Little Girl Lost (Georgiana Germaine Book 1)

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  My mother walked into the room and folded her arms, nodding in agreement.

  Phoebe was right.

  They both were.

  I hadn’t checked in.

  It wasn’t because I didn’t want to see her or talk to her or ask how she was doing. It was because I had nothing of significance to tell her. I had nothing to report. She was desperate for answers, and I didn’t have any.

  I threw my arms around her and hugged her. She remained stiff with her arms at her sides.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I wanted to see you when I had good news, and I don’t have any yet. I didn’t consider that you’d want to see me either way. I’ll do better from now on, okay?”

  She took a step back and nodded. “Why are you here now?”

  “I wanted to ask a few questions about your neighbors.”

  “Which neighbors?” she asked.

  “Mitch and Holly Porter.”

  “What do you want to know about them?”

  “I went to see Hattie yesterday. She seems to think the man who ran by her house the other night had the same build as Mitch Porter.”

  “Are you saying she believes the guy she saw was Mitch?”

  “She thinks it wasn’t Mitch. It was just an observation. Could have been anyone, I suppose.”

  “I don’t care what she thinks or what she doesn’t. It wasn’t him.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I know him. He’d never harm Jack, and he wouldn’t take Lark.”

  “Why don’t you like Holly Porter?”

  She sat back on the sofa and crossed one leg over the other. “Hey, Mom, I feel like I need to eat something. Could you make me a salad?”

  My mother twisted up her face like she was annoyed. She wanted to stay and soak up every salacious detail. But she’d never been any good at refusing Phoebe anything.

  My mother nodded and exited the room.

  I sat next to Phoebe.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I was wrong,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “Holly. I thought she liked Jack.”

  “Why?”

  “She’d do things sometimes like rest her hand on his arm or run her hand down his back. I was miffed about it for a while. I’m over it now.”

  “How do you know she didn’t like him?”

  Phoebe lowered her voice. “Because she started doing it to me too.”

  The conversation had taken an unexpected turn.

  “You’re saying Holly started touching your arm and stuff?”

  “Yeah. She’s an expressive person. The more I clued in to it, the more I realized she did it to everyone, and I’d stewed over it for no reason. I’m not saying she’s my favorite person. She’s a bit odd, but she’s harmless.”

  I wasn’t sure why the news was something my mother couldn’t hear. Phoebe hadn’t said anything remarkable—yet.

  “Maybe Holly realized you’d witnessed her hands-on approach and decided it would be best to do it to you too, so you didn’t suspect she had feelings for Jack,” I said.

  Phoebe leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “Holly loves Mitch, but she, umm ... she also loves women. She wasn’t attracted to Jack. She was attracted to me. Still is, I think.”

  Of all the things I thought she might say, Holly’s feelings for women wasn’t one of them.

  “How did you find out?” I asked.

  “She told me a while back, after you’d gone. She knew I was acting weird toward her, and she thought it was because I realized she’d flirted with me from time to time. I hadn’t, though. When someone is interested in me, I tend to be the last one to notice.”

  “Does her husband know?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He’s cool with it. She doesn’t act on it, I don’t think, not since they’ve been together.”

  My mother returned with the salad, which could have earned her a gold medal for being made in record time.

  She smiled at us as if to say, “What did I miss?”

  I had another question for Phoebe, one I’d hoped to ask before my mother returned, but I hadn’t been fast enough, and it had to be asked.

  “Phoebe,” I said, “did you know Jack hired a private investigator?”

  Her eyes widened.

  She didn’t know.

  “What?” she said. “When?”

  “In the weeks before he died.”

  “Who told you he hired a private investigator?”

  “Terry Pearson.”

  “Oh. Well, if Terry said it, then Jack must have.”

  “Why on earth would he hire a PI?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m meeting with the guy later today.”

  I wanted to probe my sister further over her relationship with Jack to see if she might change her tune now that he’d passed away. But she’d never tell me anything different in front of our mother. It would have to wait.

  “Does ... uhh ... Willy have a tendency to hide things in his cat bed?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “All the time. Drives me nuts, I swear. It started with him wandering around at night and bringing back random things he found in the neighbors’ yards. He’d leave the trinkets in the doorway of my room. I had no idea where they came from, so I started throwing them away. Then he scratched a hole in his bed and started hiding things there. I’ve replaced his bed three times in the last six months.”

  “I found something interesting in his bed last night. I’ve dropped it off to the coroner for processing.”

  “What was it?”

  “A money clip with the initials TP on it.” I took out my cell phone, scrolled through a few photos, and turned the phone toward her. “Any chance you recognize it?”

  Phoebe and my mother leaned in.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” Phoebe said.

  “Me either,” my mom said.

  “It’s possible it fell out of the man’s pocket when he was running,” I said. “and Willy found it and hid it in his bed.”

  “A cat sleuth,” my mother said. “Who knew? Maybe Willy saw the whole thing. Too bad pets can’t talk, eh?”

  Phoebe glanced across the room at a framed picture sitting on top of my mother’s piano. In the photo, Lark held a blue ribbon from winning first place in a cupcake contest at last year’s fair. Phoebe stared at the photo until her eyes blurred, and then she looked away.

  My mother swiped the photo off of the piano and opened a drawer to stick it inside.

  “No, Mom, don’t,” Phoebe said. “If you put it away, it’s like we’ve given up on her. It’s like she’s already dead.”

  Tears gushed from Phoebe’s eyes, and I grabbed her hand. “I will find her, Phoebe. I will bring her home.”

  My phone buzzed, and I looked down to see a message from Hattie. It said: I need you to come over please. Today. Not three days from now.

  I replied and said I’d be there soon.

  I stayed with Phoebe until she calmed down and then said my goodbyes and headed outside to find my brother’s car pulling up in the driveway.

  Great.

  I wasn’t in the mood to deal with which chameleon Tasha was today. Paul got out of the car, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He appeared to be alone.

  “Hey, sis,” he said.

  “What are you up to today?”

  “The usual. You?”

  He held up a paper sack from In-N-Out. “Just went for a burger run.”

  I checked the time.

  It was just before eleven in the morning.

  “It’s a bit early for hamburgers, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “We don’t all get our daily protein from eggs.” He grinned. “I have an extra burger in the bag if you’re interested. Want one?”

  “Thanks, I’m fine.”

  “Are you?”

  “Are you?” I asked. “How are things with Tasha?”

  “They aren’t. Wish you wouldn’t have told
her to talk to me about how she’s been feeling.”

  “Why not? She needed to get it out.”

  “I was kinda hoping the conversation could wait. There’s a lot going on right now. I wanted deal with it later. Guess it’s too late now.”

  It seemed I didn’t compare to Dear Abby after all.

  “What happened?” I said.

  He set the bag on top of the car, leaned against it, and ran a hand through his hair. “Guess I might as well say it. You’ll all find out soon anyway.”

  “Find out what?”

  “We broke up last night.”

  So far, my only success had been in becoming a wrecking ball.

  “Isn’t there anything the two of you can do to work it out?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m done, Gigi. I don’t want to be married to her anymore.”

  “Why? Is it because she accused you of sleeping with someone else?”

  “No ... yeah ... maybe. Gosh, I don’t know. And she’s wrong, by the way. I haven’t slept with anyone else. I’m not having an affair.”

  “She said you lied to her about going to a basketball game with one of your friends.”

  “Yeah, well, my buddy backed out at the last minute, and I decided I’d go alone. If I had told Tasha he wasn’t coming, she would have invited herself to come with me. I shouldn’t have lied, but we’d been having problems, and I needed some time to myself.”

  “If Tasha hadn’t accused you of having an affair, would it still be over between you two?”

  He nodded. “What’s happened with us ... it’s not about any one thing. It’s about a lot of things. I stayed quiet when I should have spoken up, put up with things I shouldn’t have tolerated. We resided in the same house together, but it’s been over between us for a while now. For me, at least.”

  “It was a shock to hear she slept with Liam.”

  Paul shrugged. “I don’t blame her for what she did, and I don’t blame Liam, either. I’ve been checked out of our marriage for a long time. I wasn’t giving her the attention she needed, so she found it with someone else. She felt abandoned by me. I don’t think she meant for it to happen. It just did.”

  Paul had always been the most levelheaded, honest member of our family, and today was no exception.

  “I’ll support you either way,” I said. “I just want you to be happy. How do you feel about your decision?”

  “I feel, I dunno, free, I guess. Freer than I’ve felt in a long time.” He grabbed the bag off the top of the car and headed in my direction. “Better get these burgers inside before they get cold. By the way, guess who I ran into this morning?”

  “Who?”

  “Tiffany Wheeler.”

  “I’m not surprised she’s here. I may have given her card to someone yesterday.”

  “Yeah, she said you did. She’s taking the case, I guess. Who’s she representing?”

  “Jack’s former clients.”

  It was much easier than saying they were the people responsible for the fire at Jack’s office and the death of his assistant.

  “Did she say anything else?” I asked.

  “She said she hadn’t heard from you in a while and was glad to hear you’re back in town. You should give her a call.”

  “Once I’ve found Lark, I will.”

  “I’m here for you, you know, if you, uhh ... need me for anything.”

  “I know. You’re a good brother, Paul. I’d love to stick around and talk more, but I have somewhere I have to be now. Maybe later?”

  He nodded. “Sure, give me a ring when you’re free. I’m around.”

  Hattie was in her front yard when I arrived, dressed in a long, thick, hot-pink robe. She had a large cluster of foam curlers rolled into various sections of her hair, which she’d tucked beneath a clear shower cap. She was spraying water over her flower garden, even though it was filled with more weeds than flowers by a ratio of three to one. I wasn’t sure why she’d chosen today to resurrect the neglected blossoms, but I suspected she was outside because she was anxious for my arrival.

  “It took you long enough to get here,” she said.

  “It’s been less than an hour, Hattie. I came as soon as I could. What’s going on?”

  “I have something for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Come inside, and I’ll show you.”

  “I have a lot to do today. Can’t we just get straight to the part where you tell me why you asked me to come over here?”

  She switched the water off and rolled the hose back onto the reel, like it was delicate and the only thing she needed to do for the rest of the day.

  “You could do with some manners, Georgiana,” she said. “I’m just trying to help.”

  And she could do with getting to the point.

  “I’m just trying to figure out why I’m here,” I said. “You still haven’t given me a straight answer.”

  “It’s always rush, rush, rush when it comes to you. Do you ever stop for a minute and breathe or take the time to look around? You might see how much life you’re missing if you did.”

  I stopped when I needed to stop.

  Right now, I needed to go.

  “Why am I here?” I asked.

  She shuffled past me and motioned for me to follow her inside the house. We walked into her craft room, and she riffled through various items all over the top of her desk and muttered, “Hmm. Where has it gone to now? It was just here. Yes, yes, I’m sure it was. I set it on the desk, and then I sent you the text, and now it appears to have disappeared.”

  I sighed.

  It was going to be a long day.

  “What has disappeared?” I asked.

  “Oh, right. I remember what I did with it now. My desk was such a mess, and I wanted to put it in a safe place so I wouldn’t lose it, so I stuck it on the refrigerator. I swear, my head is just not screwed on all the way these days.”

  The refrigerator.

  Got it.

  I pivoted and walked out of the room.

  “Hang on,” she called after me. “Wait just a minute. Wait for me.”

  I kept on going, reached the refrigerator, and noticed it wasn’t much more organized than the desk. I guesstimated she had at least fifty magnets of all shapes and sizes covering the door, and half of them were in use.

  “What am I looking for, Hattie?” I asked.

  She held a hand out in front of her. “Stand aside, and I’ll show you.”

  I slid to the right and bit my tongue a few moments longer.

  “All right, now,” she said. “I think, yes, yes. It’s here. Found it.”

  She removed a colorful magnet of the city of San Francisco off a piece of folded paper and then presented the paper to me like it was a precious commodity.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Here’s what I wanted to show you.”

  She was proud. So proud.

  “You wanted to show me a piece of scratch paper? Why?”

  “Open it up. Go on.”

  I slid the paper open and lifted it to my face. There, written in bold, black ink were the words: I’m ready to reveal myself to you, but you need to come home. Come home, Phoebe, and we’ll get through this together.

  “Where did you get this piece of paper, Hattie?” I asked.

  “It was on Phoebe’s car,” she said. “I was out for my morning walk, and I noticed something beneath her windshield wiper. I went over to take a look and found this note. Couldn’t believe what it said. I mean, what is going on with Phoebe and this mystery man of hers? Can you believe it? Can you imagine what ran through my mind when I realized Phoebe has been cavorting with someone else while her—”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you should have left the note where it was when you found it, called me, and waited for me to get here. It’s evidence.”

  “Well, golly gee. I was just trying to help. You don’t have to be rude about it.”

  “I’m not trying to be. I just ..
.”

  I just was getting more frustrated by the second.

  “What time did you go out for your walk?” I asked.

  “Ten minutes before I sent you the text.”

  “Did you see anyone around that you didn’t recognize, on the street or in a car, or anything?”

  “Nope, not a soul.” She drummed her fingers on the kitchen counter. “Well, come to think of it, I did see one person.”

  She paused without giving the name, which seemed to be for effect. Part of me wanted to wrap my hands around her neck and shake her senseless.

  “Who did you see?” I asked.

  “Holly Porter. She backed out of her driveway and was taking her boy to school when I passed.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “Of course. She said hello. She always says hello when she sees me.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “She asked if I’d heard from Phoebe and if I knew when she’d be back. She also said she saw you at my place and wondered what was going on with the investigation. She’s a right curious sort, that Holly. Always asking questions.”

  “Did you tell her about the note you found?”

  “I, uhh ... well, the thing is ...”

  She had.

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’m not interested in an explanation. I need a plastic bag. Do you have one?”

  “I might.”

  She pulled three of her kitchen drawers open before she located a single plastic bag stuck behind a roll of foil. She handed it to me, and I slipped the note inside.

  “I gotta go,” I said.

  “All righty. If I see another note, I’ll give you a call first, okay?”

  “You won’t see one. I’m taking Phoebe’s car.”

  “Why would you go and do something like that?”

  I walked out the front door and didn’t look back. “Goodbye, Hattie.”

  Holly Porter was an attractive woman. She was a couple inches taller than I was, about five foot ten, and she had long, wavy, blonde hair and deep blue eyes. At first glance, everything about her seemed fake. Fake eyelashes, fake nails, fake hair color, and what I guessed were fake boobs. She was dressed in a long, yellow dress with white polka dots and looked like a Southern Belle Barbie version of a Stepford Wife.