Page 113 of When She Dreams

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 theAdelina Beach CourierI 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.”

“You realized the three of them were working together again,” Sam said. “And for a few days they would be in one place in Burning Cove.”

“All I could think of was that I finally had the opportunity to punish all three of them for what they had done to Virginia. I pretended tobook the ocean voyage so that Maggie wouldn’t find out what I was going to do.” Lillian looked at Maggie. “I didn’t want you involved in any way. You made it easy for me because you had already decided not to attend the conference.”

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