The Wicked Waffle: Book 1 in The Diner of the Dead Series

by Carolyn Q. Hunter

  The Wicked Waffle

  Book One in the Diner of the Dead Series

  By

  Carolyn Q. Hunter

  Copyright 2016 Summer Prescott Books

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.

  **This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.

  Author’s Note: On the next page, you’ll find out how to access all of my books easily, as well as locate books by best-selling author, Summer Prescott. I’d love to hear your thoughts on my books, the storylines, and anything else that you’d like to comment on – reader feedback is very important to me. Please see the following page for my publisher’s contact information. If you’d like to be on her list of “folks to contact” with updates, release and sales notifications, etc…just shoot her an email and let her know. Thanks for reading!

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  Prologue

  “Look, just make sure that we push that building permit through for development. I don’t want any more delays on this project,” Ronda demanded over the phone, pursing her perfectly red lips.

  Using perfectly manicured fingernails to hold her the earpiece of her phone in place, she concentrated on navigating her brand new car along the rainy mountain road.

  “I don’t have another second to wait for this to happen. I don’t want any more city regulations, local protestors, tree huggers, or—heaven forbid—that stepdaughter of mine getting in the way.”

  The voice on the other line was withdrawn, reluctant.

  “Don’t give me excuses. Make it happen or you’re fired,” Ronda punched the End Call button on her cell phone—which was mounted prominently, as if on a plastic pedestal, to her dashboard. “Unreliable, as always,” she muttered.

  The road before her, the singular route leading from the tiny town of Haunted Falls, Colorado to the Smith Mansion, was a treacherous and winding experience. She hated making the drive, but preferred the solace of the large empty manor to all the tourists and small-minded townsfolk below. It also helped that the manor house—which she had inherited from her late husband—was the largest, and most extravagant, in the area – just her style. Making the drive in this weather, during the early-summer rains, could try the nerves of even the most determined, however.

  The aspen trees, underbrush, tall grasses, rocky incline, and multitude of road signs were hardly more than a wet blur outside the shield of her vehicle. Rain cloaked the car windows in its sheen, soaked through the loose asphalt, and made everything dangerously slick. Ronda worried that an unexpected rockslide could come rolling down the mountainside at any moment, knocking her luxury car off the road, over the steep incline, and into oblivion.

  She shivered, not only from the tension of battling the elements during the treacherous drive, but also from a sudden chill in the air. It was apparent that autumn was going to come early, frustrating her to no end. All she wanted at the moment was to be safe at home taking a nice calming bubble bath. It was the least that she deserved, after the week she’d been through. The phone rang, startling her, and Ronda quickly reached to answer it, accidently knocking it from its plastic cradle onto the passenger side floor mat.

  “Great,” she grumbled, leaning over to reach for the phone. Her thumb brushed the screen accidently, answering it.

  At first, it seemed as if no one was there. Then a garbled voice appeared on the line—as if distorted by the rain itself.

  “You won’t get away with this. . .” the voice crackled.

  “What? Who is this?”

  “You won’t get away . . .”

  Ronda glanced at her phone to find the caller ID. Unknown was displayed on the screen. She shivered again, this one running the length of her spine.

  “Stop now or you’ll regret it,” the voice said.

  “Look, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but if you call this number again, I will track you down and have you arrested,” Ronda replied, her nerves frayed.

  The voice said something else, but it came across as nothing but a few muffled grunts, then there was nothing but white noise on the other end of the line.

  “What was that all about?” Ronda shook her head, ending the call and fumbling with her phone, trying to get it back into the plastic dock on the dashboard.

  While she was distracted, one hand on the wheel, the other on the phone dock, a huge boulder came tumbling down the mountainside and onto the road directly in front of her sporty new car. Catching sight of it in her peripheral vision and turning her head to see it barreling toward her, she screamed, and swerved out of the way, pulling too far to the right. Managing to miss the boulder, Ronda’s wheels slid across the wet pavement, and the small silver car flipped over the side of the road and down the incline.

  Chapter 1

  “Sonja, another coffee please,” Reginald Wallaby barked from his office door. “And make it quick this time,” he grumbled sourly.

  Sonja sighed, watching Mr. Wallaby through the glass as he rolled his large leather office chair back towards his mammoth desk.

  “Yes, Mr. Wallaby.”

  She stood up from her own cheap mail-order desk, which was significantly smaller than Mr. Wallaby’s solid oak beast, and headed to the coffee stand. Barnes and Bailey Publishing had a specialty coffee counter exclusively for the suite of offices on the editing floor, and every editor had a tab that was covered by their expense account. If Sonja wanted coffee, she was stuck paying for it out of pocket, and an eight-dollar cup of joe wasn’t her idea of cheap or reasonable. She sighed at the unfairness of it all, as she walked out of the main office area, down the hall, and over to the coffee counter.

  “Hi, Dalia,” she smiled faintly as she approached the counter.

  “Wallaby want his usual?” Dalia, the coffee girl, stood behind the counter with a knowing look.

  “Seven times a day, rain or shine,” Sonja rolled her eyes.

  “Coming right up.” Dalia gave her an understanding grin and turned around to prepare the drink.

  Sonja sighed, thinking regretfully of her unfinished novel. She had thought that having a job with a real publisher would give her chance, would let her at least get a foot in the door to having her work read and considered for publication.

  “Girl, you look worse and worse every day,” Dalia said, shaking her head in sympathy.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sonja blinked, not knowing how to take the comment.

  Dalia added three shots of hazelnut syrup to the drink, the way Mr. Wallaby preferred.

  “It means, you hate it here in New York, and you hate this job.”

  “That�
�s certainly true, but it’s a job isn’t it? With a real publisher. That has to count for something,” she pointed out, trying to be optimistic.

  “If telling yourself that helps you get through your day, honey.”

  “Well,” Sonja shrugged, “I think it’s a good thing that I’m so close to the editors.”

  “Close isn’t exactly the word for it, now is it?” Dalia observed. “These high-falutin’ yahoos couldn’t care less about a little working girl like you. Receptionists are a dime a dozen, they can always find someone else to answer their phones and grab their overpriced coffee.”

  “True,” she admitted. “But, I feel like if I just stick it out, eventually I can move up.”

  “You’re a trooper, I’ll give you that,” Dalia smile was laced with pity, as she handed Sonja the coffee. “On his tab?”

  “Yeah, on his tab. Thanks, Dalia.”

  “Trust me girl, you’re not gonna find your dreams behind that desk in there, or in that cup of coffee.”

  Sonja laughed softly, recognizing truth when she heard it.

  “Do you give everyone these pep talks?”

  “Hmmpf, you’re the only one who looks at me,” Dalia raised an eyebrow. The private barista was nothing, if not a realist.

  “Well, I’m going to tough it out for a little while longer, at least until I finish my book. Then, when it’s finished, I can show it to Wallaby.”

  “Let me ask you something, Sonja Sunshine, does he even look at you?”

  Sonja paused. “When he wants coffee.”

  “And that’s all,” Dalia said matter-of-factly. “If you’re nothing more than a coffee girl, what makes you think he’ll bother to take a look at your manuscript?”

  Mildly defeated by reality, Sonja nodded and headed back to Wallaby before his coffee got cold.

  * * *

  Sitting in front of the laptop in her bare-bones one room apartment, Sonja stared down at the unfinished manuscript that lay before her. The blank pages that awaited seemed to taunt her.

  Her cell phone rang for the third time that evening, interrupting her thoughts yet again. It was her mother. Again. Her mother insisted on calling every night, to find out how she was doing, and unintentionally disturbing the only real time that she had open for writing. Sonja had hoped she could have at least talked to Wallaby about her book by now, but so far she hadn’t managed to catch him at the right time. Her mother’s persistence didn’t help. This time, Sonja answered, realizing that she couldn’t practice avoidance forever.

  “Hi, mom,” she answered, politely hiding her impatience.

  “Sweetie, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all evening.”

  Sonja groaned inwardly. “I know, mom. I’m writing.”

  “Writing? It’s after eight o’clock, it really seems like they’re working you far too hard for the pay that you’re getting,” her mother worried.

  “It’s my writing, Mom, not something for work,” she explained, for what felt like the hundredth time, desperately wishing that she was writing for pay.

  “They haven’t given you a contract yet?”

  Sonja sighed. It didn’t seem to matter how many times she explained the situation. The simple fact that someone could work at a New York publishing house, doing something other than writing, was a foreign concept to her mother.

  “No, mom. I pretty much just fetch coffee all day, and open the mail, which is why I’m writing now. I have to work on my writing on my own time.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you, sweetie, I just wanted to hear your voice and make sure that you’re okay in the big city.”

  Sonja sighed inwardly, smiled and, shaking her head, rolled her computer chair back from the desk. She needed coffee anyway.

  “Okay, mom, spill it. Tell me why you’re really calling.”

  “Well, you don’t have to be like that, sweetie, but since you asked, as you know . . . the big church charity sale is almost here.”

  “Yes, and I’m sorry that I’ll miss it,” she lied cheerfully. “I have work through the rest of the summer, right up until Christmas.”

  “And summer is your favorite time of year here in Colorado,” her mother continued, as though she hadn’t even heard her daughter.

  “You mean autumn, right mom? The season with all the ghosts, goblins, and witches?”

  “No, sweetie, your favorite is summer, it’s always been summer,” her mother insisted. “Now, I was thinking it would be so nice—if you wanted to, of course—for you to come up and spend a week or so, here in Haunted Falls.”

  Sonja strolled into what passed for the kitchen, if you could call a mini-fridge with a hot plate and coffee pot on top a kitchen, and flipped the switch on the coffee pot. The little red light glowed, and she wished that she had started a pot earlier, it was nearly ten o’clock and she was feeling sluggish. She had at least another two or three hours of work to accomplish before turning in, and the clock was ticking as she made small talk with her mother.

  “Mom, I can’t come down. You know that,” she said softly, trying desperately to not let her impatience show.

  “No, I don’t, dear,” her mother challenged. “I assumed you would jump at a chance to take a break from the city and come back home.”

  Sonja headed towards the “pantry,” a tiny hutch she had purchased from the thrift store, and pulled out a loaf of bread.

  “I usually would, mom. But I’ve only been in New York for a few months—”

  “Nine months, sweetie. Nine months is a long time.”

  “And I just started a new job—”

  “Which I still think doesn’t sound like a real job if they’re not letting you write. Fetching coffee isn’t what you want to do for the rest of your life.”

  “I know, Mom, but it’s a job with an actual publisher.”

  Sonja threw a piece of bread into the toaster oven on top of the mini-fridge and turned it on.

  “I just don’t have the wiggle room to come back to town now.”

  “But you love summer here,” her mother persisted, sounding forlorn.

  “Of course I do,” Sonja replied, losing patience. “But I’m just going to have to spend summer out here in New York.”

  She opened the mini fridge and found two bottles of orange juice sitting there, the only things in the fridge beside some leftover Chinese from the night before. She grabbed one and unscrewed the cap.

  “Oh, sweetie. You can spare just a few days can’t you?”

  Behind the normal overly-sweet tone of her mother’s voice, Sonja could detect a note of desperation, a tension that usually wasn’t there.

  “Are you alright mom?”

  “Oh…I’m…fine,” she said, her voice wavering.

  “Mom, what’s really going on?” Sonja put down the bottle of juice, her stomach doing a little flip.

  “It’s nothing, dear,” she clearly had decided to tough out whatever had been bothering her. “You just go right along with your work and I’ll stay here in Haunted Falls by myself.”

  “Mom,” Sonja sighed. She got so frustrated when her mother wouldn’t just come out and say what needed to be said. All of this beating around the bush was exhausting and time-consuming. “Mom, tell me what’s really happening.”

  There was a long pause and Sonja wondered if her mother was still there.

  “Mom?”

  “Your father is coming for a week during the summer,” she blurted out suddenly.

  Sonja went completely still, feeling her heart thud in her chest. “What?”

  She heard the ding of the toaster oven somewhere in the distance, but it seemed far away and irrelevant.

  “Your father is coming here for summer this year.”

  Instantly Sonja’s mind was back in Haunted Falls, and her resolve to stay in New York, with all its potential, crumbled. This news changed everything.

  “Honey? Did you hear me?”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Sonja said abruptly.

 
Her mind began to spin with all the things she needed to get done before she left, fighting for space in her head with all the happy and unhappy memories of her father.

  “Well, honey, there’s no rush. He won’t be here for another week.”

  Another week. That would be perfect, she could use that week to get re-acclimated to Haunted Falls, and mentally prepare herself to see her father again. It had been four years, two months, and six days since he had left Haunted Falls—left mom, left her.

  “I’m coming as soon as I can get a flight out,” she murmured, still in a state of shock.

  “Alright, if you insist,” her mother said, sounding like it had been Sonja’s idea all along.

  “I’ll talk to you later, Mom.”

  “Alright, I love you, sweetie.”

  “Love you too, see you soon,” Sonja replied absently and hung up the phone.

  She looked at her dry, dollar store, white bread toast sitting in the toaster oven and threw it in the trash. Going back to her desk, she closed the document she’d been laboring over, kissing her novel goodbye once again—and opened the airline website. Sonja took a trip down memory lane, imagining waffles, freshly brewed coffee, and homemade comfort foods, prepared only the way a mom can make them. She also looked forward to visiting Alison’s Diner, just down the hill from her mother’s house, one of her favorite places in Haunted Falls. If nothing else, it would be nice to have real food again.

  Chapter 2

  The only flight Sonja could find, without having to dip deeper into her savings than she wanted to, departed the following afternoon. She didn’t bother even going into work that morning to say goodbye, tendering her resignation via e-mail, stating that she had “a family emergency.” Originally, she had considered just asking for the next couple of weeks off and then returning to work, but, knowing that she was expendable, she elected to skip the humiliation of being fired for leaving on short notice, and just quit.

  It was a difficult decision since she knew she might never return to the publishing world of New York, New York ever again, but, considering how things had turned out this time around, there really wasn’t much to lose. Goodbye, dreams, she thought as she rode the public transit to the airport. Her entire life fit into a singular rolling piece of luggage and an old backpack, and her fading dreams weighed heavily on her mind during the hour ride to the airport.