Hotter than Helen (The Bobby's Diner Series)

by Wingate, Susan

  Roberta unlocked her fingers and grabbed Georgette around the waist with one arm. “You’ll be fine. You got dealt a real crappy hand, but you’ll be fine.” She sniffled and pulled back. She dabbed a finger to the corner of each eye. “Look. You are the strongest woman I have ever met. Well, Mom was amazing too, but Georgette, you two were equals. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “Oh.” Georgette’s swollen eyes plated open as wide as possible. “Well, Roberta, my dear girl, I believe that might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Yeah, well, if you tell anyone. I’ll deny it.” She laughed once.

  “I guess I have my work cut out for me.”

  “I guess.” Roberta concurred.

  “Okay, so, first thing. Call the realtor and cancel my listing.”

  “Yep.”

  “Second. Take a cruise. Meet some tan muscle boy, let him help me lift weights.”

  “Okay. Stop. Gross.”

  “I’m just talkin’ a little exercise, Roberta. You know, squeeze and tug and squeeze and …”

  “Gross. I’m leaving.”

  “No, don’t. I’m joking, but I do need to get out for a week, like you said.” She nodded and picked up her coffee from the floor. “A cruise? Kinda sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

  “You left out something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You need to call Helen.”

  “No.”

  “Georgette. If for no other reason than to let her know how she ruined things for you.”

  “I’m sure she knows that without me speaking with her.”

  “You will always wish you had told her. It will gnaw at you until you die.”

  Georgette looked at Roberta. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking from her own personal feelings or if it was something Vanessa had said one time in her past. Their eyes locked. She didn’t need to know. She could see the truth behind her words and heard Vanessa’s pain speaking to her, even through Roberta’s eyes.

  “I will try. That’s all I can say.”

  Roberta patted her knee and rose. She looked at Georgette, then behind her.

  “Your cat wants back out.”

  “That cat is my exercise. I mean.” As Georgette rose Roberta held out a hand to help. “Thanks, honey.” She grabbed her around the waist and hugged her. “For everything. For talking me down.”

  “Anytime.” Then she pulled back and Georgette walked to the French door.

  “Go, you little monster.” She closed the door behind him.

  “Just so you know. I mean, if you hear.” Roberta ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve been trying to reach Helen myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons. Anyway, she hasn’t returned any of my calls.”

  “The chicken.”

  “Yeah, well. If you talk to her, tell her I need to talk with her too.”

  “This is my fight, Roberta.”

  “Yes, it is. You’re my only family outside of Rick and you know what? I get to have my say as well. Just tell her I’m next.”

  “Okay, dear. But you really don’t have to.”

  “Oh, but, Georgie… I really do.”

  17

  Helen saw Georgette’s car at the diner and knew she wouldn’t be home.

  Helen jabbed her fingers into the soil of the planter, searching. Georgette had left the extra key in the pot just like she had before Helen moved away from Sunnydale, just like when she moved back.

  Wiping peat and soil off her hand, Helen’s eyes darted behind her, across the street and down the road, to see if anyone was watching. Shaking the last few crumbs of dirt off, she angled the key into the lock. When she looked down at her hands as they moved, she could see a line of swollen skin under her eyelid. Her cheek was thick from the night before, a night she’d spent crying. Her skin flushed beet red, a color that had not subsided even after the cold shower at the hotel. She had thrown on her clothing and hadn’t time or energy to blow dry her hair, causing a reaction of electrostatic sprigs to dance around her face and stick to her skin like cobwebs, reminding her of Medusa and her snake-laden skull.

  She flopped her sunglasses from on top of her head to back down over her eyes. After unlocking the door, Helen jammed the key back again into the plant’s soil and slipped inside Georgette’s house.

  As usual, hearing the door slam and the lock flipping into position, Gangster came running into the kitchen. He sat on the floor whipping his tail back and forth and watching Helen scurry around.

  She trotted to the cupboard where Georgette kept her antacid. She popped two, three, then four into her mouth and munched them fast, swallowing them and gulping down a cold-water chaser. This whole mess with Pinzer and Biggs had her stomach tied in knots for weeks.

  Gangster whispered out a raspy yowl. She wiped her mouth with her arm. Looking at Gangster, her mind spinning in all directions. She noticed him but didn’t all at the same time.

  “Hey, cat.” Her words were as brisk as her steps past him. She practically leapt over him.

  Gangster ambled a few steps after Helen but stopped in the living room where he jumped up on the couch and began washing his face.

  A thick lump bubbled up into her throat on the way to her room—the guest room, she corrected herself.

  Flipping through papers on the desk, she found a blank piece to write on.

  Swallowing hard, trying to make the knot in her throat subside, she grabbed at her stomach, sat down and flung open a drawer. Finding a pen, she pushed the drawer back in hard, causing it to sound like a slap across the face. Then, she rubbed her fist into her gut. The pain had intensified over the past week, since leaving Georgette’s and getting a room at the hotel.

  After writing the beginning, after starting her letter to Georgette off with an apology, she began crying again. The embarrassment had started with her own husband. Why couldn’t she shake his ghost? He still haunted her.

  After finishing the note, explaining everything, how Pinzer contacted her in Seattle, out of the blue and how the idea seemed almost too simple, too perfect. But after realizing she could slip back into life in Sunnydale, how nothing of his plan needed to go through, how she didn’t need Pinzer at all, she decided she would just back out. She and Georgette could just as easily have become business partners. There really would be no reason to “dispose of ” anyone. Life could just go on as if Pinzer had never contacted her.

  But then Hawthorne happened. They became involved and she unraveled when he exposed his true intentions.

  She laid the letter out clearly so when Georgette came to clear her things from the room, she would find it and understand how Helen had changed her mind about the whole thing. How she was merely a dupe in Pinzer’s scheme.

  But, as she began to tongue the flap of the envelope, she heard the rumbling sound of an engine. She heard it pull into the driveway, then stop.

  Helen jumped at the silence the truck left when the engine died. Still gripping the envelope, she folded the lip inside itself.

  Peering out from the hall, she spotted Hawthorne’s truck. He’d found her.

  Helen heard two doors slam, then men’s voices nearing the house.

  She couldn’t remember if she’d relocked the kitchen door.

  She peeked out into the hall. Except for Gangster sitting by the door, her path to the bathroom was clear. She slipped across the hall and ducked inside. The cat slipped in behind her. Helen didn’t notice he’d followed her. Then she clicked the door locked. The bathroom had a second door that led directly into the garage.

  The men pounded at the front door. Then it was quiet.

  Then she heard the door open.

  And heard it slamming shut.

  Trying to make no noise, she sneaked open the garage door and hoped they wouldn’t find her in there. But, as the thought occurred, Hawthorne spoke just outside of the bathroom in the hallway.

  “Helen, honey. Don’t make this difficult. Open the freaking
door.” He jiggled the bathroom door’s knob. Gangster wrapped around her legs and jumped.

  Then she heard their footsteps pad away. They were walking into her old room.

  She looked down at the envelope in her sweaty palm. Turning the knob slowly, making no sound, Helen opened the door, letting the cat follow her as she crept into the garage.

  “Check the door again,” his voice boomed. They had returned to the bathroom. She could hear the bathroom door jiggling again.

  He started talking to her. “I know you’re in there, Helen. Your car’s outside, Helen.” He said it in a sing-song-y manner, taunting her then the sound of something being inserted into the small hole of the doorknob in an effort to unlock it.

  Upon entering the garage, the darkness subsumed all shape and form. She lost track of the cat. She could barely see her own hands. But she couldn’t think about the stupid cat, not now. She had to worry about saving her own skin.

  Inside the pitch-black emptiness, she groped around until her eyes adjusted as the men banged against the bathroom door, yelling to her about breaking it down. After feeling around for the cabinet, the one she stored her old papers in, she opened it and slipped her note inside, then closed it.

  Unable to see for certain, something matted, unfamiliar brushed across her hand gently. She recoiled and gasped. Nothing happened, only her nerves sending a splitting chill through her spine.

  She slipped the loop of the combination lock through the cabinet’s latch. Everything else felt like dark water. She had no baseline of where she was because of utter murkiness. The only thing remotely close to this sensation was her memory as a teenager in a haunted house with fake spider webs grazing against her skin via a short kiddy-train ride.

  She crouched down, trying to squeeze in behind the. She tried not to breathe, tried not to think.

  Helen realized something was missing. The world had gone deaf—was void of sound.

  Maybe they left. Maybe they gave up.

  She took in a helpless gulp of air and held it.

  Straining to listen, to hear anything now, her eyes felt so open, like her pupils had dilated to the size of pennies.

  Nothingness.

  She crouched down onto all fours in the slice between the wall and the cabinet, trying to get more comfortable. She heard the cat mewl once and knew he was close but didn’t know where. She reached her hands out, patting at the cool concrete floor, searching for him.

  A streak of light blazed on. Someone had flipped on the lightswitch. It angled through the dark garage, spotlighting the opposite side of the room, by the entry for cars, by the tambour door.

  Helen blinked. Her pupils shrunk immediately.

  The glaring light cascaded around the two men’s bodies.

  Helen huddled alone, motionless. Her arms covered her head. The gritty floor pressed hard against her forehead.

  “Did you think you could hide?”

  Lifting her head, she saw two sets of men’s shoes. She began to cry.

  “Did you think you could hide?” He repeated with more intensity, commanding her to speak.

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what, honey?” He stepped closer. Tanner followed him. “Don’t do what?”

  “Look. I’ll just go back to Seattle. I’ll disappear. I’ll never say a word.” Her voice warbled out the words, begging.

  “No. Now, you know that won’t work for any of us.” He shifted his eyes onto Tanner. “Get her. We need to take her somewhere else.”

  As Tanner approached her, Helen screamed. “Shut up, bitch.” He cracked her across the cheek with a fist. Helen fell to the side and onto the floor at the base of the cabinet. She scrambled on her side away from him but it proved useless. He was on her fast. Pulling her up to her feet with both hands—one hand gripping the back of her shirt and the other snagged within her hair. He steadied her and then punched her in the face again.

  “Okay. That’s enough. We don’t want any blood in here.” Hawthorne walked over to both of them, grabbing one of Helen’s arms and leading her in front of him. “Take her car. I’ll take Helen.”

  18

  The deadbolt didn’t click over when she turned the key inside the side door lock. She didn’t remember locking it but she also didn’t remember not locking it either. Habits like that she just took for granted sometimes. Although today, Georgette parked her car, her little white Suzuki Grand Vitarra, in the driveway instead of inside the garage. It needed a wash, plus this spring day looked too inviting to drive inside and walk through the garage, inside through the bathroom and into the house. She wanted to stay outside as long as possible today.

  “Gangster! Mommy’s home.” She repeated the same words each day upon returning from work. “Kitty, want some food?”

  She set her purse and keys down on the kitchen counter and toed the heel of her left shoe, pulling it off, then did the same to her right.

  “Gangster. Kitty.” She untied her apron as she walked to the washer. Unlooping it over her head, she tossed the soiled thing into the machine and closed the lid. “Gangster. Where are you, you little monster?”

  He wasn’t in his usual spot on the couch.

  “Gangster? Where are you?” She remembered closing the coat closet earlier and wondered if he might’ve gotten shut inside there but then remembered petting him before she left. She checked the coat closet anyway and to no surprise was not inside. She remembered him jumping up onto the kitchen counter. Then questioned her memory. Was that yesterday or today?

  Looking inside the open door of the bathroom, Georgette checked to see if he might be there, curled up on a towel. No sign there either. “Gangster!” She had a couple other places she could look before she needed to panic. Her mind flashed on the kitchen door being unlocked.

  “Darn it, Gangster. When I find you …” Her voice trailed off from her fake threat.

  Stopping in the hallway, she looked around with her hands on her waist. She turned to the left then the right wondering why she couldn’t find her cat.

  She walked to the couch again and looked at the spot where he normally slept. She felt it checking to see if it was warm, if he was near. But it was cool. Rubbing her hands now over the entire surface of the couch, worrying about where her cat was hiding. She bent down to her knees and lay her cheek against the floor, looking with one eye closed the other targeted under the piece of furniture. He wasn’t there either.

  She raised up, bent-kneed, sitting next to the couch. “Gangster!” Her voice croaked out. “Kitty, honey. Where are you?” She felt her heart skip into a quicker pace but tried to calm down, to think of other hiding places, other options where she might search.

  Finally, she rose and walked fast to the open door of where Helen had stayed in. The mustiness of the room had been replaced with something fouler, something dirty. It smelled of Helen’s perfume and Hawthorne. Her nose twitched at the odor but she went inside anyway and pulled the chain to the ceiling fan sending it whirling for circulation. Then she opened up the window for the draft to wash the room clean. She checked under Helen’s bed.

  He wasn’t anywhere.

  Nearly at a run now, leaving doors open, she raced through the living room and outside through the French doors, calling for her cat there.

  After a half hour, she decided to call Roberta. When she pressed the button the distinct beep beep beep of a message still waiting on her voice mail buzzed in her ear. Messages left by Hawthorne. Messages left by Helen.

  But then she wondered if maybe someone else had left a message about her cat.

  She dialed her voice mail, pressed in her password and listened.

  Hawthorne’s begging voice pissed her off immediately and she deleted all four of his entreaties without listening all the way to their end.

  Helen’s messages disturbed her the most, making Georgette feel betrayed all over again.

  “Georgette,” her voice sounded urgent. Not what Georgette would have expected so she listened f
urther. “Georgette. Look. It’s important you call me. I need your help. Oh. No…” A muffling through the mouthpiece was undetectable, then the phone went dead.

  Georgette deleted it. Just like Helen. Weak, pitiful, deceitful, conniving, untrustworthy, no-good Helen.

  It was Helen’s second message she decided to keep. “Hello, Georgette. Don’t worry about me. Like I said in my note, I’ve decided to go back to Seattle. I’m leaving Thursday morning on an early bus.”

  The complete reversal seemed odd. Her voice didn’t sound the same. The urgency had been replaced by something different, something sounding like surrender.

  She didn’t say goodbye when the phone went dead.

  This time she called Roberta asking for her to help in order to find Gangster.

  Georgette went to the cupboard and grabbed a can of cat food. She unzipped its lid, a final sure-fire way to get her cat to come to her, hoping the familiar sound, the ensuing call of Zummy! would bring Gangster back.

  19

  “Yes. Helen Wellen’s room, I believe she’s staying at your hotel, thank you.”

  Music intermixed with hotel ads looped in Georgette’s ear for so long she switched the phone from to the other ear. The hotel operator came back on the line saying no one was answering.

  “Yes, please. A voice message will be fine. Thank you.” Georgette agreed.

  The robot recorder announced Helen as the guest and instructed Georgette to speak after the brief tone. A bell droned and Georgette began.

  “Helen, it’s Georgette Carlisle. Look, I’m leaving Sunnydale for a while. I’m calling for two things—first, you’re not getting any part of my diner. Roberta has decided to buy in, so looks like you’re out. Don’t even think about contacting a lawyer. I’ll fight it until I have to sell the diner to some drifter if that’s what it takes to keep you out. And, second, you can have all of Hawthorne Biggs. Goodbye, Helen. I hope we never see each other again.”