Dreams of Jeannie (A New Age Mystery)
Catherine Dain
From "Dreams of Jeannie and Other Stories"

Mariana Morgan has been the protagonist of two New Age mystery novels, one (Angel in the Dark) in which she had to develop her psychic powers to solve her husband's murder, and a second that picks up her life after she has become a professional psychic, when she uses those powers to search for her missing brother and solve a murder that occurs at Enchantment, the metaphysical store where she works. The events of this story take place shortly after the time of Darkness at the Door.

	"I am so tired of clients insisting that their dreams of a terrorist attack are clairvoyant," Mariana snapped. "The dreams are the body's attempts to call attention to stress. Personal stress combined with the anxiety of the collective unconscious, that's all. How long is it going to take before we go on to the next fad?"
	She leaned against the jewelry counter, hoping for some attention, but Deirdre was devoting herself to polishing earrings and didn't look up. Deirdre ran Enchantment, a small store and metaphysical center, with impressive attention to detail.
	"Well, the sleeping-with-Bill dreams persisted a couple of years after his presidency ended," Deirdre answered calmly. "So I think we're going to be hearing about terrorists for a while. You'd better find a way to deal with your own stress so you can nod and listen when your clients express theirs. Right now, I suggest you go outside, take a psychic shower, clear your chakras, and come in again."
	Mariana straightened up, uncertain whether to follow Deirdre's advice or argue with her. Clearing her chakras before the next client arrived for a psychic reading was a good idea. But she had half an hour, and arguing felt more satisfying.
	"Why don't you hold a workshop on dreams?" she asked. "Teach people something instead of letting them muddle through on their own."
	"Why don't you?" Deirdre responded.
	"Because I don't know enough about dreams. I can give people intuitive help, but I don't know theory, so I can't teach them to help themselves. You can."
	"All right." Deirdre finished polishing the silver moon-and-stars earrings she had been working on and removed the polishing glove from her left hand. She looked up at Mariana, giving her full attention. "Tell me what you've been dreaming."
	"Not about terrorists." Mariana hesitated. Deirdre waited expectantly. "I dreamed about Tim dying again. And I dreamed about Marion Zimmer Bradley. And I dreamed about an earthquake."
	"What did you dream about Marion Zimmer Bradley?" Deirdre was suddenly interested. Although the writer had been dead for several years, her books still sold well. Deirdre had limited shelf space for books, since she had a better mark-up on jewelry, crystals, incense, and other such items for New Age-minded shoppers, but she always had at least one copy of Mists of Avalon in stock.
	"I dreamed I was standing in line with a group of other women, waiting to hear a great teacher speak. We were outside a temple, and the weather was warm. I could feel the perspiration on my skin. When we were allowed inside, the speaker turned out to be Marion Zimmer Bradley. But she was young, and she wasn't obese," Mariana said.
	"How do you feel about Marion Zimmer Bradley?"
	"I love her books."
	"Okay," Deirdre said, "so either you had an out-of-body experience in which you went to hear her speak in the spirit world because the message in her books means something to you, and you wanted more, or your Higher Consciousness took her form to tell you something."
	"I think I was really there. Do astral bodies sweat?"
	"Why not? People cry astral tears in their dreams, why not sweat astral beads of perspiration? Do you remember what she told you?" Deirdre asked.
	"No."
	Deirdre shook her head with impatience.
	"Ask for another dream about her, and this time remember. The message might be important—like about writing a great book. And you know why you dream about Tim dying."
	"I know. Because I still miss him," Mariana said. "I know he has gone on, which is why he doesn't talk to me as often, but I still miss him. I don't know about asking for a dream about Marion Zimmer Bradley. You're better at asking for dreams than I am. My subconscious doesn't seem to pay attention. Anyway, why would Marion Zimmer Bradley give me a message about a great book?"
	"Why not?" Deirdre said again. "Especially if it was just your Higher Consciousness appearing as Marion Zimmer Bradley. Your Higher Consciousness might think it's time for you to use your talent. And if you want to control your dreams, you have to practice."
	This time Mariana shook her head.
	"Maybe. All right. What about the earthquake?"
	"This is Southern California. Wait long enough, there will be an earthquake, and then it will be a clairvoyant dream. Maybe it was nothing more than a truck going by outside, and the rumble became an earthquake in your dream consciousness. Otherwise known as random firing of synapses in your brain. Or maybe something—maybe someone—is coming to shake up your life."
	"I could have come up with that myself. And I really don't want my life shaken up, thank you very much. I think I'll go clear my chakras."
	Mariana pushed through the glass doors and left the shop. What she saw outside was so unattractive that she almost changed her mind. Mini-mall parking lots are seldom aesthetically pleasing, and the one in front of Enchantment was no exception. On this day the heavy marine layer, Southern California June gloom extending into July, had added a gray glaze to the picture. Cars, a few people, a street, and another mini-mall on the other side. All the colors muted, slightly drab. Maybe she could use some change in her life.
	She sat down on a bench, took off her sandals so that her feet could feel the energy of the narrow strip of grass between cement and asphalt, and closed her eyes. Visualizing a waterfall of drops all the colors of the rainbow, flowing through her body, clearing her energy centers, helped more than she thought it would. When she opened her eyes, she was ready to go back to the store and see her next client.
	"Mariana? I'm Jeannie Cullen, and I'm early. Can we start now?" A woman was standing between the bench and the door, barring Mariana's way. The woman's dark brown hair was wild and frizzed, and her face was flushed from crying. She was wearing a yellow tunic top that didn't go well with her blue and green floral slacks, as if she had dressed in what her hand grabbed from the closet, without paying attention. But even those colors were muted by the gray of the day.
	"Of course, Jeannie," Mariana answered, allowing herself a slight twinge of annoyance that her break was over almost before it began. "Come on in the store, let me get a cup of tea, and we'll start."
	Deirdre looked up and nodded as they entered.
	"Okay?" she asked.
	"More or less," Mariana replied.
	She slipped behind the counter, dropped a bag of spicy herb tea into a cup, added hot water from the red-topped spout on the dispenser, and slipped back to the customer side.
	"Follow me," she said to the distraught woman waiting for her.
	Beyond the book section at the back of the store, a hallway led to a combination office and storeroom for Deirdre, two offices that she rented out, the reading room, and a larger room where evening classes were offered.
	Mariana ushered Jeannie into the reading room, which wasn't much more than a large closet with a small, round table, two chairs, a framed poster of frolicking dolphins, and a potted plant that somehow managed to sustain itself in fluorescent light.
	"I dreamed about a terrorist attack," Jeannie began, before Mariana could even set the timer to thirty minutes.
	"Dreams are not necessarily clairvoyant," Mariana said, knowing it would be useless to tell Jeannie that she was the second person that day to come in with a dream of terrorists. Jeannie would take it for confirmation, when it was nothing of the kind. The last client's dream could be easily explained by what was going on in her life. Mariana was certain Jeannie's dream would be the same.
	Jeannie glared at her. Mariana knew that she would have to be careful, or the heavy emotion that had caused the flushed face and the swollen eyes would turn to anger.
	"You don't understand," Jeannie said. "And I thought you were a psychic. In the dream, my husband was the terrorist."
	"I'm sorry," Mariana replied, belatedly switching her attention from herself to her client. "No wonder you're upset. You're right, I didn't take the time to tune in before I answered. What is it you want from me?"
	"I want to know what's going on. I know he's involved in something, and now I get this dream that he's a terrorist, planning to blow something up. What is he doing?" Jeannie's eyes began to fill, and her voice broke.
	Mariana reached down and grabbed the box of tissues from its place on the floor—there was no room on top of the table—and offered it to Jeannie. Jeannie grabbed two tissues and held them to her eyes.
	"Okay," Mariana said, after she had returned the box to the floor. "Here's how we're going to handle it. I want your birthdate, then his first name and birthdate. I'm going to look at your life paths and the path of your relationship, and we'll go from there."
	Jeannie glared again, distracted from her tears.
	"You think it's about me," she said. "And it isn't. It's my patriotic duty to turn him in, but I need corroboration from somebody before I call the FBI."
	"Birthdates," Mariana said calmly.
	"I'm a Taurus and he's a Scorpio."
	"I don't care about your sun signs. I'm not doing astrology. I want to know your life path cards, the archetypes of the Major Arcana that you're working through. They will help me tune in to the situation. May I have your birthdates?"
	Jeannie reluctantly gave her both dates.
	"His name is Eric," she added.
	Mariana quickly added up the two dates.
	"A nine and a one," she said. "You're a Hermit and Eric's a Magician. This has to be a difficult relationship for you under the best of circumstances. You need boundaries, you need a quiet space to get in touch with your own inner truth, and Eric has no concept of the word privacy. He also doesn't have much sense of truth."
	"I know that," Jeannie said. "I know he's lying to me. And I know he's a terrorist."
	"Doesn't fit the profile," Mariana said, hoping to lighten the mood a little. She didn't like the energy she was picking up from Jeannie, and she didn't like the energy path that she was tuning into as she looked at the two cards, the Hermit and the Magician.
	"What kind of psychic are you? You think only Arabs are terrorists?"
	"I'm sorry," Mariana said. "We haven't gotten off to a good start. Let's try again." She shuffled the cards and fanned them out on the small table. "Pick six cards, and let's look at your relationship with Eric."
	"This is not about my relationship with Eric," Jeannie said, her voice rising. "This is not about me. I want to know what he's doing."
	"I understand that. But if you want me to look at him, I have to start by looking at the two of you. That's the way I work," Mariana responded. "You're the one who's here, you're the one who's upset, and I need to look at the energy flow between the two of you. He may not be a terrorist. He could be lying about something else."
	"He's a terrorist." Jeannie hesitated, as if she might want to argue, then quickly chose six cards and handed them to Mariana.
	Mariana placed them as the base, stem, and petals of a flower, to see the direction of the energy flow. The cards confirmed her own sense that the energy between the two people wasn't good and wasn't going to get better. And there was more. She waited until the images in her head became clearer before she spoke.
	"You're partly right," she said. "Eric is involved in something dangerous, and there is someone else involved. But his anger seems personal, not against the government, or anything faceless. You can't talk to him. He won't listen to you. In fact, some of his anger is toward you. The wisest course of action might be for you to move out. Would you like to see what your path looks like if you choose to do that?"
	Jeannie shook her head, dismissing Mariana's question. "I know I can't talk to him. I need to talk to the FBI. How can I stop him?"
	"You can't. You can't change what he does. You can only protect yourself."
	"You are not helping," Jeannie said. Her hands flew around her face, disconnected, then settled back in her lap. "In the dream, he blew something up, something concrete, some kind of building. I wasn't in danger. I think you're wrong. Eric may be angry at me—he's angry at everyone right now—but he isn't going to hurt me."
	"What Eric is blowing up is your marriage. Your dream was  a metaphor, something that your subconscious was trying to tell you. He may not hurt you physically, but he's hurting you psychologically. You need to get out." Mariana said it flatly. She didn't like telling clients things they didn't want to hear.
	"I don't need to get out. I need to get information I can take to the FBI, and you aren't giving me that," Jeannie said. She picked up her bag. "This is useless."
	Mariana glanced at the timer.
	"We've only used about fifteen minutes," she said. "I'll tell Deirdre to charge you for that."
	"Fine."
	Jeannie was out the door and halfway down the hall before Mariana caught up with her.
	Deirdre barely raised an eyebrow when Mariana explained that Jeannie had called off the reading.
	"I couldn't give her what she wanted," Mariana began, once Jeannie had left the store. "She decided to end the reading, and I let her."
	"This is the first time a client has walked out on you, but it won't be the last," Deirdre said. "You'll have others. Some will even yell at you. And some of the ones who yell will come back for another reading, but they never apologize. It's all part of the business. Do you want to tell me about it?"
	While both psychics kept their clients' secrets where outsiders were concerned, they had agreed when Mariana had first started working at the store that there would be no secrets between the two of them. Mariana thought of Deirdre as the psychic equivalent of a consulting therapist. Although Deirdre was no older than Mariana, both women in their mid-thirties, Deirdre had acknowledged her psychic talents at a younger age and had been a professional for years. For Mariana, the awakening had been later and more difficult, and it was still hard for her to discipline her talents to the constraints of the business.
	When Mariana had met Deirdre, shortly after both women had lost their husbands to murder, she hadn't thought they would become friends. She still wasn't sure they were friends. So much about them was different: what they read, what they watched on television, even physical characteristics. But as she looked at Deirdre, with her short, curly blond hair and blue eyes, and thought of herself, with her long, dark hair and dark eyes, she knew that the deep similarities were more important than the surface differences.
	"She dreamed her husband is a terrorist. I think it's a metaphor for what's happening in the marriage. And I hope she isn't in danger," Mariana said.
	"You could always call David, see what he thinks," Deirdre said.
	"Don't, Deirdre. I don't think this is a job for the police, and David would think I wanted to talk to him." Mariana had learned to deflect Deirdre's light jabs, but she wished that Deirdre hadn't mentioned the police detective. There were too many uncertainties in that relationship—if she could even call it that—and she didn't want to deal with them now. Maybe never.
	"Then you need to let it go," Deirdre said. "Another psychic shower to clear your chakras, and then get ready for the next client."
	"I don't have a next client."
	"But you will."
	Deirdre was right. Mariana had two more clients that afternoon, neither of which had terrorist dreams. By the time she was through for the day, she was ready to leave all client concerns behind her at the store.
	When she reached the small apartment above a garage a few blocks from the beach, her home in Ventura until she could figure out where to go next, Miles and Ella were waiting to be fed. And Mariana had to feed herself as well. After dinner, she settled down for an evening of watching television, curled up on the bed with the two cats.
	She was laughing at an old movie on one of the cable channels when the phone rang.
	"Are you watching the news?" Deirdre asked. "If not, turn it on. Your client was murdered. You may want to call David after all."
	Deirdre hung up before Mariana could argue with her.
	And there it was on the local news. Jean Cullen had been murdered, stabbed to death when she apparently surprised a pair of burglars. Her distraught husband, Eric Cullen, sobbed for the camera. Mariana had been wrong—it was a matter for the police.
	Mariana waited until morning, after an almost sleepless night, before she picked up the phone and called David.
	He returned her call just as she was getting ready to leave for the store.
	"The woman who was murdered last night, Jeannie Cullen," Mariana said. "Her husband did it."
	David hesitated, then said, "He couldn't have done it, Mariana. He has an alibi. Eric Cullen owns a custom auto body shop, and for the last couple of weeks he and two other men have been working into the night, restoring a classic Jaguar. They place him at the shop until after ten. Then he stopped for a late dinner, verified by a credit card slip. His wife had been dead for a couple of hours by the time he got home."
	"Are you sure? Couldn't the men be covering for him?"
	"Believe me, we checked. The spouse is always a suspect until proven otherwise. And burglars don't often break into a home in the middle of the evening when someone is there. Because of that, we'll look at him even harder. But the two men who swore he was working with them seem pretty reliable, and the waitress remembered him, said he didn't seem upset about anything. Why do you think he did it?"
	"Because she came to see me yesterday. She said he was a terrorist, plotting something, but I told her she was the one in danger, told her to leave him. I should have called you then," Mariana said.
	David laughed gently. "You can call me anytime. But I couldn't have done anything to protect Jean Cullen, you know that."
	"You could have had somebody drive by her house last night," Mariana argued.
	"But I wouldn't have. You know that, too. We wouldn't have done anything unless she asked for help."
	Mariana did know that.
	"What happens now?" she asked.
	"We investigate it as a burglary that became a murder, just what it appears to be. And don't worry. We'll consider the possibility that Eric Cullen set it up himself, that he hired somebody to do it. Do you have any idea why he might have wanted to get rid of his wife?"
	"No. Damn. I don't. She didn't think he was angry at her—she kept calling him a terrorist. I'll tune in later and let you know what I come up with," Mariana said.
	"How about over dinner?" David asked.
	This was why she hadn't wanted to call him.
	"I'll think about it," she said.
	"My divorce is final in November. Are you going to make me wait until then?"
	"It's not that."
	"Then what?"
	"We live in such different worlds. I don't think it makes sense to start something that can't go anywhere."
	"Would you say that to one of your clients?"
	"No, I wouldn't." She would look at the energy flow between the two people, and if it was positive, as she knew it was in this case, she would tell a client not to jump ahead, not to try to guess the end of the relationship at the beginning, because too much can happen in between. People have free will. Take it a step at a time, see what it feels like. "All right. Dinner. But not tonight. I didn't sleep last night, and I'm tired. And I still have to work this afternoon."
	"Okay. Tomorrow. I'll pick you up at seven."
	Mariana hung up the phone, grabbed the bag that held her cards, said goodbye to the cats, and headed down the stairs to her car. She didn't like being late.
	Not that it would have mattered this day. Deirdre was alone when Mariana reached the store, and the only two appointments for readings were scheduled late in the afternoon.
	"So what did David say?" Deirdre asked before Mariana even had a chance to put her bag in the reading room and get a cup of tea.
	"He said the husband has an alibi," Mariana replied.
	"Of course," Deirdre said. "I asked for a dream of Jeannie last night. She realizes now that she was wrong, that she was in danger from her husband. It's some kind of trade, but I don't think she knows the details, even with her enhanced perspective. He's going to do something for someone else, and that's the person who murdered her."
	"A dream of Jeannie," Mariana said, smiling in spite of herself.
	"But she has dark brown hair," Deirdre said.
	"And she spoke to you?"
	"Not exactly. Her regret and her husband's anger were feelings that she transmitted. And then I saw an image of something changing hands, and a handshake, and then blood. The blood woke me up. I could be wrong on the interpretation, but I don't think so," Deirdre replied.
	"How long have you been able to control your dreams— get what you ask for?" Mariana asked.
	"I can't always do it. But I've been working on it for about fifteen years now, and sometimes it works." Deirdre twisted her face into mock annoyance. "It's like everything else connected with the psychic world, though. I can't always get all the information I want. Jeannie didn't tell me anything you could use to convince David that her husband is a murderer."
	"Or a terrorist." Mariana lowered her voice. Two women had just entered the shop, heading for the incense display, and she didn't want to discuss the murder with them. "What could this favor be? Do you suppose he really is planning to blow something up?"
	"That's as good a favor for murder as any, isn't it?" Deirdre had lowered her voice, too.
	Mariana sighed. She felt like a conspirator, the way the two of them had their voices lowered and their heads together. "All right. How do we get more information? Do I read for you, or do you read for me? Or do you want to channel Baba-ji?"
	"Well, it gets harder now, because we're both involved to some degree, which makes it harder to get out of the way and let the energy through, as you know." Deirdre said. "And I don't think Baba-ji would be interested in helping out on this one. He'd want to know how this project helps our spiritual growth."
	"I should think bringing a murderer to justice is a good reason to go forward," Mariana said.
	"I know you would, but Baba-ji would tell you that the Lords of Karma will take care of Eric Cullen, and that they don't need your help," Deirdre said calmly.
	"And so..." Mariana prompted.
	"And so I think we both ought to ask for dreams of Jeannie. She might get through to you more easily than to me, since you made a psychic connection with her shortly before she died. Let's try that first." The two women customers were standing in front of the cash register, and Deirdre moved away to ring up the purchase.
	Mariana wanted something more definitive, but she knew she wasn't going to get it. She needed to prepare for her first client. Jeannie Cullen's murderer would have to wait.
	The afternoon dragged for Mariana, with only two readings. Deirdre was busy, though, with a steady stream of customers, so they didn't get a chance to resume the conversation until Mariana was ready to leave.
	"I'll do it," Mariana said, as Deirdre counted out her share of the money for the readings. "I'll try asking for a dream. But I want to do something else, too. I want to drive by Eric Cullen's shop and see if I can pick anything up from the energy there."
	"You think you'll catch him making a bomb?" Deirdre handed Mariana the money and closed the cash register.
	"No. I just want to see what the place feels like. Mind if I borrow the telephone directory? I need an address."
	Mariana found the address, only because Eric Cullen had been considerate enough to list himself as owner of Top of the Line Body Shop in the Yellow Pages ad. The shop was on Thompson, in midtown Ventura, one of a number of auto repair shops in a cluster not too far from where she lived.
	"Don't go in," Deirdre said.
	"I'll just drive by," Mariana replied. "Although the Mustang could use a paint job."
	"Call me when you get home."
	Mariana shook her head, not wanting to be fussed over, and left the store.
	She took the short drive to Thompson and slowed down when she reached the block, looking for a sign so that she could tell which of the small repair shops was the right one.
	Top of the Line Body Shop had an address on Thompson, but was actually set back from the street, almost all the way to Front Street, the last street before the railroad tracks, the freeway, Harbor Boulevard, and the beach. Mariana decided to drive around the block to get a better look.
	But there was really nothing to see. A narrow asphalt parking area with more cars than parking spaces and a garage with three racks, all of them in use. A small office. That was it.
	There were five men working on the cars, all wearing dirty gray uniforms. Mariana wondered which one was Eric Cullen. She decided he had to be the big man with blond, curly hair. He seemed to be in charge.
	Deirdre was right, of course. Mariana wasn't likely to catch him working on a bomb. Especially at six in the evening, with the sun still up. The thing to do was to drive by later, see if he really worked until ten.
	Mariana drove home, fed the cats, fed herself, and found that she couldn't settle into her regular evening routine, tired as she was. She wanted to know what Eric Cullen was doing.
	She forced herself to wait until nine o'clock before she left the house. She wrapped herself in a shawl, not because she needed protection from the elements, but because it brought her comfort.
	The evening air was a comfortable sixty-five degrees, practically a year-round norm in Ventura. For about ten months of the year, the temperature rose to a high of seventy during the day and dropped to a low of fifty at night. Not much summer, but not much winter, either. Mariana couldn't complain about the cold. Still, the shawl felt good.
	The short trip down Thompson didn't quite confirm Eric Cullen's alibi, but it confirmed that he might have had one. The lights were out at the four other shops that were part of the same cluster. Not at Top of the Line. Three men were still working on what appeared to be a dark blue Jaguar, and one of the men was the big blond.
	Mariana couldn't think of a good reason to talk to them, so she slowly drove home again.
	Deirdre was right. The only thing she could do was ask for a dream of Jeannie.
	The dream came toward morning, and Mariana struggled to hold on to the images when she woke up.
	She had been standing in a meadow, and Jeannie had waved to her from the other side of the stream—a transformed Jeannie, smiling, glad to see her. Then she and Jeannie were flying, hand in hand, through the night sky. The ocean was below them. Then they were over a building of some kind—Mariana couldn't quite make it out—and Jeannie wanted to take her inside, but then they were both afraid. Jeannie vanished, and Mariana woke up.
	That was all.
	A dream of Jeannie. Borne like an angel on the summer air. Except that in the song Jeannie was borne like a vapor, not an angel. Nothing was quite right.
	The building. Was there a way of finding the building?
	Was it even in Ventura? It didn't look like a house, more like an office building, but the image had been hazy.
	Mariana hurried to get ready to go to Enchantment, eager to compare dreams with Deirdre.
	But Deirdre was busy with customers, and Mariana had two clients waiting, and it was the middle of the afternoon before Mariana could tell Deirdre about her trip to the body shop, and before they had a chance to compare dreams.
	"Well, Jeannie certainly wants to communicate with you," Deirdre said, when Mariana had told her dream. "And your dream was more helpful than mine. All I got was the image of Jeannie lying dead on the floor while two men with gloves on messed up the living room. Neither one was a big blond."
	"If you saw them, though, maybe you could pick them out of a book," Mariana said. "Mug shots."
	"No. All I could tell was that they were both more brownish than blondish. They had baseball caps on, and facial hair, and jackets pulled up high. I don't think Jeannie knew them."
	Mariana sighed. "David told me when we first met that psychic information was always interesting, usually right, and never helped him solve a case. I'd really like to prove him wrong."
	"We have a start," Deirdre said. "We know we have to find a building near the beach."
	"We?" Mariana had expected Deirdre to try to talk her out of looking for the building.
	"Well, you. I have to be home to take care of the kids tonight."
	"And I'm having dinner with David."
	"Then after dinner you can take a nice, romantic drive along the beach and look for that building."
	"I'll think about it. I'm not sure David would agree."
	They were interrupted by Mariana's third client, who turned out to be her last for the afternoon. Because it was slow, Mariana checked out a little early. And because it was Saturday, she wouldn't be seeing Deirdre for the next four days.
	"Call me tomorrow," Deirdre said, as Mariana prepared to leave. "Don't make me wait until Thursday to find out about your date. Or about the building, either."
	"I'll call if there's anything to tell. And call me if you get another dream."
	Mariana stepped out into a late afternoon that was a little sunnier than the preceding days. She still felt a chill.
	By the time she had gone home, fed the cats, and put on a little fresh makeup, the chill had settled into her bones. She wished she hadn't made the date with David.
	Just before seven, she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
	"I'm early," he said as she opened the door.
	"It's all right. I'm ready."
	They walked down the stairs in silence, not speaking until they were both settled into his car.
	"I thought we might go to that cafe on Thompson," David said, starting the engine.
	"That's fine. We could drive by Eric Cullen's shop on the way, see if he's working late," Mariana replied.
	David frowned. His gray moustache twitched before he answered. "If there's something you have to tell me about Jean Cullen's murder, let's get it over with before we have dinner."
	"I'm not sure I have anything that will help, but Deirdre and I have both been dreaming of Jeannie."
	"Okay, tell me." David turned off the engine. He leaned back in the seat and looked at her, waiting.
	Mariana couldn't quite see his eyes. She wished she could see his eyes.
	"Jeannie says it was two men, brownish complexion, facial hair, wearing jackets and baseball caps. She didn't know them. She thinks there was some kind of trade, that they murdered her because her husband is going to do something for someone else. There is a building involved, and I think it's near the beach. Maybe he's going to blow it up." She got it all out in one breath.
	"All this from a dream," David said.
	She still couldn't see his expression.
	"From three dreams, actually—two of Deirdre's and one of mine."
	"Anything else?"
	"No." Mariana hesitated, then plunged on. "Except I was wondering if you had come up with any motives, either a motive for the burglary—something important stolen from the house—or a motive for murder."
	"Nothing we could take to court. Cullen lost his wife at a convenient time. He's in debt, and the insurance money will get him out. And we heard he has a girl friend. On top of that, nothing of value was stolen from the house." David reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm telling you this because I'm treating you as part of the investigation on this case. I want to know anything either one of you picks up. Okay?"
	"Does that mean we can take a drive along the beach and look for the building?"
	"After dinner. But only if you promise to talk about something else from now until then."
	Mariana promised. So over dinner and wine at the small cafe on Thompson they had one of those conversations that people have when they are avoiding talking about anything important, complete with awkward silences.
	She was glad when it was over.
	And he kept his promise.
	"Which way?" he asked, when he had steered the car to Harbor Boulevard. He hadn't driven past Eric Cullen's shop on the way to dinner, but he did then. The lights were out, and he didn't slow down.
	"I don't know. Let's try right. I think it's toward Santa Barbara, not Oxnard."
	"In that case, I should have stayed on Thompson. Do you want me to pick up the freeway?"
	"Yes."
	It would have been a pleasant drive under other circumstances, with a full moon and a clear sky and the gentle waves breaking against the sand. But this wasn't going to work, and Mariana knew it almost at once.
	"You might as well take me home," she said, even before they reached the Seacliff exit.
	"Okay."
	She could feel his disappointment. Until then, she hadn't realized that he wanted her to be right. There was something comforting about him wanting her to be right.
	"I'm not going to ask you in," she said when he stopped the car in front of her door. Even though they weren't in the black-and-white, David accepted it as his prerogative as a police detective to park in a no-parking zone.
	"I know." He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Goodnight."
	Mariana was halfway up the stairs, and David had already driven away, when it hit her. Nothing about this was quite right. They should have turned left on Harbor Boulevard.
	She wasn't certain what to do, whether to go in and try to call him back, or to look for the building herself. But then a wave of urgency hit her. She had to look for the building. Now.
	She walked back down to the carport, got in her car, and headed back to Harbor Boulevard, this time turning left.
	When she saw the building, she recognized it at once, and wondered why she hadn't known it in the dream. It was a small, exclusive hotel, with an equally small and exclusive restaurant, a low rectangular building, dimly lit, right on the beach. And a dark blue classic Jaguar was parked in front of the restaurant.
	The wave of urgency hit her again. It was quickly replaced by fear, the same fear that she had felt in the dream.
	Mariana pulled over to the curb and jumped out of her car. She started running toward the restaurant, shouting as she ran.
	"There's a bomb in the Jaguar! A bomb!"
	She saw a door open, and a face appear.
	"A bomb!" she cried again. "In the car! Run!"
	People began streaming out of the restaurant, customers and staff, running away from the building.
	But when the explosion came, it wasn't from the car. The entire restaurant turned into a fireball before her eyes.
	Mariana stood, too stunned to say anything when a security guard appeared beside her and twisted her arm up behind her back.
	"Let's sit down, right where we are, and wait for the police," he said.
	Mariana nodded. That was exactly what she wanted to do.
	The firefighters were the first to arrive, followed closely by three police cars. She sat locked in the back of a black-and-white until David arrived to take her home for the second time that evening.
	Mariana didn't call Deirdre on Sunday. She spent much of the day recovering from the fear and the shock of the night before, a recovery made only a little easier by the sense that the spirit of Jeannie Cullen was hovering over her bed, wanting her to be all right.
	Deirdre had been watching television news, though, and she left two messages that Mariana ignored. Deirdre knew she was all right. The details would have to wait until she felt like sharing them.
	Only after David had called on Monday to fill in the missing pieces did Mariana pick up the phone and call Enchantment.
	"The bomb target was Senator Fordham," Mariana said. "She and her husband occasionally use that particular hotel for a weekend getaway. Several people knew they would be there this weekend. And everybody knows they enjoy late dinners. Nobody raised an eyebrow when a well-dressed blond man with a briefcase parked a Jaguar out front and asked for a table. Nobody noticed when he went to the men's room and didn't come back."
	"So they have Eric Cullen for the bombing, if not his wife's murder. Does David know who the co-conspirator is yet?" Deirdre asked.
	"The FBI is swarming all over the case, but the rumor is that someone wanted to remove the one strong anti-war voice from the Armed Services Committee," Mariana told her. "It centers around the shop. I'm almost certain that one of Cullen's employees is the link. But I've been not-quite-right on so much, starting with my dream of an earthquake. It felt like an earthquake, but it was an explosion. I think I would have responded differently from the beginning if I had dreamed of an explosion."
	"But you still succeeded in saving all those people. Is David ready to admit that he was wrong? That psychics can help solve a case?"
	"He was even cheerful about it."
	"So are you seeing him tonight?" Deirdre sounded like a teenager, and Mariana didn't feel like giggling with her. Not yet.
	"Tonight I'm asking for a dream of Jeannie," Mariana said. "It's time to get it right, time to say thank you, and goodbye."