When She Dreams (Burning Cove #6)(34)

“What was the risk?”

“Giving you the information you wanted means you might conclude I’m unbalanced. You could drop my case. I don’t want to have to find another private detective, but quitting is the worst thing you could do to me.”

He put his glass down on the table with just enough cool precision to signal his anger. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t have the power to have me committed to an asylum,” she said. She swallowed the last of her brandy and set down the glass. “It’s not as if you’re my husband.”

Sam went very still. Understanding heated his eyes. “Your dreams are the reason you’re not married, aren’t they?”

She was shocked speechless for a few seconds. And then she found her voice. “You are a very astute detective, Mr. Sage.”

His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Thanks, but there was no Sherlock Holmes work involved in that deduction.”

“I disagree. I can count the number of people who have arrived at that conclusion on one hand, and I wouldn’t need all five fingers. No one in my family has figured it out. Neither have the various dream analysts and therapists I’ve seen over the years.”

“Haven’t they been curious about your aversion to marriage?”

“Sure. But when I refuse to give them a straight answer, they come to their own conclusions.”

“And you don’t bother to correct them,” he said.

“Nope.”

“Just how close did you come to getting married?”

“Too close.” She shuddered. “I still have nightmares about that, as well.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a long and rather harrowing tale that ends with me terminating the engagement in a somewhat abrupt fashion.”

Sam smiled a little. “You went for a dramatic touch.”

“I would just like to point out that I ended the engagement seventeen days before the ceremony. Contrary to the gossip, I did not abandon my fiancé at the altar.”

“Got it.”

“Also, the rumors about the fire in his office were greatly exaggerated.”

Sam looked interested. “There was a fire?”

“Forget it.”

“All right. I’ll put it aside for now. I would like an answer to my question, though.”

“What?”

“You never explained exactly why Lillian Dewhurst took off on that long voyage,” Sam said.

“Oh, right. I got sidetracked, didn’t I?” Maggie winced. “Sorry about that. Lillian had trouble with nightmares that caused her to walk in her sleep. I advised her to get rid of a certain object in her bedroom that was casting a bad shadow. She did as I suggested and was able to use her natural lucid dreaming talent to rewrite the scripts of her dreams. When the nightmares stopped, so did the sleepwalking.”

“She was afraid to get on board a ship because she might walk in her sleep?” Sam asked.

“She wasn’t just alarmed by the possibility of waking up in a public place wearing her nightgown,” Maggie said, “although that would have been bad enough. Lillian was terrified she would go overboard in her sleep and drown. I think something about the object that was giving her nightmares was linked to water.”

“You’re saying that once she was confident she wouldn’t walk overboard, she felt free to book the voyage?”

“Right,” Maggie said. “I told you that you probably wouldn’t believe me.”

“Huh.”

“Changing your mind?” She gave him a thin smile. “Worried I might be delusional after all?”

“No, just contemplating the power of suggestion.”

“You think I somehow hypnotized Lillian into believing she was cured?”

“Doesn’t matter. If it worked, it worked. Let’s get back to the case.” Sam leaned forward and folded his arms on the table. “Here’s what we’ve got. We don’t know if Beverly Nevins was the blackmailer or one of the victims, but we do know that she is dead under circumstances that are strikingly similar to the Virginia Jennaway death.”

Startled, Maggie frowned. “I’m not sure I agree with you.”

“Somehow that does not come as a surprise.”

She pretended she hadn’t heard him. “It’s true they are both dead and they both appear to have had a link to other people who are interested in dream analysis, but beyond that, their deaths are not all that similar. Jennaway drowned. The verdict on Nevins looks like natural causes or accidental overdose. She certainly did not drown.”

“Jennaway’s death was ruled accidental, but there were rumors of a possible overdose,” Sam pointed out.

Maggie thought about it. “True.”

“The details vary but the result is the same. Two women are dead. Both had links to groups that study dreams, and there were rumors of an overdose in each case.”

Maggie got the unpleasant icy-hot frisson that one gets when one narrowly avoids a close brush with disaster.

“There’s another constant in this case,” she said quietly. “The Traveler.”

Sam’s eyes tightened. “You’re talking about that old legend you mentioned when you hired me?”