Nobody's Child (Georgia Davis Series) by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Authors: Libby Fischer Hellmann
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“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.
Chapter 15
“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
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.
Chapter 15
“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
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