“She does,” Nick said.
Tammy waved a hand. “Flick to the next photo.”
Georgie did so, and read the handwritten signed note from the author. “I see. So you knew she’d met the author.”
“As I said—ace detective. Can I have a raise?”
Nick held out his hand, and Georgie handed him the phone. He studied it silently for a moment, flicking back and forth between the photo and the note to his mother in the front.
“I’ll have a look in the book when she’s not around,” he said finally. “See if I can see a website address or something.”
“Already did that.” Tammy took her phone back. “There were no contact details at all. I don’t suppose you can remember how your mother got this book? A bookstore? Online? From a visit?”
Surprisingly, Nick remembered it clearly. “She came home with it, the day she went to see her for the first time…all happy because she’d given her the book as a token of faith.”
“No wonder she told her that my not charging for visits was a lead-in to a scam,” Georgie said. “She probably does it all the time. She’d know all the tricks.”
By now Nick had his own phone out, doing a search for Bianca Bellamy. “400,000 hits,” he said absently. He tapped some more. “I’ll add ‘medium’.”
“Add ‘scam’ and ‘fake’ too,” suggested Georgie. “If anyone’s posted about her, it’ll come up. Try the name of the book, too.”
Nick hammered away at his phone for a bit, clicked through to a few links, and finally shook his head. “Nothing. Not that I can find quickly.”
“Hmm.” Georgie was surprised. “You’d think that somebody would have mentioned her. Unless, of course, she uses different names.”
“That book could be just for show,” Scott contributed. “She could just have a dozen or so printed at a time and be ready to hand them out to any likely targets.”
They all sat for a moment, with nobody coming up with anything useful. Now they had a name, and a photo that might or might not be real, but no trail.
“We still need an address, or a phone number… anything.” Then Georgie had a sudden flicker of memory: Rosa saying, “Nick needs to be a part of this. He needs to be the one to fix it…”
“Back to you, Nick,” she said firmly. “I can guarantee she’s the one. Now you have to either persuade your mother to take you to see her, or get a phone number, or something.”
“A signed confession would be good,” suggested Tammy.
Scott put in: “Ask her how she first heard about Bianca. That might give us a lead.”
“Okay.” He opened the door. “I’ll go back and tell her that she’s insulted Tammy so badly that she isn’t speaking to me.” A tired grin crossed his face. “Maybe hint that I might need to skip school tomorrow to try to win her back.”
“Love your work, Nick.” Tammy leaned over to blow him a kiss, which gave him a birds-eye view of generous tanned curves displayed in a handkerchief-sized top, which made him turn bright red again before he stumbled backwards and hastened off around the corner.
“Tams,” Georgie said reprovingly. “He’s just a boy. Have pity on him.”
“Big boy though,” Tammy said dreamily. “Imagine him in a few years’ time. College quarterback. All muscle and no pimples.”
As she spoke, her phone gave the blip that presaged an incoming video call.
She looked at the display, said “Huh,” rolled the gum around in her mouth a few times, and tapped the screen, holding up one finger to signal to Scott and Georgie to hold everything. “Hiya honey. How ya doin’?”
There was a shocked silence, and then Jerry’s voice said, “What in God’s name have you done to your hair?”
“It’s my new trailer trash look,” Tammy said. “Look.” She held the phone out and tilted it here and there so Jerry could take in her bare flesh and skin-tight capris, finishing with her gold flip flops. “You like?”
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”
Tammy frowned at the phone, while Georgie put a hand over her mouth to hold back the mirth.
“Jerry, that’s not very friendly,” said Tammy reprovingly.
“You’ll be the death of me, Tams. What if someone saw you like that?”
“Well, that’s the general idea. I’d hardly dress like this just for me.”
Georgie heard an irritated grunt on the other end of the phone, and gave Tammy a thumbs up.
“Yes, well.” Jerry finally got his voice back, along with an aggrieved note. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’ve got a nice surprise for you. Not that you deserve it.”
Tammy narrowed her eyes at the phone, a move that made her heavily made-up eyes take on the look of a predatory jungle cat. “Careful, Jer.”
“Whatever. Just look at this.” There was silence, while Tammy stared at whatever Jerry was showing her on his phone. At one point she glanced up at Georgie, her rosebud lips pressed together in a way that didn’t bode well for Jerry B. Goode, and then returned her gaze to the phone.
“Well?” Jerry’s voice finally sounded again. “Isn’t that just what you had in mind? I found your notes and got exactly what you wanted. Right down to the Chevy ice cream bar!”
There was another silence, while Tammy just stared at the screen and Georgie chewed her fingernails. She had a fair idea of what was going on.
“Tams? Don’t just stare at me like that. Tell me what you think?”
“I think,” said Tammy, “that I could see the back of the work shed while you were panning around. And, if I wasn’t mistaken, the corner of the fence.”
“Tams. C’mon. It had to happen. You can’t have everything your way. When are you girls going to see reason?”
“Can you do the walk around once more?”
“Sure, babe, sure.”
Tammy silently handed the phone to Georgie, who tilted it so Scott could see. The camera panned around to show a row of vintage vans, all set up with cute outdoor settings, all different colors and styles. There were three gypsy vans clustered together, with gaily colored shawls flung over a couple of chairs outside.
Just as Tammy had suggested, it was all enclosed inside a charming picket fence. And it was all squeezed into the corner behind the main work shed, a fact that Jerry tried to hide by hastily panning back when it appeared.
Georgie’s eyes met Tammy’s as she handed back the phone.
War, they promised each other wordlessly.
“See?” came Jerry’s voice again. “Your retro lot will love it. I tried really hard here, Tams.”
“Yes,” she said. “I can see that you implemented my ideas faithfully.”
Jerry picked up on her meaning right away. “I’m not taking the credit for it. Everyone knows it’s all your idea.”
“Except for the position.”
Jerry gave up and tried another tack. “When are you coming back? I miss you.”
“Do you?” Tammy blew a huge bubble of gum, which promptly burst and flattened out over her mouth.
“That’s gross, Tam.”
“Yeah, but I’m trailer trash now. And I’m not coming back.”
“What do you mean, you’re not coming back?”
“I mean: I. AM. NOT. COMING. BACK.” Tammy’s eyes took on a feral gleam. “Not until I’m ready to start my own vintage and retro yard. Tammy’s Traditional Trailers. Has a ring about it, don’t you think?” She turned her phone around so that Jerry was looking straight at the face of his furious sister. “What do you think, Georgie?”
“Sounds good to me,” Georgie said to Jerry. “Guess you’d better tell Dad.” With that parting salvo, she sat back, and Tammy hit END to cut off his spluttering entreaties and threats.
She sat for a moment staring out of the window, and then looked back at Georgie. “I knew he’d do it. Dammit.” She picked at her ugly stretch pants, and heaved a sigh. “Let’s go. I’ve got to get these things off before they stick permanently to my skin.”
Quietly, Scott started the engine. Nobody said anything all the way back to the RV park.
CHAPTER 13
The entire next day passed without a word from Nick, and Tammy spent most of the time in her beloved cherry red and white retro van looking up startup business grants and crunching numbers, while the furrow between her eyes grew deeper and deeper.
“She’s devastated,” Georgie said to Layla on the way back from a much-quieter-than-usual morning tea at Tammy’s. “Furious with him, and so sad. I don’t know what to say to her.”
“That’s because you’ve lived with Jerry-the-snake your whole life and you didn’t expect anything else. Tams fell in love with him.”
“Dammit.”
“Yeah. Are you really going to start up your own vintage vans yard?”
“To tell you the truth,” Georgie said, “I don’t want to. I was perfectly happy as part of the road team. Jerry and Tammy were doing great back there until he decided to pull rank. What an idiot.”
Layla cast her a sideways look. “Any chance of him changing his mind?”
“He never has before, unless Dad pulls rank on him. But if Dad thinks it’s for the best, he’ll let Jerry have his way. And he will think it’s for the best, because Jerry will talk about nothing but the benefits of the Platinum Customer Care program, which Dad has wanted for years.” Georgie flapped a hand. “Don’t talk about him.”
“Fine,” said Layla. “Let’s go get Mags and talk about the next Retro rally instead.”
Which they cheerfully did, even managing to drag Tammy across for a happy hour drink as the sun went down.
Nobody had heard anything from Nick. They heard nothing the next day either, and by breakfast the third day were surmising that maybe Katherine had locked Nick in a cupboard under the stairs like Harry Potter, when he finally phoned.
“At last,” said Georgie. “We’d just about given you up. Wondered if maybe Madame Bianca had banished you to the Other Side.”
“School, football, Mom watching me like a hawk,” Nick said briefly. “She even went to see Coach to talk about me. I got the fatherly talk about not throwing my life away and how hormones can make teenage boys crazy.”
“From what I remember of teenage boys, he’s not too far wrong,” said Georgie. “So you agreed to stay away from trailer trash?”
“Only if I could get the chance to hear from Dad myself… well, through the medium. Mom wouldn’t agree at first, but I wore her down.”
Georgie, remembering her brother Jerry working on her mother, could well believe it.
“On the condition that I leave my video pen at home,” Nick went on, “and any recording devices. She made me promise. Not that we got anything useful the other day.”
“So, where does this person hang out?”
“I don’t know. Mom won’t say. She says she still doesn’t trust me not to do something stupid, so I told her if she felt like that I’d agree to be blindfolded while she drives there—and she said OK! Can you believe it? What does she think this is, the Mafia?”
“So says the boy with the video spy pen,” Georgie said dryly. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll follow you.”
“Watch that she doesn’t see you. It would be better if we could use a tracking device.”
“Sadly, I’m right out of those.”
Heavy sigh from Nick’s end. “I was going to order one. I should have.”
Georgie shook her head. She liked Nick, she really did, but she thought he should stick to football and cheerleaders instead of playing spies.
“Did you find out how your mom first heard of Bianca?”
“Yeah, it was in a chat room. She met her on a forum and then went to a chat room for a consult, and then they met up offline. Sounds like it all took a few months. I’ll text you the forum details.”
It didn’t sound like anything they could use right away, but at least he was trying. “Thanks. So, what time is this happening?”
“It’s…hang on.” There was a brief silence, then “Mom just came in; gotta go. We go to see her tomorrow, when I get home from football training.” Abruptly, Nick ended the call.
Georgie looked at the others, who had been listening in avidly. “Hear that? Tomorrow it is.”
“I was thinking,” said Scott, “maybe we should use two cars. In case one gets caught at traffic lights or something. One could stay ahead of them, one behind.” He cast a glance at Georgie’s distinctive truck. “Better use mine and Layla’s. If you’re going to make a habit of stakeouts, you’d better buy a truck that blends in.”
“No chance.” Georgie glanced from the glowing maroon woodwork of her caravan to the matching truck canopy and smiled. A girl had to have a bit of style.
“I can tell your heart’s not in this investigation lark,” Scott said. “Not when it comes to the practical details.”
They tossed around ideas and suggestions for a while, and then hung around the forum and a couple of associated chat rooms, but nobody who looked or sounded like Bianca showed up.
“If I had months,” Georgie said to Scott, closing her computer far too close to midnight, “I could probably find her. But that’ll give her too much time to get her claws into Katherine. We have to move now.”
“We do,” he agreed. “Have faith. Tomorrow is the day.”
~~~
As soon as Katherine’s ancient Toyota backed out of the driveway the next afternoon, Scott, a hundred yards down the road, started his engine. “Here we go.”
“Some investigators we are,” Georgie said, feeling tense. “No plan. No clues. Just following a woman who spends her all grocery money on psychics and a teenage kid with a blindfold. What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Roll with it.” Calmly, Scott settled in at a cautious distance and followed. He glanced into the rear vision mirror, and then reached for the CB. “You there, Layla?”
“Yeah, copy.”
“I’m going to go past soon. You stay behind them for a while and then we’ll swap. Let me know if they turn off once I’m past.”
“Copy that.”
“Wow,” said Georgie. She reached across and keyed the mike to talk to Layla. “Listen to us sounding all official. Can’t we throw in a few Alpha Delta Tangos?”
Tammy’s voice came across the airwaves. “I liked it better when I was playing trailer trash.”
A gravelly masculine voice cut in. “Don’t mind a bit of trailer trash myself, little girl. Wanna meet up?”
“I beg your pardon,” Tammy shot back. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“It’s not talkin’ I had in mind, darlin’.”
Scott laughed.
“Hell.” Georgie scrabbled for her cell phone and called Tammy. “It’s me. Change to a different channel.”
“Won’t make any difference if they’re scanning,” Scott observed. “Just use your phone on speaker.”
“Did you hear that, Tams?” Georgie asked, tapping the speaker button on her own phone.
“Yes,” came Tammy’s disgusted voice. “I bet the cops don’t have this kind of trouble.”
“Leave your phone on,” Scott advised. “Going past her now, Tams.”
He pulled into the next lane and drove past Katherine, looking straight ahead with his ball cap pulled low and sunglasses shading his eyes. Georgie, similarly disguised, turned her head away from the other car.
They drove for about fifteen minutes. For amateurs, Georgie thought, they weren’t doing too badly. As far as she could judge, they were somewhere in west LA when Katherine finally pulled over to the side of the road, reversing her car to tuck it in between two others.
Scott was ahead of her, but keeping watch in his rear vision mirror. “That’s it,” he said. “She’s stopped.” He cruised along, hunting for a parking space, and raised his voice. “You watching, Layla?”
“We’re a couple of hundred yards behind,” came Tammy’s voice. “When they get out we’ll cruise past to see which house she goes in.”
&n
bsp; “Okay.”
With a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, both cars finally managed to park within a block of Katherine’s. Tammy called in to report the house number, and then they all settled in to wait, with a few desultory conversations on cell phones.
Finally, Scott nodded at the brightly woven bag between Georgie’s feet. “Go on, have a look. You won’t settle until you do.”
She darted a quick look at him. “How did you know I brought it?”
“I know you. Nick has located her, now see if you can find out more.”
Georgie reached down and pulled the bag onto her lap. “I just thought…if we could get close to her, it might somehow trigger something in this…” She pulled out Rosa’s crystal ball, cocooned in the decades-old black velvet cloth, and unwrapped it.
She had barely laid her hands on it when the white mist appeared.
CHAPTER 14
Georgie drew in an involuntary breath and stared intently at the crystal ball. An image of Bianca flickered into her mind, the same woman that Tammy had photographed on the back of the book jacket, but with a face that seemed sharper. The flickering light from a candle in front of her emphasized the angles of her cheekbones.
The woman’s eyes were, at first, focused on the candle, but then she glanced up. Her eyes darted back and forth, as though looking from one face to another. Nick and his mother, perhaps.
Georgie had her eyes closed, concentrating on the image in her mind, but as it faded she opened them and stared at the shifting mist in the crystal ball. Now, impressions were flooding into her mind—she had no words for what she felt. It was a kind of inner knowing: she sensed corruption and lies, coldness and avarice.
She also felt that Katherine and Nick were completely out of their depth.
She hastily wrapped the ball again and shoved it into the bag, and let herself out of the car. “She’s conning them, I know it. I’ve got to get in there.” On impulse, she opened the door again and picked up the bag.
Scott, as always, was calm. “Want backup?”
Good Riddance: Book 3 Georgie B. Goode Gypsy Caravan Cozy Mystery Page 7
