Killer On A Hot Tin Roof

by Livia J. Washburn

  That didn’t sound at all like the sort of man who would wind up with a doctorate in English and write scholarly books and articles about Southern authors.

  It got worse, though. The two witnesses, a pair of brothers who had worked for the garbage collection company at one time, had disappeared before they could ever testify before the grand jury, and several days later their bodies had been found at a landfill. They had been chopped into pieces, so identifying them was sort of like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, according to the lurid, breathless reporting in the newspaper. The cops found somebody who had seen Ian Keller in the building where the brothers lived, about the time of the murder. He’d been arrested and charged with killing them.

  Even I knew that was pretty flimsy evidence, strictly a circumstantial case. But men had been convicted on less. When Ian Keller’s fingerprints were found in the brothers’ apartment, the case got even stronger.

  But then Terrence Keller had confessed to the killings. He claimed that Ian hadn’t had anything to do with the murders or the corruption that had led to the RICO investigation. It was true that Ian had gone to the brothers’ building that night, but only because he was following his own brother in the hope of preventing Terrence from killing the two witnesses. According to Terrence’s story, Ian had been trying to convince him to get out of the mob for a long time.

  The cops had originally been inclined not to believe Terrence. They thought he was just trying to shield his younger brother. But Terrence had provided details that only the killer would have known (the newspaper article didn’t go into specifics, but I imagined they were pretty gruesome), and hadled the cops to the place he had hidden the blood-soaked clothes he’d been wearing on the night of the killings. That blood matched the blood types of the murdered men. Faced with that evidence, along with Terrence’s confession, the district attorney had dropped the charges against Ian and the cops had arrested Terrence. He was convicted and sent to prison.

  I quickly checked some follow-up stories and found that Ian Keller had dropped out of sight after that, and the speculation was that he had left town.

  That turned out to be true, and Will and I knew where he had gone. He had moved south, gone to college, and made a completely different life for himself than the one he had seemed destined to lead. He had reinvented himself, as the old saying goes. He hadn’t changed his name, which indicated that he wasn’t really trying to hide out or keep anybody from finding out who he was, but the chances of anybody connecting a doctoral student–and then a professor–in Georgia with a reputed gangland killer in New Jersey were pretty slim, same name or not.

  “Wow,” Will said when he finished reading over my shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Wow.”

  “I never would have dreamed … I mean, sure, Ian’s a big, tough-looking guy. But I thought maybe he had started out as one of those–what did they used to call them?–blue-collar intellectuals. You know, like a dockworker or a truck driver who reads all the time. I never expected him to turn out to be a gangster, even though he looked like one.”

  I pointed to the screen. “This says he was cleared of all charges. That was the only time he was ever arrested, and the case never went to trial. There’s no proof he was ever even in the mob.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he and his brother were both telling the truth.”

  “Even so, wouldn’t all this have turned up when the university ran a background check on him before they hired him?” I asked.

  “You’d think so. You’re wondering why they gave him a position if they knew all about this?”

  “Well … yeah.”

  “The charges were dropped,” Will said with a shrug. “In the eyes of the law, he’s an innocent man. They had no reason not to hire him.”

  “What about fear of lawsuits if it came out they had a guy teaching kids who’d been accused of chopping up two other guys?”

  “It’s not quite the same thing when you’re talking about college students. Sure, some of them have parents who are really protective of them, but they’re all adults, legally, anyway. And if they had refused to hire Ian when all his credentials were in order, he might have turned around and filed some sort of discrimination suit against them. I’m not saying he would have won, mind you–I don’t think he would have–but the administration wouldn’t have wanted the hassle of a lawsuit, anyway.” Will shook his head. “Here’s what it comes down to. Ian Keller is highly respected for his academic achievements and there’s never been a hint of scandal or trouble attached to his name while he’s been at the university, at least as far as I know. He’s well liked and one of the top people in the department.”

  “He may not be after word of this gets around,” I said.

  “All anybody knows is that the police came to talk to him. I’m sure they’ll be talking to other people.”

  I shook my head. “There were people close enough at the other tables around us to have heard Ramsey talking about the Newark cops and the FBI. Somebody will be curious, like we were, and dig up the truth. And then the whole group will know about it by the end of the day.”

  Will had started to frown as I talked. Now he sighed and said, “You’re right. Something like this won’t be kept quiet. Good Lord, what a terrible thing to happen to Ian.”

  “Yeah … assuming he didn’t chop those guys up into little pieces.”

  “His brother confessed. The charges were dropped.”

  “And it’s still possible he could be guilty. Terrence Keller could have known the details of the murders because Ian told him about them.”

  Will thought about it and nodded. “And he could have known where the bloody clothes were because Ian told him about that, too.”

  “It’s more likely that they were Terrence’s clothes, and they got bloody while he was helping his brother dispose of the bodies. That would make him an accessory after the fact, but not a killer. Why keep the clothes, anyway? Why not just burn them?”

  “So he’d have some physical evidence that he could show the cops if he had to confess to save his little brother from prison?”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” I said.

  “But the police must have thought of these same things,” Will objected.

  “Sure they did. I imagine they had plenty of doubts. But with Terrence’s confession and the bloody clothes, a jury would have enough reasonable doubt to acquit Ian if the case came to trial. They weren’t gonna win that, and they knew it. So they dropped those charges and went with a case they could win.”

  He frowned at me. “You know too much about this stuff.”

  “I get most of it from movies and TV, like everybody else,” I assured him.

  “So what you’re saying is that you think Ian murdered those men after all.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have any earthly idea. The story his brother told could be the gospel truth, for all I know. Criminals have done things a lot stupider than keeping bloodstained clothes.”

  “And even if he’s guilty, I suppose that part of his life is so far in the past, it’s almost like someone else committed those crimes.”

  “I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that.”

  “What I know is that I’ll never be able to look at Ian quite the same again,” Will said. “And neither will anyone else once this story gets around. Blast it, Delilah, this is going to ruin him, and it’s not fair when we don’t know for sure if he’s guilty.” His eyes widened as something else occurred to him. “But why did those detectives want to talk to him? No matter what happened in New Jersey twenty years ago, it can’t possibly have anything to do with Howard Burleson and Tennessee Williams and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!”

  “You sure wouldn’t think so,” I said.

  But deep down, I wasn’t certain. Ian Keller might have committed at least two murders in the past. If that was true, I didn’t think he would hesitate to get rid of an old man who got in the way of something he wanted.

&n
bsp; But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what that something might be.

  CHAPTER 16

  What with getting caught up in the story of Ian Keller’s background, Will had almost forgotten that he was supposed to be on one of the festival panels that morning. He recalled it in time, though, and asked me if I was going to attend.

  “What’s it about again?” I asked.

  “Williams’s use of setting as character.”

  That didn’t make much sense to me. You had your setting, and you had your characters, and they were two separate things, or at least so I’d always been taught in school. But I knew from experience that Will could make almost anything interesting, and I usually learned something from listening to him talk, too. So I said, “Sure, I’ll come with you. I ought to let those detectives know where I’m going, though, in case they need to talk to me again.”

  It was possible Ramsey and Nesbit would forbid me to leave the hotel, in which case Will would just have to go on by himself. I didn’t really expect that to happen. I had already told them everything I knew.

  Well, almost everything. I still hadn’t said anything to them about seeing Callie Madison in the garden right after I found Howard Burleson’s body.

  Will and I agreed to meet in the lobby in half an hour, then we would walk together to the museum where the festival’s panels were being held. The museum, which housed a collection of items relating to New Orleans and its arts and history, had a small auditorium that was perfect for the panels, Will told me.

  I went down early to see if I could find one or both of the detectives. Dale Gillette was behind the registration counter, talking to the clerks who were currently on duty. He must have spotted me as I headed in that direction, because he came out from behind the counter to meet me.

  “Ms. Dickinson,” he said. “How are you this morning? I hope you’ve recovered a little from the terrible experiences of last night.”

  “I’m all right,” I told him. I looked around the lobby. “I thought the place was supposed to be thronged with reporters.”

  Gillette gave me a thin smile. “They got word that there’s going to be a press conference at police headquarters to announce an arrest. I’m sure they’ll be back later.” He paused. “By the way, I took the liberty of having our operator screen the calls to your room. I have a list of messages for you, but they’re all from reporters wanting an interview or at least a quote. You can return them or not, as you choose.”

  I was irritated for a second by Gillette’s high-handed manner. He didn’t have any right to screen my calls. But then I realized that to his way of thinking, he was just trying to do what he could to protect the privacy of one of the hotel’s guests, so I supposed I couldn’t be too upset with him. That explained, too, why my phone hadn’t been ringing off the hook, which was something I’d wondered about.

  “All right, thanks,” I said. “I’ll get that list from you later. Right now I’m looking for Detective Ramsey and Detective Nesbit. Are they still here?”

  “Yes, they are. I’ll show you the room they’re using.”

  He led me to a small meeting room just off the lobby and knocked on the door. Ramsey, sounding annoyed, called from inside, “Yeah?”

  Gillette opened the door a few inches and said, “Ms. Dickinson would like to speak to you, Detectives.”

  Nesbit came over and opened the door the rest of the way. He smiled at me and said, “Come in, Ms. Dickinson. Actually, we wanted to talk to you, so this is good timing.” He nodded to Gillette and added, “Thanks.”

  “If there’s anything you need, just let me know,” Gillette said. He was eager to please because he was eager to get the cops out of the hotel.

  Nesbit closed the door behind me. The room was simply furnished, with a long wooden table surrounded by eight straight-backed chairs, a few paintings on the walls, and a smaller table that held a pitcher of ice water and some glasses. Nesbit nodded toward them and asked, “Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I came to ask you if it would be all right for me to leave the hotel.”

  “No,” Ramsey said flatly, but Nesbit asked, “Where did you want to go?”

  “Just a few blocks away, to the museum where the festival’s panels are being held.”

  Nesbit nodded. “I know the place. I think that would be all right, don’t you, Detective Ramsey?”

  Ramsey grunted and shrugged.

  “Before you go, though,” Nesbit went on, “what do you know about Dr. Ian Keller?”

  I thought for a second about how to respond, then decided that lying wouldn’t serve any purpose. “Before this morning, I didn’t know anything about him except that he’s from upnorth somewhere and is an English professor. But after that little scene in the ballroom, I looked him up on the Internet.”

  “So you know about his involvement with organized crime and the two murders in New Jersey?”

  “Alleged involvement,” I said. “The newspaper stories I read online sounded like nothing was ever proven against him.”

  Ramsey said, “He killed those two guys in Newark. Count on it. His brother just took the fall for him. But Terry Keller probably ordered those murders and who knows how many others, so I’m not gonna lose any sleep over him rotting in prison. I just wish his brother was in there with him.”

  “What’s all that got to do with what happened to Howard Burleson?” I asked.

  Nesbit crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me. “You tell us,” he suggested.

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” I replied with a shake of my head. “I don’t see any way in the world Burleson could be connected with what happened in New Jersey twenty years ago. He was living in Atlanta then. He didn’t seem to know Dr. Keller, and Keller didn’t know him.” I took a deep breath. “If you want my opinion, I think Keller just happened to be walking through the garden around the time of Burleson’s murder. He’s bound to not have been the only one.”

  “You think we questioned him only because of his ties to organized crime?” Nesbit asked.

  “No, I think you questioned him because he was around the scene of the crime about the same time the murder took place.” I waited a second, then added, “I think you came into the ballroom and embarrassed him because of what happened in the past.”

  “You got a mouth on you,” Ramsey snapped.

  “Must be the red hair,” I told him as my eyes narrowed angrily.

  Nesbit said, “All right, let’s not start that again. Have you thought of anything else since last night that might help us?”

  I shook my head. “No, I haven’t. But what more help do you need? You’ve already arrested Tamara Paige, haven’t you?”

  “Dr. Paige is still in custody.” It was Nesbit’s turn to shrug. “She’ll be arraigned shortly on a charge of first-degree murder. Luring Burleson down to the garden shows premeditation, and so does burning those manuscript pages to destroy evidence.”

  “So what was the deal with Dr. Keller?”

  I didn’t really expect either of them to answer me, but Ramsey grinned and said, “Fun.”

  That arrogance was too much for me. I blew up. “You’ve probably ruined the man’s life for no good reason! How in the world can you call that fun?”

  “He had it comin’,” Ramsey insisted.

  I just shook my head.

  “We don’t have to explain our actions to you, Ms. Dickinson,” Nesbit said tightly. “But given Dr. Keller’s record and his proximity to this crime, we would have been negligent in our duty if we didn’t question him.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Tell yourself whatever you need to hear.”

  “Go on to your panel,” Nesbit said. “Just don’t check out of the hotel or try to leave town.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving New Orleans as long as the tour’s still going on. I have a responsibility to my clients.”

  Ramsey said, “I guess that doesn’t extend to keeping them fro
m being murdered.”

  I got out of there before I took a swing at the obnoxious son of a gun. I had dealt with the cops more than I liked to think about in the past couple of years, but Ramsey was by far the biggest jackass among them.

  Will was waiting in the lobby with a slightly worried look on his face. When he saw me, he smiled and said, “I thought you’d changed your mind, or that something came up.”

  “I checked with Ramsey and Nesbit to be sure it’s all right for me to leave the hotel,” I explained. “They said it was. Have you been waitin’ long?”

  Will shook his head. “No, just a few minutes. We still have plenty of time.”

  We left the hotel and started walking toward the museum. It was a beautiful morning in New Orleans. The air was cool, the sky a deep blue with white clouds floating in it. The French Quarter had a pleasantly drowsy feel to it, not surprising since a lot of the restaurants, clubs, and bars in the area were open until well after midnight. The Quarter’s inhabitants were sleeping in this morning.

  The museum was housed in a beautiful old building. I saw Jake Madison standing in front of it. He might have been admiring the architecture or just the techniques that the builders had used. He took a professional interest in such things, Callie had said earlier.

  Jake glanced over at us as we walked up, then looked again and said, “Oh, hi, Ms. Dickinson. Dr. Burke.”

  “Hello, Mr. Madison,” I said. “What do you think of the building?”

  He grinned. “Callie told you I’m in construction, I’ll bet. The guys who put this sucker up knew what they were doin’. They didn’t have our modern techniques or equipment, but the place has been standing for well over a hundred years. Heck, some of these buildings are probably close to two hundred years old. You gotta admire the guys who built them.”