Hotter than Helen (The "Bobby's Diner" Series) (17 page)

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 hadn’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.

When she jumped up, the chair screeched across the tile, sending Gangster bounding off the table. “OhmyG--! Roberta!” It wasn’t like her not to pick up her calls or not return messages.

She dialed her number again. Nothing.

Running into her bedroom, she yanked open her top drawer—her panty drawer where she hid her .38—the one she hid under her red satins. But, when she shifted them, the gun wasn’t there. She moved to the other side of the drawer. Maybe she’d forgotten and put it under the black ones. But, no. Her gun wasn’t there either. Pulling the entire drawer out, she dumped the contents onto her bed.

Pulling each of the six drawers out, she dumped each onto the bed. She ripped open her closet door and scrambled up on a footstool, sweeping her hand across the length of the upper shelving. There were only her purses and luggage. She slid all of them off onto the floor and got down. Searching each bag, she tossed them out of the closet, one by one, onto the bedroom floor.

It wasn’t anywhere.

Her gun was gone.

36

The tires laid a patch of rubber four feet long on her driveway as Georgette pulled out. Her car lurched as she threw the gear from reverse into drive.

The change from a dead stop to speeding made the tires scream again, probably leaving more rubber on the street behind her.

She had to get to Roberta’s. This wasn’t like her, this, this, not calling. It certainly wasn’t like her to not show up for work. And why would she have canceled the contract?

Pulling across the highway she zipped in between two cars, one coming from the north, one heading south. Her car heaved across the median, causing her ass to lift off the seat a good six inches over each trundle. But this way was a straight shortcut to Roberta’s house over to Gold Miners Road. She had no time to turn right up Highway 93 a mile or where making a U-turn was legal but time-consuming and then to head back south again.

The car creaked and clamored, hitting the curb, chucking up and then banging down on the other side and reconnecting onto the opposite road’s pavement. Someone honked out a loud, long whine of annoyance. She didn’t even look.

“Roberta,” she gnarled out, halfway crying, halfway angry.

It seemed as if her cell phone was hiding from her as Georgette searched its contents with one hand, driving recklessly with the other. The bag was useless and too deep for emergencies.

A gust of wind blew in, flicking at her hair and causing her flouncy garnet-colored smock to lift out like a tent around her torso.

Turning too fast, she felt the car leaning into a curve and she hoped she wouldn’t skid out. Pulling the steering wheel to correct it, she clipped a mailbox, sending it off its base and denting the right edge trim of the window. Her car skid to a stop in front of Roberta’s house. She’d settle the issue of the mailbox later.

Running up to the front, she reached the door and banged on it, screaming Roberta’s name. The house seemed lifeless.

She moved over to the kitchen window and, cupping her hands onto the glass, peered inside. No one.

Then, she banged on the window calling Roberta’s name. She ran around the back of the house, through their gate and to the side window that Georgette knew was to Roberta and Rick’s bedroom.

She banged on that window. “Roberta! It’s George. You here?”

Her screaming had turned dire. Her throat closed around each word.

Georgette ran to the back but stopped.

She stood there frozen, not believing what she saw.

The glass sliding door had been broken into. It looked someone had kicked a hole through it and it hung off its tracks and a long single crack ran from one corner at the bottom diagonally all the way to the top.

“Oh please, Lord.” She hadn’t heard from Roberta since Friday. That was two days ago.

37

When Willy showed up with the crime scene unit, Georgette was sitting on a chair on her front porch.

“Willy. What are we going to do?”

“Georgette. Look. You’re no good here. We can only do so much. Why don’t you go home and wait.”

“Wait! Willy. She’s my daughter!”

He tipped his head. His eyes warmed and softened at her statement.

Everyone in town knew that Roberta was Bobby and Vanessa’s daughter but since Vanessa died, Georgette felt like Roberta was her own.

Georgette still understood that, when people saw them together, their age difference made them appear more like sisters than anything else. But she didn’t care. The age difference was only that. Roberta, in Georgette’s mind, was her daughter.

Her heart raced and her chin fluttered while she stared at Willy, expecting him to do something more.

“George.” He pulled her into him. “Look. She’s special to me too.”

As he held her, she began to cry. “I promise you. We’ll find her. Okay?” He pulled her back to look into her eyes. They were red and wet. She sniffled and wiped at her nose.

“Okay?” he repeated.

Georgette nodded yes. “Okay, Willy. But you promised. Remember that. You promised.”

She turned and continued to wipe at her face until she reached her car. Before getting back in, she looked over its hood and mouthed the words back to Willy. “You promised me.” She noted how his face looked old then. He looked serious and faithful.

Driving off, she refused to go home. Being at home would only serve to send her into the land of the loonies. Instead, she wanted to get a bottle of wine. She drove through the residential area surrounding Roberta’s house and exited out Country Club Road, which intersected with Highway 93 where there was an all night grocery store, a twenty-four hour grocery.

She wanted to stop there first and take some time to decide what else she needed to do. While idling at the stoplight she prayed to her late husband, Vanessa’s dad. “Oh, Bobby. God? You there? Please help me. I didn’t mean to lose your daughter, Bobby. Please let her be okay. Please.”

She openly cried quietly inside the car. The hum of her engine in the background and the moaning coming from her sounded weak and helpless.

When the light changed from red to green, she wiped a sleeve across her nose. She looked toward the store sitting kitty-corner from where she was in the right hand lane. Beyond the light sat a massive median. With no chance to make a left turn into the store, Georgette turned right, south on 93. She would make a U-turn, reroute and turn right into the store’s parking lot off of 93.

As she drove south, she noticed someone who looked familiar in the parking lot of the hotel where they had found Helen. He maneuvered a large duffle bag he was rolling. Already in the left lane, she cranked her neck and thought the man looked a lot like Martin Tanner but she had to turn left by then.

When she did the one-eighty back onto 93, she tried to see if the man was still in view but she lost him behind a few cars that had their trunks up.

Staying in the left lane, she decided to turn around again. Passing through the light, her heart began palpitating. She breathed in and out trying to settle herself but she felt a surge of adrenaline pulse through her body and couldn’t control the onset of shakes.

By then, her tears had dried and the car seemed to drive itself.

She reached inside her purse. This time her hand landed, magically enough, onto her cell. Georgette remembered she’d forgotten to mention her missing gun to Willy. She needed to call him back. Looking down and flipping open the phone, she nearly tail-ended the car in front of hers that stopped in front of the light. She skid to a stop inches before connecting. That was too close. If she had gotten into an accident, the time spent dealing with that could’ve meant the difference between finding Roberta alive and finding her dead.

Pressing Willy’s cell number, she listened for him to answer.

Clouds built just miles beyond the mountains and with the wind pushing like it was now, the storm would be hitting within an hour, she figured.

As Willy answered, a flash of lightning scudded across the sky for miles, splitting the eastern sky, looking as though the charcoal thunderclouds were chasing the flash behind it.

“Willy,” she said when the recording sounded in her ear then realizing it wasn’t Willy. She stopped speaking until the phone beeped, then said, “Call me back. I think I just spotted Martin Tanner. He knows Hawthorne. Call me back.”

Flipping the phone closed again, she realized she had forgotten to mention the note to Willy. When he called her back she would remember to tell him about her missing gun and Helen’s note—a confession and explanation incriminating other accomplices.

***

Thirty-six hours slithered by with Roberta’s strength dwindling. The small room smelled like burnt coffee and old pizza. Her left eye had swollen so badly from being punched that she could only manage to see through a squint. But it was difficult to keep either eye open by now.

She feared if she fell asleep Tanner would get to her.

Her head dipped and a thin veil fell over her mind, something one might describe as sleep, but when Tanner spoke, she forced herself awake.

“He should’ve called by now.”

Ignoring him, Biggs shrugged his arms tighter around himself. He, too, had been drifting in and out of consciousness. Tanner, with a constant eye on Roberta, looked like the only one out of the three who didn’t seem tired. In fact, he appeared on high-alert, even jittery. He had been drinking an inordinate amount of coffee. Roberta had too and so had Biggs but yet, they were on the verge of exhaustion while Tanner seemed ready to jump out of his own way.