Killer On A Hot Tin Roof (22 page)

Only a professor would say something like that, I thought … but Jeffords was right, no matter how he put it.

I managed to herd the three of them out of the auditorium. Will went as far as the doorway with us, where I paused and told him, “I was lookin’ forward to hearin’ what you had to say.”

“I can give you the highlights later,” he said with a smile. “Although I doubt if they’ll be as exciting as the preliminaries.”

“Huh,” I said. “That kind of excitement I can do without.”

It was sort of appropriate, though, I thought as I left the auditorium with Callie, Jake, and Jeffords, having so much drama at a Tennessee Williams Festival. We’d had lust, greed, fistfights, murder, and plenty of emotional turmoil. Maybe a little madness, too, depending on whether or not Howard Burleson’s claims turned out to be true. If Williams had been writing all this, the language would have been fancier, but I was willing to bet he could have gotten enough material from this crazy bunch for a play or two.

I got the Madisons and Dr. Jeffords off in a corner and told them, “I’m not a marriage counselor or a referee, but I think you folks need to talk about this.”

Jake grunted. “What is there to talk about? She cheated on me … and with a guy who looks like Orville Redenbacher, for Christ’s sake!”

I was glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who thought Dr. Jeffords bore an uncanny resemblance to the popcorn man. That didn’t help the situation, though.

“Jake, I’m sorry,” Callie said. “I know that doesn’t mean anything to you right now, but I really am. I … I never meant for it to turn out this way. Andrew and I were working together and … and things just happened. You and I have grown so far apart–”

“Oh, hell,” Jake broke in. “People always say that. It doesn’t mean anything. You either honor your vows or you don’t. Simple as that.”

She looked down at the floor. “I know. You’re right.” Her eyes came back up and locked with his. “But I don’t want a divorce. I know that, too.”

Jake looked confused. “Well … what do you want?”

“To put all this behind us?”

“Callie?” Jeffords exclaimed. “Does this mean–”

She turned toward him. “I’m afraid it does, Andrew. We … we have to end it. I’m sorry.” She swung back to Jake and reached out to put her hand on his arm. “Let’s go back to the hotel and talk about it.”

He looked steadily at her for a long moment, then heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I guess we ought to do that before we throw away fifteen years of marriage.”

They started toward the door. I wanted to call out for them to wait. I hadn’t asked them any questions about Burleson’s murder. My mouth even opened.

But I didn’t say anything. I supposed my investigation could wait. They were just going back to the hotel, not leaving town. Anyway, I couldn’t really bring myself to believe that either of them had killed Howard Burleson. They just didn’t have any reason to do that.

But they might have seen something that could lead to the killer, I reminded myself. That was the real reason I needed to talk to them.

“I … I don’t believe it,” Jeffords said as he stood beside me, watching Callie and Jake leave the museum. “She’s abandoning me and going back to that … that savage.”

My opinion of all of them wasn’t very high at the moment, and that included Jeffords. Before I stalked off, I glared over at him for a second and said, “Oh, go pop some popcorn.”

Since it hadn’t taken long to get things settled down between Callie and Jake, I slipped back into the auditorium and caught most of the panel. As I expected, it was sort of interesting at times, at least when Will was talking. The other professors droned a little and I had to stifle a yawn or two.

When the panel was over, Will spent a few minutes talking to some of his colleagues who came up to him, then he noticed me waiting for him and excused himself. He came over to me and asked, “What happened with the Madisons and Dr. Jeffords?”

“Callie and Jake went back to the hotel to talk. She was still claiming that she didn’t want a divorce, and I think there’s at least a chance she can talk him into goin’ along with that. I don’t know where Dr. Jeffords went, and I don’t care. What a dirty old man.”

“Don’t be too rough on him,” Will said. “His wife died fairly young, while they were still in their forties. He’s been a widower for almost twenty years. If some young, attractive woman started paying attention to him–”

“Don’t make excuses for him,” I said. “No matter how lonely he was, he knew she was married.”

“Well, yeah, it’s hard to get around that, isn’t it?” Will admitted.

We were standing not far from the auditorium doors, which were open now between panels. One of the festival volunteers, an attractive, middle-aged, obviously well-to-do lady, came into the room, looked around, and spotted us. She came toward us with a worried look on her face, which prompted me to mutter, “Uh-oh.”

“Dr. Burke,” the woman said. “I need your help.”

“Of course,” Will said. “What can I do for you?”

“Talk to Dr. Frasier, please, and try to convince him to put on his presentation.”

“He wants to cancel it?” Will asked. I remembered our earlier conversation.

“He says there’s no point in it now,” the volunteer said. “But that will leave us with a hole in the programming.”

Will looked like he wished she hadn’t tried to rope him into this. But I wasn’t surprised when he nodded and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” It just wasn’t in Will’s nature to refuse when someone asked him for help. “No promises, though.”

“Thank you, Dr. Burke.”

We left the auditorium and saw Frasier standing in the museum lobby talking to three more volunteers–two men and another woman. As we walked over to join them, Frasier saw us coming and started to shake his head.

“Forget it, Burke,” he said. “I’m not going through with it. There’s no reason to get up there and humiliate myself.”

I knew that Will sort of agreed with him, but for the good of the festival, he was willing to go against his instincts, or at least try to.

“Michael, no one blames you for what happened,” he began. “You can at least get up there and talk about the time Mr. Burleson spent with Tennessee Williams in Italy. I know that as talkative as Mr. Burleson was, he must have related a number of stories about those days to you. And he said they spent some time here in the French Quarter as well. None of that is really controversial.”

Stubbornly, Frasier shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You know what the centerpiece of my presentation was … the old man himself. Without him, no one is going to believe anything I say. Better to let it go so that everyone can just forget about it. All I want to do now is move on.”

A part of me wanted to feel sorry for him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He had rubbed me the wrong way too many times.

Will said, “If you cancel your talk, Michael, people will remember you as a quitter.”

“Better that than remembering me as a complete fool. Anyway, you know good and well that some other controversy will come along and make people forget about this one. That always happens.”

Will shrugged. “Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. After everything that’s happened, it’s better just to forget about it. And that’s what I intend to do.” Frasier looked at the festival volunteers. “Sorry.”

One of the men sighed. “I suppose there’s no way we can force you to go on stage and make your presentation, Dr. Frasier. But we’re all very disappointed by your decision.” He looked at the other volunteers. “I suppose we’d better make an announcement about the cancellation and post a sign for anyone who shows up later, so they’ll know what’s going on.”

The volunteers went off to attend to those matters. Frasier gave Will and me a defiant glare and said, “I suppose you’ve lost all respect for me, haven’t you?”

I figured that telling him I’d never respected him in the first place would just make things worse, so I kept my mouth shut. Will just said, “It was your decision, Michael. I respect that.”

Frasier muttered, “This never would have happened if not for that bitch Tamara. I’ll never forgive her.”

I thought that with a first-degree murder charge hanging over her head, Tamara Paige had a lot more important things to worry about than whether or not Frasier forgave her. Again, though, it wasn’t going to do any good to point that out.

Still muttering to himself, Frasier left the museum. With his presentation cancelled, nothing else was scheduled thereuntil the afternoon. So as soon as one of the volunteers got on the public address system and made the announcement, the rest of the festival-goers started to filter out of the place, except for a handful who remained to look through the museum itself.

“We might as well go back to the hotel,” I said to Will.

He nodded, looking a little glum. “Yeah. Between the murder and that scene Callie and her husband made, the festival’s not getting off to a very good start.”

I would have added the commotion during the opening ceremonies the night before to that list. And Howard Burleson had had a busy evening, first disappearing and then getting himself killed.

We left the museum and started back toward the St. Emilion. The streets were a little busier now as more tourists were out and about. This wasn’t the height of tourist season in New Orleans, which was probably one reason the festival was scheduled for now.

“I probably ought to go see Dr. Paige,” I said as we walked along past the picturesque buildings.

“Why?” Will asked.

“Well, I feel a certain responsibility toward her. She’s a member of my tour group, after all, and when one of the folks you brought with you is in trouble, you want to help out. At least, I do.”

“And you still don’t believe she’s guilty,” Will said.

I shrugged. “I know all the evidence points to her. I want to make sure she has a good lawyer, though.”

Will nodded and said, “I can understand that. I’ve known Tamara for several years and always liked her. I don’t want her being railroaded if she’s really innocent.”

I heard the wail of a siren somewhere behind us. We stopped and turned to look. An ambulance came along thenarrow street, moving fast but not at breakneck speed. It couldn’t go too fast here in the French Quarter. The ambulance went past us with lights flashing and ambulance whooping, then turned a corner up ahead. A moment later, the siren stopped.

As the echoes faded, I realized that the ambulance had turned onto the same street where the hotel was located.

“Oh, shoot,” I said.

Will looked over at me. “What? You don’t think it has anything to do with our group, do you?”

“The way things have been goin', I wouldn’t count on it,” I replied grimly. Then I started hurrying along the sidewalk, almost breaking into a run. Will came after me and caught up easily.

We didn’t say anything else until we rounded the corner. Then I saw the ambulance parked in front of the St. Emilion with its lights still flashing.

“We still don’t know–” Will began. Then he stopped short. He knew as well as I did that this couldn’t be anything good.

We found a crowd of people in the hotel lobby. The excitement of the ambulance’s arrival had brought them out. I spotted Dale Gillette among them and went over to him.

“What happened?” I asked. “Is that ambulance here for one of my tour group?”

He nodded. “I’m afraid so, Ms. Dickinson. It’s–”

Before he could finish, the elevator doors opened and the crew from the ambulance wheeled out a gurney with a big mounded shape on it that I recognized, even before Edgar and June Powers hurried out of the elevator behind the paramedics. One of the guys from the ambulance went ahead, clearing a path for the gurney. As it came closer, I saw the oxygen mask strapped over Dr. Lawrence Powers’s face.

“Papa Larry,” I breathed.

“Evidently he had a heart attack,” Gillette said. “That’s what I was told, anyway.”

The gurney rolled past us, with Edgar and June following closely behind it. “This is all your fault,” June was saying bitterly to her husband.

“How is it my fault?” Edgar asked.

“I don’t know, but it is.”

I fell in step beside Edgar and said, “If there’s anything I can do to help, Dr. Powers–”

“You’ve done enough,” June snapped. “Getting the police involved and stirring up everything with that murder probably put too much strain on Papa Larry’s heart.”

I thought that was completely unfair. I hadn’t had any choice but to get the police involved once I found Howard Burleson’s body. And I figured getting drunk as a skunk, not to mention having to put up with the bickering between his son and daughter-in-law, had put a strain on Larry’s heart, too.

I didn’t say anything, though. June was all worked up, so I just let it go. I stopped and watched the ambulance guys wheel the gurney on out of the hotel and load Papa Larry into the ambulance. Silently, I said a prayer for him.

Even if he survived this, he was still going to need all the help he could get.

But then, that was probably true of us all.

T
here was nothing I could do for Larry Powers, so I figured the best thing would be for me to concentrate on something I might be able to affect. I called a cab to take me to the New Orleans police headquarters so I could see Tamara.

Will insisted on coming along and, to tell the truth, I didn’t argue with him much. I knew I’d feel more comfortable if he was with me.

The cab driver knew where the police department was located, not surprisingly, and took us to the office on South Broad Street. Inside, an officer at the reception desk called Homicide to see if Detectives Ramsey and Nesbit were there. As it turned out, they weren’t. The officer offered to take a message for them, but instead I asked where a female prisoner who had been arraigned this morning on a murder charge would be held pending a bail hearing.

“Y’all lookin’ for that lady professor who killed the old man in the Quarter?” the cop asked.

“You’ve heard about the case?” I said.

The cop grinned. “Sure. Word gets around about somethin’ like that. Most of our homicides are bar fights, one drug dealer shootin’ another drug dealer, robberies gone wrong, things like that. I don’t recall ever hearin’ about a homicide involvin’