McFadden was amused that she didn’t even get the irony of what she was saying. But this Paulette was clearly a follower. A naïve follower. Big, bad Georgina had come into her life and taken over.

Now as McFadden sat down again across the table from Paulette, he looked at her kindly. “Georgina’s grandmother lived in New York. That fact didn’t come up until my colleague in New York asked me to find out if you knew anything about her. You didn’t think it was important to mention her when we first started talking tonight?”

Paulette blinked. “No. We’d been talking about what she did to the guys she picked up and her ex-boyfriend, Huck. She was obsessed by him.”

“Did Georgina mention any special places she went with her grandmother on her visits to New York?”

“No. There was only one night when she really talked to me about her grandmother.”

“When was that?”

“It wasn’t long after we met. One night a lady came into the diner. Georgina’s eyes got all watery. I’d never seen her like that before. She rushed into the ladies room, and I followed her to see if she was okay. Turns out that the woman looked so much like Georgina’s grandmother, it was really upsetting for her. She was trying so hard not to cry but she said the sight of that woman brought all her sadness to the surface. I told her I’d take her out for a drink after we got off work. We went to a bar, sat in the corner, and she poured her heart out, as much as someone like Georgina would, about her grandmother. That’s when we got close.”

McFadden waited.

“When Georgina was a baby, her father died. Her mother lived with different guys, and they moved around a lot. Georgina’s paternal grandmother lived in New York City. She said she loved to go visit her, and wanted to live with her, but Georgina’s mother wouldn’t allow it. She still liked to think of herself as a mother even though she pretty much ignored Georgina. But her grandmother doted on her. She took her on trips. They were going on vacation together and that’s when the grandmother died in a car accident. I think Georgina felt responsible. After that night in the bar, Georgina didn’t talk about her grandmother to me again. If I brought the subject up, she brushed me off. It was almost like she was embarrassed that she’d been so open.”

“Was Georgina in the car with her grandmother when she died?”

“No.”

“But they were on vacation together?”

Paulette looked slightly exasperated. “They weren’t on vacation together. They were going on vacation together. Her grandmother was in a cab on the way to the airport when the accident happened. She was planning to arrive in Miami first and meet Georgina’s flight when it came in. It was before cell phones, so by the time Georgina’s mother heard about the accident, Georgina was in Miami with someone from the airline, waiting for her grandmother to pick her up.”