In Good Hands: Book 5 Georgie B. Goode Gypsy Caravan Cozy Mystery (2 page)

“Cut,” Seth said.

Jaxx groaned and smacked herself on the forehead. “Georgie. You’ll have a chance to have your say in a moment. That was just the
intro.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Georgie said hastily. “But I
don’t
earn a living doing this, so it would be wrong to say I do. And, well, Rosa is my father’s grandmother, not mine.”

“You could change that to “has people lining up”, Lilli said to Jaxx. “As in: “she has taken to the road, yada yada yada, and has people lining up to have their fortunes told. With her
great
grandma’s crystal ball.”

“I suppose so.” Jaxx looked a mite petulant about having Lilli tell her what to do, regardless of whether or not it was the producer’s job. “Let’s try again. Georgie, please, try to remember you’re in good hands here. We’ve done this a thousand times before, so just go along with what we say.”

“When you’re ready,” Seth said, and waited a beat. “Three, two, one…rolling.”

Lilli went through her spiel again, ending with: “…and now we’re going to find out more about what happens when a gypsy actually looks into a crystal ball. Georgie, let’s imagine that I’m coming to you to have my fortune told. What happens next?”

“I usually wait to see what you will say,” Georgie said. “Some people come right out and tell me what they want to know. Others are happy to let it roll along and see what I come up with.”

“I’ll go with ‘let it roll along,’” Jaxx said. She flicked her hair again and leaned forward conspiratorially. “I
might
be interested to know whether you see any tall dark strangers coming into my life.” She gave a low, throaty chuckle. “But if you foresee any airline crashes that involve me, keep it to yourself!”

“You should know that using a crystal ball is not like switching on a computer,” Georgie told her. “I can’t tap into some magical database in the sky.” She slowly drew the cloth off the crystal ball, which instantly reflected the glare of the television lights. “In fact, at times it’s like dealing with a stubborn teenager. I can sit here with questions in mind, and be met with the equivalent of a blank look.”

Jaxx laughed for the camera. “I hope that doesn’t happen today. I must admit, I’m curious. Show me what you do.”

“I start by holding a question in my mind. In this case, it’s general:
‘What does the future hold for Jaxx Saxby?’
” Georgie drew the crystal ball slightly closer and gently closed her hands around it. “I’d like you to keep the same question in your mind, Jaxx. Or anything else that you want to know.”

“OK.” Jaxx waited for five seconds, watching her, and then said, “What happens when you put your hands on the crystal ball? Does that make a difference?”

As long as the person with me doesn’t keep talking,
Georgie wanted to say. Instead, she said, “It seems to help create some sort of connection.” She shut out Jaxx, and closed her eyes.
What does the future hold for Jaxx Saxby…?

“Do you feel anything when you do that?”

“I often feel a sensation of warmth.”

“Is that what you’re feeling now?”

“Yes.” Somehow, despite Jaxx and her interruptions, Georgie
was
detecting the familiar sensation of her skin becoming warmer. There was a flicker of something in her mind.

Relieved, she almost huffed out a sigh of relief. She should be able to satisfy the woman with some small insight. She really, really wanted to come up with something that would convince her. How embarrassing would it be to have to say, in front of an audience of millions, “Sorry, I wasn’t able to get anything today.”

She felt a whisper of air on her fingers and opened her eyes to see that Jaxx had hunched so far forward that her nose was almost on the crystal ball. “What can you see?”

Georgie took her hands away and saw the gently swirling white mist that presaged a message of some kind. She glanced again at Jaxx, curious about whether she could see it too. One look at her face was enough to see that she could. Her mouth dropped open very slightly, and when she looked up at Georgie, her eyes were a little wider. “What’s that misty white stuff?”

“I don’t really know. It just appears—although not everyone can see it,” Georgie told her. “Sssh. Be very quiet for a moment, and I’ll see what I can pick up.”

A tiny frown came and went on Jaxx’s face at being told to hush, but she pressed her lips together prettily and adopted an expression of tense anticipation.

The mist in the crystal ball slowly began to darken. It turned the color of heavy storm clouds, and then began to spin.

And in the middle of it, Georgie could see the form of a woman, running. Pursued.

Jaxx.

Oh, hell. She couldn’t tell her
that.

Chapter 2

“Wow,” said Jaxx, her brow slightly furrowed. “It’s changed color. Does that mean anything?”

“Sssh,” Georgie said. “Let me concentrate. It could mean anything.”
Anything threatening, that is
, she thought. They were not talking of rainbows and kittens here.

She closed her eyes, shutting out Jaxx and the lights and the camera in her peripheral vision.
What is the threat to Jaxx?

It would have been nice to see into the future a bit more clearly here. As in a razor-sharp image of somebody holding a processing number, waiting to have his mug shot taken before being slung into a cell.

No such luck, but there
was
something coming through. She felt a growing certainty that it was not a male behind the threat, but a female… hmm, interesting. Conscious of the camera on her, Georgie ran through the possibilities mentally, hoping for some sort of psychic hit. Jaxx’s mother? Her sister, niece? Had she had an affair with a married man—stolen away someone’s husband?

No, no, no. None of those seemed to hit the target.

A succession of images winked through her mind, barely there before they were gone. A house on a cliff overlooking the sea. A flash of red as a car hurtled around a bend in a road before it disappeared at warp speed into the distance. And then Jaxx, her auburn hair whipping around her face in the breeze, leaning against the same red car. She seemed to be on the edge of a lake, staring into the water, looking at her own reflection.

Then, as though someone had turned off a tap, everything stopped.

Georgie snapped back and opened her eyes.

Jaxx stared at her, and then back to the crystal ball. “You weren’t actually
looking
into the crystal ball,” she pointed out. “You had your eyes closed. Does that mean you see things in your
mind
?”

Thank God for Jaxx and her endless questions, giving her time to think. There was no way she was going to share all that she had just seen on camera.

“That mist you can see is a signal to me that there is information waiting to be picked up,” Georgie explained, still trying to make sense of what she had seen without exposing it all to the camera. “I don’t often see actual images in the crystal ball. If I relax and just let the messages come through, I can see pictures in my mind. Or words; I might catch a fragment of conversation or hear a voice.” The ‘voice’ was quite likely to be her great-grandma Rosa, but she didn’t plan to talk about that.

“Look, the color has changed again,” Jaxx said, pointing to the crystal ball with one perfectly shaped scarlet fingernail. “It’s back to white.”

Indeed it was. And there was actually a
face
in it. Just for a few seconds, but enough for Georgie to register who it was: one of the presenters from
Dancing with the Stars.
Immediately, her mind filled with images of an auditorium filled with people, an auburn-haired dancer being lifted high into the air by her partner, a standing ovation, the judges’ panel smiling… until the whole scene gradually went dim, and then winked out, leaving a heavy sense of what might have been.

It was one of the clearest premonitions Georgie had ever had, and she instinctively knew what it all meant.

Dancing with the Stars
was in Jaxx’s future, but only as a probability. It was a future that would never happen, unless the threat to her was eliminated.

Jaxx’s voice brought her back to reality. “Georgie?”

She looked up, to find Jaxx looking at her expectantly.

Georgie seized upon the only thing that she could share. “Have you ever been approached about going on
Dancing with the Stars
?”

The involuntary gasp from Lilli Chin Lee, standing behind her, told her she had hit pay dirt.

Opposite her, Jaxx straightened up, her eyes wide with surprise and pleasure. “Is that what you saw?”

“Yes. No doubt about it.”

“Did you see me actually performing?” Jaxx did the hair-flick thing again, preening. “Or did you just hear the name of the show? Was it words or pictures?”

“I saw the presenter, and images of people dancing, as though I was above, looking down. The woman had hair the same color as yours.”

“I’ve been trying to decide whether I can handle the commitments of the show with my schedule,” Jaxx confided, with a wide-eyed glance at the camera, and then went on eagerly, “What else can you tell me?”

There was a slight
blip
in Georgie’s mind, as though she was being tuned into a different channel, and more information came trickling in.

“Your sister will be phoning you with some good news soon,” she said, automatically passing on whatever came through. This was small stuff; safe and familiar—she recognized the feeling from dozens of light-hearted readings for people. “Something to do with your nephew—he’s quite intelligent, I think? He’s just won an award, or a scholarship, something like that.”

Jaxx nodded, her smile showing that there was a good chance this might happen.

“You should schedule a trip to the dentist soon—don’t keep putting it off; it won’t get any better.” The image of a book came into her mind, with the other woman’s smiling face on the cover; behind her an acorn resting under a tree; the show’s logo. “You’ll either be writing a book about your show, or someone will approach you about having a book written. If they haven’t already.”

She rattled off several more insights, the information flowing steadily into her mind, until she sensed that it was time to finish.

“That’s about it.” The mist in the crystal ball gradually dissipated, and Georgie covered it up.

“And CUT.” Seth did something to the camera, and then stabbed at buttons while he stared at a small screen. He nodded and gave the thumbs up sign to Jaxx. “All good. Some pure gold there.”

“That was
amazing.
” Jaxx beamed at her. “We should do a show just on you. Georgie the Gypsy Fortune Teller.”

“I don’t think a donations-only business fits the profile for your show,” Georgie pointed out.

“Tell me, do you think I’m actually going to win
Dancing With the Stars
?”

Yes,
Georgie thought instantly, but that was immediately followed by:
If you survive.

“I sense that you’ll be a finalist,” she said. “As for whether you’ll win… wouldn’t you like a little mystery in your life?”

Jaxx gave her sexy throaty chuckle. “I’d like a mystery
man
in my life, but you didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“No sign of that just at the moment, I’m afraid.”

“Well, it looks like I’m just going to have to give them a call at
Dancing with the Stars
and tell them that I’m in. Now that I know I’m going to be a finalist.”

“We could do that on camera,” Lilli suggested.

“Sure. Pass me my phone.”

Lilli looked at the screen as she handed it over. “Jaxx, you have a missed call from your sister.”

“
No.
” Jaxx was delighted. “This is too good to be true. I’ll phone her back first.”

In the next fifteen minutes, the camera caught all the action while Jaxx phoned first her sister and then the producer at
Dancing with the Stars
, and then they did the wrap with Jaxx talking excitedly about how
blown away
she was to have her fortune told by an eighth-generation gypsy, and
wow,
she couldn’t believe how
accurate
it all was—and yes, Jaxx had accepted the invitation to go on
Dancing with the Stars
, and her clever nephew had scored an invitation to a prestigious science summer school!

At last it was all over, and Jaxx headed off somewhere to have lunch, leaving Seth and Lilli to pack up and tote everything to the car.

Georgie stood at the top of the steps of her gypsy caravan, watching Jaxx’s low-slung red hatchback turn out of the gate and on to the road.

A red car, a house on a cliff, and someone in pursuit.

How was she going to warn Jaxx about all that without it appearing on film? And what, exactly, was Jaxx supposed to do about it?

Chapter 3

Layla and Tammy spotted Georgie standing in the doorway, and made a beeline for her trailer.

“How’d it go?” Tammy grinned up at her. “Ready to swat the annoying Ms. Saxby yet?”

“She wasn’t too bad.” Georgie walked down the steps to meet them. “I’m in her good books: she was thrilled that I foretold her success on
Dancing with the Stars
. More fame and fortune.”

“Georgie.” Seth stuck his head out of the doorway, the earphones casually slung around his neck. “I’m going to do a few background shots, OK? The candle, the crystal ball, close-ups of some of the interior. Would you prefer to be present while I do it?”

Georgie grinned up at him. She liked Seth, with his tumble of sandy hair and his startling black eyelashes and eyebrows.
And
he had a permanent twinkle in his eye: she was always partial to people who found the world amusing. “No, I trust you. Besides, one peek in my crystal ball and I’ll know what you get up to.”

He winked and disappeared.

Layla moved a little to one side, peering over Georgie’s shoulder so she could see watch him at work. “Now there’s a tasty morsel. What’s his name?”

“Seth.” Georgie tilted her head on one side and regarded her friend quizzically. “Should I warn him you’re on the hunt?”

“I can make my own advances, thank you.” Layla edged closer to watch him work, bending over to adjust the crystal ball and candle, and lowered her voice. “Which I may well do quite soon. He’s got a nice butt, had you noticed?”