Sarah’s next words confirmed her thoughts. “We don’t blame Rachel,” she said. “I might have done the same if it were Grace.”
“I’m going to the police,” Rachel said. “And Damian and Cory. I’m telling them everything, so they can get the evidence they need. James will get his job back. If he wants it.”
James said nothing, and Georgie could imagine how he felt. Betrayed, not only by Rachel, but by everyone who had been ready to believe that he would do this.
“The thing is, I was ready to do anything to protect Izzie. Anything. But in the end, what drove her to try to kill herself wasn’t just the photos, or what happened to her. She told me, tonight, at the hospital.” Rachel slumped, looking too exhausted to cry any more, and went on, “It was what happened after it as well: betraying our friends. My best friends, Sarah and James. Izzie’s best friend, Grace. She couldn’t live with it all.”
James let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulder, resting his arm across Sarah’s. “We’ll see you through this, Rachel. We’ll go to the police with you, and to see Damian and Cory.”
“Yes. We will.” Sarah nodded, and then her face hardened. “And we’ll catch this bastard. There’ll be a trail, somewhere.”
Georgie looked at them, and thought what good people there were in the world. It made her heart warm.
“Well,” she said. “I’m glad it all worked out. Give my regards to Izzie, Rachel.” She stood. “Thank you for letting me know.”
Sarah stayed with Rachel while James escorted her to the door.
“Rachel is not the only one who owes you an apology,” he said. “I was pretty tough on you.”
“Water under the bridge. I’m glad the truth is out.” Georgie held out a hand. “I’m glad you and Sarah are standing by Rachel, too.” On impulse, she added, “You’ll be even closer after this, you know. Tell Rachel that.”
“I will.” He shook her hand. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, let me know.”
“I will,” she said, not really meaning it but knowing he needed to hear it. “Goodbye, James.”
Back at the truck, Scott was leaning on the passenger door. Without a word, he opened his arms and Georgie walked into them, leaning on his broad chest and sighing deeply. They stood like that for several minutes, while Georgie felt the stress melt away.
“You were right?” he asked eventually, breathing into her hair.
“We were right,” she corrected him, with a small smile into his shirt. “Our little CBI team. I got the message right about poor Izzie, but Tammy was the one who made the breakthrough. It was blackmail, but not for money.” She told him Rachel’s story.
He smoothed her hair, thinking. By the light of the moon, she could see that his face was serious.
“What?”
“I was thinking,” he said, “that you should give yourself more credit. You doubt yourself so much, but you don’t have to.”
“That reminds me. I was going to ask you something about your mother. I always notice that if a reading is all in fun, I get hit after hit… but if it’s something important, I have to fight for information. It’s so frustrating. Is it just me, or is it like that for her too?”
“Yes, sometimes. Even now, when she’s been doing it forever. You’re new to it.”
“I’m just going to have to find my own way, I guess.”
“Hmm.”
She could tell his mind was still working it out. “And…?”
“And I was thinking, this whole thing—meeting me, and Layla, and now Tammy. I know it started as a joke, CBI instead of CSI. But what if this is all part of your journey? We’re all good together. Perhaps you’re not meant to do it all alone.”
Wordless, she stared at him.
“You’ve been wondering why Rosa doesn’t give you more help. Did she do it this time?”
“Only once,” she admitted, thinking back. “Her face popped up When I was talking to Grace about Izzie.”
“When it was urgent. Maybe she just knows, at her end, when you need a nudge. Or a boost.” He shrugged. “I can’t guess at Rosa’s motives. But the rest of it, that was all you.”
“And the rest of you.”
“OK, all of us.” He tipped up her chin and kissed her gently.
Oh, thought Georgie. That’s nice.
‘Your Leo’, Rosa had called him.
She didn’t mind the idea of that at all. A new man to go along with her new team. She breathed out a huge sigh, and felt a calmness descend. He was right. She didn’t have to do it alone.
She kissed him back to see if it felt as good as the first time—which it did—and then rested her head on his chest, thinking about their little team. A laugh bubbled up. “I can imagine what the police would think. You realize nothing we come up with will ever be admissible as evidence, don’t you?”
“Might be part of the fun. We can be the stealth team. Can’t fight a crystal ball.”
Georgie grinned into his shirt. “I guess we’d better get back to the others and tell them the news. They’ll be waiting up.” She remembered that Jerry would be there too, and her joy dimmed somewhat. “Jerry will be there looking at me with that superior smile and patting me on the head and saying “Now, Georgie, be good.”
“Just keep telling yourself you are good,” Scott said, “and that you’ve got a good team.” His teeth glinted in the moonlight. “As for your brother: his days are numbered. All you have to do is picture Tammy fixing those big blue eyes on Jerry and saying,” he wagged a finger, “Now, Jerry, be good!”
Laughter felt good.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Time to tell the team that they’ve wrapped up their first investigation.”
This time, she drove. It felt good to sit up high and hurtle along the roads, back to her little gypsy caravan and her little team.
Georgie, she said to herself, you are good.
Note from the Author
Dear Reader,
About eighteen months before I started writing about Georgie, two things happened that eventually came together and resulted in this book…and the rest of the Vintage Gypsy Caravan Cozy Mystery Series.
The first thing: I was traveling with my husband in our own RV (which is actually a modern caravan, or trailer) and we stopped at an RV park in a small country town. It happened to be the day after a festival, and one of the first things we saw was a fantastic old gypsy caravan. I discovered later that it was called a Bowtop caravan, and it had been rescued from obscurity and pressed into service by a gypsy fortune-teller. She took it to various markets and towns, and set up a tent nearby to tell fortunes; she used the caravan for sleeping.
I took photos, thought how great it was, and moved on to explore the rest of the country.
Fast forward a year or so, and we were in an entirely different part of the country—and this time, we found ourselves in an RV park surrounded by gorgeous vintage vans. I was completely won over. I took photo after photo, and chatted to lively women dressed in retro fashions and cats-eye sunglasses, visited rockabilly events, and enjoyed afternoon tea eaten from delicate plates with floral retro patterns. I realized that this was a whole lifestyle for some people: vintage vans, vintage cars, and vintage clothes.
A few months after that, I decided I’d write a mystery series—a cozy mystery series, that would actually be more cozy puzzles, because I didn’t really want to have a corpse in each story. Hmm, I thought, who could the sleuth be? Where could I have these stories take place?
In a variety of locations, I thought. Someone could be traveling around, as I like to do, and find a mystery—or puzzle—in each place. That’s when everything suddenly came together. Travel, vintage and retro vans, and a gypsy fortune-teller who finds herself solving mysteries!
Now you have reached the end of the second book in the series. If you’ve enjoyed it, I’d really appreciate it if you would give a few minutes of your time and leave an honest review on the book page here: http://www.amazon.com/dp
/B00ZC6UFN4
* * *
More About Georgie
** Don’t forget…I have a FREE book for you! **
Read more about Great Grandma Rosa…
Whether she wanted to believe it or not, from birth Georgie was destined to follow in Great-Grandma Rosa’s footsteps—as well as inherit her crystal ball!
Here’s your chance to find out more about the crabby old lady that Georgie sees as a kind of taciturn genie. Visit my website below and get your complimentary copy of Rosa’s story in “Fortune’s Wheel”! (And there will be more bonus books to follow!)
http://georgiebgoode.com
~~~
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And now... here’s a sneak peek at Book 3: Good Riddance
Chapter One
It wasn’t often that a teenage boy found his way to Georgie’s gypsy caravan to have his fortune told. In her experience, boys of that age usually stood around looking bored or wrestling with each other, while their giggling girlfriends queued up to find out if they were going to be lucky in love. (“Not likely,” Georgie felt like advising them, “unless you find a male who’s a bit less of a Neanderthal.”)
But kids were kids, and she could still remember the awkwardness of most of the boys she’d been to school with.
Now, here was another one.
Bending his head to walk through her door, tripping over his own feet on the way in, he was like a puppy that still had to grow into his paws. He stood there almost touching the ceiling, and shoved his big hands into his pockets, looking everywhere but at her face. He looked as though he’d been put together out of a kit, with nothing quite fitting into place.
Reddish-brown hair flopped over his forehead, but his brows and lashes were black. A good-looking boy, but with some acne scarring on his cheeks that probably made him self-conscious. She put him at about seventeen.
“Hi,” Georgie said. Looking at him, she was glad that she had put the little picket fence around her caravan, with a gate that held her sign “Please wait here for the next available appointment.” That way, she could leave the door open for some fresh air and still maintain confidentiality. Males as big as this one made her feel claustrophobic when the door was closed.
“Take a seat.” She waved at the bench seat behind the table, and then changed her mind. “No, wait. You’ve got such long legs; you might be more comfortable in a chair. Hang on.”
She leaned out of the door and hauled up the folded camp chair that she kept handy for larger clients. Some were tall, like this boy. Others couldn’t squeeze in between the table and the seat.
“Thanks.” He took the chair from her and unfolded it, and settled himself in it. He still looked awkward.
“It’s a little cramped in here for taller people,” Georgie said, sitting opposite him. “Can I get you a soda? Or a water?”
He shook his head, still not meeting her eyes.
Okay, thought Georgie. This was going to be a getting-blood-out-of-a-stone exercise.
“Have you been to a fortune-teller before?” she asked pleasantly.
That made him look at her—glower at her, more like. “No.”
She gave a mental sigh, but persisted. “So what brought you here today?”
“Entertainment,” he said, his brown eyes challenging. “Isn’t that what it says on the sign? That none of this is for real?”
Her carefully hand-lettered sign did indeed say for entertainment purposes only, to comply with the law… but what was he getting at?
“Fortune-telling can be entertainment, yes,” she said carefully.
He seemed to struggle with himself, and then forced a smile. “You have to say that, right? But you can tell the future. You advise people.”
Georgie sat and looked at him for a moment, trying to work out his agenda. Was this a boy who needed help, but was putting on an aggressive front to hide his embarrassment? Or was he trying to bait her?
“People ask me questions,” she said finally, “and I do my best to answer them. You have to understand that I don’t base what I say on facts. How could I? I don’t know the people who come to me. I don’t know you. I have no idea why I know some of the things I do, and that’s why I class it as entertainment.” She shrugged. “Make of it what you will…just remember that in the end, we all have to make our own decisions.”
“What if I don’t agree with what you say?” His Adam’s apple moved convulsively as he swallowed. “What if I think it’s all rubbish and refuse to pay you?”
Then I think I’d recommend that your mother give you a good spanking, she thought, but kept calm. There was something going on here.
“If you felt that strongly,” she said, “then I’d let you go and write it off to experience. I’m here to help people, not to make their lives more difficult.”
“Hah. So you admit it. How can you help people with problems if you can’t really see into the future?”
Georgie sighed. Did she really need this? “What’s your name?”
He set his jaw. “You should be able to see that in your crystal ball, shouldn’t you?”
“It’s possible,” she said. “Give me a false name if you want to. I need to call you something.”
“Anthony,” he said.
Nick, Georgie heard, as clear as a bell. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a wisp of white mist forming in her crystal ball. She ignored it, maintaining eye contact with the boy.
“Fine, Nick,” she said. “Anthony it will be, if that’s what you prefer.”
His eyes widened and his lips parted in surprise. “How did you do that?”
“Lucky guess,” Georgie said dryly. “It couldn’t possibly be the crystal ball. Tell me why you’re here, Anthony.”
“Well, if you know what it is, there’s no point,” he said sulkily. “Just go ahead and tell me my fortune.”
End of Excerpt from
Good Riddance, Book 3 of the Georgie B. Goode Gypsy Caravan Cozy Mystery Series
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
GEORGIE BE GOOD
Copyright notice
Get Your Free Book!
ABOUT GEORGIE BE GOOD
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
Note from the Author
Georgie Be Good: Book 2 Georgie B. Goode Gypsy Caravan Cozy Mystery Page 8