Bed & Breakfast Bedlam - Abby L Vandiver Page 0,50
she told me ‘how’ she worked her way through school.” She put air quotes around the word “how.”
“I was leery about hiring her at first,” Jill Sterba said, her eyes showing that she was remembering the incident. “Of course we have a reputation to uphold and we want only the best environment for our students. But Gemma promised me that nothing would come back to haunt her or put the school in any bad light. She said that she’d never taken any pictures or been on the Internet, she was sure of that. Plus she worked under a stage name and always wore a black wig and heavy makeup. Even though a scandal would be devastating to our small school, I took her at her word and hired her.
“Gemma turned out to be a caring and dedicated teacher. The children and staff loved her. It wasn’t long before she proved to me that I had made the right decision in giving her a chance. Then, one day, just out of the blue, she quit. She said that she wanted to keep her promise to me and something had come up where she didn’t think she’d be able to.
“I knew that she must be referring to her days working in Atlanta so I didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask any questions. I accepted her resignation and she left. I did hear, later that is, that she had moved back home.”
“Back home . . .” Miss Vivee let her voice trail off then she grabbed her dress over her heart, pulled it tight and looked at fake grandpa. “Mac, do you suppose . . .”
Mac’s eyes got big. I don’t know if he was playing along and seemingly understood what she meant, or if he really didn’t know what it was he was “supposed” to know.
“Oh my,” Miss Vivee started to fan her hand over her face. “There was a place that she used to run away to when she was young,” she licked her lips and let her eyes move from Mac back to Principal Sterba. “Just to get away, you know. She always called it her other ‘home.’ I wonder . . .” Miss Vivee bowed her hand.
“Don’t cry, Vivee. We’ll find her. That’s gotta be where she is,” Mac said. “C’mon, honey.” He stood up and helped Miss Vivee stand.
“Thank you so much, Principal Sterba,” Miss Vivee said through fake sniffles.
“Call me, Jill,” the principal told her.
“Jill.” Miss Vivee dabbed at her eyes with a hanky that Mac had produced from his pocket. “I think we now might just know where to find our Gemma.”
I didn’t want to be morbid, but I knew where to find Gemma, too. At the coroner’s office in Augusta.
“Mac shake the woman’s hand,” Miss Vivee said. “I think she may have just given us back our granddaughter.”
Mac obliged. The crap flowing in the room was getting too deep for me to stay without wading boots so I slipped out into the hallway. Thought I’d go make a call to Hollywood and find an agent for Miss Vivee. That woman had definitely missed her calling.
Chapter Thirty
Yasamee, Georgia
Thursday Afternoon, AGD
No one in Atlanta that we talked to knew a Jeffrey Beck. Principal Sterba said Gemma left no contact numbers or information on next of kin. That meant she had no names or addresses to share with us. The strippers, Miss Vivee found out when I was outside talking to Bay, did seem to think that Gemma had two boyfriends. Maybe Jeffrey Beck was one of them, but we weren’t able to confirm it and we hadn’t a clue who the other one could be and that worried Miss Vivee. She couldn’t “connect the dots,” she kept saying, if she didn’t have all the information.
With Miss Vivee being the Queen of Lies, and her trusty cohort, Sir Mac, seconding every fib she told I was beginning to think that Miss Vivee might could wrangle enough information out of her unsuspecting suspects to find out “whodunit.” So it made me sympathetic when she was upset on not finding Jeffery Beck or the name of the second man in Gemma’s life.
“I know what we have to do,” she said with some reluctance in her voice. I’m sure she wasn’t timid about asking me to do anything, I couldn’t ever get out of anything she wanted me to do. I just think her hesitation stemmed from the fact that she wasn’t sure what her next step in her crime solving spree