Nightmares Can Be Murder (A Dream Club Mystery) (19 page)

“Yes, that’s a very popular dream symbol,” Ali agreed. “I’ve had those dreams myself, especially during stressful times in my life. I’m running barefoot in a field of flowers, and the colors are so vivid, really vibrant. It’s a very comforting dream.”

“Was Marie Antoinette speaking French in her dream, or were there subtitles?” Dorien asked wickedly.

“Of course there were no subtitles,” Sybil bristled. “This wasn’t a foreign film, it was a dream. I had complete access to her inner thoughts and emotions, and I saw everything through her eyes. There was no need for dialogue.”

“Well, that’s certainly convenient because I expect you’ve forgotten your high school French by now,” Dorien sniped. “Now, may I tell everyone about my dream?”

As always, Dorien was itching to hog the floor. Dorien described a pretty mundane dream about climbing a cliff and admiring a beautiful vista and a spectacular sunset. The reddish brown colors of the rocks and hills seemed to suggest the Southwest, and Dorien confided that she was planning to visit her sister in Albuquerque.

“This seems pretty straightforward,” Persia offered. “You didn’t feel any anxiety about being at the top of the cliff, did you, Dorien?”

“Not a bit. I was as happy as a clam.”

“Then I’d say it’s a wish fulfillment dream, wouldn’t you, Ali?” When Ali nodded her consent, Persia asked if anyone had a different interpretation, but no one had any new ideas.

Ali had taught me that dream content can simply reflect “residual material” from the day and not have any particular significance. Dorien admitted that she’d spent an hour at the computer before bedtime, checking out flights to New Mexico, so it wasn’t surprising that her mind created a scenario that placed her in a desert setting.

The brain needs time to process information so dreaming is a way of sorting new material and putting it in the context of a series of images. Sometimes the thread has a strong emotion attached to it and sometimes not. The meeting ended shortly afterward, and I was heading to the sink with a pile of dishes when the phone rang. I caught myself wishing it was Noah. I was surprised by how much I was looking forward to our next meeting with Sara.

“I’ll get it,” Ali said cheerfully. A moment later, her faced hardened and her voice grew chilly.

“Detective Sanderson,” she said in a flat voice, “what can I do for you?” She turned her back to me, pacing around the kitchen, listening for a full thirty seconds. “Okay, I’ll be there,” she said. Her tone was leaden, defeated.

“What did he want?” My pulse was pounding and I tried to read her expression when she turned to face me.

“Another interview,” she said, sounding hopeless. “Down at the station house . . . first thing tomorrow morning.”

“It will be all right,” I said, rushing to her side to give her a hug.

“Do you think so?” She shook her head, her eyes blank. “I’m not so sure, Taylor. Not this time.”

22

“What did Sanderson say exactly?” Noah picked at his lobster salad, and I could tell he wasn’t enjoying it. He’s strictly a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, but he’d gamely ordered the lobster salad because it was the house special at Andrea’s on Broughton Street. I used to tease him about expanding his gastronomic borders. I thought wistfully about all the good times we’d enjoyed together back in Atlanta. Those were carefree days, without the threat of a murder investigation looming over us.

“Very little,” I said crisply. “He asked for another meeting with Ali this morning, and naturally, she refused to let me go with her.” I glanced at my watch. Ali was probably being grilled by Sanderson right this minute, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. Ali had looked pale but calm when she left the house, and I hoped she’d managed to keep her composure.

“Ali can be stubborn at times,” Sara said with a smile. “She knows her own mind, that’s for sure. Do you suppose Sanderson has new information about the case?” The three of us had met for an early lunch to compare notes, and even though my stomach was roiling with worry over Ali, I felt comforted being in the company of good friends.

“I have no idea, but the thought crossed my mind.” I bit back a sigh and speared a chunk of sweet potato off my roasted veggie platter. “I wonder what he could have come up with?”

Noah shook his head, and Sara shot me a sympathetic look. “I think it’s time for a status report,” she said, pulling out a notebook. She pushed aside the remains of her margarita pizza and reached for her reading glasses. “Shall I go first?” Noah and I nodded and she said, “Do either of you know someone named Lucinda Macavy?”

“Of course. She’s a member of the Dream Club. Ali and I both know her very well.” I couldn’t imagine where Sara was going with this, and Noah had lifted his eyebrows at the name.

“The word on the street is that Chico might have been involved with her.”

“Involved? You’ve got to be kidding.” I immediately thought of Persia’s dream about Chico and Lucinda wrapped in each other’s arms, dancing around the studio to Latin music. “That’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Sara said archly. “That’s the first rule of reporting.” She smiled at Noah. “I bet it goes for detective work, as well.”

“That it does,” Noah said, pushing his salad away. He glanced around for the waitress, and I knew he was going to order dessert. Southern desserts are to die for, and Savannah has some mouthwatering classics.

“Well then, far-fetched,” I said, gulping down some sweet tea. Persia’s dream couldn’t be true, could it? A sudden thought hit me. “Wait a minute. You meant romantically involved, right?”

“Oh no,” Sara said firmly. “I meant financially.” She shrugged. “I suppose they could have had a little something going on in the bedroom department, but”—she allowed herself a little giggle—“she doesn’t really seem like the type to hook up, does she?”

I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. It was doubtful that Lucinda had ever heard the expression “hooking up” and she would be appalled to think it was being applied to her. Lucinda, with her white gloves and gardening awards, was every inch a Savannah lady.

“No, she doesn’t.” I remembered her profile photo on the dating site—she’d been dressed like a prim schoolmarm. Then I recalled Persia’s comment:
Still waters run deep.
“What was the financial connection between them?”

“One of my pals is an investigative reporter, and she said Chico had a history of scamming women out of their life savings. I should say ‘women of a certain age’ who were lonely and vulnerable. It’s the kind of thing that’s tough to prove, but Chico’s name came up in an FBI investigation on Ponzi schemes. There was never enough evidence to formally charge him, but it looked like he was cheating women out of their life savings.”

“I wouldn’t think Chico was clever enough to set up a Ponzi scheme.” I took a big gulp of sweet tea. The restaurant suddenly seemed stifling to me even though a Casablanca fan was whirring slowly above us.

“It’s not that hard to do,” Sara said. “You just have to pay off the early investors, the people at the top, and then you keep everything that comes in after that. If you buy in early, you come out okay, and if you’re at the bottom of the pyramid, you lose your shirt. Of course, you’ve got to find people gullible enough to agree to the idea.”

Pretty clever
, I thought,
and completely illegal
.

“Chico might have been smarter than you think,” Noah offered. “He was the first one to recognize that buying up the buildings on your block was a smart move, remember. He spotted it as a golden opportunity, not just a bunch of run-down buildings.”

“The guy could smell money a mile away,” Sara cut in.

“And he managed to swindle Kevin out of his share of the dance studio,” Noah continued. “Plus he seemed to have a pretty significant income stream on the side.”

“We still don’t know anything else about that angle, do we?” The more I learned about Chico, the more I disliked him.

“He has a history of robbing business partners and scamming investors. Chico might have pocketed large sums of money and stashed them in secret accounts. It would take a team of forensic accountants to sift through all his records and make sense out of them.”

“So maybe this is all about money?” I said thoughtfully. “If that’s true, why are the police looking at Ali as a suspect?” As soon as I asked the question, the answer lit up in my mind like a neon sign.

“Because she was over there shortly before he was killed.” Sara looked sympathetic.

And because they had a history
, I added silently. Sara didn’t know that part of the story, and I wasn’t about to get into it with her.

“Your turn,” Sara said to Noah.

Noah opened a manila envelope and pulled out a grainy black-and-white photograph.

“You didn’t get this from me,” he cautioned. “I’m going to show it to you, and then I have to take it back.”

“What is it?” I said eagerly. I was hoping against hope that it was evidence that would clear Ali or at least point the finger of suspicion at someone else.

“It’s a screen shot from a surveillance video of Chico’s dance studio,” he said, lowering his voice. “Tell me if you can identify the woman entering the studio.”

The image was poor quality, the lighting was terrible, and the resolution was far from optimal. But the figure on the screen was immediately recognizable. My heart stopped in my throat.

“That’s Dorien Myers,” I said softly. “She’s a member of the Dream Club.” I frowned, baffled, as my mind tried to make sense of the inexplicable. “She has no connection with Chico.”

Noah shrugged. “Apparently she does. Look at the time stamp on the screen shot.”

“Six o’clock,” I said, my voice wobbly with shock. “The night he died. There was no reason for her to be there that night.”
Or any other night
. First Lucinda and now Dorien? Chico was starting to resemble a giant spider, extending his web further and further, ensnaring more prey. And like Ali, Dorien hadn’t volunteered any information about visiting the studio. I wondered if Detective Sanderson would grill Dorien as he had my sister.

“And she’s carrying something,” Sara said, leaning across the table to see the photo. She looked at Noah. “What is that? It looks like a picnic basket. Weird.” She glanced at me. “Unless she’s bringing him dinner.” She flicked me a glance. “Does that seem likely to you?”

“It’s the last thing I would expect,” I said, shaking my head. I felt like one of those restaurant owners on a reality show, watching their employees on hidden camera. The employees usually behave in a way that was completely unexpected and the owners are predictably shocked.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I said quickly. “Dorien despises Chico. She showed absolutely no reaction to his death. She couldn’t have been emotionally involved with him.”

“Who said anything about her being emotionally involved?” Sara asked, her tone cynical.

“Oh,” I said quietly. “You mean—”

“I mean Chico was poisoned and this chick was bringing him dinner. Or delivering a gift basket with food in it. You do the math.”

“Dorien wouldn’t have any reason to kill Chico,” I said. I was still having trouble believing Dorien even knew him or had visited the studio. She knew who he was, of course, because Gina is a member of the Dream Club.

A dead silence descended on us. “You’re sure this is Dorien?” Noah pulled out a pad and scribbled down her name. “And she lives here in Savannah?”

I rattled off her address and phone number, and he grinned. “You’ve just saved the police a lot of work. She was in and out of the studio in five minutes. I didn’t bother bringing the second screen shot because it was even grainier than this one.”

“I still can’t believe it,” I said slowly. “There has to be some other explanation.” I licked my lips. I felt vaguely guilty that I had somehow betrayed Dorien by identifying her.

“Pictures don’t lie,” Noah said, stuffing it back in the envelope. “And don’t worry, your name won’t come into this. The cops can interview Dorien and see how she explains her presence at the studio. The timing fits in with the estimated time of death.” He must have seen the shocked expression on my face. “Look, Taylor, you may be right. Maybe there’s some perfectly innocent explanation. But you have to ask yourself, why didn’t she tell the police that she was there that night?”
Why indeed?

“Could she have been delivering the basket for someone else?” Sara asked. “Does she do deliveries for a local shop? Maybe it was a gift basket, filled with wine and cheese. Or maybe she works for a restaurant, delivering dinners.” She chewed on the end of her straw, squinting in thought.

I shook my head. “No, that’s not possible. I’d know if she did. We talk about everything in the Dream Club.” A stray thought pinged in my brain. Ali had said that it looked as though Chico was expecting someone to visit him that evening. Why did she say that? Maybe he’d lit some candles? Or had put out wine and cheese? I struggled to remember exactly what she’d told me, but my mind stalled and I drew a blank. Why wouldn’t Dorien admit to being there? What could she possibly be hiding?

I tried to recall exactly what the studio looked like when we’d hurried over there that day. All I could remember seeing was the crumpled body of Chico lying on the floor, and my mind recoiled at the image.

“Tell me more about Dorien,” Sara said, interrupting my morbid thoughts and drawing me back to the present. “Is she single or married? What does she do for a living?”

“She’s single. She has a little shop in the district and does tarot readings.”

“Hardly a lucrative enterprise,” Sara sniffed. “Chico doesn’t sound like the type who’d ask for a reading, does he? And that still doesn’t explain why she was carrying a basket.”

“Not at all,” I admitted. An idea wriggled in the corner of my mind. Had someone mentioned that Dorien wanted to expand her business? I struggled to remember the conversation and gave up. My thoughts were whirling like colors in a kaleidoscope, and I needed time to reflect quietly on everything I’d heard. Dorien as Chico’s killer? It seemed impossible. But the notion that my sister had anything to do with his death was equally impossible. Everywhere I turned, I met a solid brick wall of resistance. I remembered Dorien’s dream about a “woman and child” in Chico’s life. Had she invented that dream, to draw suspicion away from herself?

“What do you do when all your leads dry up?” I asked Noah. I tried to keep a note of defeat out of my voice, but my neck was throbbing and I felt like a boulder was settling on my shoulder blades.

“That’s easy, you look for new ones!” Sara said brightly. Like Ali, Sara has always been a “glass is half full” sort of person, and nothing can dim her sunny personality.

“Not a bad idea but there’s another possibility,” Noah said, picking up the dessert menu and giving it a quick scan. “You go back and look at your leads again very closely. Go over everything with a fine-tooth comb. See what you missed. Look at the witness statements very carefully. Go over every word in the interviews. Try to read between the lines. If you have video, look at the body language. And watch for pauses or hesitations. Sometimes what
isn’t
said is just as important as what
is
said. I learned that as a rookie agent at the FBI.”