Hotter than Helen (The Bobby's Diner Series)

by Wingate, Susan

  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.

  The blackout curtains of the scrubby motel room created the sensation of nighttime but Roberta had been trying to watch the clock since she’d been abducted. It was daytime now although she would never have known that for the curtain and through the blindfold from which he could only see a sliver when she looked at the floor.

  A low rolling rumble, sounding like a storm coming, rose and fell somewhere outside. She imagined standing be outside to see the sky fill with rain clouds, to be untied, free from her captors.

  Tanner rose, antsy and hoping to get at her and approached as he walked toward the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Biggs had the TV on and was slipping in and out of consciousness again.

  She’d been sitting in a hard wooden kitchen chair for hours. Her ass had gone from aching to numb. She preferred the pain. At least she felt alive when her hips ached. The numbness, however, made her feel dead all over.

  When Tanner walked past her, he brushed an open hand across her breast and bent down fast into her face over her shoulder and he stood behind her.

  He gripped her breast hard and tight and talked to her so close that she could smell the bitter coffee off his tongue.

  “He can’t stay awake forever.” He whispered in her ear, the heat of his breath burning her skin. He tipped his head to Biggs. She moaned in a high pitch through the rag they’d stuffed into her mouth.

  Biggs, with his arms crossed over his chest and one foot on, one foot off the sofa, spoke in a surgical tone. “Leave her alone, Tanner.”

  He kept his eyes closed. Roberta twisted her body out of his grip. He dug into his jeans pocket, pulling out a small tin and walked off. Roberta cranked her neck around to make sure she was a safe distance from him. With his back to her, he slipped open the tin and shook it once. Then, throwing his head back, he popped whatever he had in the tin into his mouth. She assumed, from his agitated state, he was taking amphetamines.

  He turned quickly to look at her then, again, like a snake, fluttered his tongue at her. It sickened her and she didn’t hide her feelings.

  “I’m telling ya, Biggs, he should’ve called by now.”

  In the last day and a half, the two men worked out the situation together. Someone else above them was calling the shots via phone conversations Hawthorne received. He had gotten a call on Saturday at one o’clock. They expected another call again today within the hour, at one.

  “Shut up.” Hawthorne shot a quick peek at Roberta as she focused on both men again. She hadn’t meant to sleep.

  “I need to pee.”

  “I’ll take her.”

  “Shut the hell up,” Biggs barked at Tanner.

  “You let me with Helen.”

  “That was different.”

  “Why?”

  “She threatened me. Plus, Helen wasn’t the god-bless-ed mayor, asshole. Now, shut up and if he calls while we’re in the toilet, keep talking to him until we get back.”

  Roberta understood they meant Helen had been raped. Since Biggs had slugged her she had remained quiet, only speaking when they asked her questions and when they forced her to leave those two scripted messages, one to Kaplan Hayes and the other to Georgette.

  As Biggs untied her arms from behind the chair, she tried to remember each conversation, trying to puzzle everything together.

  They wanted to obtain ownership of the diner, that was clear. But why? And who was the man on the phone? She figured the “why” part of the equation was out of greed. That part was simple too.

  They’d double-tied her. Once around her wrists then again onto the chair. Biggs raised her from the chair by yanking up on her arms, forcing her to stand.

  “Let’s make this one quick.” She nodded fast. “You know the drill.” He pulled up the blindfold to her forehead. She turned around like she had all the other times. Her whole skull felt bruised.

  The time before when she urinated, she fell asleep leaning back against the toilet. Biggs had fallen asleep on the couch allowing Tanner to sneak in and try to get her panties down around her legs. When his tugging woke her, she kicked him against the wall and screamed.

  Hawthorne came in and dragged him out, then he flung him out the bathroom door like a schoolboy. She wouldn’t make the same mistake this time.

  They didn’t hear her finish and walking back out from the toilet, she had a view of the entire room. Both guns sat several feet away from her chair, on the dresser near the TV, next to Biggs’ cell phone. The duffle bag lay on the bed, gaping open.

  Her jaw was sore. Keeping her mouth open like this had put an unusual amount of strain on her facial muscles.

  The phone jangled, making Biggs rise and swing his feet down, making Tanner race to answer it, spilling coffee onto the floor as he moved from the kitchen over to the dresser.

  “Hey,” Tanner answered the phone, then turning he handed the phone to Biggs. Roberta had seen the roles playing out this way quite often. Tanner was Biggs’ boy and Biggs’? Owned, by the guy phoning in.

  “Yeah…” he listened dutifully. “Where…” stopping for more instruction. “Got it.” He ended the call. “Wants us to move. Says we’ve been here too long.”

  “Where?”

  Biggs rolled his eyes and tipped his head toward Roberta. They wouldn’t say in front of her.

  “Get her in the bag.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to her how they got her into the hotel without being seen. The duffle bag had been her most recent mode of transportation.

  They tied Roberta to the chair again. She flailed and moaned but couldn’t get any volume because of gag in her mouth. She rocked the chair, trying to somehow unleash herself. It was a primal urge, her body, her reaction, thrashing, groaning, crying. Her fear peaked when she thought that no one might even realize she was missing.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, bitch.” Tanner, smiling, showed no anger. He walked up in front of Roberta, who had not yet calmed down.

  Biggs, now standing, put his cell phone in his pants pocket and walked calmly to the dresser, retrieving his and Tanner’s guns.

  “Shut her up,” was all Biggs said. It took only one punch this time, to the right side of her jaw, to knock her out.

  ***

  “We found something, boss.” Taylor West, dressed in chalkline blue from neck to toe, was one of Willy’s men at the scene.

  He held up an evidence baggie between his gloved fingers. The sanitary gloves st
retched tight across the tips, allowing his fingernail bed to show through. He rubbed his nose, clearing the oil off his nut brown skin. His fifties-style, black-rimmed glasses didn’t do justice to his good looks.

  “A few hairs too, found a partial and tons of full sets from what I gather are Roberta’s and Rick’s.”

  Willy eyed the baggie and its contents. “Any writing on it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “The Sunnydale ESL on 93.”

  “Where they found Helen Wellen?”

  “Same one.”

  “Sound like a coincidence to you, West?”

  “You know what they say about coincidences, boss?”

  “No, what’s that?” Willy egged on his answer.

  “There aren’t any.”

  “And the partial?”

  “Yep. I want to get it to the lab and run it through Solaris.”

  “Good. I want that info now. Go. Call as soon as you know something.”

  West turned to leave the scene with the matchbook. He wiped at his forehead and adjusted his glasses closer to his face on the bridge of his nose. “It’s muggy today,” he called back, unzipping his blue clean suit. “Muggy and hot.”

  Willy looked out across the horizon, seeing a mountainous thundercloud billowing in the east. “Looks like rain in the mountains. Know what that means.”

  “Idiot drivers trying to surf!” West yelled back as he walked, holding up the hand with the baggie, acknowledging Willy.

  “Call as soon as you know!” Willy called out again.

  “Check, boss.” Willy jumped into the white police van and sped off.

  On the outside, Willy remained calm. But his heart pounded inside his chest.

  The scene showed obvious signs of violence—from the back window being busted out to a trail of destruction through the house and blood in the master bedroom. He feared the worst—they had found blood on the bed and splatter on the lamp, blood he assumed was Roberta’s.

  His exterior spoke of authority and finesse while inside he feared for Roberta and the injuries she had incurred, or worse—her possible brutal murder.

  He resolved that he would wait to call Georgette. Alarming her any further wasn’t the way to handle things. He had to remind himself that this wasn’t personal even though, in their small town, he had personal relations with so many folks. It was hard not to become close with each and every crime.