“Who murdered her to keep her quiet.”
“We also need to talk to the woman who hired Phyllis Gaines to play the part of Cornelia,” Sam said. “Miss Finley in marketing.”
Maggie sighed. “There are so many questions here.”
Sam looked at her, his brows slightly elevated. “Including one about the real Cornelia.”
“What do you mean?”
“The more I think about it, the more I find Lillian Dewhurst’s sudden decision to take a long voyage to the South Pacific one month ahead of the dream conference an interesting coincidence.”
She smiled. “It’s not really, not when you know the whole story behind her decision to board that ocean liner.”
Sam drank some brandy and lowered the glass. “Explain.”
“All right, but you probably won’t believe me. No, that’s not true. I think you’ll believe that I think I’m telling you the truth, but you’ll probably conclude that Lillian and I are gullible or mildly delusional.”
Amusement glinted in Sam’s eyes. “So long as it’s only mildly delusional.”
“Right.” She sipped some brandy and set the glass down with great care. “I told you that Lillian and I share an interest in dream analysis, and lucid dreaming in particular.”
“Dewhurst is a lucid dreamer?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, she is prone to nightmares. I’ve had considerable experience with bad dreams.”
Sam had been about to swallow more brandy. He paused. “Are you saying you suffer from nightmares?”
She went quiet, taking a moment to consider just how much to tell him.
“I need information,” Sam said. He was not demanding a response; he was asking quietly, sincerely. “I’m trying to fit pieces of a puzzle together. I could use some help. You’re the one who keeps telling me we’re working this case together.”
She studied him for a moment. This was probably one of those occasions when she ought to keep her mouth shut or, alternatively, sidestep a straightforward response. There were ways to finesse questions such as the one he had asked. She was very experienced at evasive answers. Everyone occasionally has nightmares. Lots of people have particularly intense dreams, which can be unnerving. Haven’t you ever had a disturbing dream, one that wakes you up? A dream you can’t forget?
She rarely used the most truthful response, not with those who did not take dreaming seriously. Have you ever had dreams that bring you awake in a full-blown panic? The kind in which you try to scream and can’t? Worse yet, the kind in which you do come awake screaming? Nightmares that are so powerful and so real they make you think you’re going to be trapped forever in a dreamstate? Dreams that are guaranteed to doom an intimate relationship? Dreams that make you fear sleep? Dreams that could land you in an asylum?
No, she kept the honest answers for people who understood extreme dreaming. But this was Sam. He might not take dream analysis seriously, but she was sure he was very serious about his work. She had hired him for his expertise. The least she could do was give him the information he seemed to think he needed.
He might conclude she was na?ve or overly imaginative or even inclined toward hysteria, but she sensed he would see the case through to the end. Afterward they would go their separate ways. She was safe because he wasn’t in a position to have her committed to a hellish place like Sweet Creek Manor.
“Ever since my late teens I’ve been prone to dreams that seem so real they can be terrifying,” she said. “Sometimes I woke up screaming or in the midst of an anxiety attack. Sometimes I was so exhausted from my dreams that I would drift off at my desk in school, go into another bad dream, and come awake in class in the middle of a nightmare.”
“Awkward,” Sam said. He sounded sympathetic but not shocked.
“Very awkward. My teachers and the other students were alarmed, to say the least. Actually, they were frightened. My parents took me to a series of doctors and dream therapists. After some of them recommended a stay in a sanitarium so that I could be treated for shattered nerves, my parents decided to give it a try. I spent two months in a private clinic. Sweet Creek Manor.”
Sam watched her intently. “That must have been tough.”
“Let’s just say I still have nightmares about my time there.” She swallowed some brandy, lowered the glass, and kept going, determined to finish what she had started. “I did learn some survival skills, however.”
“Such as?”
“It became clear at Sweet Creek that I would have to learn how to control my dreams if I wanted to get out and stay out. If I failed, there was a very real possibility I would spend the rest of my days in an asylum.” She paused. “I make some people quite nervous, you see.”
“Is that right?”
She leaned forward. “Does it make you anxious to know you’ve got a client who, according to certain experts, ought to be locked up in a psychiatric hospital?”
“Beats divorce work.”
She blinked and then, like the morning coastal fog, much of her inner tension dissolved. Or maybe the brandy was taking hold.
“I told you that you should not do divorce work,” she said.
“I’ve made a note. So, you learned to control your dreams?”
“For the most part. But sometimes I still wake up thinking I’m going to get trapped in that other world.”
“Other world?”
“That’s what dreaming is like for me. When I sleep, I enter another dimension or world.” She sighed. “I should have known better than to try to explain.”
Sam’s brows rose. “Why did you?”
“Call it a calculated risk. I agree you need all the information you can get in order to make progress on my case.”
“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?”