Virginia Hawkins

Concept: Sweet old lady with something extra.

AKA: known to most as “Miss Virgie”  or “Mrs. Hawkins”  Maiden name Spencer.

Desc: Blue tint in the hair. Get’s it “did” every two weeks. Spectacles on a chain around her neck. Needing to step up her prescription soonish.Doesn’t drive anymore because her night vision is for shit. Decent posture. Walks a lot still and she’s in decent health for a woman in her 70s. Soft pleasant eyes and smile.  The kind of woman, who keeps candy in her bag and a tissue up her sleeve.

History: Sometimes, the things that can shape our lives are so very subtle. Take Virgie for example. Middle girl of 5 siblings. Virgie just always seemed to know things.  It’s not as if she’s genius smart. (although she is VERY smart and you’d do well not to underestimate her.) She just has a sense about people.  It’s not flashy. It’s not like some wild psychic power which overpowers the senses or anything like that. It’s just that when she touches a person she gets an intuition which speaks up, in her own mental voice no less, giving her information. “This person means to kill themselves tonight.”  “This person wants to fuck you rather badly.”  “This person is struggling with her alcoholism”   Stuff like that.  Hell. As subtle as it is, Virgie didn’t actually recognize for the longest time that not everyone has it.  It took the longest time to even recognize that she had something unusual.

A person like Virginia has always been one to lean into her gifts and despite her up close and intimate understanding of human nature, still likes to believe the best of people, while not exactly being naïve about them at all. She worked as a secretary for a private investigator straight out of a high school. Between the read she could get on clients and Mike Hawkins actual investigative ability, the firm did well. Mike eventually married her and gave her three kids of her own.

   Mike was terrible with money. He had a heart as big as all outdoors, but he was nutty for buying new surveillance electronics.  Virgie however was pretty good with money, She raised the kids, made sure that no one went hungry (including Mike), and salted away money for rainy days.  And it was good that she did because Mike passed away in his 50’s from a pulmonary embolism. Considering the way he smoked, it was hardly a surprise, but it was still a rude shock.

So Virginia, in her later years found herself back on the job market after a long layoff. Deciding it was better to work for herself than someone else, She took some of that salted away money and bought part ownership in a bar near the Precinct house.

    And in truth, she liked slinging drinks. I mean, Bartenders are practically EXPECTED to offer advice.  Heck only the really young beat officers don’t know who Miss Virgie is. And there isn’t a single older officer on the force who doesn’t have a story about that uncanny old lady who helped them solve a case, or who helped them navigate the waters of a tough time.

    In fact, Virginia probably would have gone to her grave without really knowing the true nature of her intuition if it hadn’t been for an incident on the bus.  I mean, if you’ve lived with that for a long time, you could just chalk up those intuitions to a long career in private investigation and to slinging drinks for a living. (The bar does well enough that she bought out her partner years ago.)  But some intuitions seem to go deeper than an easy explanation. And that was the case the afternoon she accidentally bumped into that fellow on the bus and her inner voice spoke up and said, “This man is a serial killer and he has the leg of a missing secretary in his freezer.”

It’s just good that Virginia has always been good at poker. Her face didn’t give her away.

She hasn’t seen that man on the bus since, but the idea of him has haunted her and made her decide to learn more about her gifts. Shockingly, Virgie has gotten pretty adept at business over the years. It’s not as if she has any special insight into how stocks and bonds work or anything like that.  But she CAN, with a short meeting, determine whether a broker is smart, competent, honest, and has no problem with hookers and cocaine.  That makes a difference.  As a result, Virgie lives pretty comfortably and she’s repurposed Mike’s den and the adjoining garage into the meeting space for a group called the “Paraphysical Research Society” A group of wanna-be ghost busters and occultism enthusiasts.

The big question is, when will this group run headlong into something that puts them FAR out of their depth. Her eldest son, Eldon has already been floating the idea that maybe she’s gone senile and that these “Ghost humpers” are simply soaking her for the rest of the inheritance. The back half of this thesis is easy enough to buy, but nobody who actually has met Virgie and spoken with her for any length of time believes her to be senile. Not even a little bit.  Even Eldon doesn’t really believe it, but he is certainly alarmed at this seemingly weird phase his mother has entered at this late stage in her life.

Attitude: “Dearie. I know you want me to tell you that this is all very simple.  But it’s not. The world has a lot of moving parts and they don’t seem to get greased as regularly as they should. As a result, occasionally, things like this happen. But give us an opportunity to do our work and maybe we can make the walls of this house stop bleeding.  Ok sweetheart?”

Skills:  A lifelong love of detective fiction, being married to a P.I. and talking with hundreds of cops has given Mrs. Hawkins an astounding 4+ dots of investigation with a specialty  in evidence handling. She’s also got crazy high dots in Empathy and Subterfuge. (playing poker with her is an invitation to getting your wallet vacuumed)  Her touch sensitivity functions much like a combination of Aura Perception and Psychometry powers in vampiric auspex. Except that the information is simply her back-brain speaking up in her own mental voice.  In addition, she’s begun to notice that if a place has a particular aura, that it tends to color her own personal emotional state. She’s started paying more attention to that, especially on ghost hunts.

In addition, to these abilities, She’s still a decent shot with a light pistol, Has a garden that puts most to shame and has the best  oatmeal no-bake cookies, quite possibly in the world. Her social attributes are considerable and her Mentals are nothing to sneeze at.  

Gear: Virgie used to tote an enormous purse before twinges of bursitis in her shoulder put paid to that. The purse she carries now normally has a cell phone. (Her daughters insisted) Her nickel plated 38 (100 shells at the range every month.) and a metal flask with decent whiskey in it. Spare glasses, a packet of tissues, life savers, Her wallet, her tiny notebook, and a spray can of mace round out the rest of purse.

Home: Virgie has a lovely home in burbs furnished with books and plants. She’s got a black Scottish terrier named Mac, (Short for McTavish,named for an old cop friend).  Her Olds Delta 88 in is the garage and is still in decent shape, but she rarely drives it anymore.  The aforementioned den has become a welter of occult tomes and tchotchkes (Don’t worry, MOST of them are entirely harmless...)  She’s even got a housekeeper named Marta who comes around once a week to pick up the place. (Eldon insisted, mainly because it’s his way of keeping an eye on mom.)

Circle:Mike, could occasionally be a real dick sometimes. So as a result, Virginia got in the habit of going around behind him and doing some spadework, to keep people from killing him.  As a result, most of Mike’s P.I. and cop friends became Virgie's too in short order.  Her many years slinging drinks at “Hanlon's” The cop bar in this town has netted her a fairly pervasive influence among local cops.  She is beginning to put her considerable social acumen into making contact with the occultist sub-culture in the city.  She's occasionally disheartened by how many of them turn out to be full of shit.

Story Uses:

“Children...I’m catching a bad feeling here...”

People tend to learn to listen to Miss Virgie. In personal conversation she seems like she knows your soul, and in the field, it’s likely to save your life. Dismiss her as a daffy old woman at your peril.

“Don’t worry. I’m confident we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

She’s confident, She’s optimistic.  She has a positive attitude that is fairly unusual in occultist circles. (They tend to be a grim bunch.) and she’s convinced that the occult world can be understood and dealt with, as long as you pay attention and do your homework. Needless to say, she hasn’t exactly bumped into vampires, or werewolves yet.

Connections:

* Knows Rika Martinez and her best friend Latrice from riding the bus. Occasionally, they get into interesting conversations. Rika has a something going on, and for once, her inner voice just doesn't seem to understand exactly.  all it seems to say is, "She has a very old soul." And this seems to be born out by the nature of some of their conversations. She seems to know things that a teen shouldn't.

* Doesn't know it, but her housemaid Marta also works for Payton Breckinridge. It's a simple coincidence because Virgie knows Payton independently. She's taken Mac to Payton's veterinary concern when he started having trouble with his teeth.

* Is related by marriage to Marcie Hawkins. Marcie's father was a brother to Mike, making her his niece. Since Mike's brother died relatively young, He didn't really have any knowledge of her at all. It will be interesting to see what would happen if they met and Virgie's inner voice spoke up.

* Has met Schuyler Lavey. The things she learned from shaking his hand made her want to take a shower. Schuyler considers her a dilettante and not a very smart or talented one at that. This is EXACTLY what Virgie wants him to think.

* Has seen Special Agent Owen Maccready at the shooting range a few times. He's fascinated by the old lady who seems to know ALL the local cops, who shoots fairly well, and who seems interested in a lot of the same stuff. For her part. Virgie likes the young man. "He's fishing in the dark...but he means well, bless his heart."

* Has served more than a couple of drinks to Norman Cayce,  Officer Honus Brightwater, and Detective Bela Janofski.  Brightwater is headed for a bad end in her opinion, but she's still sweet as pie to him because she senses his rotten temper. She likes the other two just fine. She thinks Norman should probably see somebody about meds for depression.

* Regular readers of this blog have already sussed out that the maniac she brushed up against on the bus was, of course, Lewis Flowers. Lewis sensed...something...But being relatively unschooled in his new senses, he couldn't determine exactly what. If they encounter one another again...No telling what could happen.

* Is a regular down at The Grimoire. They love her there. Even Noel. The world's best no-bake oatmeal cookies will cut through a lot of ambivalent teen angst. I'm just saying.  If Miss Virgie were to meet a bad end, there is a section of the occult underground that would want to DO something about it.