Killer On A Hot Tin Roof

by Livia J. Washburn

  CHAPTER 12

  Tamara said, “Murder!” and I said, “Arrest!” at the same time, and both words came out like startled yelps.

  I wasn’t completely surprised by Ramsey’s threat, because a similar thought had gone through my head a few moments earlier. Thinking about it, though, and hearing the actual words coming out of an angry police detective’s mouth were two mighty different things.

  “Take it easy,” Nesbit said with a soothing quality in his voice. They were back to the good cop, bad cop bit. “Nobody’s being arrested. We just want to ask you a few questions, Dr. Paige.”

  “Yeah,” Ramsey said. “Like what did this meddling redhead tell you?”

  Why do men always have to bring up the color of my hair? If I’d been a blonde, a guy might have mentioned that every once in a while, but Ramsey never would have asked, What did this brunette tell you? Never in a million years.

  I don’t know why that crazy thought crossed my head just then, but it did. I ignored it and said, “I didn’t tell her anything. We were just making small talk like you do when you run into an acquaintance in a hotel hallway.”

  Tamara shot me a narrow-eyed look, like maybe she thought I should have told her what was going on. But she just said, “Who are these men, and what’s this about a murder?”

  “This is Detective Ramsey and Detective Nesbit from the New Orleans PD,” I said, nodding to each of them as I introduced them.

  “Go ahead and answer her other question,” Ramsey said. “I want to hear how you do it.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from glaring at him for a second before I turned back to Tamara. “Howard Burleson is dead,” I said. “His body was found downstairs in that garden in the middle of the atrium a little while ago. Somebody killed him.”

  Her eyes got big with shock. “My God,” she murmured. “That poor old man! But how do you know he was killed? He could have had a heart attack or a stroke–”

  “Someone hit him several times in the head,” Ramsey broke in. “Possibly with a fist, possibly with a blunt object. Busted it wide open. Blood all over the place.”

  Tamara paled and took an instinctive step backward. “How awful! I can’t imagine anybody doing such a thing. He … he was a nice old man.”

  “For a lying fraud?” Nesbit prodded gently.

  Tamara’s face hardened. “Wait just a minute. What are you saying? Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to him?”

  “From what we’ve heard so far, it sounds like the victim was going to present some claims at the literary festival that would have threatened to seriously undermine your work, Dr. Paige.”

  Ramsey ran his gaze up and down her athletic body and added, “You look like you’re in pretty good shape, Doctor. Plenty good enough to punch out an old man, anyway.”

  Tamara started to back away as panic welled up in her eyes. “That’s crazy!”

  Nesbit took a quick step toward her. “Please, Dr. Paige, stay right where you are.”

  Tamara started shaking her head. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this lunacy. I’ve never hurt anyone. You … you can’t accuse me of … of such a horrible thing!”

  “No one’s accusing you,” Nesbit said. “We just have to ask you some questions–”

  “No!” Tamara turned and broke into a run, dropping the ice bucket as she did.

  It shocked me that she ran. I would have thought that she was smarter. But maybe she was guilty, I thought, and even if she wasn’t, maybe she just lost her head and panicked. But either way, it was a stupid thing to do, as she found out a second later when Nesbit lunged after her, sailed through the air, and tackled her from behind.

  They went down hard. Luckily, the thick carpet must have cushioned their fall a little. Tamara cried out as Nesbit landed on top of her. He grabbed her left wrist and dragged it behind her back, then pinned it there with his left hand while he reached for her right wrist. He snagged that one, too, and yanked that arm behind her. Then he held them both in place with one hand while he reached for his cuffs with the other.

  Tamara was sobbing by now. I took an instinctive step toward her. Ramsey yelled, “Stay back!” and I looked over to see that he had his gun out. It was an ugly, short-barreled revolver. “Stay back,” he told me again, and between the gun and the look on his face, I knew I’d better do what he said.

  Nesbit had plastic restraints on Tamara’s wrists by now, locking her arms behind her back. He pushed himself up and off of her. Ramsey holstered his gun and hurried forward to help his partner. Each of them grasped one of Tamara’s arms, then Nesbit said, “We’re going to help you stand up, Dr. Paige. Please don’t try to fight us.”

  Tamara was still sobbing. I didn’t think she had any fight left in her.

  They got her on her feet and moved her over so that she could lean back against the wall. “Are you all right?” Nesbit asked. “Are you hurt? Do you need medical attention?”

  “I … I didn’t do it,” Tamara said, gasping with fear and desperation in her voice. “I didn’t hurt anybody.”

  “Then why’d you run?” Ramsey said.

  That was a good question. I wanted to think it was just because she had gotten scared and stopped thinking straight, but I wasn’t sure anymore.

  “I didn’t kill that old man. I’ve never been accused of such a thing in all my life!”

  “Again, no one has accused you,” Nesbit said. “You’re not under arrest.”

  I said, “Then why the cuffs?”

  Ramsey gave me a dirty look. “Are you her lawyer?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  “Then you don’t get to ask questions,” he snapped.

  Nesbit said, “Dr. Paige is being detained for questioning. That’s all.”

  “She’s got a right to have a lawyer,” I insisted. “Even if you haven’t charged her with anything, she doesn’t have to answer questions if she doesn’t want to, and she has a right to have an attorney present if she does.”

  “You’ve watched too many TV shows, lady,” Ramsey told me with a sneer.

  “I don’t think I’m the only one,” I told him. “When you were wavin’ that gun around, I kept expectin’ you to yell ‘Freeze!’ ”

  I know, mouthing off to a cop isn’t the smartest thing in the world. Ramsey rubbed me the wrong way, though, and, anyway, I felt a responsibility toward Tamara. She was one of my clients, and I wasn’t going to let them mistreat her or take advantage of her.

  Ramsey didn’t like what I’d said. He clenched his jaw so tight that a little lump of muscle poked out from it. He took a step toward me, but before he could say anything else, Nesbit jumped back in.

  “I suppose you’re right, Ms. Dickinson,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll follow proper procedure. We’re going to take Dr. Paige in for questioning, but her rights will be protected. If she wants a lawyer, she’ll have one.”

  I looked at Tamara. “Do you know any lawyers in New Orleans?”

  “Of course not!” she replied with a shake of her head. “Why would I?”

  “How about back in Atlanta? I could call him for you and see if he can recommend anybody here.”

  Slowly, she shook her head again. “I have a personal attorney, but I doubt if he would know anybody who could handle something like this. Something like murder!”

  “Is that a confession, Doctor?” Ramsey asked with an ugly grin.

  “No,” Tamara said. “No, it’s not a confession at all. I don’t need to confess. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Ramsey leaned closer to her. “Everybody’s done something,” he said quietly. “They say confession is good for the soul.”

  “Come on,” Nesbit said. “We’ll get some of the patrol officers to continue with the canvass.”

  Firmly but not roughly, he turned Tamara toward the elevators. “We’ll see that you have a public defender if you want one,” he went on, as he started marching her along the hall.

  Ramsey tu
rned and glared at me. “You’re lucky we’re nottaking you in, too, Ms. Dickinson. If I were you, I’d go to my room and keep my mouth shut. You don’t want to get in the middle of our investigation.”

  “You got that right, Detective,” I said. The look I gave him wasn’t any friendlier than the one he was giving me.

  He grunted and then followed Nesbit and Tamara. I watched until the three of them got into one of the elevators and headed down.

  Maybe Ramsey and I had both been wrong just now, I realized. Despite what I had said about not wanting to get involved, it was too late for that. I was smack-dab in the middle of the mess involving Howard Burleson’s murder. How could it be any other way when I had discovered the body? Not only that, but both the victim and the leading suspect were members of my tour group.

  Like it or not, I couldn’t just turn my back on everything, especially when I wasn’t convinced that Nesbit and Ramsey were really after the truth. I thought a quick arrest and a cleared case were the things that mattered the most to them. That was why they had their sights set on Tamara.

  It was too late tonight to do anything about it, but first thing in the morning, I vowed, I would have some questions of my own to ask.

  And I would start by talking to Dr. Callie Madison.

  But if I thought this hellacious night was over, I was wrong. I had been in bed about ten minutes but hadn’t dozed off yet when someone pounded on my door. The knocking had an angry sound to it, so I wasn’t surprised when I got up, went to the door, looked through the peephole, and saw Dr. Michael Frasier standing in the hallway.

  I considered ignoring him, but I figured it was unlikely hewould go away anytime soon. Muttering to myself, I pulled a robe on over my pajamas and then opened the door.

  “What?” I snapped before he could say anything.

  “Howard Burleson is dead!”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know. I found his body.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to come and tell me? My entire career was riding on that old man!”

  “Maybe you weren’t smart to stake so much on a fella who might’ve dropped dead at any time,” I told him. That thought had already occurred to me. Somebody had murdered Burleson, sure, but his age put him at risk to start with. “Did you at least record his story?”

  Frasier went from looking angry to looking sick in the blink of an eye. “No,” he said miserably. “I didn’t think it was necessary. I thought it would be much more effective to have him deliver his claims in person.”

  “I guess so, but you should have backed them up somehow.” I wasn’t sure why I was trying to help him, but I thought of something else and went on. “You’ve got those manuscript pages he said he wrote.”

  Frasier’s eyes lit up. “The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof pages! Of course!” His glare came back. “But you still should have come and told me what was going on. My God! The police came and questioned me. I would have appreciated a little warning.”

  “If I’d warned you, then I would have been in trouble with the law,” I pointed out. “The cops ordered me not to say anything to anybody.”

  “Do you know if they’ve arrested anybody yet?”

  I hesitated. Detective Nesbit had made it clear that Tamara wasn’t actually being arrested … but by now that situation might have changed. Anyway, they had handcuffed her andtaken her with them, and the way most people would look at it, that qualified as an arrest.

  But before I could figure out if I wanted to tell Frasier about that, he got an excited look on his face and said, “Wait a minute! I know who must have done it! There’s only one person who had anything to gain by killing Howard.”

  He turned and stalked off down the corridor, and it took me only a moment to realize that he was heading for Tamara’s room.

  I wasn’t sure how he knew which room she was in. I didn’t even know that, only that her room was on the same floor as mine. Maybe he’d been stalking her.

  I hurried after him and started to tell him that she wasn’t there, that the police had hauled her off about a half-hour earlier. But he had already stopped in front of a door and started banging on it the way he’d been banging on mine a few minutes earlier.

  When there was no answer, he grabbed the door handle, shook it, and called angrily, “Damn it, Paige, open up! I know you’re in there!”

  I had stopped about ten feet behind him in the hall. With my arms crossed, I told him, “No, she’s not, and you’d better hush before you wake up everybody on this floor.”

  He turned to stare at me. “What are you talking about?”

  I didn’t see any way out of telling him the truth. “She’s not in there because the police took her in for questioning awhile ago.”

  “I knew it!” He pumped a fist in the air. “They’ve already got her!”

  “Hold on, hold on. I said they took her in for questioning. She hasn’t been arrested.” As far as I know, I added to myself.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Frasier said confidently. “Iknow how weak and spineless she really is. She’ll crack and confess that she killed Howard to save her own reputation.”

  Tamara hadn’t struck me as weak at all. She seemed plenty strong willed, as well as strong physically. The only way she would confess to Howard Burleson’s murder, I thought, was if she’d actually done it.

  A door several rooms away opened, and a couple of uniformed police officers stepped out, followed by Will Burke. I remembered that Detective Nesbit had said they would get some uniforms to finish canvassing the hotel guests, and I figured that was what those two officers were doing.

  Will wore a bathrobe, too, and his hair was tousled from sleep. I thought he looked cute. I didn’t have time to dwell on that, however, because the cops looked at me and Frasier, and one of them demanded, “What’s all the racket out–hey, it’s that redhead Ramsey told us about!”

  Both officers came toward me. The second one said, “What are you doing out here, ma’am? Detective Ramsey warned you about trying to interfere with the investigation that’s going on.”

  “I’m not interferin’ in anything,” I insisted. I pointed at Frasier. “I just followed Dr. Frasier here to try to keep him from makin’ a commotion.”

  “Well, you didn’t do a good job of it,” the first cop said. “We heard all that pounding on doors. After we talked to you, Dr. Frasier, didn’t we just tell you to stay in your room?”

  “Yes, but I thought of something!” Frasier said. “I figured out who killed the old man!”

  “You’d better let Detectives Ramsey and Nesbit worry about that. That’s their job, Doctor, not yours.”

  “But I’m telling you, it had to be Dr. Paige!” Frasier thumped a hand against the door of Tamara’s room.

  “She’s already been taken in for questioning,” one of the cops said.

  “I know. You’d better keep her locked up. She might try to kill me next. She’s really got it in for me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be safe,” the other cop said. “We’ll have officers here in the hotel the rest of the night.”

  Frasier nodded. “All right. Those detectives will be making a mistake if they don’t go ahead and arrest her for murder, though.”

  “Just quiet down and go on back to your room, sir. We’re trying to disturb the rest of the guests as little as possible.”

  “Fine,” Frasier said. He glanced at me. “I’ve got to go check on something, anyway. With those manuscript pages, I might still be able to salvage my presentation.”

  He hurried down the hall. The cops went to the next room, knocked on the door, and were admitted a moment later by one of the professors who’d spent the whole trip so far arguing with his buddy about Tennessee Williams. That left Will and me alone in the hall to look at each other and shake our heads.

  “I can’t believe it,” Will said. “Only a few hours ago we were sitting in Petit Claude’s with Mr. Burleson, and he was having such a good time.”

  “And now he’s dead,” I said
. “It’s a real shame. Things happen that way, though.”

  Especially on my tours, I thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  “What was that about Tamara being taken in for questioning?” Will wanted to know.

  I nodded. “It’s true. The police seem to think she has the strongest motive, and I don’t think she has an alibi. She was alone in her room most of the time after she got back from that club.”

  “Well, I just don’t believe that she killed that old man. I don’t think she’d hurt anyone.”

  “Even to save her career?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate for the moment.

  Will frowned and was about to answer, probably to defend Tamara again, when a bloodcurdling shriek suddenly sounded from down the hallway.

  As best I could tell, it was coming from Dr. Michael Frasier’s room.

  CHAPTER 13

  Will and I were closer to Frasier’s room than the cops, who popped out into the hall when they heard the screaming. By that time, we were hurrying toward Frasier’s door.

  It burst open before we could get there. He ran out of the room, saw us, and yelled, “They’re gone! They’re gone, damn it! She must have stolen them!”

  Frasier waved his arms in the air and jumped around like a deranged chimp. His face was purple with rage. As the cops pounded toward us, Will grabbed one of Frasier’s arms and said, “Settle down, Michael, or they’re going to arrest you for disturbing the peace!”

  Frasier stopped yelling and jumping, but he was still breathing like he had just run a mile and looked like he was on the verge of having a stroke.

  As the cops came up, one of them warned, “Quiet down, sir, or you’ll be in trouble.”

  “What’s the trouble here?” the other one wanted to know.

  Frasier took a deep breath and controlled himself with a visible effort. “There are some very valuable papers missing,” he said, “and I think Dr. Tamara Paige must have stolen them.”

  “The manuscript pages from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?” I asked.

  He nodded and looked like he was about to cry. “That’s right. They’re gone.”

  The words came out of him in a wail of despair. I almost felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t quite, because he’d been such a jackass earlier.