Page 60 of When She Dreams

Chapter 24

What the hell is going on out there at the Institute?” Brandon said. He slid an apologetic glance at Maggie. “Sorry about the language, Miss Lodge.”

“It suits the circumstances,” Maggie said.

She did not take her eyes off the smoldering wreckage at the foot of the cliffs.

“The answer to your question,” Sam said to Brandon, “is we don’t know what’s happening. All I can tell you is that the Institute is a slick con selling a program that claims to be able to teach psychic dreaming techniques and that someone at the conference is blackmailing one or more of the attendees. But it gets complicated, because it’s entirely possible the blackmailer is dead.”

Brandon narrowed his eyes. “Beverly Nevins?”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “If so, the extortionist is no longer a threat, but we’re left with other problems. Someone went to a lot of trouble to murder the woman in that car at the bottom of the cliffs. Valerie Warren wasrunning. She said the Nevins death had frightened her—but there may have been other reasons.”

“Think she was the blackmailer?”

“That’s also a possibility,” Sam said. “She worked inside the Guilfoyle operation for quite a while. She knew some secrets. On top of everything else, we can confirm there are drugs involved.”

“After Nevins, I figured as much. Not good.”

“In addition to the con job the Guilfoyles are pulling, there’s a doctor named Emerson Oxlade in the mix. He’s got a hallucinogenic drug he thinks enhances the lucid dream experience. That may have been what Nevins injected.”

That got Maggie’s attention. “I don’t think so. Oxlade’s enhancer is administered orally. It’s odorless and tasteless.” She paused, thinking. “I suppose he may have come up with an injectable version, but why would he?”

Brandon groaned. “Stop trying to cheer me up.”

“Maybe it really was just an accident,” Maggie ventured.

Sam glanced at her. “What?”

“Valerie was in a rush to get out of town,” Maggie said. “She was very anxious. She had been here for less than two months and she probably hadn’t had a lot of experience driving Cliff Road, at least not at night.”

Both men watched her in silence. She crossed her arms and blew out a breath.

“All right,” she said. “It probably wasn’t an accident.”

The three of them were not alone at the top of the scenic overlook. There were a couple of police vehicles and a fire truck crowded into the small space at the side of the road. Several people were standing around but no one was doing much of anything because there was nothing to be done. The vehicle was still hot, and the location was too dangerous to risk a rescue team at night when it was obvious no one could have survived the crash.

“I don’t see a body,” Maggie said. “Maybe she got out.”

“No,” Brandon said. He spoke with the world-weary authority of a man who had seen enough bad car crashes to know what he was talking about. “The windshield was shattered. If the body isn’t in the car it’s because it was flung into the ocean. It will wash ashore in a day or two.”

Maggie nodded and fell silent again. The fire had burned out by the time she and Sam had returned from the task of locating a pay phone to report the tragedy. All they could do at this point was contemplate the disaster and try to make sense of it.

“Give us a little more time,” Sam said to Brandon. “I have that feeling you get when you’re closing in on the answers. I could use some help, though.”

Brandon slanted him a speculative glance. “Yeah?”

“There are some phone calls that have to be made. You know how it goes. It takes time to track down people and get them to talk. I don’t want to risk making the calls from the hotel. Guilfoyle’s people run the place. But I’d rather not waste a few hours shoving coins into a pay phone.”

“If you’ve got a list of names and some questions and your client is willing to pay for the long-distance calls, I can spare one of my men tomorrow,” Brandon said.

“I think it would be better to handle this quietly,” Sam said. “You know what police stations are like.”

Brandon snorted. “Rumor mills.”

“Know a local private investigator who can be trusted to handle this kind of thing?”

“I do, as a matter of fact,” Brandon said. “Kirk Investigations.”

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