The guard punched a few buttons and the time jumped ahead to show 15.19, the door opened and Jaxx appeared.
“Zoom and freeze,” ordered Johnny.
The guard did so.
They all stared at the girl with Jaxx’s abundant, wavy auburn hair, her nose pert under the sunglasses, her full lips curved in a smug smile. There was no way to see the color of her eyes behind the glasses, but as for the rest of it - it could have been Jaxx’s twin.
The thought took Georgie’s breath away.
Tammy was not the only one to dress as a Jaxx double that day.
The crystal ball had been right again.
But who was this?
Chapter 14
Johnny said what they were all thinking. “I’ll be damned—it could be her twin.”
Georgie pressed her hand against her forehead, thinking. Just out of her grasp, there was an important fact…something Layla had said. Layla, talking about the people Jaxx had fired.
The personal assistant before Ella came on the scene, that was it.
When she looked up, Scott and her father were both looking at her enquiringly. They knew her well enough to know she was close.
She moved to the security guard’s side, glancing down at his name badge. “Andrew, can you phone Seth’s room? The cameraman?”
“Sure.” He picked up the phone, consulted a list on a clipboard at his elbow, and tapped out the extension. When it was answered, he handed it to Georgie.
“Seth? It’s Georgie.”
“Georgie! We’ve been waiting to hear. How’s Trixxi?”
“We think she’ll be all right, but they’re keeping her under observation for a few days.” She hurried on. “Seth, Layla was telling me about the personal assistant before Ella, the one Jaxx fired. Can you tell me what she looked like?”
“Courtney? Uh, sure. When she started or when she left?”
Georgie felt that inner click that told her she was on the right path. “So her appearance changed?”
“You could say that.” Seth gave a short laugh. “That was the whole trouble. When she started in the job, she was a little like Jaxx—sort of a pastel version, if you get my meaning. Pretty, but not stunning. Strawberry blonde, pale skin. Then she dyed her hair a darker shade of red, and started wearing it the same way Jaxx does. She got a spray tan, and did something to her lips, too, to make them fuller.”
“She was making herself look like Jaxx.”
“Trying to make herself into Jaxx, more like,” Seth said. “She started talking like her and moving like her, too. Got too much for our drama queen. The day a fan asked Courtney for her autograph she fired her. Her excuse was that her mind wasn’t on the job.”
“What happened to her after?”
“Haven’t a clue. Joined the ranks of the many people who once worked for Jaxx Saxby. It’s a big club.”
“Thanks, Seth. Just one more thing—where did she work before she started with Jaxx? Or where did she come from?”
“Um. Somewhere near Florida, I think. Have a look at her Facebook page.”
“What was her surname?”
“Glover.”
“Thanks. Catch you later.” Georgie handed the phone back to Andrew. “It’s her. I know it.” She pointed to the laptop in front of another screen. “Can I use that?”
The guard waved an expansive hand.
Georgie got to work, the others looking over her shoulder. Courtney Glover’s Facebook page had about eighteen hundred friends, and her profile picture showed green eyes gleaming seductively from under a deep auburn sweep of hair. Her full lips were parted slightly in an almost-smile, showing gleaming white teeth.
The page was full of photos of her in Jaxx Saxby-type clothes, posing against all manner of backgrounds. The posts were full of gushing comments about how much like Jaxx Saxby she was.
“Bingo,” Georgie said. “She was fired, what, six months ago? More? And she plainly hasn’t gotten over her Jaxx fetish.” Another thought struck her; now she was on the right track, everything was falling into place. She swiftly calculated the time and place, and asked, “Andrew, can you bring up records from the camera near the vintage trailer site? Say from about 2.30 or so? Jaxx took off out the front gate in her car.”
Within moments, they were watching Jaxx tear out of the gate while the woman grabbed her child by the scruff of the neck and hauled her out of harm’s way.
“Good thing I wasn’t around,” Georgie’s father said through gritted teeth. “Nobody is allowed to drive like that in my yard. Wait until I see her again.”
“That’s just it, though—it might not have been Jaxx. Andrew, can we take a look at the Platinum car park at around the same time?”
It was just as she thought. Courtney Glover not only looked like and dressed like Jaxx Saxby, she had an identical car.
“She’s set it up so that if anyone sees her, they think it’s Jaxx. She could go out into the community and say or do anything, blame it on her,” Scott commented.
“When you thought you saw her come back to her motorhome yesterday, that could have been Courtney. She could go in and out at will, and nobody would question her.”
“Bit of a risk, though. What if someone realized there was a lookalike prowling around?”
“She’s hardly thinking rationally, is she?”
Scott conceded that with a nod.
“Anyway,” Georgie added, “It’d be a simple matter to disguise herself. Add a brown or blonde wig, a scarf, or a cap and sunglasses - suddenly she’s someone else. Think of the number of people we have wandering around here at any one time, popping in and out of trailers and motorhomes. She’s probably been watching what’s going on the whole time. How many times did we have an audience when we were filming?”
“Right.” Georgie’s father spoke in a decisive voice. “Sounds to me like this girl’s getting dangerous. She’s gone from playing pranks like moving a step to poisoning a dog, who knows what she might try next?”
“Actually,” Georgie said, recalling more of what Layla had reported, “I think if you talk to the film crew you’ll find that things have been going wrong ever since she left. This is the tail end of it all.” Which is probably why, she realized, that she had such a feeling of doom about it all.
Jaxx was in real danger—and so was everyone around her. Including herself and Tammy.
“OK.” Her father tapped a finger on his teeth, thinking. “They wrap up the final interviews tomorrow, and the next day is just for fill-ins. Background shots, extras. So whatever this Courtney is going to try, it will be soon.” He shot a look at the owner of the security company. “We’ll increase our security patrols three-fold until they’ve gone. Jaxx and her assistant have gone to a hotel. Georgie, you and Scott will stay in one of the Platinum Customer Care suites for the next few nights: you’re too vulnerable in your RVs. Tammy’s with Jerry, so she’s safe.”
Georgie was relieved. Much as she loved her gypsy caravan, she didn’t fancy spending the night in it with Courtney on the loose.
“There’s one more thing we need to check,” she said. “If Jaxx and Ella have gone to a hotel, then where is Courtney’s car? Is it still inside the RV Empire complex, or has it gone?”
Andrew brought up the cameras on the three main car parks. “There’s a red hatchback in the Platinum parking lot. We’ll check the plate against our records.” He called up the patrolling security guard and asked him to check.
The answer came back within minutes. Andrew nodded, checking it against a computer printout.
“It’s clear,” he said. “Belongs to one of our regulars, in here for an advanced driving course.”
Her father looked at his watch. “At least she’s not in the complex. It’s getting late. Let’s leave this up to the security company for tonight, and meet tomorrow to decide on a course of action.”
Georgie nodded, pushing down an unreasonable sense of panic.
Why was it that tomorrow sounded all too late?
>
Chapter 15
At first, Georgie didn’t know what had woken her. She came awake with a full-blown sense of panic, her heart thudding crazily in her chest, staring the digits on the bedside clock: 2.17 At the same time someone hammered on the door and shouted her name.
Scott leapt out of bed and yanked on his jeans, stumbling towards the door. “Coming!”
Georgie slid into her own jeans and a t-shirt, close behind him.
Her father stood there, his hair rumpled and his face set in uncompromising lines.
Barely able to get any words out, Georgie reached out and clutched his arm. “Dad. What’s happened?” Then, behind him, she saw the red glow of a fire in the RV yard. “Oh no. No.”
“She’s set fires,” he said, turning on his heel and racing off. “Security caught her at it.”
In the distance, Georgie could hear approaching sirens.
Scott grabbed her hand and they hurried after her father. In the big RV parking lot behind the Customer Care suites, they could see silhouettes of men with hoses and fire extinguishers, bathed in the glow of the fire consuming Jaxx’s monster motorhome.
Scarcely able to look, Georgie turned towards the vintage trailer section, where her gypsy caravan was parked for the duration of the shoot.
There, too, bright flames lit the sky.
She ran.
~~~
At eleven that morning, finally free of interviews with police and emergency services, they all straggled into the RV Empire boardroom and sat around the table. Georgie’s father had ordered refreshments, but nobody seemed to have much of an appetite. Jaxx, for a change, had very little to say. Georgie wouldn’t have been surprised if she had started yelling and threatening to sue everyone at the Johnny B. Goode RV Empire, but she finally seemed to realize that she might well have been killed.
Georgie didn’t think that it would last long. The publicity potential should strike her at any time.
Ella sank into a chair next to her, staring into space. Dom and Seth were in a corner hopefully setting up their cameras, but so far hadn’t received the go-ahead from Johnny.
Johnny still looked grim. He stood up and waited until he had everyone’s attention.
“Listen up, everyone,” he said, standing at the head of the table. “I know you’re all tired and upset, so I’ll keep this short.” His gaze fell on Jaxx first, who was still looking more than a little shell-shocked. “The main target of all this appears to be Miss Saxby, although we got all caught in the fallout. I’m sorry that it had to happen on my property and while you were my guest, Jaxx.”
She shrugged and said nothing.
“The perpetrator was, as you will all have heard, Courtney Glover, who once worked for Jaxx as a personal assistant. From the little she has told police so far, it seems that she had an unhealthy obsession with Jaxx. She dressed like her, dyed her hair like her, and was bitterly resentful when she was fired.”
“She told me I’d regret it,” Jaxx said. “But I’ve had lots of people tell me that in my life, people who don’t like it when they don’t get their own way. Who would have guessed she meant this?” She waved her hand in an all-encompassing arc.
“It seems that she has been stalking you for some time,” Johnny told her. “She has been watching the filming wherever she could – pretty easy, when we were shooting here. She saw you with Tammy and Georgie, and apparently overheard you trying to convince Georgie to be in some kind of new series with you…?” He raised an eyebrow.
Georgie remembered the day Jaxx had been talking about her as the ‘new John Edward’, within earshot of the watching crowd. “She was there, listening?” She nodded, thinking of Jaxx’s over-the-top efforts to convince her. “So that’s how I ended up on the hit list.”
“You, and Tammy – she was out at the RV park yesterday, and when she saw Tammy dressed up like Jaxx, it was the last straw. She went back to the park, poisoned the dog, and laid her plans for torching the trailers – and Jaxx’s motorhome. They found her car behind the work shed, with more accelerant in the trunk.” He looked away from Jaxx and focused on Georgie, sadness on his face. “I’m so sorry, Georgie.”
She just nodded, unable to speak. Her gypsy caravan had been the first trailer to go up in flames, and the fire had spread from there to three nearby vintage trailers before it could be put out. When the fire took hold and the security guards raced to the vintage trailer section, Courtney had moved her attention to Jaxx.
Thankfully, nobody was sleeping in any of the trailers she had targeted, or in Jaxx’s motorhome.
“That’s as much as I’ve been able to find out,” Johnny said. “No doubt we’ll learn more as Courtney recovers, but right now she’s being treated for severe burns in the Emergency department. Like many others before her, she misjudged both the amount of gasoline needed to set fire to a vehicle, and the way to do it safely.”
Georgie wished she could bring herself to feel more sympathetic, but… the girl had brought it on herself.
Every time Georgie looked at the charred skeleton of her beloved gypsy caravan, her heart broke all over again. It was not just the caravan but all the things that made it home: her carefully chosen bedspread in rich, warm tones; her treasured chinaware and the hand-crafted carved shelves. How could she replace them all? And the very worst thing: her great-grandmother's crystal ball… Georgie bit her lip and breathed deeply in an effort to hold back the tears.
She felt Scott’s arm around her shoulders squeezing her tight, and managed a mournful smile at him before she looked at Jaxx, telling herself that at least she had prevented anything worse. Self-centered, loud, opinionated, unfair… Jaxx was all of those things, but she didn’t deserve to die.
“Georgie.”
At the sound of her father’s voice, she switched her attention to him.
“I just want to say to everyone here,” he said, “that if it hadn’t been for Georgie, things might have been much worse. She put things together just in time…with the help of her friends.” His gaze included Scott, Layla and Tammy, who was sitting close to Jerry. “I know she’s sad right now, because she’s lost a trailer that was more than just accommodation on the road. It was home, and it meant something.”
“Caravan,” Georgie managed. “Gypsy caravan.”
He nodded. “Gypsy caravan. But we’ll replace it, Georgie. Just the same as it was, or better than ever. I promise you that.”
“Thanks, Dad.” She nodded at him, but her lip trembled. “But Rosa’s crystal ball…”
His face changed. “Oh, Georgie girl—it slipped my mind, in all this. It’s in good hands: Rosa has it.”
His words finally made the tears spill over. “Rosa?”
“She told me last night to fetch it for her. I meant to tell you.”
Georgie swiped at her eyes, and the tremendous sense of relief made her shoulders slump. Of course her great-grandmother would sense that something was wrong, even if all she knew was that she had to get hold of that crystal ball.
“Anyway, things will be messy for a while, as the investigation proceeds. It will be a while before Courtney Glover is in any condition to be interviewed further.” He managed a grim kind of smile at Jaxx.” “Ms. Saxby and her team will be our guests as long as it takes, to finish the last few interviews and wrap things up.”
“And then,” Jaxx said, “we’ll have to head off to the next shoot, a little late, but that can’t be helped. I do need to organize a new motorhome, though.” She cast a speculative glance at Jerry, but averted her eyes quickly when she met Tammy’s unfriendly regard. “And find a new home for Trixxi.”
Scott stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve decided that it’s not a good idea to have a pet. I’m out on film shoots all day, and I can’t leave the motorhome unlocked, can I?” She sounded petulant. “Look what happened when I did it this time. Courtney not only had access to all my stuff, she tried to poison my dog.”
“What kind of home
?” Scott said.
Jaxx shrugged. “I’ll put it on Facebook. There’ll be lots of people who’d want Jaxx Saxby’s dog.”
Georgie could feel Scott’s anger radiating. “No. You don’t know who might get her. I’ll take her.”
She looked taken aback. “You?”
“Yeah,” he said, frowning at her. “Me. We’re mates.”
“And when he can’t take her with him,” Georgie added, “I’ll have him.”
“And so will I,” said Tammy. “She can be our mascot. People will love her. And we’ll look after her.”
“And if none of them can have her,” put in Georgie’s dad, “Angela and I will.”
Jaxx looked from face to face and wisely decided not to argue. Her gaze returned to Georgie. “All right,” she said. “I’ll leave the dog. But now that Courtney has been caught, Georgie, and it’s safe – how about that show? You’d be really good at it. I just know that it would be incredibly popular!”
“No, Jaxx.” Georgie held up a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. “Not ever. It’s not going to happen.” Forcing herself to be polite, she added, “But thanks for asking.”
Jaxx shook her head and cast a look at the ceiling as though there might be an answer up there to why someone would say ‘no’ to such an opportunity. “I think you’ll regret it, but after going through a traumatic experience like this, I have a Plan B. I know exactly what it’s like to be a victim of crime, so that’s going to be my next TV series. Victims of Crime with Jaxx Saxby.” Another thought struck her. “Or maybe ‘Unsolved Mysteries’?” She opened both hands out wide. “You could all be in the very first episode. I thought I’d kick it off with my experience here, and then – ”
Georgie’s father interrupted her, which was probably a good thing before someone threw something at her. “Thank you, but I don’t think so. After we’ve wrapped up this, that will be it for us.”
Jaxx’s lips tightened, and her eyebrows drew together in a frown. She opened her mouth, but hastily closed it again when she met Johnny B. Goode’s frosty gaze. Nobody could do frosty better than Johnny when he was in the mood.
In Good Hands: Book 5 Georgie B. Goode Gypsy Caravan Cozy Mystery Page 8