Hotter than Helen (The Bobby's Diner Series)

by Wingate, Susan

  HOTTER THAN HELEN

  The No. 2 Book of the “Bobby’s Diner” Series

  by

  Susan Wingate

  Copyright Susan Wingate 2013

  (electronic Edition)

  ***

  Copyright 2013 by Susan Wingate. All Rights Reserved

  Copyright 2013 cover art Roberts Press

  ***

  Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  HOTTER THAN HELEN

  1

  Steel shackles jangled at his ankles when he shuffled to a stop on the cold travertine floor, sounding much like the ghost of Christmas future.

  Cabling, the kind used on bicycle locks, wrapped around his thin waist and angled off to a Y, snaring him by each wrist. He held his arms close to his stomach, monk-style, as if praying but he held his head up not down.

  At the thick red mahogany podium, the orange-clad prisoner stood next to a smaller-framed bailiff. The bailiff’s hand cupped the man’s elbow and someone called out, “All rise. The honorable Judge Lindon.” The bailiff stepped back and the prisoner’s eyes shifted. His lawyer stepped up next to him. The packed courtroom stood almost in unison.

  Everyone watched as the judge stepped in, sidling behind his wide bench, a dense desk spanning no less than eight feet long and three feet wide of the same rich mahogany as the podium.

  He sat, pausing midway to eye the prisoner over his black-rimmed reading glasses, sitting slowly before lifting the docket in front of him and reading the papers.

  He looked pissed.

  Once settled, he slid his black and wooden chair under the bench. Everyone else in the courtroom sat. Everyone, that is, except the prisoner and his lawyer. The judge wasted no time.

  “Your sentence, sir, in light of this,” he hesitated briefly rolling his hand in a circle as he spoke then continuing, “this new information and these errors,” he glared at the lawyer, “in allowing this new information from reaching the court at the time of your trial,” the judge kept a hard scowl as he looked between both men but mostly at the man’s attorney, “is that I have no other reasonable choice than to reduce said sentence to a lesser term, no more than two years beginning today.” He slammed down his gavel so abruptly that the stumpy, tight-combed and gray-haired court recorder jumped. She looked up suddenly but went back to typing.

  Judge Lindon continued to speak cautiously but with obvious anger and directed his emotions at the prisoner. His dark-lined eyes and the sharp angles of his cheekbones exaggerated the judge’s mood. His mouth tight and his eyebrows in a hard V gave away his disgust for the restrained man standing in front of him. “You should thank your lawyer with some flowers or something for this one, Mr. Pinzer. He’s pulled quite the acrobatic stunt. Maybe after his career as a lawyer, a career in the circus would be a fit for Mr. Ruckheimer.”

  His short but formidable lawyer, Wallace Ruckheimer, looked down at his feet over his fat belly and coughed into his fist. Zach Pinzer remained cool, not breaking a sweat, cracking a smile, or fluttering an eyelash. He simply stared, unswayed by Lindon’s comments, just as his lawyer had instructed him.

  No matter what, Zach, do NOT react. The judge can either hand down a lighter sentence or not. If he doesn’t, we start the appeal process all over again but this time with a higher, more difficult court. He didn’t need his lawyer to tell him not to react. Still, Pinzer remembered Ruckheimer’s advice not letting a muscle twitch. He tuned out the judge and spent the next few minutes lost in thought about the ineptitude of the both the Pyles—at the dead mayor and now at his ridiculous, pathetic wife. A wimpy woman with no backbone, reneging on her part of the deal. The gall! A woman who spent her life in a balancing act, walking a tightrope, blaming others for her fate. Now, on the run, she couldn’t hide, not from him. He’d promised to find her and he did. It was too easy, really. His man outside found her within a week of her taking off. She practically left a trail of crumbs. His man outside had replaced her already. Her leaving actually opened up a better plan of action, a much more devious plan. What was it people said? When one door closes?

  Yeah.

  Well, people would die. But who cared when he was dying in prison? No one.

  He remembered the letter he shredded, the one where she stated she intended to back out of their deal. The strips of paper spilled onto the floor of his mind.

  Of course she would tuck her tail and dash back home to Sunnydale. The simple woman proved too predictable.

  Zach stood there, not moving, barely breathing, until Lindon’s gavel pounded once more against a hard block of oak, this time jolting Pinzer from his self-induced hypnotic state. He turned to his lawyer and with his shackled hands they shook.

  Only the side of Pinzer’s mouth, the side the judge couldn’t see, tilted up ever so slightly into a half smile. The bailiff stepped in again, his thin eyes glancing from the judge to the lawyer to Pinzer, then quickly leading Pinzer out toward a side door, to a holding cell where he would await transportation back to the Florence state penitentiary.

  As they walked into a barren hall, the bailiff slipped a note into Pinzer’s hand.

  Unfolding it carefully so no one would see him, Pinzer read its message.

  He whispered to the bailiff. “Must I do everything myself?” He flipped his head to the lawyer who handed the bailiff a one hundred dollar bill. Ruckheimer looked around,

  Even if things didn’t work out exactly as planned, Zach knew he would still get what he wanted—Bobby’s Diner. Operating from the Maricopa County Jail, where he expected to be transferred for the rest of his two years, Zach knew they would pull it off.

  2

  The day started like any other desert day spent in Sunnydale at the diner. Georgette Carlisle was surfing the internet and landed onto a page about NASA slamming a rocket into the moon. She recalled the date. She recalled the pathetic fanfare—an event that no one seemed to care about. It was only the moon, not Jupiter or Saturn. Since the 1969’s and 70’s, the moon, somehow, slid onto the backlist of newsworthiness by current twenty-first century standards.

  The day coasted out of sight into a flotsam of more noteworthy press like the inauguration of the first U.S. black president. The moon seemed to fade against today’s bigger news like Michael Jackson’s death, news that would last for years. With an economic recession tumbling forward sucking into it a pandemic swine flu outbreak and the escalation of the Afhganistan War, the world felt topsy-turvy.

  And, today, when the world seemed in so much turmoil was the same day that Georgette posted her first ever monthly recipe contest on Facebook. So, when her old friend called, the moon’s event, the war, the economy all slid into other things that didn’t seem quite important at the moment but that would, eventually, change people’s lives.

  Helen tried to hide the desperation in her voice. Georgette still heard it. Call it intuition. Call it what you will, Georgette heard the tightness in her speech.

  Even with her friend hundr
eds of miles south, even through her tiny smart phone, the one she pictured Helen holding to her face, Georgette imagined her willowy jaw line quivering as she spoke somewhere outdoors, her mousy, almost colorless hair unruly from the wind around her face, a ballet hand grappling at the wispy, thin strands as she looked around the busy street corner in Phoenix, cars rushing past her in a hot train, bumper-to-bumper and, as if Georgette were standing there with her, she imagined Helen’s nervous frown bridging her forehead, causing that single soft fold to form between the skin of her eyebrows. She imagined her glossy lips moving over each fractured word. The two women, complete opposites in mind and body. Georgette also imagined her eyelashes trimmed with red skin, wet from recent tears.

  But, Georgette knew Helen well. Always cloaked in something. Always scheming.

  Even so, she still trusted Helen, with reservations, of course. Helen, although slippery at times, Georgette believed, would remain a true friend. Even so, the call startled Georgette.

  A mounting bank of clouds buffeted the perimeter of Sunnydale’s desert landscape and threatened action. It was early morning, a time when the diner’s kitchen remained quiet in a soulful way, the way only early morning hours can produce. Except for chopping food on the butcher block counter’s soft wood, the place at this time remained perfectly peaceful.

  She was dicing up a chunk of milk chocolate for a mousse she planned to serve as a special dessert that night. The cocoa scent attacked her nose and sent a pang of hunger like a knife into her gut.

  First, the ringtone Georgette set for unknown callers, Beethoven’s fifth, made her jump. Hearing those first disturbing solemn four chords, da da da dum and then the second set, the same but bolder, scarier, made her look around, wondering for a second what the sound was and where it came from until she figured out the ringing was coming from her purse. Seeing the display, Georgette realized Helen went from using her married name to using her maiden name again, Wellen. She quickly flipped open her phone.

  “What?” she nearly screamed into the phone when Helen told her the news. “Oh my goodness, that soon? You’ll be here tomorrow?

  “No, that’s wonderful, Helen. I’ve missed you so much. You’ll stay with me. A spare room will be ready!”

  Even after she’d returned from work that day, the conversation replayed in Georgette’s ear. “Did you hear what I said, Gangster? Helen’s comin’ home.”

  The cat let out his usual breathy “yow” and jumped from the sofa where Georgette had removed her shoes, to his bowl, sliding back to her, wrapping his tail around her ankles, letting out another sexy “yow” and walking back to his bowl—his way of letting Georgette know he wanted more.

  “Yeah, you get down. You know Hawthorne doesn’t like to find your hair on the sofa.” He made it known he wouldn’t put up with pets on the furniture. “What? You’re hungry, again, Gangster? How ‘bout some catnip? That’ll settle you down.”

  Georgette pulled out the oregano-looking herbs and envisioned seeing Helen again and wondered if she had changed much in five years.

  It was settled. Helen would stay with her for a couple of weeks until she found a suitable place of her own. Helen had sold the house where she lived after the mayor died. She left Sunnydale soon after for Seattle to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer.

  Everyone loved Helen. Hawthorne would love her too. Georgette had already told Hawthorne nearly all the stories about the three of them after Bobby died. How Georgette and Vanessa, Bobby’s ex-wife, God rest her soul, inherited the diner.

  She always wondered about Bobby’s decision about the diner. She figured Vanessa must have wondered too. Why he would do such a thing? Bobby didn’t have a mean bone in his body, so Georgette was sure it couldn’t been out of some cruel inclination to pit the women against each other.

  And after a while even they began noticing their similarities. Both strong, intelligent, sometimes quick to react but always loving and kind. Well, most of the time they were kind. Hell, they even looked a bit like one another. Big, beautiful, red-haired southern gals. Of course, Georgette being from Georgia, her southern drawl differed from Van’s Arizona born dialect, sounding slower and longer.

  It was almost like Bobby knew they would get along and manage his beloved diner better than he might ever have. And they did. Wasn’t that really why that crook Zach Pinzer ended up nearly destroying everything they had built?

  Even now she didn’t understand why Zach wanted Bobby’s Diner. Although she did remember him ranting on about “the perfect highway corridor” and “the new Sedona.” Trashing their vegetable patch was nothing compared to him killing José, their beloved gardener and busboy, then nearly killing Roberta, Bobby’s and Vanessa’s daughter. She shook her head unable to understand the criminal mind.

  But he couldn’t keep Vanessa and Georgette from prevailing, winning and becoming as close a family as possible, especially being once-wives of Bobby’s. It made her giggle, the term, ‘once-wives.’ They’d probably be adding that one to the latest Oxford Dictionary.

  She remembered also telling Hawthorne about how she, Helen and Vanessa sat after hours at the diner drinking wine and telling stories, laughing and crying, talking about the past, worrying about the future—all the things women are apt to do when they toss back a few cocktails together.

  And she remembered telling Hawthorne about a letter Helen had mailed after she settled in Seattle, describing to him Helen’s confession to her, about Helen’s feelings for Bobby before he died but how Bobby never stepped one toe outside of their precious marriage. Qualities she believed she spotted in Hawthorne—the second man she had dated since Bobby died.

  The first man, Willy, fizzled out before anything really happened. Getting involved with someone so soon after losing Bobby wasn’t something Georgette could let happen. She was also still grieving the loss of Vanessa to breast cancer.

  The timing was off for Willy and her. However, sometimes, even now, even since her engagement to Hawthorne, she found herself wistful about Willy. She even went as far as wondering what life as a policemen’s wife might be like. But it was high school thinking. She refused to allow herself these girlish and fickle ideas.

  Wrenching her thoughts back to Hawthorne, she looked at her ring and thought of her fiancée. The diamond was so big it embarrassed her. He made quite a good living as a day trader and spoiled her with dinners out, bottles of champagne and precious trinkets.

  “Three carats, sweet girl,” he’d said on one knee. “What d’ya say? Will you have me, honey?” He was such a romantic. Their whirlwind courtship lasted a long weekend, maybe. No more than seventy-two hours, she knew that for certain. It felt like kismet. One day he moved to Sunnydale and the next thing you know, Georgette and Hawthorne had become engaged to be married. It was all very quick and very romantic.

  The proposal was like you’d expect to see in the movies.

  She nearly knocked him over when she accepted. It was more of a tackle move on Georgette’s part. She remembered saying “yes” as they clambered around on the floor, making love to him in the same spot.

  Georgette felt herself blushing as she dumped a small pile of catnip next to Gangster’s bowl. “There you go, kitty.” Upon smelling the herb, Gangster rubbed his chin into it and then dropped on his side and rolled. “You nut.” She loved that cat.

  She looked toward Bobby’s old office. The extra room. Nobody would care that Helen hadn’t succeeded as a writer. Nobody would care now that she was coming home. Anyway, who said she couldn’t write in Sunnydale. Georgette made a mental note to suggest that very thing to Helen when she arrived. Helen would slip back into life in Sunnydale just fine.

  And, Georgette refused to find fault in Helen so long ago for trying to take Bobby away. Bobby was a good man, a true man. Attractive.

  She knew nothing had happened between them. Actually, she understood Helen better because of it. Anyway, hadn’t Georgette and Bobby done something similar to Vanessa? Who was she to judge Hel
en? Either way, it was water under the bridge. It was history.

  She couldn’t wait for Helen to meet Hawthorne.

  3

  Standing inside the door frame of Bobby’s office, she noticed her hips took up more than half of the door. Her denim Capris ended at each thick freckled calf. Her legs never tanned. She could live under a heat lamp and she’d never tan. Her tennis shoes were her working shoes, easy on easy off with zero laces and the tongues lopping out like an old dog’s.

  Looking up, she ran a finger along the door frame’s dusty trim. The room needed a good cleaning before Helen arrived. She pulled back her strawberry curls and knotted them in a clip behind her head. She looked into the bucket on the floor next to her. Rags floated like dead bodies inside the frothy steaming water.

  A promise of new life and friendship within her home gave Georgette energy. Helen was like her sister. The thought of having her stay for a while felt like having family home again. She had spent too many days without family. Her future promised an abundance of family now with Roberta, Hawthorne and now Helen. Anyway, Georgette had intended to convert Bobby’s office into a guest room.

  Even from the door the room smelled musty. A ray of sun angled across his desk and seemed to point to the lonely unmade bed. As she stood looking in, she remembered the last time she’d opened this very door. It had been an entire summer, fall and winter since she had gone into or out of the room. She told herself she kept it closed off in order to save money on heating or cooling. But the truth was that she didn’t want to deal with the nineteen years of memories she knew she would find when she finally rummaged through the boxes of Bobby’s things.

  Five years.

  It had been five years since his death.

  She walked to the big picture window and cranked it open. Immediately air shifted through, allowing the dankness out and smells of early spring in—the hint of rain, rugosa roses mingling with cut grass. A forgotten wild honeysuckle blossomed, spilling its sweet smell into the room. The vine bordered the window like a Hallmark card. Its fragrance mixed in with the dry pink desert silt reminded Georgette of her days as a child making mud pies. All of these elements created the very essence of springtime in the desert to Georgette.