By the time she got back to her desk, Nicole was waiting and Maggie's heart sank. "Hello, you," she said, trying to remain her normal happy self.
Nicole's attitude was clearly the opposite. "I need you to do a project for me."
"Okay, what?"
"I'm going to send you a link to some spreadsheets. I want you to check all the figures and make sure they're right."
"Will do."
Nicole's expression was even more intense when she said, "Set all your other work aside, this is important."
"Okay."
At last, she walked away and when she did, a relieved Maggie sunk into her chair. It was no fun being constantly terrified of losing a job.
*
Nearly six hours after Jackie's PI team broke for lunch, she asked Carl, "No Nanny yet?"
"If I could, I would, but I just can't, Jackie. I've tried every online trick we have. There is no phone or address listing for Adelaide Bertrand, no A. Bertrand, and not even an AWOL Bertrand."
"She's not in any of the hospitals either," said Michael.
"Keep looking," said Jackie. The evening sun was positioned just right to cast its bright light through the windows, so she got up to close the blinds in the dining room.
Michael watched her walk back to her spot at the table. "And, while we are working our butts off, what are you doing?"
"I finished with the trial notes. It's just a lot of stuff about why the Connellys deserve the money, nothing more on the dead girl?"
"Dead girl, and a big dead end," Michael muttered. "No Georgia Marie James living anywhere in the US or the UK either. Man, when some people get lost, they really get lost."
"That means the theory of there being two Georgias won't hold up," said Jackie, as she retook her seat. "Have you tried Ireland?"
Michael was getting frustrated. "Why would she go to Ireland? Why not Australia or New Zealand?"
"Okay, concentrate the search there too."
Carl rolled his eyes and checked his second laptop to see if the automatic search had turned up anything new on the 24,934 possible matches. "Maybe our Miss Bertrand went back to France."
"Maybe the nanny found Georgia and they both went back to France," Michael mocked.
"If she didn't come to the US, Georgia would have headed for an English speaking country," said Jackie.
Carl rubbed the back of his neck. "True."
Michael puffed his cheeks. "Trouble is, there are a lot more countries in the world that teach English as a second language now."
"I'm going to look at the credit card statements again to see if Mathew did anything unusual around the time Georgia turned six. He must have paid for her tuition somehow."