“Almost an hour. And then Donna showed up.”
“And you knew who she was because she had given you the tip on the Shooting Star.”
“Right.” He was brighter than I had given him credit for.
“She identified you, too. She didn’t remember your name, but she said she had seen you in the Administration Building. She said you’re a professor.” He looked at me suspiciously.
“I was a professor. I’m retired.”
“But she didn’t say anything about the Shooting Star.”
“Maybe she forgot.” I explained how we drove around the block and found Elise there when we returned.
“Why did you want to talk to Elise?”
That was a good question. What had I hoped to accomplish? Blackmail? I decided to stick to the bare facts. “I wanted to talk her into dropping the harassment charge against Mark.”
“Did Elise admit to being the Shooting Star?”
“The subject didn’t come up.”
“What did you talk about?”
“I told her how much damage she was doing to Mark.”
“And…?”
“She said she was sorry.”
“And that’s how it ended?’
“At that time, yes.”
“What do you mean by ‘at that time.’”
“Elise left me a voice-mail last night.”
“What?” Detective Johnson jerked his head up so fast I was afraid he would hurt himself. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Because I had so much to tell you. Would you like to hear it?”
“Of course.”
Detective Johnson listened to Elise’s voice-mail, turned to me and said, “Has Pappas heard this?”
“I don’t think so. As far as I know, he hasn’t been here since yesterday morning.”
He listened to it at least half-a-dozen times. Then he said, “Don’t erase that. I want to have the our lab make a permanent copy of it.”
Our voice-mail is centralized so there was no tape that Detective Johnson could take with him.
Mark walked through the door with a cheery, “Hi, Lillian.”
Detective Johnson heard him and came around the corner from the den where the phone was located. I said, hastily, “Mark, this is Detective Johnson. Mark Pappas.”
“Detective?” Mark asked as they shook hands. “Is something wrong?”
“Have you been at the college today?” I asked.
“Uh, no.”
“Have you heard the news?”
“Not really.”
“Let’s not play games,” Detective Johnson said. “Elise Hoffman was murdered last night.”
I could tell from the way Mark’s face crumbled and how he grabbed my small bureau for support that this was the first time he had heard about Elise.
Chapter 11
I didn’t have a chance to speak to Mark until much later. I had volunteered to leave my apartment while Detective Johnson questioned him. I went to Tess’ apartment, taking King with me, and called Albert and Sandra. I told them Mark had shown up, but that I didn’t know where he had been. I told them about the message from Elise. Sandra seemed to be more interested in trying to refute a possible murder charge against Mark than that Elise had said she was going to drop the harassment charge. I was relieved to hear her talk like that. I promised to keep them informed.
Tess and I ate an early dinner in the dining room while the questioning continued. It was close to 8 p.m. when Mark called me and told me that Detective Johnson had left.
Mark looked so haggard and wrung out when I returned to my apartment that I was afraid a breeze would blow him away. His face had scratch marks. For one awful moment I wondered if Elise’s fingernails had done that. No, it couldn’t be. I immediately got my thoughts under control and went about fixing something for him to eat, especially after he told me that he had only eaten once since yesterday. Mark was a three-meals-a-day person. Minimum.
“Go in and sit down, Mark,” I told him when he offered to help me. “You look completely beat.”
“No, I need to talk to you, Lillian,” he said.
He wouldn’t be persuaded to relax so I got him a beer from the refrigerator. Beer was another food item I had stocked up on when Mark came to stay with me.
“I guess you know by now that the murdered woman is the one who filed the charges against me.”
I said yes, figuring that a long explanation at this point was inappropriate.
“I swear I didn’t know she had been killed until I walked through that door.”
“I know,” I said. “It was obvious from your reaction.” “I want to tell you what happened to me.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“But you’re wondering where I’ve been for the last 36 hours,” Mark said. “You’ve probably been worried about me. After, all, I didn’t call you or anything.”
“You can tell me later. I assume you’ve told the story to Detective Johnson. That’s what counts.”
“I tried to. But he doesn’t believe me. And there’s no reason why he should.”
“Okay, you’d better start at the beginning.”
“I left here yesterday morning, fully intending to go to work.”
He had left before I had.
Mark took a sip of beer and continued, “When I got near Sandy’s condo I had an overwhelming urge to talk to her. Of course I knew she would probably be gone already, but the urge overpowered me so I stopped at her condo, anyway. Sandy wasn’t there. I let myself in with my key. I wanted to take a look at the things I had left. Among them were a pack, hiking boots and other hiking gear.
“It suddenly occurred to me that I needed to get away for a day…to clear my head and get some perspective on my situation. That idea got a boost from the fact that I dreaded going to the college, even though I didn’t have any classes scheduled and so would have to face a minimum of people.”
I wondered if Detective Johnson had played Elise’s message for him, but I decided I’d better not interrupt him.
He took a few more sips of beer. “On impulse, I took the hiking gear and put it in my car. Then I drove west toward the mountains. After a while I realized that I was headed toward Mt. Mitchell, one of my favorite places.”
“The highest mountain east of the Mississippi,” I said.
“And it also has a road going up it. I thought I would drive up the road and, somehow, the solution to my problems would come to me in the thinner air, like a bolt of lightning. I forgot that the road might still be closed from the storms we had in February. Well, it was.”
“Let’s continue this in the dining room,” I said, exaggerating the grandeur of the area where I eat. You can start on this salad. You need to get some food in you before you waste away to a grease spot.”
Mark thankfully took the salad and we sat at the dining table. After a few bites, he started talking again.
“I had driven all that way and I had my hiking gear with me so I put on my boots, took my pack and began hiking up the trail, figuring that I would go for a couple of miles and then turn back. But even after I got to the snowline I was able to follow the trail and I wasn’t cold so I kept going. Then it started to snow some more. I still kept going because I thought I was near the summit. Then a cloud dropped on top of me and I couldn’t see past the
