Dawn in Eclipse Bay

bastard tell Marilyn about your files the day he came to see her at the institute. He actually bragged about them to her. He used them to talk his way into my job . Promised her he could get them for her.”
    “I see.”
    “Got to give credit where it’s due. Marilyn is no fool. She understood the value of those files immediately.”
    “Did Anderson tell her he planned to steal them?”
    “Of course not. He just said he was working an angle to get them. Told her not to worry. He’d handle all the details.”
    “Where were you when they had that conversation?”
    “I was packing up my desk in the adjoining office. Marilyn closed the door but I simply switched on the recording system.” Claire smiled bitterly. “That was one of my jobs, you know. Recording Marilyn’s meetings and conversations with important people. She plans to publish her memoirs someday.”
    “Later you decided to see if you could find my client files before Flint got to them, right?”
    Claire shrugged. “He said they were on your computer. Sounded easy enough. I could have used them the same way Flint planned to use them.”
    “To buy your way into another job?”
    “Yes. The data on your high-end clients would be worth a fortune to any candidate in the Northwest.” Tears welled in Claire’s eyes again. “But I couldn’t find your computer when I broke into the cottage. And there was Arizona with her damned camera when I came out. Everything went wrong. All that risk for nothing. It’s not fair.”
    “That day you stopped by the cottage to warn me to watch out for Marilyn, you overheard my conversation with Gabe when he was on his way back from Portland. You learned that we had concluded I might be the target of a stalker. That made you very nervous, didn’t it? You realized that we were no longer dismissing the break-in as the action of a transient. So you came back to trash my studio to add some credibility to our theory.”
    “I got scared. Really scared. This is Eclipse Bay. I knew that if a Harte and a Madison were putting pressure on Sean Valentine, he might actually conduct a serious investigation. I didn’t know where that would lead. I thought that I would be safe if everyone continued to blame the break-in on a stalker who could conveniently just disappear.”
    “Oh, Claire.” Lillian shook her head. “What were you thinking?”
    The bitterness tinged Claire’s voice. “How did you figure it out?”
    “I suppose you could say it was a process of elimination. Gabe and a private investigator cleared the only real potential stalker we had on our list. When we talked to Anderson, he denied the break-ins here in Eclipse Bay. Adamantly.”
    Claire widened in scorn. “And you actually believed that bag of sleaze?”
    Lillian shrugged. “The forced entry didn’t fit with what I knew about him. Anderson is the sort who tries to talk his way in and out of situations.”
    “What about Marilyn? She should have been on your list. She was the one who had the most to gain from those files.”
    “The thing about Marilyn is that she is very up-front about what she wants. She doesn’t sneak around. You, on the other hand, have a history of sneaking around.”
    Claire flinched. “What do you mean?”
    “She was right when she said that you had an affair with Trevor Thornley, wasn’t she?”
    “I told you, I never slept with Trevor.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    Claire watched her warily. “Why not?”
    “Because I found out that you were sneaking around with Larry Fulton in the back of his father’s van the summer that he and I were dating.”
    “Larry Fulton.” Claire’s mouth fell open. “But that was years ago. We were in college .”
    “I know. I was pretty sure that he was fooling around with someone else that summer. I just hadn’t realized that the other woman was you. The Willis brothers set me straight a few days ago. They gave me a whole new perspective on you, Claire. Once I started asking the right questions, things fell into place.”
    Claire backed out of the laundry room, never taking her eyes off Lillian. “You can’t prove anything.”
    “You keep saying that.” Lillian came away from the washer. “I’m not arguing the point. I came here today for some answers, not to get you arrested.”
    “Get out.”
    “I’m on my way.” Lillian crossed the living room, paused at the front door and looked back over her shoulder. “Just one more question.”
    “I said, get out of