Killer On A Hot Tin Roof (2 page)

I glanced down at the list, saw the lines that read “Dr. Michael Frasier” and “Guest of Dr. Michael Frasier.” I’d been able to leave that second spot unspecified when I was booking the trip, although of course I’d need the name of whoever was accompanying Dr. Frasier, and the person would have to have ID before they would be allowed to board the plane. The airlines don’t allow anybody on anymore without knowing who they are.

“You know this fella Frasier?”

“Of course,” Will said. “Not well, mind you. He’s only been at the university for a year or so. But I’ve met everyone in the English Department.”

“Well, he and his wife had better show up soon, or they’re gonna get left behind.”

“I don’t think it’ll be his wife coming with him.”

“His girlfriend, then, if he’s not married. Or his mistress, if he is.”

Will shook his head. “Not that, either.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s all right. Nobody cares about things like that these days.”

“No, no, I don’t know that he’s gay,” Will said. “I don’t know that he’s not. But I’m pretty sure he’s not married, and I never heard anything about a girlfriend or a boyfriend. I’m not sure he has a social life. He’s pretty consumed by his work. Publish or perish, you know.”

I’d heard the phrase and vaguely understood it, but I’d never had any direct experience with it, being a travel agent instead of a professor.

Before I could say anything, Will went on with relief in his voice, “Here comes Dr. Frasier now.”

He was looking along the concourse in the terminal. I followed the direction of his gaze and saw two men coming toward us. The one who had to be Dr. Frasier had an air ofimpatience about him as he carried both bags. He looked like he wanted to stride on ahead but had to hold himself back so he wouldn’t walk off and leave his companion. Every few steps, he seemed to pull himself back.

The other man shuffled along at what would have to be a maddeningly slow pace to anyone who could walk normally. He bent forward slightly at the waist, and his back was humped with age. He wore a brown suit and tie over a white shirt. The shirt’s collar was loose around his stringy neck. An old-fashioned brown fedora was on his head. His arms moved back and forth a little at his side as he walked, almost like a puppet’s. He had to be at least eighty years old, probably more.

I leaned close to Will and said quietly, “Would it be too politically incorrect for me to say that if Frasier is gay, he has pretty odd taste in boyfriends?”

“Yes,” Will said. “Anyway, maybe that’s his grandfather.”

That was possible. Frasier looked like he was about forty, or half the old guy’s age, in other words. He was slender, with tightly curled dark hair touched here and there with gray. His suit had a slightly shabby look, sort of like the one the old man wore. The difference was that Frasier’s suit looked like it was the best he could afford on his teaching salary, while the old man’s looked like he had owned it for the past fifty years.

The others had started to notice Frasier and his companion, and evidently they were as puzzled as Will and I were, because they gradually fell silent. Dr. Paige, she of the short dark hair and somewhat more commonsense attitude, glared at Frasier with obvious dislike. Curious, I glanced at the list in my hand. Tamara was her first name. She didn’t really look like a Tamara to me, but of course you can’t always go by names. Although I’ve been told that I look just like a Delilah.

I was too impatient to wait while the two newcomers madetheir way all along the lengthy concourse. I went around the group and hurried to meet them.

“Dr. Frasier?” I said as I approached. “I’m Delilah Dickinson, the leader of the tour.”

Frasier nodded pleasantly enough. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Dickinson. I’m sorry we’re late.” With an expression that was half smile, half grimace, he inclined his head toward his companion. “Howard can’t move very fast these days.”

“That’s all right. They haven’t announced the boarding call for our flight yet, so you’re here in time. I do need your friend’s name, though, and he’ll have to have his ID ready at the gate.”

Before Frasier could reply, the old man said in a loud, surprisingly clear voice with a strong Southern drawl, “My name is Howard Burleson, young woman. I can speak for myself. And I don’t need any identification. I know who I am.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Burleson,” I told him. “I didn’t mean any offense. But you, uh, have to have ID to board the plane–”

“He’s got it,” Frasier broke in. “Or rather, I do. They gave it to me at the home when I checked him out. I have his driver’s license and social security card. Will that be enough? You don’t need a passport, do you?"

I was tempted to tell him that the last time I’d checked, Georgia and Louisiana were both still in the United States, but I decided there was no point in being a smart aleck. Also, it bothered me that the state would give somebody as feeble as Howard Burleson a driver’s license. But I said, “That’ll be fine. Is Mr. Burleson your … grandfather?”

Burleson waved a gnarled hand. “I’m no relation to the boy. I’m just his meal ticket to fame and fortune.”

I had no idea what that meant and didn’t really care. Frasier looked annoyed and I thought he was going to say something,but just then the announcement came over the loudspeaker that Flight 561 to New Orleans was now boarding at Gate 3.

“That’s us,” I said as I took a pen and crossed through “Guest of Dr. Michael Frasier” and printed “Howard Burleson” in the space above it. “If you’ll join the others…. Have you already checked the rest of your luggage?”

Frasier hefted the two carry-ons. “This is all we have. The festival is only five days.”

Only a man could go on a trip for five days and fit everything he needed into a carry-on.

But there was no point in saying that, either, so I just ushered the two of them toward the rest of the group. By now they had picked up their bags and were making their way toward Gate 3, along with everybody else who was taking that flight to New Orleans.

I gave Will a reassuring nod. Now that everybody was here, things would be all right. The professors had stopped arguing, and they looked like the low-key, intelligent, and, well, professorial bunch I’d expected them to be in the first place. From here on out, I told myself, everything would go smoothly.

That was when Howard Burleson said, “It’s goin’ to be wonderful to see New Orleans again. I just wish poor Tom could be there with us.”

Dr. Paige said, “Tom?”

“Tom Williams, of course,” Burleson said. “Or Tennessee, as he called himself.”

Dr. Paige stopped in her tracks. “You knew Tennessee Williams?”

Burleson stopped, too, and looked at her, his leathery face creasing in a smile. He ignored the gentle tugs on the sleeve of his suit coat that Frasier was giving him and said, “Knew him? Tennessee Williams and I were lovers, young woman.”

T
hat stopped everybody in their tracks. I didn’t really blame them. I wasn’t even a professor, and I was surprised by the old man’s statement. Here they were, going off to a five-day literary festival honoring one of America’s most distinguished playwrights, and Howard Burleson wanted them to believe that he had been intimate with that very playwright.

At the same time, I wanted to shoo the group back into motion. The loudspeakers had already announced that our flight was boarding, and we didn’t have the luxury of standing around gawking at Burleson, no matter how outrageous the claim he had just made.

And maybe it wasn’t really all that outrageous. Even though most of my knowledge about Tennessee Williams and his life came from the movies based on his plays, I knew that he had been gay and had been involved with a lot of different men in his life. If Burleson was eighty now, he would have been in his twenties during Williams’s heyday as a playwright. He could have been young and good-looking and just the sort that Williams went for. I didn’t know.

But I knew it would be a big hassle if we missed our flight, so I forced those thoughts out of my head and raised my voiceto say, “We’d better move along, folks. We don’t want that airplane leavin’ without us.”

Dr. Tamara Paige turned her head toward me and said, “You can’t expect us to just … just …”

Frasier clamped a hand on the old man’s arm and tugged him toward the gate. “Not another word, Howard,” he warned. “Do you understand me?”

I didn’t like the browbeating tone that Frasier took with Burleson, but the old man just nodded and said, “All right, Doctor.”

“What are you up to, Frasier?” Dr. Paige snapped.

“Be there when I present my paper,” Frasier said. “You’ll see.” He steered Burleson toward the gate, and the others followed along behind them, chattering again now.

The routine of getting on the plane quieted them down. I spend a lot of time in airports, and even when you’re an experienced traveler like I am, all the rigamarole can’t help but remind you of why the extra precautions are in place. A lot of people still turn solemn when they get on or off a plane.

I took advantage of the opportunity to lean close to Will Burke as we were waiting to board and ask, “Do you believe that?”

“You mean do I believe what Mr. Burleson said about being Tennessee Williams’s lover? Or that Frasier would drag him to this conference?”

“Actually, I was speakin’ more in general, like you might say, ‘Well, what do you know about that?’ But I’d take an answer to either of the questions you asked.”

“I have no idea whether Mr. Burleson is telling the truth,” Will said. “It’s not like we have a list of everybody Williams was involved with. We know the most significant ones, like Frank Merlo, but there were plenty of others.”

I looked at the pink flush spreading across Will’s face. “Why, Will Burke, you’re blushin',” I said in surprise.

“I was raised in a pretty strict environment in a little Georgia town,” he said. “There were more things going on in the world than I really knew about until I got to college.”

Once I stopped to think about it, I knew what he meant. We get bombarded by so much all the time these days, we forget that there are still plenty of folks walking around who didn’t have the Internet and cable TV when they were growing up. I should know, I’m one of them. Especially in rural areas, there were some things you just didn’t see very often, so you didn’t think about them all that much. Like Will said, you had to get out into the world before you started forming opinions, and even then, it was hard to escape your upbringings.

“Anyway,” Will went on, “I’m not surprised that Frasier dug him out of the woodwork somewhere, or that he’s taking Burleson to the festival. Like I said, he’s all wrapped up in his work, and if what he says is true, it might be the basis for a good paper.”

“And that’s important to his career?”

He nodded. “Really important.”

“Are you going to, what do you call it, give a paper at the festival?” I hadn’t really had a chance to talk to Will about his schedule over the next few days.

“Present a paper. And no, not this year, although I have presented papers at the Williams Festival before. I’m just on some panels this year.”

“I’ll try to attend some of them,” I promised … although if the panelists started in on that ethnological, gynocentric, English professor gobbledygook, I wasn’t sure I’d know what they were talking about.

Will and I were the last ones in our group to board theplane. We found our seats–I’d made sure they were together, of course–and settled back for the ride, which would only take a little more than an hour. As soon as the plane was in the air and it was all right to get up and move around, I unfastened my seat belt and started up the aisle to check on my clients and see that they were all settled in okay.

When I came to Dr. Frasier and Howard Burleson, I stopped and asked, “How’re you folks doin'? That take-off bother you any, Mr. Burleson?”

“Not a blessed bit. I have been on an airplane before, you know. I was quite the world traveler in my time.” He had taken off his hat and held it precisely squared in his lap, revealing a mostly bald, liver-spotted scalp that had just a few strands of white hair draped over it. “Matter of fact, it was in Italy where I first met Tom. Venice is such a romantic city, you know.”

Frasier put a hand on his arm. “I told you, Howard, save it for the conference.”

“Very well,” Burleson said. “The memories are quite clear, though, of the sun on the canals and the warm breeze blowin’ through my hair.”

“Yes, fine,” Frasier said, obviously trying to suppress the impatience he felt. “You can tell everyone about it when we get to New Orleans.”

I heard a snort from one of the seats ahead of them, and when I looked in that direction, I saw the close-cropped hair of Dr. Tamara Paige. She hadn’t looked around, but I knew she could hear what Frasier and Burleson were saying and figured there was a good chance the snort had come from her.

“Where is it we’re goin’ again?” Burleson asked.

“New Orleans,” Frasier said. “I’ve told you several times now, Howard.”

“Oh, yes. New Orleans.” Burleson sighed. “The French Quarter. Such wonderful memories. I can see it all like it was just yesterday I was there.”

I wondered if Burleson might have a touch of Alzheimer’s. He seemed a little fuzzy about what was going on in the present, but evidently his memories of the distant past were crystal clear.

Of course, my memory wasn’t what it once was, either. Age and trying to juggle too many things will do that to a person.

I moved on along the aisle and stopped next to two more seats that contained a man and a woman. She was a blonde in her thirties, pretty except for the fact that her jaw was maybe a little too wide for her face. The fella with her was older, maybe fifty, with thinning dark hair and broad shoulders that strained the sports jacket he wore. He didn’t look like a professor to me. I know that’s stereotyping, but he just didn’t.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Delilah Dickinson–”

“We know,” the woman said, smiling brightly up at me. That broad jaw accommodated a lot of white teeth. “I’m Dr. Callie Madison, and this is my husband, Jake.”