Killer On A Hot Tin Roof (18 page)

“I will,” I promised.

“And if there is anything I can do to help you, please let me know.”

“Sure.” I put a hand behind his neck and came up on my toes to kiss him. “I’m sorry, Will …” I murmured.

“It’s all right. Really.” He kissed me then, and if it hadn’t been so late … if I hadn’t stumbled over a corpse earlier in the night … if I hadn’t said such a dumb thing …

Well,
if, if, if,
you know how that goes. Sometimes I think
if
is one of the most useless words in the English language, because most of the time it’s just pointing out where you went wrong and there’s not a blasted thing you can do to change it. You can’t go back. All you can do is keep going forward and hope for the best.

Life can be a bitch that way.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I was haunted by half-waking dreams of Howard Burleson’s bloody, lifeless face, and when I finally did fall sound asleep, I found myself in the middle of the movie version of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
… and no matter how broodingly handsome Paul Newman was, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. All the emotional turmoil swirled around me like floodwaters and nearly pulled me down. I woke up gasping as if I’d really been drowning.

After that I dozed some more but never really did go back to sleep, so I was tired and cranky when I got up the next morning. A shower helped a little, and I hoped some hot coffee would help even more. It was a little after seven o’clock when I left the room and headed for the elevators, intending to avail myself of the breakfast buffet that was planned for the hotel’s ballroom that morning.

I got in the elevator alone and the doors were sliding shut when I heard someone call, “Hold that elevator, please!” Without thinking, I pushed the
DOORS OPEN
button, and they slid back.

Callie Madison stood there, a little breathless.

She gave me a bright smile and said, “Ms. Dickinson! Good morning. How are you today?”

She was so chipper and cheerful I thought to myself that she couldn’t possibly have heard about Howard Burleson’s murder or Tamara’s arrest. I also thought that Dr. Jeffords must be a lot more of a tiger in bed than he looked, if Callie was still this perky the next morning.

But what I said, without answering her question, was, “Are you goin’ down to breakfast?”

“That’s right.” Callie stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor.

“How was your evening?” I asked. “Is your husband enjoyin’ New Orleans?”

“Oh, as much as Jake can enjoy any vacation, I suppose,” she replied with a little laugh. “After the opening ceremonies last night, we went to Paul Prudhomme’s and he ate like he usually does … like a bear about to go into hibernation. But he seemed to have a good time.”

“When I eat a big meal like that, it usually puts me right to sleep.”

She laughed again. “Jake’s the same way. I swear, he was sound asleep ten minutes after we got back to the hotel, and an earthquake couldn’t have budged him. Except they don’t have earthquakes here, do they? They have hurricanes. All right, a hurricane couldn’t have budged him.” She sobered as the indicator light on the panel above the door changed from the second floor to the first. We were almost to the lobby. “Oh, that was in bad taste, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t bring up hurricanes after what happened here a few years ago.”

“They’re still a fact of life,” I pointed out. “Folks here can’t ignore ‘em.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

The elevator came to a stop. I had found out a little that Iwanted to know, but there was still more. As we stepped out, I went on. “What did you do the rest of the evening, if your husband turned in early?”

“Actually, I relished the opportunity to take a long hot bath and read some.”

She told the lie with conviction and, at this point, I wasn’t going to challenge her on it. Instead, as we started walking toward the ballroom, I asked her, “What’s Mr. Madison going to do today while you’re at the conference? Or is he going to attend, too?”

“Jake?” She smiled and shook her head. “Jake’s not interested in such things. He’s going to do some sightseeing. He owns a construction company, so he always has to check out the buildings everywhere he goes and see what methods other people in the business are using.”

“Well, I hope he has a good time.”

“I’m sure he will. And then tonight we’re going to hit some jazz clubs.”

We walked into the ballroom, and I noticed right away how somber the mood was. The news of the old man’s murder and Tamara’s arrest must be getting around, I thought. And as the eyes of the professors swung toward me and stared with morbid curiosity, I knew they’d heard about my part in the discovery of the body, too.

“My, everyone certainly looks serious this morning,” Callie commented. “Who died?”

I knew she wasn’t serious–either that, or she knew more than she let on and was pretending ignorance–but I answered her anyway. “Howard Burleson,” I said.

She looked at me and started to frown. “What? Wait … you mean somebody really died? Who did you say?”

“Howard Burleson.”

“That old man Michael Frasier brought along?”

“That’s right.”

“My God!” Callie pressed a hand to her chest. “That’s awful! What happened? Did he have a heart attack?”

That seemed to be everybody’s first reaction to the news that Burleson was dead. With somebody that old, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. On the other hand, somebody who was mixed up in Burleson’s murder would probably pretend to react the same way, just to keep suspicion from falling on them.

“No, he didn’t have a heart attack,” I said. “He was murdered.”

Callie’s eyes widened even more. “Murdered?” she repeated in a hushed voice. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty darned sure. I was the one who found the body in the garden, there in the atrium, so I saw the blood and how his head was bashed in.”

She was pretty fair skinned to start with, and she turned even paler when she heard that. “In the … the atrium?” she said.

“Yeah. Right there in the middle of all those plants.”

“When?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure exactly when he was killed, but the police have probably narrowed down the time of death by now. But it was between midnight and one when June Powers and I found the body.”

“June? What’s she got to do with this?”

“We were looking for her father-in-law. He’d slipped off to the garden and was gettin’ drunk.”

“Larry Powers was out there, too?”

“That’s right.”

I saw the nervousness in her eyes. Obviously the garden had had more occupants last night than she had thought wouldbe there when she cut across it. Whether she was nervous because she was feeling guilty about her affair with Jeffords, or because she was afraid somebody might have seen her kill Burleson, I didn’t know.

I went on, “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard all about this. The police were going to question everybody in the hotel.”

She shook her head. “No one told me about it. No one came to our room. I haven’t talked to the police.”

Once I thought about that for a second, I wasn’t surprised. Ramsey and Nesbit had planned to canvass the whole hotel, but once they arrested Tamara Paige, I suppose they had decided the questioning no longer had the same urgency. They had probably called it off and would be back today to finish up, rather than disturbing everybody in the middle of the night.

“Have they arrested anyone yet?” Callie asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered, and it wasn’t exactly a lie. Even though I felt sure Tamara had been charged with the murder by now and would probably be arraigned this morning, I didn’t actually know that. Nobody had told me one way or the other.

A little shiver went through her. “I hope they catch whoever did it soon.”

“You and me both.”

“I’m sorry about Mr. Burleson,” Callie continued. “He seemed like a nice, friendly old man. A real Southern gentleman.”

I nodded. “He was that, no doubt about it.”

“Do you believe he really knew Tennessee Williams?” She didn’t know anything about Burleson’s claim to have written
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
… or at least was pretending not to know anything about it.

“They might have been acquainted,” I said. “We maynever know. What’s your interest in Williams? Do you specialize in his work like some of the others who come to the festival?”

I didn’t mention Tamara by name.

Callie shook her head. “No, not really. I’ve taught his work in some of my classes, of course, but my interest is more in Southern literature in general. Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Lansdale,
Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird
… things like that.” She paused. “This is really going to cast a shadow over the festival, isn’t it?”

“I imagine so.”

“And poor Dr. Frasier must be devastated, since Mr. Burleson was his friend.”

I didn’t bother to correct that impression, although I knew that Frasier hadn’t been the old man’s friend. Burleson was just a means to an end for Frasier, a way to further his career and damage Tamara Paige’s at the same time.

“But I suppose life goes on,” Callie said with a sigh. “I’m going to get some coffee and something to eat. I have a panel later this morning, and I’ll need to get ready for it after breakfast.”

“All right. I’ll see you later.”

Callie gave me a nod and headed for the buffet table. I hesitated, looking around the room to see if Will was here yet. For the most part, people had stopped looking at me and gone back to eating, but I caught a few of them still sneaking glances at me. I guess finding corpses is bound to give a person a certain amount of notoriety.

I didn’t see Will anywhere, but I did spot June, Edgar, and Larry Powers sitting at one of the round tables. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and then strolled over to the table. I wanted to find out how Larry was doing this morning, after his binge the night before. He didn’t look too happy. He was scowling downinto a coffee cup with a plate of apparently untouched food in front of him.

“Mornin', folks,” I greeted the three of them as I came up to the table. I put my free hand on Larry’s shoulder. “Dr. Powers, how are you feelin’ today?”

“Like every venomous serpent in the world crawled down my throat, curled up in my guts, and died,” he rumbled without looking up.

“Ooookay,” I said. “A mite hungover, are you?”

“More than a mite. But if you were inquiring about my medical condition–”

“He’s fine,” June broke in. “I’ve already talked to his oncologist and his gastroenterologist this morning. They were extremely upset about what happened, but agreed that in the absence of new symptoms, Papa Larry probably didn’t do any new damage to himself.” She glared at him. “Not for lack of trying, though.”

Edgar asked, “Have they found out any more about that old man’s murder?”

I dodged the question, as I had with Callie. “I don’t really know. I haven’t heard anything new this morning.”

“It’s a terrible thing, just terrible.” Edgar sounded sincere. June seemed to think he didn’t have any emotions, but I wasn’t sure about that. I figured it was more a matter of the two of them just not connecting anymore. I knew from painful personal experience how that sometimes happened.

Despite the bad night I’d had, I was actually hungry this morning, so I said, “I’ll see you folks later. I think I’ll get something to eat.”

“The bacon is excellent,” Edgar said.

Larry groaned. With his hangover, I wasn’t surprised that the idea of eating didn’t appeal to him right now.

As I went to the buffet table, I noticed that Callie had filleda plate, gotten some coffee, and gone over to sit with some of the other professors. Dr. Jeffords was at the same table, but he was several chairs away from Callie and didn’t seem to be paying any particular attention to her. She was acting the same way toward him. I wondered just how much practice they’d had at covering up their affair. It could be something new, or it could have been going on for some time. Without coming right out and asking her, I wouldn’t know, and I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

I started filling a plate with biscuits, gravy, scrambled eggs, and bacon. The food looked and smelled good. Callie was right about one thing: in spite of death and murder, life went on for those of us who were still here. I was looking forward to digging in and satisfying my appetite.

It looked like that might have to wait awhile, though, because as I neared the end of the buffet table, a heavy hand suddenly fell on my shoulder.

I
managed to control my reaction so that I didn’t drop my food and coffee, but the man whose hand was on my shoulder must have felt me jump a little. As I turned, I half expected to see Detective Ramsey or Detective Nesbit–the grip felt like that of a cop–but instead I saw the gruff but worried face of Dr. Ian Keller.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Dickinson,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“That’s all right,” I told him.

“I just wanted to say that I heard about what happened last night, and I’m sorry.”

“About Mr. Burleson, you mean?”

“Yeah, that, too, but mainly about you finding the body like that. I know how upsetting a thing like that can be.”

The way he phrased that made me wonder. He hadn’t said that he could
guess
how upsetting it was to stumble over a corpse. He said he
knew.
I had to ask myself if he was speaking from personal experience.

But all I said was, “Thank you. It was a bad night, all right.”

“I’m sure.” He turned his head to look out over the ballroom. “There’s an empty table over there. Would you mind if we had breakfast together?”

I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to sit with me while we ate, but since I wanted to talk to him anyway, I wasn’t going to refuse. I said, “Nope, that’ll be fine.”

He smiled. “Good. I’ll get my food and join you in just a minute.”

I went over to the table Keller had indicated, and, true to his word, he sat down next to me as soon as he had filled his plate. And I do mean filled. It was heaped high with pancakes, eggs, sausage, and slices of ham. He had managed to juggle a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice, too. It was a lot of food, but he was a big guy. It probably took a lot to keep him going.