Killer On A Hot Tin Roof

by Livia J. Washburn

  And for that matter, I thought, once I did get to bed, I might not be going to sleep right away …

  “All right,” he said. “Six-thirty. I’ll see you then.”

  With a little wave, he went on down the hall with the porter and the luggage cart. I closed the door, leaned against it for a second, and then turned back toward the bed.

  “Mattress,” I said as I kicked my shoes off, “here I come.”

  I wore a white-trimmed dark blue dress with a matching jacket and white heels, and a single strand of pearls around my neck, going for simplicity and elegance. What took the longest getting ready for the night was pinning up my unruly red hair into a partial updo. I knew that I cleaned up pretty good, as we say back home. Pretty good wasn’t enough for tonight, though. In addition to Tennessee Williams scholars from around the country, there would be the movers and shakers of New Orleans high society in attendance, along with folks from Broadway and Hollywood.

  Judging by the look on Will’s face as I walked toward him across the lobby, I’d done all right. He was smart enough to know not to gush about how good I looked as I came up to him, because that would have implied that I didn’t look all that good normally. But he was definitely impressed. He went for simple, too, saying, “You look beautiful, Delilah.”

  “Thank you, kind sir.” He wore a black suit and a charcoal tie, and his hair was neatly styled for a change, and as I looked him over, I went ahead and used the line I had thought about earlier. “You clean up pretty good, too, Doctor.”

  He grinned. “Thanks. I’ll admit I don’t like dressing up very much, but I don’t mind when the occasion warrants it. And I’d say it’s definitely justified when I’m going out for an evening in New Orleans with Delilah Dickinson.”

  I linked my arm with his and said, “Honey, you just lead the way.”

  I had spotted several other members of the tour group in the lobby, and as we left the hotel I saw more of them walking along the narrow sidewalk. Night had fallen, but the streets of the French Quarter were brightly lit with gas lamps on iron posts along with the light that came through the windows of the nearby buildings. The area wasn’t nearly as crowded as itis during Mardi Gras, of course, but there were still a lot of people making their way along the sidewalks. Some of them were pretty disreputable-looking characters, too, because, after all, what would the French Quarter be without some lowlifes? It was a microcosm (there’s one of those words I’d picked up, again) of society, from the highest to the lowest, and sometimes there wasn’t all that much difference between them. In the great scheme of things, the spaces that divide humanity are small.

  Dr. Callie Madison and her husband, Jake, were about half a block ahead of us. As I watched, what appeared to be a homeless man came up and started talking to them. Jake shook his head, tightened his hold on Callie’s arm, and started moving faster. The man stayed with them, though, and I caught some of what he was saying.

  “ … no place to live since Katrina, man. You can help out a little…. All dressed up to go to some fancy party …”

  Jake Madison stopped short, let go of his wife’s arm, and squared up with the panhandler. “I said I don’t have anything for you and asked you to leave us alone.”

  Beside me, Will said, “Uh-oh. You think we should do something about this?”

  “I don’t know what we can do except look for a cop,” I said as I started to do just that. Police officers on foot patrolled the French Quarter, but I didn’t see any of them at the moment. That old bit about there never being a cop around when you need one seemed to be coming true right now.

  But Will was right. I felt a certain responsibility for the Madisons, since they were my clients. If that panhandler got violent, they might be hurt, and I couldn’t just stand by and allow that to happen. I started walking a little faster, my heels clicking rapidly against the sidewalk.

  Things happened before Will and I could get there. Thepanhandler said in an aggrieved tone, “Hey, man, you don’t have to be like that. Remember that ‘there but for the grace of God’ stuff. You could be me, man.”

  “Not in a million years,” Jake said.

  That set the panhandler off. I knew that a lot of them had mental problems or drug addictions and weren’t too stable to begin with, and this one certainly wasn’t. He started cursing and swung a punch at Jake’s head.

  But Jake was too fast for him. He ducked under the blow with what seemed like a casual move, and then as he straightened he drove a fist into the panhandler’s midsection. It was a short, sharp punch that sent the man stumbling backward. He came up against a lamp post, banged his head on it, and then slid down along the post so that he wound up sitting with his back against it, gasping for air. Jake pointed a blunt finger at him and said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay right there, boozy.”

  Will and I hurried up to the Madisons, and I asked, “Are you folks all right?”

  Jake grunted. “I’m fine,” he said as if he didn’t think he’d been in any danger at all. He turned to his wife. “How about you, Callie?”

  “I’m fine, too,” she said, but her voice was tight with anger. She glared at her husband and went on, “Did you have to hit him?”

  “Hey, he tried to hit me!”

  “Would it have killed you to give him a few dollars so he would have just gone on his way?”

  “Yeah, he would have gone on his way,” Jake said, “and he would have started bothering somebody else. Don’t go thinking he would’ve used any money I gave him for food or a place to stay, though. He would have drunk it up, just like he drinks up all the rest of the money he begs from suckers like you, Callie.”

  I was sort of agreeing with him until he took that shot at his wife. I thought that wasn’t called for.

  Callie didn’t like it, either. She said, “I may be what you call a sucker, Jake, but at least I have some compassion in my heart.”

  “Yeah. Just not any passion.”

  With that wide jaw of hers set tight, she blew out her breath between clenched teeth and shook her head. “Not … here,” she said.

  Jake spread his hands. “Fine. Let’s go on to this party. At least they’ll have drinks and maybe something to eat, right?”

  Callie didn’t say anything. She just turned and started stalking along the sidewalk, away from the scene of the brief but violent confrontation.

  Jake glanced at Will and shrugged as if to say, “Women, huh?” When he didn’t get any response from Will, he turned and went after his wife.

  “Funny, I didn’t realize we’d gone back in time fifty years,” Will said quietly when the Madisons were out of earshot.

  “You mean because of the way Jake treats his wife?”

  “Yeah. He was pretty rude.”

  Before I could agree with Will, the panhandler whined, “Hey, I’m the one who got knocked down here! Doesn’t anybody feel sorry for me?”

  “Quit while you’re ahead, pal,” I told him. “That guy could’ve broken you in half.”

  Will took a five dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the man. “Sober up and get something to eat.”

  “Sure thing, Chief. I’ll sure do that.”

  As Will and I resumed walking, I said, “You know Jake was right about one thing. That guy will just go drink up that money.”

  “I know,” Will said with a sigh. “I can’t help it. When I see somebody who’s down on their luck, even when it’s their own fault, I want to help.”

  It was debatable whether giving the panhandler money actually helped him or not, but it was also a debate I didn’t want to have right now. I was more interested in getting to the reception, and then to the opening ceremony of the festival, and then to that late supper with Will.

  We turned the corner. The theater was on the next block, on the right. People were streaming into the impressive red brick building. I spotted Drs. Paige and Jeffords, who seemed to always be together. I wondered for a second if Dr. Paige had taken up with Dr.
Jeffords after breaking up with Michael Frasier, but that seemed unlikely to me. For one thing, he was a good thirty years older than her and, for another, he looked like somebody’s kindly old grandfather or a popcorn pitchman, take your pick.

  The reception was being held in the theater lobby. As Will and I went in, I saw Lawrence Powers talking to a couple of women I recognized from the movie screen. As far as I knew, they hadn’t been in any movies based on Tennessee Williams’s plays, but they might have performed in them on stage. His son and daughter-in-law stood nearby. June looked like she wished Papa Larry would introduce her to the movie stars while Edgar wore the distracted, slightly bored look that engineers often display when they are out of their element. But, to be fair, a playwright would probably have the exact same expression if he found himself in a roomful of engineers.

  A cash bar was set up on one side of the lobby where the harder stuff could be purchased, while waiters circulated through the crowd with trays bearing glasses of complimentary champagne. There was also a long table with cheese, crackers, and other finger food. I was hungry and thought about nibbling a little, but I was willing to wait until Will and I had supper.

  The lobby was already crowded and full of talk and laughter. We wandered past the two professors who had done the bulk of the arguing at the airport in Atlanta and during the flight. One of them was saying, “How can you defend the editorial acumen of Farnsworth Wright? He rejected story after story that Lovecraft submitted to him!”

  “Yes, but he published ‘The Vengeance of Nitocris,’ ” the other one insisted. “That was Williams’s foot in the door.”

  The first one snorted. “Some foot! It was just a lurid story by a high school kid that made no lasting impression at all. Williams might as well not have sold it to Weird Tales.”

  “It was his first work in print. Wright saw something there.”

  “Then why didn’t he buy anything else from Williams?”

  “Thank God he didn’t! If that had happened, Willliams might be just another forgotten pulp writer today!”

  “So you praise Wright on one hand and damn him on the other, all because of a story that has absolutely no place of importance in the rest of Williams’s oeuvre?”

  “There always has to be a first story and, anyway, the prevalent themes are already there, right from the start.”

  Will had paused to listen to the exchange and, as I watched him, I said, “You’re just itchin’ to get right in the middle of that, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said. “I think both of their positions are extreme and that the truth lies somewhere in between. As S. T. Joshi has commented about Farnsworth Wright–”

  I held up a hand to stop him. “I don’t know who any of those folks are, darlin’, so why don’t you just get us some champagne?”

  I was afraid for a second that I’d insulted him, but then he laughed and said, “You’re right. Do you want something to eat, too?”

  Giving in to temptation, I said, “If they’ve got some of those little squares of cheese and some crackers, I wouldn’t mind that. I’m feelin’ a mite peckish, and it’ll be a good while yet before we have supper.”

  Will nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  He moved off through the crowd, weaving in and out of the available spaces, while I looked around. I saw several tuxedo-clad men and women in evening gowns near the entrance to the theater’s auditorium and figured they were the members of the committee that oversaw the festival. I was about to go over and say something to them when a big shape got in front of me.

  “Excuse me,” Dr. Ian Keller said. “I didn’t mean to get in your way.”

  “That’s all right. I’m Delilah Dickinson, by the way.”

  He smiled. “Sure. Will Burke’s friend who arranged the trip for us. I’m grateful to you, Ms. Dickinson. I’m not much of a guy for details. I liked being able to just show up at the airport and go.”

  He seemed friendly enough, so I thought I could risk a personal question. “You’re not from the South, are you?”

  That brought a chuckle from him. “Nah, I’m one of those Yankees. Born and raised in New Jersey.”

  “How’d you wind up bein’ an expert on Southern literature? If you don’t mind me askin’, that is?”

  “Not at all,” he assured me. “Something about it just … resonates with me, I guess you could say. I like the gentler pace not only of Southern literature, but of Southern life as well. I never fit in up north. Too much of a rat race.”

  “I know the feelin’,” I told him. “Unfortunately, Atlanta’s gettin’ to be the same way.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I know. But I’d still rather be there than in Newark, no offense to the friends and family I still have up there.”

  “You still have family there?”

  “Well, yeah. A brother. That’s all.”

  I liked Ian Keller. He was a little intimidating because of his size, and he was a Yankee, true enough, but compared to most of the rest of the professors, he was a plain-spoken fella and down to earth. Not like–

  Before I could finish that thought, I heard an angry voice shouting, “Where is he? What have you done with him, you bitch? You’ve stolen my old man!”

  CHAPTER 5

  I recognized Michael Frasier’s voice, and it didn’t take much deductive power to figure out that the “bitch” he was yelling at was probably Tamara Paige. I couldn’t see them as I looked across the crowded theater lobby, but as a surprised silence fell over the place, I heard Paige respond, “What the hell are you talking about? Get away from me, you lunatic!”

  “Not until you tell me what you did with Howard Burleson!” Frasier shouted back.

  “Oh, no,” I muttered. “Those two are gonna ruin the evening.” I started trying to push my way through the crowd, hoping that if I could reach them, I could calm things down and maybe salvage the rest of the reception.

  Dr. Keller caught up with me and moved past me. “Let me give you a hand,” he said.

  He was about six-three and probably weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, which meant that people were a lot more likely to get out of his way than they were to move aside for me. So I got right behind him and let him plow a path through the crowd for me.

  By the time we reached Drs. Paige and Frasier, a circle had cleared around them as people backed off from the angry confrontation. The two of them were still yelling at each other.

  Frasier wasn’t dressed for the reception. He wore slacks and a casual shirt with no jacket or tie, which told me he had intended to stay at the hotel this evening. Something had caused him to come here to the theater, however, and it was obvious that something was the disappearance of Howard Burleson.

  I wondered what had happened to the old man and immediately thought that he might have forgotten where he was and wandered off. He could be shuffling around the streets of the French Quarter and getting into all sorts of trouble.

  But while that possibility worried the heck out of me, I had more pressing concerns, like keeping Drs. Paige and Frasier from trying to punch each other. Dr. Jeffords was plucking ineffectually at the sleeve of Tamara Paige’s dress, but she ignored him as she glared defiantly at Frasier.

  “I tell you, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she insisted. “I haven’t seen that old scoundrel you dragged along and persuaded to lie for you, since we got here.”

  “Who else would have taken him?” Frasier shot back. “And he’s not lying!”

  “Why would I want to kidnap some delusional geriatric fraud?”

  “You’re worried that what he’ll say during my presentation will invalidate everything you’ve ever written about Tennessee Williams and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!”

  “You’re insane!” Dr. Paige spread her arms and then gestured at her body, which was covered by a rather formfitting green dress. “Anyway, do I look like I’ve got an old man hidden somewhere on me?”

  Frasier made a curt, angry slash wi
th his hand in the air. “You’ve probably got him stashed in your room at the hotel. Or maybe you got him out of there completely and hid him inanother hotel. You just want to ruin my presentation tomorrow.”

  “You’re wrong,” Dr. Paige said. “I’d much rather you get up there and make a fool of yourself, Michael, so that everyone can see for themselves what I found out a long time ago: as a scholar, you’re a complete failure.” She sniffed contemptuously. “Just like you’re a failure as a man.”

  That was one too many cheap shots for Frasier to withstand. He took a quick step toward her, his hands coming up as if he wanted to wrap them around her throat and choke the life out of her.

  Ian Keller glanced at me and then stepped between them. He was too big for Frasier to get around. “Hold on there, Michael,” Keller said in a mild but firm voice. “I think you’ve made enough of a scene here tonight.”

  “Get out of my way, Ian,” Frasier snapped. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The likelihood of Frasier being able to hurt Dr. Keller was so farfetched it made me want to laugh, but I wasn’t in a laughing mood at the moment. I was mad and worried at the same time. I stepped up and said, “Dr. Frasier, do you claim that Mr. Burleson has disappeared from the hotel?”

  Frasier gave me an impatient glance. “Of course he’s disappeared. Would I be here trying to find out what that harpy did with him if he hadn’t?”

  “Calling folks names isn’t going to do anybody any good,” I said. “Did you have Mr. Burleson paged at the hotel? It’s a big place. Maybe he just got turned around and couldn’t find his way back to his room.”

  “I looked everywhere before I came over here. He’s not there.” Frasier sent another glare toward Tamara Paige. “She did something with him.”

  “I most certainly did not!” she said.

  Dr. Jeffords cleared his throat and spoke up. “Dr. Paige has been with me most of the time since we arrived, Dr. Frasier. I doubt if she would have had time to abscond with your … your companion.”

  “Don’t call him that,” Frasier snapped. “He’s part of my presentation, that’s all.”