DREAM GATE...GRABBING AIR
From the moment of that discovery Olivia struggles with her growing attraction to the lead detective, the disruptive presence of an art investigator and confusion over a series of reoccurring dreams that seemed connected to the man and the art. Then just when Olivia begins to make sense of where she 'goes' in her sleep there's a new murder, her cousin and the art expert disappear and her dreams point the confounding investigation in another direction...
CHAPTER 1
“Is this just an
optical illusion or is the distance on the guestroom side of this wall longer
than the distance on the den side?” Olivia Jamieson stood
in the hall. She tipped her head to the left then to the right.
Her cousin Phoebe
looked up from measuring furniture in the sitting room and joined Olivia in the
hall. Phoebe studied one room then the other. “It could be. Or, it’s the
bookcase. Maybe it makes the den look smaller.”
“Or maybe…” Olivia
covered one eye then the other. “Phoebe do you still have that measuring tape?”
“Yup, here.”
The girls measured the
length of both walls. They measured them twice.
Olivia shook her head
looking at her cousin. “I don’t get it. The den walls are clearly shorter. And
if we’ve measured correctly they’re shorter by a full twelve inches, but that
doesn’t make sense. Did Aunt Nora ever say
anything to you about her den?” Olivia pulled out a few inches of measuring
tape then let it roll back into its case, several times.
“No and stop that.”
Phoebe took the metal measuring tape away from her cousin then studied the
floor to ceiling, wall to wall built-in bookshelves.
After removing several
books Phoebe knocked on the back of the emptied shelf with her knuckles then she
used the measuring tape case. “It sounds hollow behind there.”
Phoebe walked by Olivia
in the hall and into the guestroom then knocked on that wall. “This sounds
solid, but then the outside of this building is brick. Maybe Aunt Nora had a
secret life,” Phoebe smiled with her typical impish rise of one eyebrow, “and hid
stolen art behind a false wall.”
Olivia made a face.
The Jamieson cousins,
both recent Colorado State graduates, couldn’t have been more opposite even though
their father’s were identical twins. Olivia’s long dark
auburn hair and grey hazel eyes contrasted with Phoebe’s pale blue eyes and short
curly hair the shade of corn-silk. In coloring they
favored each of their mothers, but in physical features and stature they had
taken after the paternal side of their family. With that, both girls
resembled their late Aunt Nora’s cheekbones and chin. And they were both medium
height, slim and athletic.
Olivia shook her head. “Yeah,
right, that might have been you, but not Aunt
Nora.”
Still in the hall Olivia
scanned its length from the guestroom doorway, on her left all the way beyond
the sitting room to the rear stair access.“Do you remember if
there are any windows on the south side of this
building? There’s a window in the front guest bedroom that faces east onto
Linden Street,” Olivia extended her left
arm.
“There’s another window, in Aunt Nora’s sitting room facing west that overlooks
the back alley.” She extended her right arm.
Phoebe shrugged.
“Obviously there was a lot that we didn’t pay attention to when Aunt Nora lived
up here.” She followed her cousin toward the sitting room, out a rear door then
down metal fire escape stairs.
On the ground outside,
a narrow alley, that divided the center of a historic block of downtown shops, flanked
the south side of the building. Access to the rear of
each store from the alley was by rows of narrow parking spaces for main floor
business owners and any second floor tenants. The late Nora Jamieson hadn’t
been a tenant. She had owned and managed the main floor retail space, living
above her business for convenience.
Olivia and Phoebe
didn’t need to walk far to have their question answered.
“Oh my, gosh, there it
is.” Olivia pointed toward the upper half of the vintage red brick building. “I
never noticed that shuttered window before, not ever, not in all the years Aunt
Nora owned her store.”
“The den bookcase is in
front of that window.” Phoebe frowned crossing her arms. “The den actually has
a window, but it was covered up, how odd.”
The day had been a busy
one. Olivia was drained and all she remembered feeling was the cushion of her
pillow - then she was asleep…
………..
She
walks toward a darkened arch through a fine, grey-green mist in shallow fluid.
Passing
under the arch she moves up three wide, uneven stone steps.
From
the top stone she finds herself across the street from a train station.
It’s
raining and on the sign above an entrance door is printed; Westminster. As she steps
to cross the street a brightly painted delivery van; ‘McDaniels Paint &
Hardware’- rushes by splashing water…
………..
Olivia awoke with a
start, relieved her experience was only a dream…
-----------------
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