Nobody's Child (Georgia Davis Series) (5 page)

B
y the time Georgia left Mickey’s, the wind had kicked up, spitting pinpricks of sleet that stung her face. When she got to the car she turned the heat and defroster on high.

Sam jettisoned her guy soon after Georgia. After what happened to Jay, Noel claimed to be “separated.” Not good enough, said Sam, who, after the men made a hasty exit, ranted about the nerve of some men who thought—no—expected women to gratefully drop their panties after one drink.

Like Sam, Georgia was irritated too. Not that Jay was dangerous. Deceptive, but probably innocuous. No. Her disappointment was more subtle: she had allowed herself to hope. To expect something good would happen just because she was ready for it. She should have known that anytime she pretended to be a normal person, someone for whom good things happened as a matter of course, God reminded her that wasn’t his plan.

She parked around the corner and trudged to her door, trying to shield herself from the sleet. She had more SUVs to check out, but she wasn’t optimistic. The odds of finding out why the guy had been tailing her were growing slimmer. This was one of the times she missed being a cop.

She’d call Gutierrez tomorrow. They would have done the autopsy—maybe she’d learn something. Maybe he’d let her read the GPRs. Aside from that, though, there wasn’t a lot more she could do. She wasn’t hurt, and no one was threatening her. It might be time to let it go.

She entered the vestibule. On the left wall were six mailboxes. Below them was a small table covered with junk mail. One was for a new pizza delivery place. Someone else wanted to clean her carpets. Nothing interesting or even important, except bills. That’s why she only checked her mail every few days. She slid in a key and pulled out her mail: ComEd, phone, and cable bills, and a long white envelope with a blue Post-it attached. She read the Post-it:

Found this wedged between the wall and the table. Don’t know how long.

It was signed by one of her upstairs neighbors. She turned it over. Stamped, addressed to her in black ink, but scratchy penmanship. No return address. The envelope was so light she wasn’t sure anything was inside. She held it up. Maybe a sheet of paper.

She climbed up to her apartment. Inside she peeled off her coat, gloves, and hat and took the mail into the kitchen. She didn’t like unidentified mail. She considered not opening it. She considered putting on gloves in case it contained a toxic substance. No. She was being paranoid. She shook it lightly. The contents didn’t move. If it was powder, there was only a trace amount. She was reasonably confident whatever was inside wouldn’t explode. She considered asking her neighbor upstairs what he knew about it, but it was already after ten. Too late.

She took a breath and opened it. A small scrap of paper drifted to the floor. She picked it up. Thin, opaque, as scratchy as tissue paper, it had skinny red and yellow stripes on one side. It looked like a fast-food wrapper. She smelled it. A faint odor of grease. She noticed a brown smudge in one corner. Ketchup? There was also the black bleed-through of writing from the other side. She turned it over. Written in the same jagged penmanship as the envelope was a note.

Georgia, I am your half sister, Savannah. I’m in Chicago and I’m pregnant.

I need your help. Please find me. 

G
eorgia wandered around her apartment, the note in her hand. She didn’t have a sister. It was a hoax. A crude, tasteless joke. You just don’t barge into someone’s life and turn it upside down like that. Sure, there were people who didn’t like her. She probably had an enemy or two. But she didn’t know anyone with the nerve to do this. It had to be a lie.

She padded into the kitchen. Sleep would be impossible. She brewed a pot of coffee. She carefully anchored the note on the counter with an empty mug. The coffeepot beeped. She poured and took a sip. Was this why she’d been tailed? Someone wanted to tell her she had a sister? No. There was no reason to think the tail who’d been gunned down was connected to this note.

The phone call the other night was another matter. Was someone—even “Savannah” herself—calling? If so, why not leave a message? Or text? Unless she couldn’t. Maybe she was doing it in secret, contacting her on the sly. Is that why she couldn’t talk? Because she got caught? But why
wouldn’t
someone want Georgia to know she had a sister? Why force the caller, whoever it was, to hang up? Because it was a lie? Or the truth?

* * *

Georgia had been an only child. Or so she thought. Her father was a cop, her mother, Jobeth, a housewife who abandoned her when Georgia was ten. She knew for a fact that her father never looked at other women afterward. Until the day he died, his liver and heart pickled by booze, he hated women. In fact, as she matured, he began to blame Georgia for his problems.

It didn’t help that she had long blond hair, large brown eyes, and a knockout figure that must have reminded him of her mother. Or that she spent most of high school in a blur of backseats, booze, and weed. Until the night she staggered home, lipstick and mascara smeared, and her father pulled out the belt. Shouting that she was just like her mother, a no-good tramp who whored her way out of his life. Two weeks later, when he hit her again, Georgia moved out.

Her mother, on the other hand, was an enigma. She’d been a good mother, but there was something off about her. As if she couldn’t let herself be happy for longer than brief moments. They’d be making cookies, laughing and teasing and eating the raw batter despite her mother’s warnings that she’d get a tummy ache. But then her mother would suddenly withdraw and behave as if Georgia was invisible.

Georgia would tug on her sleeve and say, “Mommy, did you hear me?” Sometimes it worked, and her mother snapped back. But other times, her mother ignored her and stared into space, her eyes a mix of sorrow, isolation, and fear. As if she was a fragile bird trapped and chained to its roost like that painting and book everyone was talking about. Now, years later, Georgia thought she knew why, but back then, she had no clue that her father was an abusive monster. They—her mother especially—had kept it hidden.

Then came the day Georgia returned home from school and found her mother gone. Her father claimed to have no idea where she’d gone or why. Georgia waited for her to come back, but after a few desperate, soul-crushing months, she persuaded herself she didn’t care. Her mother was gone. She didn’t love Georgia. Which meant that Georgia was fundamentally unlovable.

That was borne out by the absence of any contact going forward. Her mother couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge Georgia was still alive. What was wrong with a phone call? Or one of those crappy “Thinking of You” cards? Even an email? It was as if her mother had fallen off a cliff, taking all of Georgia’s love and affection with her. And now, if the note was the truth, it seemed as if her mother had replaced her with another daughter, as easily as switching toothpaste.

Georgia took her coffee and the scrap of paper into her bedroom and sat on the bed. The tick of her alarm clock sliced the silence like a blade. She reread the note.

I am your half sister, Savannah.

Her mother, Jobeth Crawford, had been raised in rural Georgia. The closest city was Savannah. Her childhood had been the happiest days of her life, her mother always said. That’s why she named her Georgia. For her home, and for her baby daughter’s peachy-pink skin. Her mother had taken Georgia down south when she was five. Her memories of the trip were hazy, but she did remember a picnic table with slabs of ribs, coleslaw, and fresh peaches. And lots of grown-ups whose perfumed sweat stung her nose and whose lipstick stained her cheeks. Naming another girl “Savannah” wouldn’t have been a stretch.

I’m in Chicago and I’m pregnant. I need your help. Please find me.

Chicago was a big place. Why didn’t Savannah say where she was? And why didn’t she leave a phone number? If the note had really come from her half sister, wouldn’t she want Georgia to contact her right away? Unless, for some reason, she couldn’t. Was that why she’d asked Georgia to “find” her? But if that was the case, how had she been able to write the note at all? It didn’t make sense.

Georgia fired up the computer and Googled “Jobeth Crawford,” something she hadn’t done in years. When she was still on the force, she’d tried to do a background check but came up empty. No “Jobeths” this time either, but she did find a few “J. Crawfords” and even a “JB Crawford” in Minnesota. Still, she doubted her mother would go north. She’d probably headed south. Or west.

She closed up Google and was about to ball the note up and pitch it in the trash when the brown splotch in the corner caught her eye. She examined it. Even though it was on a sandwich wrapper, the smudge didn’t look thick enough to be ketchup. A coffee stain? Gravy? Or something else?

She shook her head. She had to stop. Lots of young girls ended up pregnant. Why should she care about one of them? Even if she did claim to be her sister? Her family history wasn’t one of intimacy. Or permanence. Why should she care? The chances were that someone was just fucking with her. It wasn’t her problem. In fact, when she thought about it, there was no reason for her to give a shit at all about a young girl in trouble. Her mother hadn’t.

“I
never thought something like this would happen a block away from us.” The woman behind the counter fingered a strand of pearls around her neck.

A second woman in the back of the shop replied. “I know what you mean. It’s—it’s disturbing.”

The next morning was one of those bright, crisp days that made people think winter wasn’t so bad. Georgia had stopped into the Susan Hatters art gallery, a relatively new shop not far from the crime scene. It was the type of upscale place Evanston had lured in an effort to distinguish itself from the blight of Rogers Park on one side and the middle-class ennui of Wilmette on the other. Unfortunately, a murder on one of the main thoroughfares wouldn’t help its carefully crafted image.

“From what I can tell they don’t have many clues.” The woman with the pearls was attractive in an over-sixty, Botoxed way. With expensive clothes and even more expensive cosmetics, the only giveaway of her age was her hands, which, despite a perfect manicure, revealed loose, crepey skin speckled with age spots. “Have you heard anything, Susan?”

“Nothing,” replied the other woman, who was clearly Susan Hatters, the owner. She looked Georgia up and down, then flashed her a smile.

Georgia smiled back. She briefly considered telling them who she was, but the police hadn’t released any information connecting her to the crime. She kept her mouth shut.

Jittery from too much caffeine and not enough sleep, she’d popped into the gallery to take a break from the questions swirling around her brain. She couldn’t draw a straight line, and the artwork was way out of her price range, but she was attracted to art. She would study the play of light on a canvas, its shapes and colors. She would admire the composition and speculate about the mood of the painter. Matt used to say it had something to do with left-brain activity—or was it right-brain? He’d tried to interest her in photography, claiming the principles were the same. But photography was too real; it exposed too much. She gazed at a colorful abstract in blues, greens, and violet. She shied away from color in her own life.

“Well, they’re saying it was an isolated incident,” Pearl Lady went on. “And that there’s no danger to the community.”

“So what’s their theory? Drugs?” Hatters asked. With long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, she was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and looked more like a hippie than a gallery owner. Maybe that was the point, Georgia thought. Pearl Lady for the older generation, Hippie Sue for the younger. Ingenious.

“Isn’t it always?” The older woman gave a shrug and twisted her pearls again.

Georgia turned to a painting of a sailboat being launched off the shore of a rocky beach. She tilted her head. Something about that setting was familiar. She knew this place. She tried to blot out the chatter so she could concentrate, but the women’s conversation was relentless.

“I hear there’s going to be a press conference this morning,” Pearl Lady said.

Georgia’s stomach lurched. That was news to her. Had they ID’d the tail? Or was the conference simply to soothe nervous residents? Were they going to reveal her part? Gutierrez had promised not to; then again, he wasn’t in charge. Some PR flunky might pull rank on him. Having her name bandied around was not good. It would draw attention to her. And whoever gunned down the tail.

She continued to stare at the sailboat. She knew nothing about technique, but she was drawn to the painting. A lonely beach, cresting waves, a muscular surf. A figure stood on the boat, but it was indistinct, and she couldn’t tell if it was male or female. That had to be intentional, Georgia thought. The artist wanted to emphasize the smallness of man versus nature. One lonely sailor against the elements.

“I hear the mayor’s speaking,” Pearl Lady said.

Georgia’s gut loosened. The fact that the mayor was talking meant the press conference was political. The mayor of Evanston, a down-to-earth woman Georgia occasionally saw in the grocery store, needed to calm turbulent waters. She’d gone door to door after a previous murder asking residents for suggestions on how to make the city safer. Georgia turned away from the painting.

“You like that?” Hatters asked. “We just got it in.”

“It’s powerful,” Georgia said. “I feel the passion.”

Hatters nodded. “That’s what drew me to it.”

“Funny, it looks familiar. I keep thinking I’ve been there before.”

“It was done by a woman in Glencoe. She was away for a while and just got back.”

“Where was she?”

“I’m not supposed to say.” Hatters’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. She leaned over the counter. “But everybody knows. She was in prison.”

Georgia sucked in a breath. She turned back to the painting and peered at the artist’s initials in the lower right corner.
A.W.
Andrea Walcher. She’d dealt with Walcher and her daughter on a case not long ago. She’d been to their house, a palatial estate that overlooked the lake in Glencoe. The painting was a lake view of the rocky beach below their home.
Small world,
she thought.

Or maybe it wasn’t.