Hotter than Helen (The "Bobby's Diner" Series) by Susan Wingate Read Free Book Online

shut.
    Once she heard the car’s engine turn over and Helen backing out and drive away, Georgette got up to check on Gangster and to lock the door.
    Helen’s key sat next to a note folded in half. Georgette refused to read the note. Not now. Not until later after she was gone forever, out of her life, out of town. When Helen was dead to her.
    Georgette reminded herself to move the spare key she had outside in the potted plant. Both Hawthorne and Helen knew where that key was and she didn’t want any unexpected visitors.
    She crumpled the pathetic note into her palm and walked back to her bedroom. After setting it on her dresser, she dropped the entire weight of her body into bed, sitting up only once to call for her cat, then dropping off into a quick and depressed sleep.
     
    11
    Georgette heard, while falling in and out of her restless sleep, a reverberation of some elemental disturbance, maybe thunder along the outskirts of town. Or had she dreamed up the storm?
    It was four hours later when the phone rang, waking her. The digital display brightly showed Hawthorne’s cell phone number in her dark room.
    Then a call came from Helen, well, she assumed the call came from Helen. The caller ID showed the Sunnydale Extended Stay Lodge. Georgette refused to answer either call.
    The second call came quickly after the first from the hotel.
    Then calls alternated between the hotel and Hawthorne’s cell for an hour before finally stopping.
    She didn’t listen to their messages. She didn’t delete them either. She would wait to deal with it later.
    There was no way she wanted to speak to anyone. She felt utterly humiliated.
    “Gangster? Come here, kitty.” Georgette’s spoke through her sniffling. She sounded like she was surviving a ten-year-long cold. Her crying had not subsided once that day and at that point she could see no end in sight.
    She let the damned phone ring on and off the rest of the evening. And, after drinking a bottle of cabernet and slipping her diamond ring from her finger lying it next to the crumpled note on her dresser, Georgette moved into the living room where she fell asleep on the couch with her cat on her chest.
    What had she been thinking, anyway? Who would want to marry a middle-aged woman?
     
    12
    After re-opening and re-reading the message, he re-crumpled the note, slamming it into his palm with his fist and wadding it up into a tight ball. Tossing it hard into the corner of his cell, Pinzer screamed.
    “Ahh!” Jumping to his feet, he pressed his face in between two iron bars. “I need a cigarette!” he yelled to anyone. “Hey, can anyone hear me!” He pressed his face harder against the bars. “Can anyone frickin’ hear me!” he repeated. “I need a cigarette!”
    The day guard clad in a blue uniform walked at an even slow pace in front of Pinzer, stopping, standing with his shoulder in front of him and looking straight down the hall. He patted a front pocket on his shirt and, lifting the flap, withdrew a cigarette. He slid the white rolled paper under his nose and breathed in deep, as if he enjoyed it. He placed it in-between his lips, holding it with all five of his fingers and licked the butt with his tongue.
    He patted the other front shirt pocket and this time withdrew a red plastic lighter. He flicked it and a bright blue and yellow flame shot an inch high. Holding the flame to the end of the cigarette, he sucked in. Then he breathed in and held his breath for four hard beats of Pinzer’s heart. He expelled a chalky cloud of pungent air into the hall and it wafted in all directions, making Pinzer stand back an inch from the bars and sniff the air.
    “Oh, that’s good,” the guard taunted, knowing cigarettes weren’t allowed. He pushed his cap up off the front of his forehead and took in another deep breath. Again, he puffed out another peppery cloud of smoke, this time pissing off Pinzer, who leaned his shoulder against the bars.
    “Nice. Very nice,” is all he said.