The Other Lady Vanishes (Burning Cove #2)(16)

The cool certainty in Adelaide’s voice sent a flash of knowing through him. He could have sworn that she was speaking from experience.

“That is very . . . insightful,” he said.

“For a waitress, do you mean?”

The edge was back in her voice. He had inadvertently offended her again.

“For anyone,” he said.

Onstage, Zolanda was giving a demonstration of mind reading, speaking as though in the throes of a deep trance.

“Miss Leggett, I sense that someone in the third row is concerned with financial matters. Something to do with an inheritance . . . Yes, it’s coming through quite clearly now. Someone died but he . . . or was it a woman? . . . left something important to a person who did not deserve it . . .”

A woman in the third row shot to her feet. “That’s me, Madam Zolanda. My uncle promised to leave his house to me but my sister got it.”

Thelma Leggett went to stand at the end of the third row. “Madam Zolanda, do you have any advice for this lady?”

“I see money coming to her very soon from an unexpected source. But wait. I’m getting another message. It’s quite murky. Now I understand. She must be cautious because there are those who will seek to take advantage of her improved financial situation.”

“That’s for sure,” the woman said. “My brother and sister will have their hands out. Thanks for the warning, Madam Zolanda.”

The audience member sat down quickly.

“Fourth row, near the center, Miss Leggett. And—wait—also the seventh row. I perceive some ladies and gentlemen who suffer from insomnia.”

There was an astonished gasp from several members of the audience. Several hands went up in the fourth and seventh rows.

“I can now perceive their auras,” Madam Zolanda continued. “There is a great deal of negative energy in each one. That is the cause of their insomnia.”

There was another round of applause.

Jake leaned toward Adelaide. He caught her light scent—some delicate perfume spiked with spice and flowers mingled with her indescribably feminine essence. For a beat or two he felt a little light-headed. He wished that he really was in Burning Cove to relax.

“It doesn’t take any psychic power to assume that in an audience of this size there will be several people who have trouble sleeping,” he said.

“True.” Adelaide’s mouth tilted up a bit at the corner. “At Refresh I get a lot of requests for blends to treat sleep problems.”

Onstage, Thelma fitted Zolanda with a blindfold and then turned to speak to the audience.

“Silence, please,” she instructed. “Madam Zolanda will now endeavor to provide a demonstration of astral projection. I must warn you that this is not always possible. It depends on the energy in the atmosphere. Noise from the audience can distort the astral wavelengths.”

A hush fell over the crowd. Anticipation gripped the theater. For the first time Jake was mildly impressed. Madam Zolanda was doing literally nothing onstage and yet she had managed to rivet everyone’s attention.

Slowly, deliberately, Madam Zolanda began to speak.

“I am floating above the town of Burning Cove. It is bathed in the light of the moon. I can see the Burning Cove Hotel and the Paradise Club. There is a small dog barking at me. The dog can sense my presence. I am being tugged toward a certain location. It is imperative that I go there. I must warn someone. Wait. I am being drawn to this very theater. I don’t understand.”

There was a collective gasp from the audience. Madam Zolanda continued, her voice rising with alarm.

“Now I am inside the theater looking down from the ceiling. Spirit Guide, tell me why you have summoned me to this place.”

By now almost everyone in the audience was looking up at the darkened ceiling. There was a breathless pause . . .

. . . Shattered by a nerve-jangling scream.

Zolanda.

As one the audience turned back to watch, shocked, as Zolanda rose to her feet and tore off the blindfold. There was an expression of raw horror on her face. Her eyes were wild with panic as though she found herself in a hellish nightmare.

“I see blood. Blood and death. Mark my words, someone in this theater will be dead by morning.”

The audience was absolutely motionless now. All eyes were on the stage.

Zolanda gave a high, shrill cry and collapsed. Her silk scarves cascaded around her in crimson waves.





Chapter 10


“You’ll have to admit it made for a dramatic finish to the act,” Adelaide said. She slipped into the buttery-soft leather seats of Jake’s dark green speedster. “But why on earth would Zolanda make such a ghastly prediction when it is unlikely to come true?”

“Good question,” Jake said.

There was a solid, satisfying ker-chunk as he closed the passenger side door.

Adelaide watched him walk around the front of the long hood. He looked very good in an elegantly tailored evening jacket and trousers and a perfectly knotted tie. If human auras really did exist, she was sure that his would radiate strength of will and a deeply passionate nature held in check by ironclad self-control.

She could tell that he had been affected by Zolanda’s final act but his interest was of a detached, clinical nature. He was curious, she realized, but, unlike her, he was not disturbed.