Hotter than Helen (The Bobby's Diner Series)

by Wingate, Susan

  Second, Kaplan called saying he needed Georgette to call him back, something about the contract. And, when she called, the lawyer’s receptionist simply stated that Kaplan Hayes wanted to know if they should shred the contract or just send it to her to keep or destroy.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, the contract. Should we destroy the original or do you want to handle destroying it yourself?”

  “Why would I want you to destroy the contract?” Georgette was flummoxed.

  “Hold on, Ms. Carlisle. I’ll transfer you to Mr. Hayes.” While she waited on hold, she leaned forward on the desk, holding her head in one hand. Suddenly Kaplan answered, startling her from her thoughts.

  “Mr. Hayes, oh, hello. Yeah, what’s this about destroying the contract?... Roberta called you?... Reneging… no… no, I didn’t know.”

  She felt slightly humiliated after learning from the lawyer that Roberta had cancelled the contract. After hanging up with him, she dialed Roberta’s cell phone, hoping to talk her out of it, but the phone went to her voice mailbox immediately as if she had it turned off. She left a message asking her to call back as soon as she got the message and that she had just talked with the lawyer, that she was confused by the change in plans, that they needed to talk.

  Her eyes dropped to the receipt with Martin’s name on it and Georgette wondered if he knew where Hawthorne was.

  33

  By the end of the night, they had served an all-time high number of dinners. Nearly three hundred had been plated, a record night. In all the years Georgette had worked the diner, she had never seen it busier.

  She fumed thinking about Roberta’s decision and ripped her apron off over her head throwing it into the laundry hamper by the bathroom door.

  “Nice night to bail, Rob.” Georgette grumbled to herself. She had been irritable all night but at least the wait staff had been superb. Cammy slunk in.

  “We sure coulda used Roberta tonight.” She said it low while she dug in her purse for a smoke.

  “You’re not just whistling Dixie.” Georgette poured herself a glass of wine. “Want one?”

  “Sure.” Cammy’s eyes brightened. “Let me, you know.” She held up the long slim white stick, waving it and pointing to the back door.

  “I’ll pour it and you can have it when you’re done.” Stopping Cammy before she left she added. “Look, will you lock up? Let the others have a glass too. Okay? If they want one. But only one, Cammy. You’re in charge, okay?”

  “Sure, George, but if we can only have one will you pour my glass a little fuller?” Her broad smile eased Georgette’s mind for the moment.

  “Will do.” She smiled back. “I’m out of here, Cam. See you on Tuesday, right?”

  “Tuesday, right. Bye, George.”

  After draining more wine into her glass, Georgette quick-stepped up behind her and caught the back door just before it swung shut, walking through a cloud of pungent smoke from Cammy’s cigarette.

  “Don’t take too long closing up. I can do everything with the books Monday morning. Just cash out the drawers and lock everything in the safe.”

  The night air glowed in yellow misty halos around anything lighted. Rain had edged even nearer. The air steeped in faint bergamot from the humidity. The air was thick with moisture and felt long silk sleeves on her arms from the monsoons building heavy in the south.

  She heard an owl hoot low in the direction of the golf course a ways off, beyond the diner. She didn’t often hear owls out there and it stopped her right before she reached her car making her look over in the direction of the owl. Back there, she looked in the direction of Hawthorne’s house.

  ***

  The car felt as if it were on auto-pilot turning down Golf Course Drive. She should’ve just gone straight, straight on home, but the car led her off track. As she neared his house, she slowed and sat forward in her chair. Squinting, her vision was shredded by the darkness. His home looked abandoned, ghostly. A shudder shot across her shoulders, making the steering wheel jerk.

  “Where have you gone, Hawthorne.” The words spoken straight from her mind weren’t expecting an answer. They whispered out in wonderment that one minute he was in her life, the next he had disappeared.

  An odd mix of anger and worry hit her square in the solar plexus. As she drove past the empty dark house Georgette noticed there wasn’t yet a “For Sale” sign in the yard. Pushing onto the brake, her car paused in the street. She examined the shell so ominous, so empty, so dead—like nothing had ever been alive in it before.

  Spotting a cardboard sign from inside the kitchen window, she squinted again to see if she could read it but it was too far away. She backed up a few feet and then pulled her car into his drive and parked. Her heart pounded.

  Leaving the motor running felt safest. She got out and stood looking around at the other houses, wondering what they might’ve seen in the time Hawthorne lived there. Did Helen ever come over here with him? She placed one hand on her hip and the other over her mouth. Humiliation coursed over her and she walked up to the window where the sign had been placed.

  As she neared, closing in on it, the night’s distorted letters became clearer with each step. In handwriting the sign read aloud, “For Rent, 928/555-1780, $750. It’s a rental.”

  He’d told her he owned the house but then again he had told her a lot of other things that weren’t true. Just like the ring, all lies. She turned away and walked back to the car.

  On her way home she decided to drive past Roberta’s. The place was totally dark. Either she was sleeping or no one was home. She’d forgotten about Rick being gone but expected Roberta to be there. Then she remembered that it wasn’t so late for a Saturday night. She looked at her watch. Only ten o’five. Maybe Roberta had gone out, maybe she’d run to the store.

  Well, Georgette wasn’t about to chase her down. She would call Roberta tomorrow and talk to her then.

  34

  After going to Roberta’s house the previous evening and pulling back into the garage made Georgette remember how the cat got locked inside the storage cabinet. The garage’s interior reeked from lack of attention, from her leaving the mess until now.

  And, she wanted to pull the car in because the weather was turning quickly. She wasn’t sure when it would rain.

  With summer approaching, the winds carried a musty scent of rain and rain in the desert not only created flashfloods from water skirting across the hard pack of the desert basin, but it also created muddy window shields on cars and thick mud-plated tires. Rains, lightning and thunder could approach within seconds, within minutes, within hours. For the desert rain was unpredictable.

  Few mountains protected Sunnydale. The desert became a washboard of water coming directly onto its hardpack and racing over of the land like a stampede of wild buffalo.

  With the garage door gaping wide, fresh morning breezed through inside, allowing the stench to circulate out.

  As she tugged on a pair of rubber gloves a clap of thunder roared nearly ten miles away, around Grey Mountain. Her hands felt dewy inside the gloves.

  She picked up the blue plastic bucket that held hot soapy bleach water. Inside four rags floated like drowned rats soaking in it. She pressed forward, still not wanting to deal with the chore, but procrastinated long enough.

  The other issue she needed to broach today was the one regarding Roberta and the diner. When she pulled open the cabinet, a gust of cat urine and excrement wafted out into the expanse surrounding her. Georgette held the back of her hand to her nose, got up and found two five-gallon buckets of used paint to hold open each door. She backed up to let out the air and replaced the back of her hand over her nose.

  “Lord.” The feces had hardened and moldered and the urine had crystallized to a dark yellowish amber. It had seeped into the cracks where the bottom shelf attached to the side wall. She’d need a pressure sprayer to really get it clean.

  “Oh man.” She thought about postponing the job
again but knew no time was ever good for a job like this one. Picking up six pieces of hard, dry droppings with some paper towels, Georgette crumpled the paper tight and got up from her knees to throw the entire mess into the garbage can.

  When she got back to the cabinet, she noticed the corner of an envelope on the second shelf from the top but it didn’t register in her mind to be anything necessarily important, so, she went back to the duty of washing up the cat’s urine.

  Dropping back to her knees she squeezed out one rag and looked at the bottom metal shelf. She set the rag onto it and wiped. The hardened urine felt like scraping sugar under the cloth. She scrubbed trying to dissolve it and folded the towel into quarters finding each time a new clean side. Each time, the rag tugged against the urine spot like sandpaper. She set the rag outside the bucket on the ground and pulled out another one. The shelf glistened and she sat waiting for just a couple of seconds, hoping the sandy-textured urine would soften. She looked up at the second shelf again, subliminally noticing the white corner of the envelope, then wiped the back of her hand across her brow, pulling some hair out of her eyes. Lifting the new rag out and wringing it, bleach water slopped up and splattered her tee shirt and face. She wiped at her shirt, noticing streaks of yellow instantly.

  Looking back at the bottom shelf, she leaned into the cabinet, wiping more rigorously. The urine had broken up. Now, she folded that rag into quarters and continued wiping. Each swipe felt smoother than the last.

  After setting that rag on the ground with the other used one, she grabbed and wrung out one more. But leaning back this time, her eyes connected with the envelope sitting just above her head and this time she didn’t take her eyes off of the letter but continued to clean, leaning in and wiping, recognizing that this must’ve been one of Helen’s documents.

  Pausing for a moment, she raised up on her knees. The note had HW/GC written across the front of it. Her mind drifted to Roberta. She never imagined Roberta would’ve bagged on their partnership without talking to Georgette about it first. The thought burned her eyes, making her stop, causing her to sit back fully on her heels and causing her to squeeze her eyes shut.

  When she opened them, she couldn’t ignore the letter anymore. HW/GC. Their initials—Helen Wellen/Georgette Carlisle.

  The shelf that housed the cat would be fine for now. If it continued to smell in there, she could always clean it out again later.

  Pushing herself up in to a stance, her legs warmed as the blood flowed back down through them and into her calves and ankles. She peeled off her rubber gloves and slung them over the lip of the wash bucket. After examining the envelope, she lifted it, turning the thing over in her hands and, checking out the back of it, she saw that Helen had folded the lip inside the opening.

  She figured this was one last drama for Helen. So, folding the envelope in half, she shoved it into her back pocket, set her cleaning supplies outside the garage and she pulled her car back in.

  After making sure the garage door closed and didn’t bump back up and re-open, she dumped the soiled water onto some rocks along the side of the driveway. Forgetting about the rags, they went slopping out.

  “Damn.” Picking them up off the driveway, she felt a tug against her ass where she had filled her back pocket with Helen’s letter. She mustn’t forget to read it later.

  The temperature had risen since only a half hour before. She looked up and caught the edge of a towering, bulbous, leaden cloud climbing over the roof of her home.

  The air had changed also, had become like a greenhouse, humid and hot.

  A light drizzle had fallen onto her arms and shoulders, causing them to glisten. Another clap of thunder rung deep through the desert, resounding under the bell jar created by the bowl of clouds over the land.

  Rain was falling somewhere. She walked around the side of the house to look.

  A wide sheet of water poured like a thick tongue hanging out of a huge gray mouth the clouds were making. That much water falling onto the dry desert floor was always cause for concern, always ended in a torrential flood, always washed away any loose filth that had laid claim to the land.

  35

  Cracking open a Coors, Georgette angled out a chair and, sitting at the kitchen table, she pulled her dirty tee shirt over her head. In only her bra, she shook out her strawberry hair from her ponytail and stared at the table. There the folded envelope sat, looking plain and harmless just lying there innocently on the table.

  Gangster jumped up onto the chair before she could sit. “You little monster.” She picked him up and nuzzled his neck and then she set him up on the table and reclaimed her seat. The cat lay in a heap across the tabletop and across the envelope like royalty.

  “You don’t want me to work, do you? You want mommy to play with you today.”

  She rubbed his head, sliding her hand under his jaw and scratching his chin. He pressed up again on all fours and leaned into the attention. When he did, Georgette snatched the letter out from under him and took a slug of beer.

  “Okay. What now?” Pangs of anger still arose in Georgette even with Helen dead.

  Scanning it quickly, partly to herself, partly aloud, she came to his name, then stopped. Commenting openly now, she sounded confused. “Zach Pinzer?”

  Pausing momentarily, she grabbed up her beer bottle again and took another deep swig. “What the hell… Zach Pinzer?” She couldn’t fathom why Helen would be writing about him.

  She started re-reading the note from the top. Helen’s writing had been scrawled in a jumble of letters flowing from one word into the next. Each letter looked rushed, almost panicked. Georgette read her words as a declaration of sorts, somehow a confession from her, another one.

  But was she reading this right? Was there some sort of interaction between Helen and Zach? Reading it again— yes, there had been… something about the diner, that she would get half the ownership and… Zach the other half!

  “What the hell?”

  No one but family had any rights to half her diner and that family was Roberta. The words in Helen’s note tumbled from her mouth as she read.

  Her eyes tightened, trying to understand. Then she saw another name. Hawthorne’s. He had been involved as well but, as Helen was stating, if Georgette was reading the note correctly, only after Helen’s involvement. She felt totally off-balance and confused now.

  George,

  What is it about us? About me?

  When he contacted me, I was so desperate. Have you ever been desperate, George? If you have, well, maybe you can understand me, if only a little.

  You must realize what a weak woman

  I am by now. Pathetic. I’m embarrassed by my past, my thoughts, my actions. You’re my most precious friend and this is what I do? Betray you? I don’t know why. I have no answers. All I’m left with is remorse.

  Once Zach put the plan into my head, it actually sounded like a good idea. Then, the threat of silence or death if I didn’t keep quiet. So, I agreed.

  We would get you to give me or sell me, “for a song” as he put it, the diner. Then, he would take care of the rest. He would get half, I would get the other half. He said if I tried anything funny, if I didn’t relinquish the diner to him afterwards, he would somehow implicate me in your death.

  I can’t believe I had a hand in any of this. That I actually began a liaison with this man, in this plan, a plan where you would end up dead. Of course the ridiculous part is that he intended to kill me too. Of course he did. It was a deal with the devil—my life or my soul—either way, I lost.

  The thing is, my life started folding in on itself. I couldn’t look into my own eyes

  any more. I couldn’t sleep. My mind wouldn’t stop fretting about the egregiousness of our plan. So, I backed out and wrote him

  a letter to that effect. I refused to go through with it. And then, I ran. I figured he wouldn’t ever believe I would return to his city or Sunnydale. Why would I, right?

  But, then, I met Hawthorne. I h
adn’t been with a good man since before Harold. I was so lonely. And, when he started to flirt with me and then acted on it, well, I thought I had been rewarded somehow, by God, maybe, I don’t know. Then, I overheard him outside my hotel room door, on the phone with someone. They were supposed to “do away with that Pyle woman,” as he put it.

  And, even though Martin whispered the words they sounded like someone screaming it out of a bullhorn. I watched them through my peephole as the two of them discussed my death. That’s when I realized Zach had located me and Hawthorne had become my replacement in his plans.

  It’s all my fault. If I had never agreed to this, well, I don’t know.

  All I know is that I’m dreadfully sorry for my part in this crime.

  Please find some way to forgive me, George. I can’t live knowing you hate me

  The letter trailed off there and had not been signed. Her penmanship was terrible but definitely identifiable as Helen’s, to Georgette at least. The last sentence had no period, adding to the rushed feel to the entire correspondence.

  Slamming the letter onto the table, she felt her face redden. The cat’s ears splayed back at the abrupt noise.

  “Can you flippin’ believe this, Gangster?!” She shook the letter at him and he dived off the table.

  Lifting the phone, she dialed Roberta again. The phone rang but clicked over to the recorded message. She didn’t bother to leave one.

  She looked at the clock on the wall. It was before noon. She couldn’t believe Helen’s involvement with Zach Pinzer. She picked up the beer bottle again. It was half empty. Putting it up to her mouth, she wondered how they had ever connected. She shook her head in disbelief. What did they actually plan on doing? How were they going to kill her to get the diner?

  Georgette didn’t even feel the bottle slip from her fingers. She only heard it exploding into shards on the cold Saltillo kitchen floor.

  They had killed Helen for it. That’s how Gangster had gotten locked in the cabinet.