Elise hadn’t been dead long when you got there.”
“No,” Donna said. Then she blurted out, “I may have seen his car.”
We became suddenly quiet, waiting for her to say more.
“As I went up the walk to the door of the apartment I saw…I saw a car pull away from the curb and drive away. The driver seemed to be in a hurry.”
“Had you seen the car before?” Albert asked. “Do you know what make it was?”
“It was dark, of course, and I didn’t get a good look, but…I don’t think I’d seen it before. It was a compact, but I’m not sure what make it was, either.”
“Another reason it couldn’t be Mark,” Sandra said, “is because he doesn’t own a carving knife. Or any other knife, for that matter. In fact, he didn’t own much of anything when he moved in with me.”
It sounded as if Sandra was trying to protect her turf-meaning Mark-from Donna. That was good news to me. If this kind of talk bothered Donna, she didn’t show it.
Albert and Sandra wanted to know about other possible suspects because the papers hadn’t yet mentioned anybody as a suspect. Donna and I gave a description of Eric Hoffman. From what she said I gathered that Donna liked him. Albert didn’t wish him well since he had placed Albert’s license plate number on his website, but we couldn’t come up with any reason why he would kill his daughter, unless she had been the Shooting Star.
I had promised Donna I wouldn’t tell Mark that Donna was the Shooting Star so I didn’t participate in the speculation about Eric Hoffman’s motive. Donna didn’t say anything, either.
We also talked about Ted, Elise’s boyfriend. Any reason that he might have for killing her was probably connected with her virtue or lack thereof, which might in turn be connected with the harassment charge against Mark. Donna soft-pedaled this, for which I was grateful since I didn’t want to upset Sandra. But we ended up without a prime suspect.
On that note we cleared the table and started to wash the dishes. Donna went out to her car and came back with her book of compositions. She read us several of her poems and song lyrics. I was pleased to hear that they had both rhyme and rhythm. I am not a great fan of what passes for poetry these days.
When I commented on this, Donna said, “As I mentioned before, I think my talents are best suited to writing song lyrics. And in general they have rhyme and rhythm. I write limericks too. Here’s one…oh my God, I can’t recite this one.”
I had seen Donna blush before like she was doing now and I guessed that the limerick was about Mark. She didn’t turn the page fast enough and Albert put his hand on it and read the poem over her shoulder.
“It’s instructive,” Albert said. “Let me read it out loud.”
“I’ll die,” Donna said, but somehow he took the book from her hands and read:
A physics professor named Mark
Had always been scared of the dark.
Said Elise, “‘It’s not dire,
Marky boy, light my fire.
We’ll banish the dark with my spark.
Everybody looked uncomfortable, so I said, to cover the silence, “Why did you use Elise’s name?” before I realized I probably shouldn’t have said anything.
“Because ‘Donna’ wouldn’t scan,” Sandra said, dryly.
Donna recovered her composure enough to say, “Elise was always saying, ‘Dr. Pappas this, Dr. Pappas that,’ as if she owned him. After all, I was taking a course from him too.”
“Do all of your students go bonkers over you?” Sandra asked Mark.
“Only the smart ones,” Mark said.
Elise’s funeral was Monday. Although I wanted to talk to her father, and her mother, if possible, this wasn’t the day to do so. I didn’t go to the funeral. Since I wasn’t a friend of Elise or her family, I didn’t think it would be appropriate. Mark didn’t go, either; Burt Brown had specifically told him not to.
I read a number of poems that I had copied, with Donna’s permission, from her book. Albert had recently purchased a new-fangled printer for his home computer that also acted as a copier and a fax machine so I made the copies on that. One of the poems went like this:
Each morning you wake with a smile.
Love came; soon you’ll walk down the aisle.
In school you excel,
Show business, as well.
Egad! You’re becoming a trial.
I suspected that Donna had written this poem for Elise, although it had no heading. However, it seemed to fit her. I assumed it was written tongue-in-cheek. The one thing that puzzled me was the use of the word, “egad,” a word that my grandfather might have used.
I stared at the poem for a while and then figured out what Donna was doing. When Tess came by to go to pool aerobics class with me I showed her the poem, saying, “Here’s a test for you, Tess. A test for Tess. Look at this poem, which was written by Elise’s roommate, Donna, and tell me how we could tell she wrote it for Elise, assuming we didn’t know anything about her.”
“Lil, you know I can’t do puzzles,” Tess complained.
“At least it’s not a math puzzle,” I said, knowing that Tess hated math puzzles. “It’s a word puzzle. Word puzzles are not my strong suit, but I figured it out so you should be able to.”
“Why do you always have to be so competitive? All right, I’ll look at it.”
Tess read the poem and said, “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a limerick. But in limericks the third and fourth lines are usually indented.”
“Clue number one.”
“And a college student doesn’t say ‘egad.’”
“Clue number two.”
Tess looked at the poem some more, complaining all the while. Finally, she said, “All right, I get it. If you say the first letter of each line you spell Elise.”
“Brilliant. Go to the head of the class.”
“Now tell me what is so important about this discovery.”
“It tells us that Donna is clever. She’s not only smart, which we already knew, she’s also clever.”
“Most college students are smart. And I’m not sure what the distinction is between smart and clever.”
“Maybe it has something to do with guile. There’s more to Donna than appears on the surface. Here’s another poem Donna wrote.” We studied the poem, which read as follows:
Will I shoot seven or eleven?
Will I find a jewel that gleams?
Will you lend your wand to me
So I can wave it at my dreams?
Keep it, Lady Luck.
Each lass is Satan’s earthly prize.
He makes angels run amuck
And blinds them with his laser eyes.
“Beats me,” Tess said, shaking her head. “Something about having luck, of course. But Satan, and angels running amuck? The girl needs help, I think.”
I didn’t have a ready explanation so I showed Tess the “light my fire” poem, saying, “Read this poem that she wrote about Mark and Elise and tell me what you think about it.”
Tess read it and said, “It sounds as if Elise had a thing for Mark.”
“Either that or Donna has a thing for Mark. In fact, Donna told me she has a crush on Mark. Maybe both of them had a crush on Mark. If you recall, Mark said Elise made some sort of a declaration of adoration to him during the session that resulted in the harassment charge.”
“The eternal triangle-or rectangle. Does Sandra know all this?”
