Smoke in Mirrors

take you home.”
    The killer was on the staircase now.
    She staggered forward along the shifting hall. A reflection flickered in one of the dark looking glasses on her left. Her own face? Or one of the trapped ghosts laughing at her?
    No such thing as a ghost in a mirror. You’re a trained librarian. You don’t believe in ghosts. And you didn’t drink all of the damned coffee. Keep moving. You stop, you die.
    Resolutely she kept her eyes on the floor, counting doorways, not looking in any of the mirrors. The library was the fourth door on the left. She remembered that very clearly.
    “I’m sure the hallucinations are very bad by now, Leonora.” Roberta spoke from the top of the staircase. “I gave you a very large dose and the drug acts very swiftly. My husband invented it shortly before he died, you know.”
    Don’t listen. Count doors.

    “Dear George. He was really quite brilliant. But he never saw the full potential of his creation. I did, of course. I had to get rid of him. But first, I made him write down the formula. Quite simple, really, when you have the correct ingredients. Why, you can whip it up in your own kitchen.”
    She tried to tune out Roberta’s voice. She had to concentrate on counting doorways.
    Number two.
    Number three.
    Desperation turned her stomach to ice. The library was too far away. She would never make it before Roberta caught up with her.
    She staggered past the third door. It was getting harder and harder to avoid looking into the mirrors. And she was getting tired. So tired.
    An image glittered briefly in the gilded looking glass on the right. Unable to resist, she looked into its depths. She could not make out the reflection in the dark glass, but she heard words in her head. Words from a dream.
    You can’t sleep yet.
    Car keys.
    What good would it do to get her keys? She could never get past Roberta. She might as well just sit down here in the corridor and wait for the end.
    No. She couldn’t do that. She had a date for dinner with Thomas.
    The thought sent another surge of adrenaline through her, knocking back some of the drug’s effects.
    “The drug can be made in various strengths. The weaker versions create amazing hallucinations and cause a person to be quite suggestible. Stronger versions also produce hallucinations, but not for long. One gets very drowsy, very quickly.”
    Keep going. Keep moving.

    “I gave you the strong dose, of course. The same dose that I gave to Bethany Walker and Meredith Spooner.”
    She put one hand on the wall and turned her head. Roberta was coming toward her through the shadows. She had something in her hand.
    A gun.
    “You killed Rhodes,” Leonora whispered. The words were thick and cumbersome in her mouth. “You were the one Thomas and Deke saw running away that night.”
    “Ah, yes, Mr. Rhodes. Such a handsome man. He was the one who came up with a name for my hallucinogen. Smoke and Mirrors. I thought it was very creative. He said a good name was essential for proper marketing. Mirror House gave him the idea, I believe.”
    “How did he . . . how did he know about you? And the drug?”
    “He figured out that I was mixing up the drugs the night I pushed Bethany off that bluff.”
    “How did he know that you killed her?”
    “I was a trifle careless, I must admit. Alex was out running rather late in the evening. He passed by Mirror House just as I was getting Bethany into her car. He knew something was wrong. He followed me. Watched me push her off the cliff. The next day I very carefully planted the rumors of Bethany’s drug use. And Alex put it all together.”
    “He tried to blackmail you?”
    “No, no, dear. He offered to form a partnership. I was the manufacturer and supplier. He was the middleman who actually sold the product. He’d had experience in that line, you see, and I had none. Most of his transactions were with out-of-town clients, of course. Wing Cove is such a small community. He feared that if he sold too much locally, others would soon figure out that he was the source. But he couldn’t resist experimenting withit from time to time, especially on some of his female clients.”
    “Why . . . why did you kill him if the partnership worked?”
    “It was a lucrative arrangement for both of us, but when everything started to fall apart I knew I had to tidy up before I left town. Mr. Rhodes knew too much about me. I couldn’t let him live, now could I?”
    “Why . . . why did you kill Meredith