“No, I wasn’t. Not really. She had an independent streak and the more Eric tried to make her conform to his ideas about how a girl should act, the more she rebelled. She reminded me of me when I was young. I was a rebel too-I did some pretty wild things I won’t go into here-but after I married Eric I had to suppress all that.”
“Did you have any idea that Elise was…dancing?”
“Now that you mention it, I should have guessed something was going on. And when Donna proclaimed that she, herself, was the Shooting Star I was flabbergasted. I mean, how ridiculous can you get? You’ve seen Donna. She’s not ugly, but what man would look at her twice? Now, Elise, she was a beauty. Of course she got her looks from me, although you wouldn’t know it to look at me now.”
“Did you have any clues about Elise before Donna admitted she was the Shooting Star?”
“That’s what I was going to tell you. Elise was here one day and I told her I was going to visit an old friend of mine in Bethany that evening. He’s a man, maybe your age, who acted like a father to me when I was growing up. My own father was an alcoholic and he did bad things…anyway, I stayed away from him as much as possible when I became a teenager.
“When Elise heard I was going to see Frank, she said she had been invited to a costume party and she might need a ride back to her apartment. She told me the party was near Frank’s house and that she would meet me there about…eleven, I guess it was. Well, she came waltzing in wearing this big jacket with a hood, but her legs were bare. I remember, distinctly, because it was cold out. I asked her what her costume was and she said she had gone to the party as a dancer, but she wouldn’t take off her jacket, even in Frank’s house. At the time I thought it was from modesty because of Frank, but now I suspect that she didn’t want me to see her costume.”
“Did she have a wig or a mask?”
“Not that I saw, but she was carrying a bag with her.
“Does Frank live near Club Cavalier?”
“That’s the point. Club Cavalier is only a few blocks from his house. He doesn’t live in the best part of town, but it’s all he can afford. He lives mostly on Social Security and he has some health problems. I take him food once in awhile.”
“I am curious about one thing,” I said. “How do you feel about Elise having been a dancer at Club Cavalier?”
“How would you feel if your daughter was a stripper?”
“Well, in my case, it would be my granddaughter, and the answer is, at first I would be appalled, but on thinking it over there might be some advantages to stripping over teaching, which is what she does. For one thing, the pay is probably better, what with the condition of schools in North Carolina, and the job may even be safer. I’ve seen…strippers dance, and I’ve been amazed at the power they have over the men in the audience.” I’d almost said I had seen Elise dance. I thought about the effect she had had on Albert, who should be old enough to be immune to that sort of thing.
June smiled. “That was a longer answer than I expected, but it’s kind of the same with me. On the one hand it sounds degrading, but it also sounds exciting. I guess I can’t blame her for doing it.”
I took a sip of coffee and said, “What I really want to know is how Eric reacted to the news that Elise was the Shooting Star?”
“Badly. In fact, so badly that it laid to rest any fears I might have had that he…”
She didn’t continue and in my blunt manner I said, “Did you think he might have killed her?”
June drew in her breath and said, “If he had found out before…relations between them were sometimes edgy…he’s so volatile and I’ve never been quite sure what he would do in a situation like that. But he was so astounded at the article, I knew this was the first time he had heard about it. He got very agitated and told me he had to go somewhere. He wouldn’t tell me where. He limped out of the house and got into that old pickup truck of his and roared off. I just hope he doesn’t have an accident.”
The parking lot at Club Cavalier was fuller than it had been yesterday. This must be the lunch crowd, which Lefty catered to by offering sandwiches. He attracted some of the local office workers this way. I was getting to know the business pretty well.
I didn’t feel like going in the front entrance and running the gauntlet so I said to Mark, “Let’s see if we can go in the back way.” Lefty had escorted us out the back door-actually the side door, yesterday.
We walked around the building and Mark tried the door. Sure enough, it opened. It led into a hallway near Lefty’s office. We walked to his door and I knocked.
“Yeah,” a familiar voice growled from within.
Mark opened the door and I stuck my head in, not knowing how Lefty would react to having us show up unannounced. He was talking on the phone, but when he saw me he waved me inside. Mark and I squeezed into the small room and closed the door behind us.
The old lady with the bleached-blond hair was here today, in her seat at the desk adjacent to Lefty’s, underdressed as before. She glanced at me and then took a longer look at Mark, running her eyes down his body in a way that might have embarrassed him, if he had noticed. Lefty waved for us to sit down, but we continued to stand. This would be a short meeting.
He hung up the phone and said, “Well, Lillian. I didn’t think I’d have the pleasure again so soon.” He stood and swallowed my hand in both of his, then shook hands with Mark, saying, “Mark, right? You’re the guy who killed the Star, but you haven’t confessed yet. Just don’t leave town.”
We let that remark pass. I said, “Lefty, I have just one question today. On the last night the Shooting Star worked here, how many times did she dance?”
Lefty thought a moment and said, “That was a Wednesday, right? I’ll never forget it. During the week the Star did two numbers, about eight and then again at ten.”
“Did she disappear between her numbers?”
“That’s two questions, already, but seeing that it’s you… Yeah, she did. She came to me first and got her pay, then she took off.”
“And did she leave immediately after her last number?”
“That’s three questions. And again, the answer is yes.”
“What time was that?”
“Four questions. It would have been about 10:15, 10:20, something like that.” “Thanks, Lefty. No more questions.”
“Now you sound like a prosecuting attorney.”
“I have a question,” Mark said.
“You?” Lefty looked at Mark as if he really believed Mark had murdered Elise. “Yeah, what?”
“You said you knew about Elise’s tattoo. Since it didn’t show when she was wearing a g-string, the only way you would have known about it was if she had told you about it or you had seen her without her g-string.”
Mark was repeating what Cherub had told me. Maybe I shouldn’t have passed it on to him. It was too late for him to protect Elise’s virtue. Lefty stared at Mark and I became conscious of the fact that the blond was staring at Lefty. It occurred to me that she might be his mother.
Lefty glanced at her and said, “We were talking together one time, about how most of the dancers had tattoos, and I said something like, ‘But a good girl like you wouldn’t have a tattoo,’ and she said she did and I said prove it so she pulled down her g-string a little and showed it to me. It was all kind of innocent, really.”
“Then you didn’t take her into your back room,” Mark said, indicating the door that Cherub had told me led to a room with a bed in it.
Mark was pushing the envelope and I thought Lefty would come around the desk and deck him, but the presence of the blond, whoever she was, apparently kept him in check. He finally said, “Maybe you don’t know this, but the Star really was a good girl. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me. That’s the reason I liked her.”
Chapter 25
