songs for Elise,” June said. “The words, not the music. When Elise was in the review last fall, Donna wrote the songs she sang.”
“She wanted to do more of that,” Eric said. “She told me she pictured her and Elise as a team and she thought they could go far together. In a good way, of course. I don’t like a lot of what passes for modern music-rap and garbage like that. It’s junk, with terrible words, about sex and violence against women…killing cops, disrespect for authority. But Donna wrote nice words. I think she was a good influence on Elise.”
“I didn’t know you had talked to Donna all that much,” June said.
“She came here during the day, when you were at work. Just once or twice, of course.”
“You never told me that.”
“Didn’t I? Must have slipped my mind.”
“It must have. What did you two talk about?”
“I told you; we talked about the possibility of Elise and Donna teaming up after college. Donna would write the songs and Elise would sing them. They would be good songs, with Christian values, providing a positive influence on kids, instead of the junk they hear now.”
“What did Elise think of this idea?” I asked.
“She was open to it. I talked to her-Donna asked me to-and she said anything was possible.”