“That explains why I couldn’t sort out the sources of the shadows on the coatrack,” Maggie said, looking satisfied. “You both handled it during the struggle.”
He let that go. “Elizabeth went to Reno. I moved out of the house. Six weeks later we were divorced. I picked up my last paycheck and moved to Adelina Beach. Took the wardrobe and the coatrack with me. That’s it, the whole story, and if it winds up in a confession magazine or in that novel you’re writing—”
“I told you, I always change the names to protect the innocent.”
“Somehow that does not reassure me.”
She smiled. “But it doesn’t scare the daylights out of you.”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
“I don’t frighten you, do I?”
“I seem to recall telling you that you were hard on the nerves.”
“But you’ve got nerves of steel.”
“Maybe not steel.”
Maggie watched him, her eyes unreadable behind the sunglasses. “For the record, you don’t scare me, either.”
He put his glass down on the table, sat up on the edge of the lounge chair, reached out, and used both hands to remove her sunglasses. There was no laughter in her eyes. She was intent. Serious. Determined.
“What is that supposed to mean?” he said.
“It means I trust you.”
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s very nice.”
“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.”
“Eleanor Nevins did, too,” Maggie said.
“I was in L.A. the night Virginia died,” Lillian continued. “I was to join her here at the beach house the next day. I arrived early and found her body.”
“You suspected Arthur Ellis had murdered her, but you couldn’t prove it,” Maggie said.
“Of course I blamed him,” Lillian said. “I despised that man. But even then I wasn’t sure he was the one who had carried out the murder. He was certainly capable of drugging her. He used Oxlade’s enhancer on us while pretending to teach us how to open our psychic pathways. I hated the stuff. That’s why I dropped out of the Society. But if he was the one who had killed Virginia, it seemed more likely he would have strangled her or pushed her off a cliff.”
“Because he’s the impulsive type,” Sam said.
“Yes,” Lillian said. “The drowning struck me as more . . . complicated, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Sam said.
“You knew you could never prove Virginia had been murdered,” Maggie said. “When did you realize the Guilfoyles were the same people who had set up the Dream Master operation in Keeley Point?”
“When the photo of them appeared in the Adelina Beach Courier I recognized them as the same con artists I had known as Dolores Johnson and Arthur Ellis,” Lillian said. “It was obvious they were launching an even bigger con with the Guilfoyle Method. And then they announced that Oxlade would be giving a guest lecture during the opening conference at the Institute.”