Arousing Suspicions

by Marianne Stillings

  Tabitha’s heart tripped inside her chest. “She was wearing a red dress with white dots?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Can’t cops ever simply say yes?”

  “Negative. Why did Griffin say he wanted his dreams interpreted, anyway?”

  Tabitha’s fingertips covered her mouth as she remembered the day Jack Griffin had told her about this particular dream. At the time, his words hadn’t had much impact. Dreams were symbolic. To dream of killing someone didn’t mean you really wanted to kill that person, or any person. It usually meant the dreamer wanted to do away with certain waking behaviors or bad memories.

  “Dreams have been studied by all cultures the world over for thousands of years,” she explained. “In the Bible alone, there are over a hundred references to dreams and dream interpretation. The Egyptians had special priests to help decipher dreams and their meaning. People are always trying to figure out what their weird dreams mean. Don’t you?”

  He didn’t look at her. “At the moment, the only dreams I’m interested in knowing about belong to Jack Griffin.”

  She licked her dry lips. “Well, he said that he’d started having violent dreams, sort of out of the blue, for no reason at all. He felt he was being sent some kind of message but didn’t understand what it was.” Leveling her gaze on the detective, she said, “People come to me because they need to understand. Dreams can be confusing, and if you misinterpret them, you can panic or think something’s wrong with you, when it’s simply your psyche trying to work things out. It’s why I do this, to…help…”

  She let her words trail off without further explanation.

  Darling seemed thoughtful for a moment, then said, “What did you tell him?”

  “I held his hand while he related the dream,” she whispered. “I saw it clearly. He described it, and I saw it unfold. Even so, I didn’t think it was a prophetic dream. It seemed more like a kind of release dream, where he was letting go of some long-held belief or anger or sorrow. I told him to keep a dream log next to his bed.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you wake up in the middle of the night after a dream, or at the very least first thing in the morning, you write down as much of your dreams as you can remember. Details are important. Colors, numbers, smells, sounds. Those are especially telling. Mr. Griffin agreed to keep a diary, and the next time he visited, he brought it with him.”

  Darling seemed to perk up at this news. “Did you read it? Did he leave it here? Did you make a copy?”

  She smiled and Darling’s eyes flicked for a moment to her mouth.

  “He read parts of it to me,” she said. “The parts that pertained to the dreams he wanted to discuss, but when he left he took it with him. I never actually got my hands on it.”

  The detective stood and walked to the far window. Light from the early morning sun grazed his hair and, though it was short, it looked soft to the touch. She imagined what it would be like to have her arms around his neck, her fingers entwined in his hair, her mouth pressed to his…

  Unaware of the direction her thoughts had taken, Darling said, “What kind of man is this Jack Griffin? Describe him.”

  She let her attention linger on the detective’s body for a moment longer. She was a woman, after all, and he was a man, an enormously attractive one. Her gaze drifted across his broad shoulders, lean hips, long legs. Under those civilian clothes, she’d bet anything his body was perfect, well muscled and strong.

  She didn’t fool herself for a moment. She knew part of her attraction was based on the fact she hadn’t had a steady boyfriend since she’d split with Cal, and the presence of an interesting man sent her desires into a dither.

  “I’d guess he’s in his mid-thirties,” she said, forcing her attention to the matter at hand. “Taller than I, shorter than you. Brown hair, blue eyes. Very attractive. Oh, and I think he’s rich.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  She shrugged. “He dresses casually, but in expensive stuff. Wore a Rolex, and not a knockoff, either. Parking’s tough to get around here, so I’m not sure I saw his car. Once, though, after our session, a Jag zoomed past and I got the impression it was him.”

  “What color? What year?”

  “Black,” she said. “What year?” She snorted. “Do I look like a high-end import auto mechanic?”

  Rubbing his jaw, Darling seemed to turn inward for a moment, then looked over at her again.

  “Was that the only dream where he killed someone?”

  “There were one or two others, but I didn’t see anything in the newspaper about them.”

  Darling walked toward her and stood next to her chair. She could feel the heat from his body and worried it would be enough to create the images in her head of the two of them together again. Bracing her mind against it, she scooted as far away from him as she could.

  “Does he have a regular appointment, or does he just call you?”

  She shook her head. “I never know when he’s going to call, but he seems to pop up every couple of weeks.”

  “How long since the last—”

  “Ten days. If he holds true to form, he should call again this week.” Sliding him a wary look, she said, “Why do you want to know, since you don’t believe in what I do?”

  He glanced around the room, apparently considering her question. Lifting one arm, he let it drop to his side in a gesture of obvious frustration.

  “I don’t know what I believe. I know a woman is dead. I know certain details of her murder match things you claim you picked up psychically from a man who told you about a dream he had.” He looked at her. “Just think of how that sounds to a logical person, Ms. March. If this guy did commit a murder and felt the need to tell somebody about it, pretending it happened in a dream would let him get it off his conscience without being accused.”

  “But I saw it. He did dream it just the way—”

  “Maybe he used you, Ms. March. Maybe you’re sweet and kind and gullible, and he knew it, and he used you.”

  Pushing herself to her feet, Tabitha took two giant steps backward, separating herself from the detective’s powerful presence. He was too…magnetic or something. He disrupted her thoughts, invaded her senses. God forbid he should touch her again.

  “I know what I saw,” she insisted. “It was a dream and not reality. Dreams and real events show up differently, I see them differently inside my head.”

  He raised his voice. “Okay. Okay, then. Let’s just assume for a moment that it was only a dream. That it was not an actual recounting of Jack Griffin murdering a woman in a polka-dot dress. Try this.” He took a deep breath. “The population of San Francisco is roughly eight hundred thousand. How many dreams is that per night per person for the last ninety days?”

  “I don’t like questions that require the use of a calculator.”

  He closed his eyes. “Um, yeah. At three dreams a night, that’s over two million dreams. Times ninety days is, uh, roughly two hundred million dreams.”

  Tabitha pressed her lips together. “Okay, Inspector Math Whiz, tell me this. If a train leaves San Francisco traveling east at eighty miles per hour, and a train leaves New York—”

  “What I’m saying is, in two hundred million dreams, only one involved offing a woman in a red dress?”

  “I can’t begin to imagine what other people—”

  “Okay, so maybe in those two hundred million dreams, one or two other men envisioned similar scenarios, but only this Griffin guy goes to a psychic voodoo woo-woo dream interpreter.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Hell, I don’t know!” he snapped. “You’ve got me all turned around. I don’t know if you really saw a dream and it’s just a coincidence that a homicide matches the details, or if this guy related a real murder to you. I don’t believe in dream interpretation, so if Jack Griffin came to you and in one way or another, related details of a homicide, I have to assume he is somehow involved in this murder.”

/>   “Your argument is practical,” she accused. “But this situation is emotional. Don’t make me doubt myself, Detective, or Inspector, or Officer, or whatever in the hell you want to be called. I know my business. I know what I saw, what I experienced. Just because you’re a closed-minded nincompoop doesn’t mean I’m wrong. The truth is, you don’t want to believe I can see other people’s dreams. Jack Griffin didn’t say a thing about a red polka-dot dress—I saw it when I touched him!”

  The air crackled between them and Tabitha fought to control her breathing. Damn, she hadn’t been this mad since she’d walked in on Cal that wretched day.

  Darling nodded a couple of times. “Okay, Ms. March. But red dresses are common. Could be a coincidence. Give me something else. Another detail, something that wasn’t in the newspaper and something only the killer would know.”

  In frustration, she turned away from him and pinched her eyes closed. Calming her frayed nerves, she forced herself to remember the session with Griffin—his words, and the images they’d conjured inside her head.

  I’d noticed her earlier, but she hadn’t so much as looked my way. Everyone had gone. I crept up behind her. She was admiring the roses outside the conservatory. It was just past dark and she’d wandered off the lighted path to bend and smell a blossom. I did it then, grabbing her from behind, my arm around her neck, choking her. She fought, but I was stronger. It hadn’t taken much after that to squeeze the life out of her.

  When I was sure she was dead, I let her fall to the ground. She looked just like a doll some careless child had tossed aside. Very sad. Then I shoved her under the bush until only her feet were visible. I…I couldn’t resist. I crouched and…

  “Her shoe,” Tabitha mumbled. “He…he took her shoe. A memento. A trophy. Killers do that, don’t they?”

  She turned, seeking Darling’s eyes, wanting the acknowledgment, the recognition that she really had seen, really did know. He was staring at her, all right, but it wasn’t with the look of appreciation and apology she deserved.

  “It occurs to me,” he said slowly, “there is one other distinct possibility here.”

  She shifted her weight to her left leg and assessed his words, while some emotion she couldn’t define oozed into her stomach.

  “And what’s that, Inspector?”

  He locked eyes with her. “Let me put it this way. Do you want to confess now, or do we need to go downtown?”

  Chapter 4

  To dream of dying your hair means you will narrowly escape imprisonment.

  FOLKLORE

  Nate watched Tabitha March’s jaw drop. She blinked up at him, fear and confusion plain to see in the depths of her eyes.

  Knowing he was a big guy and his size could intimidate, he took a step closer, invading her personal space…and instantly regretted it.

  He caught the scent of her perfume. Sweet, spicy, warmed by her skin. It reminded him of things he absolutely should not be thinking about.

  “So,” he said. “You want to confess or do we stand here all day?”

  He’d expected her to back up, or, best-case scenario, blurt out something incriminating. Instead, she put her hands on her hips and scowled.

  “You’re out of your mind,” she snapped. “First of all, what possible motive would I have for killing a woman I didn’t even know? Second, I probably don’t have the physical strength to strangle so much as a geriatric earthworm, let alone a grown woman. Third, if I really were the killer, why would I draw attention to myself by going to the police? Fourth—”

  “Is this a long list?” he drawled. “Because if it is, I’d like to pull up a chair.”

  Her eyes flared like blue fire. “I was only going to add that I have an alibi for the night of the murder.”

  “What night was that, Ms. March?”

  She shifted her stance. “The eighth. I was babysitting my best friend’s two little—”

  “Iris Reynaud was murdered on the ninth.”

  There went that jaw again. And those eyes. Blink, blink, blink. Like a baby bird who’d just fallen out of the nest and landed on her noggin.

  “That was her name? The woman in the polka-dot dress?”

  “Yes. Did you know her?”

  She slowly shook her head. “No. You say she was killed on the ninth? But the paper said—”

  “The coroner set time of death between seven and ten o’clock on the night of the ninth. Were you babysitting that night, too?”

  “Oh. Uh, no.” She slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans and lifted her shoulder in a small shrug. “That was Sunday. I had my hair foiled at five, got home at about six-thirty.”

  He let his gaze wander over her tumble of hair. It was that burnished red-gold color with streaks of blond, like ribbons of sunshine, running through it.

  “Foiled?”

  When she smirked at him, he realized he’d just made an I’m-obviously-a-buffoon-when-it-comes-to-women remark.

  “They use aluminum foil,” she said with over-stressed patience, “to keep the strands separated from the rest of the hair while they add highlights.”

  Nate checked out the strands in question. He wiggled his index finger. “That’s not natural?”

  “No, Inspector,” she said, as though he were an idiot. “It’s fake. Dyed. Chemicals have been added. My hair is one big lie.”

  “Hmm,” he said, appreciating the deceit. “Looks natural.”

  “It’s supposed to. That’s why it’s so expensive. Is there some point to this? Does the fact I highlight my hair indicate I have a penchant for murder?”

  “No. But I would never have guessed.” He looked into her eyes. “What did you do after you got your hair boiled?”

  “Foiled. I came home, ate dinner, watched TV, went to bed.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Why that made him feel relieved, he’d rather not think about at the moment.

  “You’re divorced.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any kids?”

  She lowered her lashes, and he knew he’d struck a nerve. He hadn’t meant to, but he could see by her response she had issues attached to that simple question.

  “No,” she said quietly. “No kids.”

  He shifted his stance. “You have boarders who live here, right?”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “Any of them see you that night?”

  “No. We live separate lives.”

  “Still, maybe they heard you coming in, running the water, banging around in the kitchen.”

  “I do not bang in the kitchen,” she said flatly.

  He wasn’t about to ask her where she did bang, so he said, “Names of your boarders?”

  Throwing her hands up in a gesture of surrender, she said, “The Ichabod sisters, Eden and Flora, and my mother, Victoria Jones.” She walked over to the chair she’d sat in earlier and dropped into it. “You can’t possibly think I had anything to do with this poor Iris Reynold’s murder. You’re just yanking my chain.”

  “Iris Reynaud,” he corrected. “Doesn’t matter whether I do or not. Only the evidence counts.”

  She lifted her hands in the air. “I hope Jack Griffin didn’t commit that murder. But it doesn’t change what I felt and what I saw.”

  Nate went to the table and pulled out one of the chairs, gesturing to it. “Okay, Ms. March. I say we just see what you saw, or say you saw.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet you can’t say that again.”

  “Sit. I’m going to tell you a dream I had last night, and I want you to tell me what you see.”

  Standing, she balled her fists at her sides. “You’re going to test me? Again?”

  “Yes,” he drawled, “but no letter grades will be given. It’s pass-fail, Ms. March. Unless you want to confess, of course. What’s it going to be? We do the séance here or at the station?”

  “Séance?” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “I interpret dreams, not communicate with the dead!
”

  “Well, whatever you call it, you’re going to do it right here, right now—unless, of course, you would prefer we do this downtown?”

  Downtown. Tabitha’s stomach tightened and she felt queasy. A moment later when the nausea began to pass, the terror set in.

  “No downtown,” she whispered. What if they locked her up? How would she survive it? She’d be in a small, dank, crowded space—trapped. She would suffocate. He didn’t understand, and he wouldn’t, even if she told him.

  In silence, she moved to the table where the detective was already waiting.

  “Are you going to lie to me again?” she mumbled, as she slid into the chair across the table from him.

  “You tell me.” He turned his hand over and, without smiling, wiggled his fingers.

  Tabitha gazed down at his hand, then took in a deep breath through her nose. Letting it out slowly through her mouth, she employed the relaxation techniques she always used before a session, clearing her mind of her own thoughts so the images she got from the client would be pure, not influenced by whatever was going on inside her own brain.

  Reaching out, she clasped Darling’s hand.

  The erotic tableau she’d seen before did not form. She felt something inside her mind stir, but she blocked it, keeping her focus on him, not on them.

  “Please close your eyes,” she instructed. “When you’re ready, tell me your dream.”

  Tabitha let her lids drift down, her shoulders relax, allowing the warmth of his large hand to seep into her body. He had good energy, strong, vital. She worked to go deeper, and deeper, and down…

  Silence stretched between them. She heard the tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer outside the closed door of her office. High overhead, a jet droned by. In the backyard, Winkin barked…

  “I dreamed I was on a ship,” Darling began. “I don’t know where it was bound, but the ship was large and I got lost looking for my cabin. There were lots of people and I—”

  “Stop,” she said. “Stop right there.”

  Tabitha opened her eyes to see Darling watching her. “You’re making it up.”