Killer On A Hot Tin Roof

by Livia J. Washburn

  One of the cops asked, “If these papers were so valuable, why didn’t you put ‘em in the safe downstairs?”

  “Because no one else knew about them except me and Howard Burleson,” Frasier replied.

  “The murdered guy?”

  “That’s right.” Frasier glared at Will and me. “At least that was true until tonight. And you can’t calculate their worth in money, anyway.”

  “Still, if they were valuable to you, you shouldn’t have left them in your room.”

  “They were in Howard’s room,” Frasier said, waving vaguely toward the next door along the corridor. “They were in his suitcase. But we have adjoining rooms, and when I went in there just now to look for them, they were gone.”

  Both cops frowned at him. One of them said, “You were in the murder victim’s room?”

  “Well … yes.” Frasier suddenly looked a little nervous.

  “You shouldn’t have been,” the cop said. “That room should have been sealed off.”

  “No one told me to stay out of it,” Frasier said defensively.

  “Ramsey and Nesbit must not have thought about there being an adjoining room,” the other cop said. “They’re not gonna be happy about this.”

  “I didn’t disturb anything except the suitcase,” Frasier said. “I just opened it to look for the papers. I swear I didn’t touch anything else this time.”

  “You were in there earlier?”

  “Yes. After Howard and I got back here to the hotel, I wentin there and made sure the door on his side was unlocked, so I could check on him. I didn’t want him wandering off again, like he did before.”

  “But he did wander off,” I said. “He went downstairs to the garden where he was killed. Although, technically, they may not have established that yet.”

  Will said, “I don’t see how he could have been killed somewhere else and then lugged through the hotel into that garden.”

  “You two shouldn’t even be discussing that,” one of the cops said. “You’re civilians.”

  “Actually, I’m a witness,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter. This is police business.”

  “In that case,” Frasier said, “I demand that you search Tamara Paige’s room. Those pages may still be in there. Maybe she didn’t have time to destroy them.”

  “Why do you think she’d destroy them?”

  “Because those pages are my last hope of being able to prove that Howard Burleson wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!”

  The cops looked confused, and I couldn’t blame them. They didn’t understand all the hoopla over who wrote what.

  Will helped put it in perspective for them by saying, “What Dr. Frasier is talking about could mean that Dr. Paige’s career would be ruined.”

  “Over a stupid play?” one of the cops asked.

  “It’s not stupid,” Frasier said. “It’s brilliant. It’s just that the wrong man has gotten the credit for that brilliance all these years. Now, are you going to search Dr. Paige’s room or not?”

  “That’s up to Detective Ramsey and Detective Nesbit.” The cop who answered took a cell phone from a holder on his belt. “But I’ll call them and ask them what they want us to do. In the meantime, Doctor, keep the racket down, okay?”

  Frasier sighed and nodded. “All right. But I really need that manuscript before ten o’clock tomorrow morning. That’s when my presentation is scheduled. Please make sure the detectives understand that.”

  The cop nodded. The other officer pointed to the door of Frasier’s room and said, “The three of you go in there and wait.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Will said. “Ms. Dickinson and I–”

  The cop glared at us and pointed again, this time jabbing the air sharply with his finger. He didn’t let Will finish explaining that the two of us didn’t have any desire to go into Frasier’s room.

  It looked like we were going to, though, whether we wanted to or not. Anyway, I’ll admit I wanted to be there if the cops searched Tamara’s room. Despite my best intentions, I had gotten caught up in the investigation. I wanted to know the truth.

  We left the door of Frasier’s room open. The bed was rumpled and unmade, but other than that the place was neat. He wasn’t the type to throw clothes around a hotel room. The connecting doors between Frasier’s room and Howard Burleson’s were both open, so I could see into Burleson’s room. It was neat, too, except for the suitcase lying open on the bed with its contents strewn around.

  The cop stood in the doorway to keep an eye on us and make sure we didn’t go into Burleson’s room. A couple of minutes later, the other cop came in and said, “I talked to Detective Nesbit. He and Detective Ramsey will be here in about twenty minutes to search that room. Until then, everybody stays out of there, and we’re gonna wait right here to make sure of that.”

  “You don’t need Ms. Dickinson and me, then,” Will said. He didn’t know that I wanted to be there for the search … although you would have thought that he knew me well enough by then to guess that I would.

  The cop who had called the detectives put out a hand when Will started toward the door. “Nesbit said for everybody to stay put until he and Ramsey get here. That means everybody stays put.”

  “But we don’t have anything to do with this,” Will protested.

  “I’m just following orders, sir. Why don’t you sit down and try to take it easy?”

  Will looked like he wanted to argue. I put a hand on his arm and said quietly, “Maybe we’d better do like he says, Will.”

  He gave me a look that seemed to ask when I’d become so mild-mannered. But then he shrugged and said, “Okay. I still don’t see the point in it, though.”

  There was an uncomfortable twenty minutes while we waited for Ramsey and Nesbit. The cops stood on either side of the doorway. Frasier sat in the chair at the desk, while Will and I took the sofa. My eyes kept straying to the curtains over the French doors, knowing that from the balcony on the other side of those doors, I could have looked down on the scene of Howard Burleson’s murder. Then I looked at the connecting doors leading into the old man’s room. The fact that the manuscript samples were missing was one more thing that didn’t look good for Tamara Paige. I wasn’t sure how she could have gotten her hands on them, though.

  “Dr. Frasier,” I said, “how did Dr. Paige manage to steal that manuscript, if she did? Weren’t the doors of both rooms locked?”

  “I don’t know how she did it,” he said, “but I know she’s to blame.”

  “What about the doors?” I persisted.

  “Yes, they were locked. At least mine was.” Frasier’s eyeswidened. “She must have come over here and gotten Howard to open his door. She could have talked him into coming with her and bringing the pages along.” He slapped his forehead. “My God! Of course. She suggested they go down to the garden where she could examine the pages while they had a drink. I know how charming she can be … when she wants to.”

  Will said, “And you wouldn’t have heard him leaving with her?”

  “Not if they left while I was taking a shower. Damn it! I knew I’d have to keep a close eye on Howard while we were here in New Orleans, but I never figured on having to protect him from a murderer!”

  I had to admit that Frasier’s theory made sense. Everything about it fit, as far as I could see, except for the fact that I didn’t want Tamara to be the killer.

  Ramsey and Nesbit showed up a short time later. We heard them coming down the hall. Ramsey came in first and glared in surprise at Will and me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I nodded toward the two uniformed officers. “Your watchdogs wouldn’t let us leave.”

  “You said for everybody to stay put, Detective,” one of the cops said to Nesbit, who had followed Ramsey into the room.

  “That’s right,” Nesbit agreed.

  Ramsey frowned at me. “The way you show up around murders all the time, Red, I’m about to start suspecting you.”

  “Is tha
t right, Red?” I threw right back at him. We were never going to like each other, I thought, and it didn’t have anything to do with the color of our hair.

  Nesbit started pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Let’s have a look around the victim’s room,” he suggested. “You two can continue sparring later.”

  Ramsey didn’t look happy with that comment, but he pulled on some gloves, too, and the two detectives stepped carefully through the connecting doors into Howard Burleson’s room.

  “We would have gotten around to this as soon as we finished questioning Dr. Paige, anyway,” Nesbit told us over his shoulder.

  “Is she still in custody?” I asked.

  “For the time being,” Nesbit replied. “She hasn’t been charged with anything, though.”

  Ramsey turned his head and practically snarled at me. “I wanted to charge her with resisting an officer for trying to run like that, but I got overruled.”

  “I’m the one who tackled her,” Nesbit said. “It was my call.”

  I stood up and moved so that I could see better as they walked into the center of the old man’s room and stood there for a couple of minutes, turning slowly and just looking around, taking it all in. Nesbit muttered, “No signs of a struggle.”

  “What about that suitcase?” Ramsey asked. “Looks like somebody dumped it on the bed, like they were searching for something.”

  “I did that,” Frasier called through the open doors. “I was looking for some papers that Mr. Burleson had with him. They’re very important, Detectives. They’re part of the reason he was killed!”

  Nesbit asked, “Is that why you were in here? Looking for those documents?”

  Frasier nodded. “That’s right. I didn’t touch anything else. But I’ll bet if you check, you’ll find Tamara Paige’s fingerprints in there!”

  “We’ll cover that base, don’t worry,” Nesbit said. “Step over to the doorway, Dr. Frasier.”

  When Frasier had done so, Nesbit went on, “Now, take a look around from there and see if you can tell if anything else is missing.”

  There wouldn’t have been many of the old man’s belongings in the room, I thought, except what was in the suitcase. Other than that, it was just a hotel room, albeit a pretty fancy one. Frasier stood in the doorway gazing around for a minute or so, then shook his head.

  “Everything looks normal to me,” he said. “You won’t find anything in here unless it’s Dr. Paige’s fingerprints, like I told you.”

  “Don’t try to tell us our business,” Ramsey said with a glare. “We know what we’re doing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Frasier said, but his apology didn’t sound too genuine to me. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Detective. I just really need to find those pages, if she didn’t destroy them. Do you think … do you think it would be possible to look in her room?”

  Nesbit said, “That’s one of the things we were going to do when we got back to the hotel, along with searching this room. I suppose we can go take a look now.”

  “Can I come with you?” Frasier asked eagerly. “You’ll need me to identify the papers, if you find them. And, by all rights, I should have them.”

  Ramsey shook his head. “Anything we find is evidence. You won’t be able to touch it, Doctor.”

  Frasier looked stricken. He had allowed himself to hope he could still give his presentation, and now that hope had been snatched away from him. He said, “You can’t mean that! My career depends on those pages!”

  “Sorry, Doctor,” Nesbit told him. “Detective Ramsey is right. If those documents are in Dr. Paige’s room, they’re evidence and will be impounded.” He paused. “We might be able to make photocopies of them for you. Would that help?”

  Frasier was still upset, but he shrugged a little. “Maybe. At least people could see that the play is in Howard Burleson’s handwriting.”

  I didn’t see how that was going to prove anything. Burleson could have sat down and copied Tennessee Williams’s play out of a book. But the pages would be something, anyway, for Frasier to present at the festival in support of his theory, even if they didn’t prove it. They would show that Burleson hadn’t been lying about having a handwritten manuscript of the play.

  “All right, come along, Doctor,” Nesbit said as he and Ramsey came back into Frasier’s room and headed for the door.

  Will and I were on our feet. “What about us?” I asked.

  “What about you?” Ramsey asked. “This is none of your business.”

  “Actually,” Will said, “I could help Dr. Frasier identify any manuscript pages you find, if you find any. I’m quite familiar with Tennessee Williams’s work and have published several articles about it.”

  I wondered if he was saying this just so I could tag along and observe the investigation. Maybe he had realized by now that my curiosity was up.

  I added, “And since I feel a certain responsibility to my clients, I’d like to go along to see that Dr. Paige’s interests are protected.”

  Ramsey gave me a withering stare. “You’re not an attorney, and, anyway, we’re not going to do anything illegal.”

  “Do you have a search warrant for her room?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do,” Ramsey said with a smirk. “But you know what? You can come with us. I know what you want to do.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. You want to play detective, just like you did those other times. You think you’re gonna figure out the case and show up the dumb cops.”

  “I never said that,” I insisted.

  But there was a smattering of truth in what he said. Not about me thinking they were dumb, of course. I didn’t like Ramsey, but I had no idea how smart he was … or wasn’t. I just wanted to see if there was any other explanation for the growing evidence that pointed toward Tamara.

  Nesbit smiled slightly and said, “Personally, I think it might be better to have Ms. Dickinson where we can keep an eye on her. That way we’ll know she’s not doing anything to hinder the investigation.”

  “Thanks … I think,” I said.

  Ramsey made a curt gesture for me, Will, and Frasier to follow them, then left the room with Nesbit. Ramsey told the two uniformed cops to stay there and keep the scene secure. He used a walkie-talkie to call downstairs and tell the forensics team to come up and go over Howard Burleson’s room when they were finished with the crime scene in the garden.

  We went down the hall and stopped in front of a doorway. Ramsey and Nesbit seemed to know that this was Tamara’s room. I realized they must have gotten that information from Dale Gillette.

  That wasn’t all they had gotten. Nesbit took a key card from his pocket and used it to unlock the door. He was still wearing the latex gloves, so he grasped the handle, turned it, and swung the door open. He looked back at the three of us civilians and said, “Stay in the hall. Don’t even step inside the door.”

  We nodded. The two detectives went in. Will and Frasier and I crowded up close so that we could look into the roomand watch as Ramsey and Nesbit walked around looking at everything.

  I felt bad for Tamara, having a couple of strangers pawing through her stuff. A woman needs some privacy, even for her possessions.

  There wasn’t really much to see in the room, though. Tamara had hung her clothes in the closet, but her under-things were still in her suitcase. I figured her makeup kit and things like that would be in the bathroom.

  Her laptop was open on the writing table, with a slide show of photographs serving as her screensaver. I could see them from where I stood. Most of them seemed to be family photos–of a bunch of people I didn’t know, of course–but there were also a few landscape shots and some pictures of dogs and cats. A paperback book lay on the table next to the computer. I could see enough of its cover to recognize it as a copy of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She had probably been looking through it earlier while she was thinking about Howard Burleson’s story, before she started working out.

  Nesbit said, “I don’t see any
handwritten papers, Dr. Frasier. You did say they were handwritten, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right,” Frasier said. “Mr. Burleson wrote the play in a legal pad, so the samples would be on lined yellow paper of that size.”

  “Nothing like that in here.” Nesbit picked up Tamara’s laptop case, which was sitting on the floor next to the table, and looked in it. “Nothing here, either.”

  A look of sweaty desperation appeared on Frasier’s face. He could see his last hopes slipping away. “Keep looking,” he said. “Please.”

  Ramsey gestured toward the open door that led into the bathroom. “I’ll check in there.” Nesbit nodded.

  I didn’t think it was very likely that Tamara would havehidden the pages in the bathroom–if she had taken them, that is–but I supposed anything was possible.

  Ramsey had been inside the bathroom only a moment when he said, “Hello.”

  Nesbit hurried over there. “What is it?”

  “Looks like a little bit of ash around the drain in the sink.”

  “Ash?” Frasier repeated. At that moment, his face was about the same color as ashes.

  Nesbit said, “Yes, it looks like something’s been burned in here, and then the ashes were washed down the drain except for a few tiny pieces. Wait a minute, maybe I can get one of them …”

  Frasier looked like he was about to burst into tears. His hands knotted together. I thought for a second he was going to pray, then decided that he just wasn’t the type. Then he started murmuring something and for a second I thought I was wrong, that he was praying after all.

  Then I realized that he was saying, “Shit, shit, shit,” over and over again.

  Nesbit emerged from the bathroom with a pair of needle-nose tweezers in one hand and a clear plastic evidence bag in the other. He held up the bag and said, “Take a look at that, Dr. Frasier.”

  At first glance, I thought the bag was empty. Then I spotted the tiny piece of burned paper inside it, a ragged square about a quarter of an inch on each side. Most of it was gray ash, but along one side a strip of unburned paper remained.