When She Dreams (Burning Cove #6)(87)

“Nice?”

“As far as it goes. I was hoping for more.”

She touched his hand. “How much more?”

He gripped her fingers. “I love you, Maggie. I know it’s too early to say that. You need time. But I’m hoping—dreaming—that maybe you might be able to fall in love with me one of these days.”

Her eyes glowed. “You’re too late.”

“Too late?”

“I’m already there,” she said. “I started falling in love with you the day I hired you.”

“Maggie.”

He got to his feet and pulled her up off the lounge chair. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her there in the warm, golden light of the California sun. When she responded, he knew he was no longer caught in a dream. Maggie was real. Love was real.

After a while he set her gently away from him and willed her to understand what he was about to say.

“Just so you know, I asked Raina Kirk to make some more phone calls,” he said.

Maggie watched him, her eyes shadowed with curiosity and concern.

“Why?” she said.

He told her.





Chapter 50




Maggie was still floating on a tide of joy later that evening when she and Sam joined Raina Kirk and Luther Pell in Pell’s private booth at the Paradise Club. The day had been perfect, and the night was proving to be even better.

The table, located on the mezzanine, overlooked the main floor of the club. The glamorous scene was cloaked in intimate shadows. The mirror ball above the dance floor showered the couples in drops of jeweled light. The orchestra played a torch song.

Maggie was enjoying her pink lady cocktail and listening to Luther Pell discuss the possibility of doing some business with Sage Investigations when Raina delivered her bombshell.

“I made the phone calls you requested, Sam,” Raina said. “Your hunch was right. There is no record of Lillian Dewhurst boarding the ocean liner she was supposed to have sailed on or any other ship that sailed the week she left Adelina Beach. I haven’t been able to locate her, but I’m quite certain she isn’t in the South Pacific.”

Maggie stilled, horrified. “Dear heaven. Dolores Guilfoyle murdered her, too.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said.





Chapter 51




Lillian opened the door of the beach house, a sad, knowing smile edging her mouth. “I wondered when you two would show up. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to call you, Maggie. Come in.”

Maggie and Sam followed her into the living room. The windows overlooked a wide stretch of sand and the sea beyond. In the distance was the small town of Keeley Point.

“Please sit down,” Lillian said. “I’ll make tea.”

“I’ll help you,” Maggie said.

They prepared the tea tray in silence. Maggie knew Lillian was composing herself, deciding how she would tell her story. There was no hurry.

By the time they returned to the living room, Lillian seemed ready. She sat down and poured the tea.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“It was the Astral Travelers Society bracelet that I urged you to throw into the ocean,” Maggie said. “You told me it wasn’t yours. You said it was a memento of someone you cared about. There was so much dark energy attached to it that I knew something bad had happened to the person who had worn it.”

Lillian sighed. “The bracelet linked me to Keeley Point and Virginia’s death.”

“Sam was sure you were still in the country and probably not far away,” Maggie said. “He had a feeling you were the one who hired Phyllis Gaines to play Aunt Cornelia.”

“It wasn’t what anyone would call a great piece of detective work,” Sam said. “It boiled down to the fact that you were the only person who knew you had never sailed to the South Pacific and you were also the only one who had a motive for hiring an out-of-work actress to pose as Cornelia.”

“You figured out my motive?” Lillian asked, startled.

“Revenge,” Sam said.

“I went through your files and found the tax records relating to this beach house,” Maggie said. “It seemed likely that, if you were hiding out, you might come back to Keeley Point, the place where it all started.”

Sam sat down and looked at Lillian. “When I made the first phone call to the Keeley Point police, I was told the body of Virginia Jennaway had been found by a relative who was no longer in town. You’re the one who discovered her on the beach, aren’t you?”

“Virginia was my half sister,” Lillian said. “Same mother but different fathers, so yes, our last names were different. Virginia and I were both fascinated with dreams, and we both got involved in the Astral Travelers Society for a time.”

“That’s how you met the Guilfoyles,” Sam said.

“We knew them as Dolores Johnson and Arthur Ellis. They were selling Ellis as the Dream Master in those days. He promised to teach people how to use their dreams to access their psychic senses.”

“The same thing he was selling as the Guilfoyle Method,” Maggie said.

“I realized early on that he was a con,” Lillian continued. “But Virginia fell for him and his promise of psychic powers. He seduced her. Told her she was the woman of his dreams. She wasn’t the only one in the Society who found him irresistible.”