When She Dreams（Burning Cove #6）(36)

He went down the stairs to the front desk. There was no sign of the clerk. A quick glance at the guest register told him Nevins had been given room 357. He went behind the counter, took the key off the board, and headed back upstairs.

When he reached the third floor, he walked down the empty hallway, his evening jacket draped casually over one arm to conceal the flashlight he had brought with him. Just another guest returning from a late night on the town.

He stopped in front of the door marked 357 and checked the corridor to make sure there was no one in the vicinity.

Satisfied he was alone, he started to insert the key into the lock.

The knob turned easily in his hand. The door was unlocked.

He hesitated, running through the possibilities. There were a couple of logical reasons why the door would not be locked. Detective Brandon had stopped by earlier to take a look around Nevins’s room. Maybe whoever had opened the door for Brandon had neglected to lock up afterward. The death of a hotel guest and the presence of a police detective would be enough to make a clerk nervous.

Maybe a bellhop or a housekeeper had already been sent to pack up Nevins’s things and had forgotten to lock up afterward. But it seemed more likely that project would have been delayed until morning. There would have been no rush.

There was, of course, a third possibility—someone else had gone into the room before him, someone who, like him, had no right to be there.

He eased his way into the darkened space and closed the door as quietly as possible. He gave himself a moment to adjust to the deep gloom. The lamps were off and the blinds were closed, but a rectangle of hall light glowed through the transom window over the door.

The room felt empty, but he had learned he could not depend on that sensation. He had encountered killers who were so cold inside, they did not give off the warmth of normal human beings—or so it seemed.

No one lunged out of the shadows with a knife. He decided to take that as a good sign. He draped his coat on the doorknob, switched on the flashlight, and surveyed the scene. Whoever had searched the room had made a neat job of it. The dresser drawers and the closet doors were closed, but there were small signs that someone had gone through the room in a hurry. The bed was rumpled and the mattress was slightly askew.

There were two suitcases on the luggage racks. Both were empty. The clothes that Nevins had brought with her were still in the drawers and hanging in the closet. They looked expensive, fashionable, and very new.

The small jewelry box proved more interesting. It was still full of bracelets, earrings, and pins, none of which looked expensive. The pieces were scattered haphazardly around the interior, however. It looked as if someone had dumped out the contents, gone through the items, and then tossed everything back inside. A cat burglar would have taken the lot and sorted through the haul later. It looked as if someone had been searching for a specific piece of jewelry.

Sam went to the doorway of the bathroom and splashed the beam of the flashlight across the pink and jade-green tiles. The towels were neatly folded, and Nevins’s toiletry items were precisely arranged on the shelf above the sink. The searcher had not spent much time in here, probably because there were no obvious hiding places.

But the searcher had not had much experience looking for items that had been concealed by people who had limited options when it came to hiding places. Hotel rooms offered extremely limited options.

He found what he was looking for taped to the underside of the lid of the toilet tank.





Chapter 18




Maggie was not surprised to find herself walking through the endless corridors of Sweet Creek Manor. She had hoped to get some solid sleep, but evidently her intuition had other plans for the night.

She is looking for someone or something. She opens the first door. Phyllis Gaines stands in the center of the featureless room.

“I’m not looking for you,” Maggie says. “Why are you here?”

“That’s the wrong question,” Phyllis says.

“What is the right question?”

“Where is the real Aunt Cornelia?”

“On a ship in the South Pacific. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“Wherever there’s money, there’s someone who will do whatever it takes to get it,” Phyllis says.

“This is a waste of time,” Maggie says. She closes the door, walks down the hall, and enters the next room. She sees Arthur Guilfoyle.

“I’m not looking for you,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

“Come with me. I will teach you how to travel on the astral plane,” Arthur says.

“You’re a fraud. There is no such thing as astral projection.”

She closes the door and opens the next. Dolores Guilfoyle is inside the room.

“Stay away from my husband,” Dolores says.

“I don’t want him,” Maggie says. “I’m looking for someone else.”

She closes the door and moves on to the next one. Emerson Oxlade stands alone in the room.

“You need me to achieve your full potential for lucid dreaming,” Oxlade says. He reaches for her. There is a syringe in his hand.

“You are extremely annoying,” Maggie says.

She tries to walk out the door but she discovers she can’t move. She opens her mouth to scream but she can’t make a sound. Oxlade is coming closer. The glittering lust in his eyes is no longer annoying—it is terrifying. She is trapped in a room with a man who wants to possess her and control her dreams.