Chapter 23
“But I had a lot of questions to ask her,” I said from the back seat as Burt pulled away from the curb.
“Let Detective Johnson do his job,” Burt said, laughing. “At least give the poor guy a chance. He’s not going to be very cooperative if you take over the case from him.”
“What’s happening?” Mark asked, sleepily from the passenger seat in front. He had been dozing when we returned to the car, not having had much sleep in jail.
“Lillian proved that Donna wasn’t the Shooting Star,” Burt said. “Elise was the Shooting Star.”
“Oh,” Mark said, trying to grasp the significance of this information. “That means…”
“That means Elise danced at Club Cavalier the night she died. She couldn’t have been out with you.”
Mark whistled. “Lillian, I owe you one.”
“You’re not out of the woods yet,” I said. “Donna can still contend that she saw your car drive away when she came home from wherever she was that evening. That’s something we’ve got to find out.”
“Hopefully, Detective Johnson will find that out,” Burt said. “Donna isn’t going to stand in line to talk to you again soon.”
“How did Elise get to and from Club Cavalier if she didn’t own a car?” Mark asked. “If somebody drove her home, isn’t it possible that person is the murderer?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Burt said. “If not, that person may have been the last to see Elise alive, aside from the murderer, that is. And Elise may have smoked some weed with him…or her, which means they knew each other pretty well.”
“I’d like to talk to the guy who owns Club Cavalier,” Mark said.
Burt glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to be getting back to the office.” He stopped for a red light. “On the other hand, Lillian probably saved me several days’ work by uncovering Donna’s lie about the Shooting Star. If I can make a couple of phone calls, I should be all right. How do we get to Club Cavalier?”
“Turn right at the next corner,” Mark and I said, in unison.
We arrived at Club Cavalier in under five minutes. Bethany is not a big place. The parking lot was almost empty. I warned Burt that if he parked in the lot he might find his license plate number on the Internet, but he just laughed. He parked the Lexus and made a couple of calls on his cell phone while Mark and I waited outside the car.
“I won’t ask you if you’ve ever been in a place like this,” I said.
Mark chuckled. “In my misspent youth I did a lot of things. And I’m not sure I’ve outgrown my misspent youth.”
Burt joined us and said, “This looks high class compared to some of the dumps I’ve seen. But hey, this is a college town and everything is high class.”
Music blared as Mark opened the door. One of the dancers gyrated onstage. I hoped the men wouldn’t be embarrassed by having me with them. The usual guy was selling tickets, but if he recognized me he didn’t let on. I yelled at him, “We need to talk to Lefty,” hoping to avoid paying the cover charge.
He yelled something back; I assumed he was asking my name so I said, “I’m Lillian, the friend of the Shooting Star.”
This seemed to impress him. At least he picked up the phone and had a brief shouted conversation, which I couldn’t hear. Then he motioned for us to follow him. Our path took us near the stage. I recognized the blond dancer as the girl named Cherub. She did some impressive things with the pole, but she didn’t have the fluid movements of the Shooting Star. Perhaps nobody would ever be that good again.
Our guide led us through the doorway into the area where they did the lap-dances. I saw some movement coming from one of the cubicles and averted my eyes. Burt and Mark had lingered slightly behind, watching Cherub. I hurried past the lap-dancer, who gyrated on some invisible man inside the cubicle, before they got there.
We passed the dressing room door, but it was closed. A knock on the door of Lefty’s office brought a “Yeah” from the other side. Lefty sat at his desk inside the cramped room, but the older lady who had been running figures the last time I was here was nowhere to be seen.
Lefty stood up as I entered and stretched out both hands across the desk. He wore another beautiful, multicolored tie. For that reason alone I would have gone out with him.
“Lillian, right?” he said, capturing my hand with both of his. “It’s good to see you again. “And who are these, your bodyguards or your groupies?”
I introduced them. After they shook hands Lefty offered us seats. There were only two chairs in front of his desk so Mark sat in the old lady’s chair at the other desk.
“I’ve been following the case of Elise in the newspapers,” Lefty said. “I read that some guy was arrested for her murder. Guy named Mark, or something like that.” He turned to Mark. “You. You’re the guy. What are you doing here?”
“He’s out on bail,” Burt said, hastily. “I’m his attorney. But he didn’t do it.”
“He better not have or I’ll kill him with my own hands.”
Lefty demonstrated a chokehold with his big hands and I had no doubt they could do the job. Mark leaned back in his chair, away from Lefty.
“Elise-the Shooting Star-was the best dancer I ever had. She didn’t have a voluptuous figure, but she sure packed them in. An innocent girl-next-door body, but how she could move it. Erotic poetry. What a combination.”
“For a while we thought the Shooting Star was another girl,” I ventured.
“No way. After you came here I started reading the newspapers. One story described her as having a tattoo on her lower abdomen-a little heart with an arrow through it. Just like the Shooting Star.”
I hadn’t seen the tattoo on the Shooting Star, although I did have a vague recollection of reading about it in the newspaper. I must have figured from the description that her g-string would hide it.
“Elise danced here the night she was killed,” Burt said. “We’d like to find out how she got home.”
Lefty shrugged. “Beats the hell of out me. She always took off right after her number. I figured she had a friend waiting for her someplace. Either that or she had a car. Whether she went in her car or somebody else’s, it was never parked in the lot.”
“She didn’t have a car,” I said. “And she would leave, even if she was dancing again later the same night. At least, that’s what she did the night I was here.”
“Yeah, she did that most of the time. Occasionally, she hung around the dressing room between shows, but she wasn’t very friendly with the other girls and she never took off her mask.”
“Did she do lap-dances?” Mark asked.
“She was too high-class for lap-dancing,” Lefty said, but not as sarcastically as I would have thought. “She said it was demeaning.”
“But you tried to get her to do them?”
“Hey, I’m here to make a buck. A lot of guys wanted her. She could have made big money.”
The door opened. Cherub stuck her head in and said, “Hi, Grandma. Ain’t you the one who was here looking for the Shooting Star a couple of weeks ago?”
“Cherub, how many times do I gotta tell you to knock?” Lefty growled.
Cherub ignored him and squeezed into the room. She wore a thin robe over her costume-or lack of costume. She looked at Burt and Mark and said, “You got good taste in men, Grandma. I would do a lap-dance for either of you-for free.”
She was standing right next to Burt. She plopped herself down on his lap before he had a chance to react and put her arm around his shoulders. He sat there, embarrassed, wondering what to do with his hands. I could feel the warmth emanating from her body, generated by her dancing.
“You see the usual class of broad I get in this place,” Lefty said. “That’s why the Shooting Star was a breath of fresh air, even if she wouldn’t do lap-dances.”
Cherub gave Lefty a death-stare and said, “What I want to know is, did they find the asshole who killed her?”
Cherub looked at me and then at Lefty. Apparently, everybody at Club Cavalier had been sure that that Elise was the Shooting Star.