“Bit of a Jack of All Trades, you might say,” Trev said. His attention was caught by movement outside the door, and he snorted. “Watch out, Lissa. Your favorite customer is here.”
Behind the coffee machine, Lissa looked to see who was coming and muttered something unintelligible. She handed Trev his coffee and a cupcake, and the two of them exchanged a glance as he handed over a ten-dollar bill.
Lissa waved away payment in disgust. “Don’t be silly, Trev. You’ve helped us out a dozen times.”
“Yeah, and you’ve lost money while you’ve been closed, haven’t you? Take it.” Ignoring Lissa’s protests, Trev stuffed the money in the tips jar and departed, holding the door open for a stout woman in a flowered shirt and wide three-quarter length pants, clutching a bulging brown leather handbag. “G’day there, Irene. How’s life treating you?”
“Oh, you know, could be better.” She didn’t look at him as she barged past, and Trev barely moved his coffee out of the way in time. He widened his eyes at Lissa, mouthed “Good luck,” and went on his way.
Irene, Georgie thought. Had Lissa mentioned an Irene?
“Well, so you’re open again.” Irene dumped her handbag on a table and moved up to the display cabinet, studying the offerings. “Janet is meeting me here for coffee. Just to show there’s no hard feelings.” She sent Lissa a challenging look. “But you know, cockroaches…nasty things. Better to tackle the problem head-on. Can’t do that with the cafe open, can you?”
Lissa moved up to stand in front of her, on the other side of the counter. “So we should be grateful to you, is that what you’re saying?”
Viv flew out of the kitchen with a determined smile. “Irene! Nice to see you back. Let us treat you to one of Lissa’s new banana rum cupcakes. You’ll love them.” When Irene’s gaze moved from Lissa’s grim face to the pretty cupcakes, Viv sent Lissa a look heavy with warning, and put a finger to her lips. “Your usual latte? Or are you waiting until Janet gets here?”
“She’ll be here any minute, I saw her up the street, outside the bakery. What are the other ones?”
“Apple strudel,” Viv said. “Why don’t you try one of each, and share? If you like them, tell your friends. A new flavor.”
“Well, I might just do that.” With a narrow-eyed glance at Lissa, Irene took a seat, ignoring Georgie at the next table, and pointed at the door, where a short woman with frizzy curls was coming in. “Here’s Janet now.”
Leaving them to it, Georgie got up and followed Viv back into the kitchen.
“So,” she said. “I’m guessing that Irene is the one who reported you?”
Viv nodded. “Cockroach lady. If Lissa loses her temper with her, she’ll go and badmouth us to everyone in the town. We can’t afford that. Keep an eye on them, will you?”
“Sure.”
Georgie returned to the restaurant. First Amber, then Irene.
It looked like Yamba wasn’t going to be quite as peaceful as it had first appeared.
5
Old Jim
Maureen Beggs moved a cloth absent-mindedly around the counter, wiping down an already-clean surface, while she watched what was going on across the road. She had to lean forward a little to see properly, because Coffee, Cakes and Crêpes wasn’t directly opposite, but she had a good enough view.
“I’m sure that’s the girls’ brother, the one who’s just been out setting up tables,” she said, loud enough for Jim to hear back in the kitchen. “And that must be his girlfriend, in there helping out. American, so I hear.”
“I’m surprised they reopened,” came her husband’s voice, heavy with disgust. “What does it take to make people realize they’re not wanted?”
Maureen heard a cupboard door slam, and the clash of metal pans. She gave an inward sigh. Truth be told, she’d be just as happy if Jim decided to retire, and stop obsessing about the opposition across the road. She was tired of waiting tables, tired of cooking fish and chips, tired of getting up every morning to come down and open the cafe.
Not Jim. He’d had this place so long that he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he had to hang around the house.
There were no customers yet, so she kept up a running commentary, more for her own entertainment than Jim’s. “Irene just went in, and Janet’s coming down the street. Can you believe it? After Irene went and reported them for cockroaches, she’s got the hide to turn up as though nothing had happened.”
Jim came out of the kitchen and stood beside her, his hands on his hips. “I’d just as soon the old bag was over there, not here. She’s a pain in the rear end.”
“A week ago, you were singing her praises,” Maureen reminded him. “Said she’d done the right thing by putting in a complaint.”
“Yeah, well, if you don’t keep your place clean, you’ve only got yourself to blame.”
“I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for them. They’ve had a bad run, what with the power outage and the broken pipe around Christmas.” Maureen watched while the girls’ brother finished setting up and went inside, then stole a look at Jim, standing there with his eyes narrowed.
She had been annoyed with him for phoning Stan Lambert with a complaint about the extra tables the girls had set up for the crowd last November, but Jim had a bee in his bonnet about people eating out on the footpath. He’d flatly refused to put any seating outside their cafe, even when customers had asked him to, and watching customers flocking to Coffee, Cakes and Crêpes, spilling all over the pavement on Melbourne Cup day, had been the last straw.
He was becoming crankier every day, she thought with an inward sigh.
She’d married Jim Beggs for better or for worse, but lately there’d been way too much of the ‘worse’. Still, he had agreed to keep sending money to support her sickly mother for the last eighteen months, even though he complained about every dollar he paid out. She knew perfectly well that was only because he had an eye on an inheritance, even though her mother’s little 2-bedroom apartment in Maclean wouldn’t sell for much.
Her share of the money was due to clear probate any day now, and she still hadn’t dared break the news to Jim that her mother had left it to her with the proviso that Jim didn’t see a penny of it.
He would be furious, but what did it matter? No matter whose money it was, it would help to ease their retirement in some way.
Secretly, she hoped that the cafe across the road would stay open. If their business declined enough, she might—just might—be able to persuade him to retire.
And pigs might fly.
“Well,” she said, “I’d better have another go at making these fancy coffees that they all want these days.” Maureen turned and cast a jaundiced eye at the second-hand coffee machine that she had finally persuaded Jim to buy. Even after taking a couple of sneaky barista classes over at the girls’ cafe on a Sunday afternoon when Jim was at golf hadn’t helped. She just couldn’t get the hang of steaming the milk. “Stretching” the milk, young Lissa had called it. All Maureen could manage was something that looked like soap bubbles.
Her words reminded Jim of money he’d spent on something he didn’t want in the first place. He frowned at the machine and shook his head. “I told you not to buy it. Why you’d take the advice of some uppity young girl with dyed hair and tattoos, I’ll never know. All a lot of nonsense if you ask me. Nothing wrong with the percolator.”
“It’s what they all want. I’ll get the hang of it.”
Maureen went to the machine and opened up the instruction book beside it again. It would be kind of nice to have people coming in and saying her coffee was as nice as Lissa’s.
But for that to happen, she probably need to go to more classes, and if Jim found out he’d have a fit.
Don’t close, she found herself thinking. Stay open and put us out of business.
With a quick guilty glance at Jim’s back, busy crumbing a fish fillet at the kitchen counter, she got to work figuring out what she was doing wrong with the milk.
I
t seemed that half the locals in Yamba found an excuse to drop by the cafe and try Lissa’s new cupcake recipes—and to discuss the cafe closure. Most of them seemed supportive, at least on the surface. A good many were curious, asking asking not-so-subtle questions. There was a good sprinkling of tourists, too: most of them older people staying in the caravan parks.
Georgie stayed and helped out until after the lunchtime rush, finding that she easily dropped back into the rhythm of waiting tables, her part-time job during her years at college back in the States.
“Thanks,” Lissa said, when the three of them finally had the chance to sit down over coffee. “I didn’t mean for you to come to Yamba so we could put you to work. But we appreciate it.”
“I enjoyed it,” Georgie said honestly. “But that’s because I don’t have to do it all the time. Different for you two.”
“I thought if one more person asked me if we were going to stay open I was going to throw something,” confessed Lissa. “But I was conscious of Viv frowning at me from the kitchen. And as for Irene…” She made strangling motions with her hands.
“Throttling Irene Wilson isn’t going to help,” Viv pointed out. “Or insulting her.”
“Maybe not, but it would make me feel better.” Lissa sat back in her chair and rolled her shoulders. “At least the cupcakes were a success. You’ll be baking again tonight. But don’t worry, I’ll help.”
Viv sat back in her chair and looked at Georgie. “I don’t suppose…” She hesitated, thinking through what she wanted to say.
“Sure, I’ll help too,” Georgie jumped in. “Can’t say I ever tried baking cupcakes before, but I can follow orders.”
“No, no. Not the cupcakes, I can bake those in my sleep. What I was going to say is—well, working here this morning, watching everyone coming in and out of the cafe, I don’t suppose you’ve got any insights?” Viv opened her hands out. “Like, you didn’t look at anyone coming in and think: “That’s him! That’s the bad guy!”
Georgie and Lissa both had to laugh at her expression.
“I’d love to be able to say yes,” Georgie said. “But—” She shrugged. “Not a thing. Sorry.”
Lissa leaned forward. “What about if you used your crystal ball? Do you think you might see anything then?”
“I did take a quick peek,” Georgie admitted, “When we got back to our caravan the first night we were here, after you told us about all your problems.”
“And?” Lissa asked, and both sisters looked at her curiously.
“Nothing helpful. A lot of what’s happened to you could happen to anybody—but not all of it. That’s the feeling you’ve got, and that’s the feeling I’ve got as well.”
Lissa looked down at her plate, now empty but for a few crumbs of one of the slices from the bakery. She said nothing, but nodded, looking a little dejected.
Viv put her elbow on the table and leaned one cheek on her fist. “What about now? Now that you met some of the locals? And what if we were there while you did a reading—would that make a difference?”
“It probably would,” Georgie said. “It sure can’t hurt to try.”
“Tonight?” Lissa asked hopefully.
“Tonight would be great,” Georgie said. “If you’re going to be busy making cupcakes, I’ll bring the crystal ball over and we can do a reading while you’re waiting for them to bake.”
“Done. After that we can relax and have a drink to celebrate our grand re-opening,” Viv said. “I’ll pick up some wine.”
“We’ll come early and bring food,” Georgie said. “Everyone like Thai?”
Everyone nodded, so with that settled, Georgie left them to their afternoon trade and headed off.
It was time to see what Scott had been up to while she’d been helping out at the cafe. He had planned to contact his brother Bluey to see what information he could ferret out about Stan Lambert and Amber Kaye. Georgie was curious to see if their friendly family hacker had found anything.
Walking down the street back to the caravan park, she felt surprisingly cheerful.
Then she worked out why.
The thrill of the chase. It was on again…finding out why things were going wrong and who was behind it. When she and a few friends back in the States had formed their ‘Crystal Ball Investigation Team’ it had been more of a joke than anything else—until they started solving cases.
Now, half a world away, she had a new team. The thought of her rag-tag group of “investigators” brought a smile to her face. Georgie the eighth-generation gypsy and her crystal ball, Scott, his brother Bluey-the-Hacker, and his mother Louise, who did horoscopes for a living and read cards on the side.
Not exactly a group that a proper investigation team would take seriously, but they did okay, for amateurs.
Not for the first time, she wondered what life might have been like if she’d decided to be a real detective.
6
Kayaks and Crystal Balls
When Georgie got back to the caravan, she found Scott with his head halfway inside a yellow kayak, while he reached forward to adjust something out of sight. A short distance away she could see an identical kayak in blue.
She put her hands on her hips. “So this is what you get up to when I turn my back for half a day?”
He sat up and grinned at her. “Just in time. Come and sit in this while I finish adjusting the pedals.” He stood up and wiped his hands on his shorts. “I took a guess at it, but I think this should be about right for you.”
“We’re going kayaking?” Georgie kicked off her sandals and stepped inside the kayak, wriggling into position on the seat. “This could end badly. I’m not exactly experienced.”
“You managed okay with the canoes back in the States, and these are more streamlined. Easier to control. Here, lean forward.”
Georgie wriggled forward, and Scott tightened the straps on the backrest to bring it forward a little. “Okay. Sit back. How does that feel?”
“Good. Comfortable.” Georgie peered down into the kayak and put her feet on the pedals, bunching her skirt up around her knees. “Does this look right?”
“You should be sitting with your knees slightly bent. That way you can brace against the sides of the kayak if you need to.” Scott stood back with his hands on his hips and assessed her position. “That doesn’t look too bad. Want to get changed, go out and give them a try?”
Georgie laughed. “Something tells me that I’m going to be in for a ducking.” She tilted her head back and looked up at the perfect blue sky. “Great day for it, though.”
“You can learn in shallow water, figure out the basics here…you’ll pick it up more as we travel.”
Georgie looked at him. “As we travel? They’re ours? I thought you must have hired them.”
“Yep.” Scott extended a hand to haul her up out of the kayak. “This is your Yamba present.” He nodded at the LandCruiser, which now sported new roof racks with kayak cradles. “Had those installed this morning. I’ll show you how to load the kayaks and tie them down later. For now, we’ll just go and paddle around down there.” He waved at the quiet waters of the river, visible from their site.
“What fun!” This was just what Georgie needed after being on her feet most of the day in the cafe – sunshine and fresh air.
Time enough to worry about sabotage and nasty people tonight, after she’d had time to clear her head.
That night, satisfyingly full of Thai food and with the heavenly scent of cupcakes cooling on the kitchen counter, they all settled down with a glass of wine around the dining table, with the crystal ball in the center.
“I can’t believe I’m going to see you in action at last.” Lissa leaned forward, with her elbows on the table and her fingers linked around the stem of her wine glass. “I mean, we’re all used to watching Mum read the cards, and Scott too, once he got into it—but a crystal ball? That’s different.”
They were sitting in the flickering light of three fat candles resting on the nea
rby window sill. The only light Georgie had left on was the one over the kitchen cooktop, so the dining table was bathed in a soft radiance.
Viv studied the crystal ball with her head on one side, her blue-grey eyes serious. “I feel kind of nervous. How crazy is that?”
“A lot of people do, if they’ve never had a reading before.” Georgie grinned at her. “Don’t worry, you’re amongst friends here. Some of the people that I’ve done readings for had something to hide, and that can make things awkward.”
Lissa stood up and faked consternation. “And you think I don’t? My parents would be in an early grave if they had any idea of some of the things I did overseas. I’m outta here.”
Laughing, Scott pulled her back down again. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to rat on you.”
Lissa made a face. “I don’t even want my brother knowing what I got up to.”
“I don’t think there’s too much to worry about,” Georgie assured her, not even trying to hide her amusement. “As long as you’re not on the run for some terrible crime. Anyway, it’s not like I’m going to see your whole life laid out in front of me, like reading a book.”
“Quite the opposite, sometimes,” Scott put in. “It’s like ‘Who, me, psychic? You must be thinking someone else.’”
“And that could well be the case tonight.” Georgie drew the crystal ball closer. “I guess the question is whether all this is just your everyday series of disasters…or is someone gunning for you?”
“I have a feeling it’ll be a mix of both,” Scott said. “Which will probably make it harder to work out who’s behind it.”
Georgie glanced from Lissa, with her whiskey-colored eyes so like Scott’s, to Viv, who looked more like her mother. Please let me find something to help them, she said silently. For a brief moment she thought of Rosa, her great-grandmother, and wondered if she could sense what was happening, all those miles away. Georgie often thought that Rosa had left a lot of herself in the crystal ball.
A Good Result Page 3