Page 9 of The Bride Wore White

She went down the steps and walked across the campus. Adelina Beach College was a new institution that aimed to attract students from the small towns and beachfront communities near Los Angeles. Eager to make its mark in the academic world, it had boldly invested in the Department of Parapsychology. The goal was to establish a reputation for cutting-edge research that would allow the college to compete with the prestigious work of Rhine and McDougall at Duke and Harry Price at the London National Laboratory of Psychical Research.

The day she had landed the position of research librarian she had been thrilled. Her long-term dream was to open a bookshop focused on paranormal literature, but she wanted to have a little more cash put aside before she took the risk of going into business on her own. Working in the library at Adelina Beach College hadseemed like the ideal position. She would gain experience in the field and establish a professional reputation that would enhance the appeal of the bookshop. At the same time she would earn a salary that would allow her to put a little more money aside for her dream.

True, she could earn more if she went back to her old line of work, but the very thought of having to do dream readings again was depressing. It would mean taking on clients who might give her nightmares and anxiety attacks. Yes, the business had paid the rent and put food on the table for her grandmother and herself during the hard times. It had covered the doctors’ fees and medicine that the elderly woman had needed during those last few horrible months.

Yes, there was a lot to be said for the profits to be made in dream reading, and if it became absolutely necessary, she would do what she had to do. But going back to her old life was a last resort. There were risks. The mess in which she found herself was directly attributable to her career as a psychic.

She walked home to her aging beachfront apartment house. She had resisted the temptation to buy a car, preferring to save the money. She stopped at a corner market to pick up some tea, a loaf of bread, and a carton of eggs.

She was sitting at the small dining room table eating an egg salad sandwich, drinking a cup of tea, and trying to come up with a plan when she saw theAdelina Beach Courierdelivery truck cruise down the street in front of the apartment house. It stopped at the newsstand at the end of the block.

Electricity snapped across the back of her neck, rattling her senses. It was too early for the afternoon edition of the local paper. That meant a special edition was being delivered.

She leaped to her feet, grabbed her handbag, and hurried out the door. She went down the two flights of stairs to the street and walked quickly to the newsstand.

She could read the headline from several yards away:

Dover Industries Heir Murdered by Killer Bride

She chucked three cents into the machine, grabbed a copy of the paper, and rushed back to her apartment to read the full story.

The body of Gilbert Dover, eldest son of Mr.and Mrs.Copeland Dover of San Francisco, was found savagely murdered in the bridal suite of a Los Angeles hotel this morning. Police report that Mr.Dover, attired in a tuxedo, had been stabbed multiple times. A discarded bridal gown drenched in what appeared to be the victim’s blood was discovered on the floor of the bathroom. The knife used to kill Mr.Dover was left on the bed.

There was no sign of the bride, who somehow escaped unseen. Indications are she may have exited the hotel by way of the fire escape.

The hotel manager stated that the bridal suite had been booked in the name of a different guest, who never checked in. None of the staff recalls seeing Mr.Dover or the missing bride. The detective in charge of the case suspects that the couple used the service stairs to sneak into the hotel and let themselves into the bridal suite.

“We think the fake bride lured Mr.Dover, who is said to possess unusual tastes in such matters, into what he believed to be a romantic liaison,” Detective Andrews said. “The woman then proceeded to stab him to death. It is obvious we are now searching for a ruthless murderess who may well be insane. If you have any knowledge of this madwoman, please contact the police immediately.”

Sources say that Mr.Dover cut a well-known figure on the San Francisco social scene and was said to be an eccentric when it came to his notions of entertainment...

Prudence lowered the paper and sat very still for a long time. She had known this was coming. She had thought she was prepared for the inevitable. But the shock of seeing it in print left her on the razor-thin edge of panic. The police were looking for her—they just didn’t know it yet.

There was no way to estimate how much time she had, and asking her friend Maggie and Maggie’s very new husband, Sam Sage, for help was out of the question. The couple was on a leisurely honeymoon road trip. They had not left an itinerary, so there was no way to contact them at a hotel or an auto court. Besides, when you got right down to it, there wasn’t anything Maggie or Sam could do. She needed assistance from someone who was capable of dealing with the weird and powerful Dover family.

It was time to call an expert. She reached for the phone.

“Long distance, please,” she said when the Adelina Beach operator responded.

“One moment, please. I’ll connect you,” the woman said.

There was another short wait until another woman came on the line.

“Long distance,” she said.

“I wish to place a call to Mr.Luther Pell in Burning Cove, California,” Prudence said. “I have the number.”

Chapter 6

Jack Wingate heard the music of the invisible chimes and knew that Prudence Ryland was going to be a problem—not because she was almost certainly a fraud and quite possibly a murderess but because she was showing every indication of being unpredictable.

He was very, very good at fitting people into neatly defined categories that, in most cases, made predicting their behavior a relatively straightforward business. But as he watched Prudence deal with Luther Pell, it became clear that the only predictable thing about the woman was that she was—yes—unpredictable.

According to Luther, she had made the appointment yesterday afternoon from her home in Adelina Beach. She had arrived on the noon train from L.A. today and taken a cab straight to Pell’s office. She had not bothered to check into a hotel. Her suitcase was on the floor beside her chair.

The three of them were gathered in Pell’s office. The expensively appointed room was located on the floor above the Paradise,the hottest nightclub in town. Luther was seated behind his large polished wooden desk. Sleek, well-dressed in a hand-tailored jacket and a silk tie, his dark hair gleaming with a judicious amount of oil, his eyes unreadable, he looked like what he was: a dangerous man who had mob connections.

Very few people were aware that Pell had other connections as well, including the private phone number of the director of a clandestine government intelligence agency.

---