Bobby's Diner (16 page)

We both started to look around
then, like the man might show up again.

“Well, if you see Vanessa will
you tell her to call me, José? I’m starting to worry a little.”

“Okay, Mrs. Carlisle.” He dropped
to his knees again and busily picked leafy vegetables and put them into his
basket.

***

It wasn’t all that unusual for
one of us, me or Vanessa, to show up the evening before we opened for the week
after our days off. Driving in, the moon was cresting over the mountains in the
distance and yet the sun was still peeking low along the hills in the opposite
horizon. I was gazing out the driver’s side window enjoying the sunset when I
heard another car approaching me fast, it sounded like the driver was gunning it.
Next thing I see is this truck is coming straight for me and honking its horn.
We both swerved out of each other’s lane. I was only half a block from the
diner and nearly got into an accident. It felt like my biorhythms were out of
whack that day.

When I pulled up, Roberta’s car
was parked outside the diner. She and I seemed to be on the same wavelength and
same mission to find her mother. The restaurant’s exterior auto-light clicked
on when I stepped out of my car. I unlocked the door and heard a shuffle in the
kitchen.

“Vanessa!” I called out.

“Vanessa!” I called out a little
louder that time.

Help me. The words sounded puny.

My purse dropped where I stood
and I ran toward the voice, a woman’s voice. The kitchen was upended. By
the
 
door, the mixer hung from the outlet
off the counter and onto the floor, a rack was pulled part way out of the wall
and hung from one screw, aprons were strewn around, the knife holder tipped
over, and there was blood
 
behind the
center island on a wall that smeared down below the line of my sight. I
screamed Vanessa! And, ran around to help.

Roberta was lying on the floor in
an expanding pool of blood.

“Jesus.” I ran to the phone and
called 9-1-1. After relaying information to the operator I grabbed an apron and
rushed over to Roberta with it. Pressing the cloth firmly into the wound in her
stomach, I tried to speak calmly and quietly. Our eyes connected and she looked
sweet and peaceful.

“Georgie, I…”

“Roberta, don’t talk. Stay real
quiet, honey. You need to keep
 
your
heart calm, you mustn’t lose anymore blood. The paramedics will be here in a
second. Shh…” As I finished we
 
could
hear sirens in the distance approaching rapidly and come to a sliding stop on
the gravel outside the diner. The door
 
opened. I looked toward the sound then back to Roberta. She smiled at me
and then closed her eyes.

“In here, hurry!”

The EMTs worked fast and
furiously. I stayed back against a wall and watched as they administered a syringe
full of coagulant into her hip, blood and fluids into her vein, and pressed an
oxygen mask onto her face. They lifted her onto the Gurney, put her into the
ambulance and drove off blaring urgently. I got lost in the waning sound as it
sped away.

Then, I heard Willy say quietly
to another officer. “We need to call the coroner and the crime scene unit. This
one didn’t make it.”

“What?” His words surfaced like a
shark’s fin in the water.

“You need to stay back, Mrs.
Carlisle.” He held his arms up to block me from the back door where he stood.

“What is it? What is it, Willy?”
He dropped his head.

“Let me by.”

“Mrs. Carlisle, you can’t go back
there. You shouldn’t. It’s a
 
crime scene
now. We can’t have you destroy possible evidence, understand?”

“Willy.” He knew I was serious.

“Look from the door. Don’t
contaminate the evidence, Georgette. It’s important.” I walked by him to the opening
of the door. When I looked out my heart started to race and my legs felt weak
and shaky. I heard my own frail voice call out to Willy, “No. Oh, no. No, god,

no.” Only his body lay there. It
wasn’t really him anymore. The blood pooled down the ramp and into the dirt. It
looked like water, dark water surrounding him as it bled off and into
 
his garden. He looked so small and he fell in
a contorted position that made the whole thing seem disjointed and appear
 
as if I were looking through a prism and into
a distorted version of reality.

The door jamb caught my body as I
slid down it till I reached the floor. My hands covered my face.

“Mrs. Carlisle, there’s nothing
you could’ve done.”

Then, he said something about
rigor and at least an hour had gone by. The night seemed unending but only
fifteen minutes had passed since I’d walked though the door. My instincts were
right on that day. My worries were met face to face with horror. Roberta might
not make it. She’d been shot high in the stomach. Now this. Where was Vanessa?
How could I explain to her what had happened? How
 
could I tell her José had been killed?

CHAPTER 25

The hospital buzzed with doctors
and nurses, police officers
 
and ambulances.
Where Roberta slept, the recovery room, felt miles away from the bustle. I’d
given a police report of what little I knew. Told them about the
 
previous
 
vandalism—the
 
first
 
time
 
they’d destroyed the garden, the day, the damage and how we thought it
was just the local juvenile element, nothing more.

We stood close to the emergency
entrance while I laid out to a police officer about events that had taken place
over the past couple of weeks. As we talked, a large van with “Coroner”
lettered across its hind doors backed up to the large double doors of the
emergency entrance. The medics pulled out a person on a
 
Gurney. That person was covered from
head-to-toe under a
 
blue cotton sheet.
When they lowered him a wheel on the Gurney caught one of the medic’s shoes.
The Gurney jerked
 
into
 
place but doing so jostled the body. His hand
fell out from under the sheet and it was then it finally struck me that
 
José was dead. His hand was proof. I gasped
and covered my eyes. The officer walked over and gently put José’s hand back
under the cover. He said something to the medics who looked
 
over quickly at me then focused on the
officers face and shook their heads apologetically.

I wondered what they were going
to tell José’s wife. Her life would be severed.

***

She looked like an angel—like
Bobby—as she laid there unconscious. Memories flooded me about her. The
screaming match she had with him before the divorce. She didn’t realize I was
in Bobby’s hotel bathroom with him when she happened by. She carried on solid
before Bobby could get a word in edgewise. When he did, he just said, “Sorry,
honey. Someday you’ll understand, or not.” She slammed the door hard when she
left. He was dreadfully sad. The divorce was finalized the following week.
Roberta showed up with her mother at the hearing. Bobby, the petitioner took
the stand and was asked if there was any hope for reconciliation. After he
responded No Roberta stood up and called her father a coward. He looked at me
squarely in the eyes as if he’d lost all hope. I shook my head
 
because I didn’t know what to do.

“Roberta,” he said, “Roberta,
honey, this is not about you.” The court recorder kept typing the words. The
whole thing was recorded as public record.

And, when they asked Vanessa if
she’d like to respond, she only said, “Forty-five years.” She got up and walked
out of our lives. I took his hand when he got down from the witness stand, he
was shaking like a leaf.

The next time we heard from
Roberta, two years later, her mother had been admitted to the oncology ward of Las
Vegas General Hospital—breast cancer. After a year of chemo—and
radiation-therapy, she was given a clean bill of health. Bobby helped out the
best he could. He visited her in the hospital twice and went over to Rick and
Roberta’s when all seemed lost. But, thanks to the good lord above, she lived.
And, as far as the doctors were concerned, so would Roberta, now.

The blood pressure monitored
dinged every three minutes for three hours and by ten-thirty that night
Vanessa
 
was still missing in action.
Ding. An I-C-U nurse came in and checked her vitals. Ding. An orderly came in
and replaced a bag of blood. Ding.

My mind was bouncing around like
a bullet shot off in a lead barrel when the frantic voice of a woman spoke to
the nurse at the station outside Roberta’s room. “Banner,
 
Carlisle-Banner, Roberta Carlisle-Banner.

What room is she in?” The nurse
said something that pissed her off. “I’m her mother!” I stood up to go to the
door and call
 
Vanessa over. But, she was
headed in before I could cross the room.

“Oh my god . Oh my god .”

“She’s okay, Van. She’s gonna
make it.” I tried to calm her down but she’d have nothing of it. It seemed she blamed
herself.

“Roberta—my baby—oh my lord,
please—oh, my god, please lord, please…” I was miles away from the two of them
as I stood behind Vanessa. The nurse must have alerted the resident-on-staff
because he came in only moments after she arrived.

“Mrs. Carlisle?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded gritty
and her face, tight.

“Mrs. Carlisle, your daughter
lost a lot of blood.”

Vanessa’s hand rose up to her
mouth and she started to cry. “She’s stable right now, and has been for a good
hour.

She’s doing remarkably well for
the injury she’s sustained.”

“What happened?”

“Well, she received a gunshot
wound to the left-side of her stomach. But, she’s had surgery, we’ve stopped
the bleeding and she’s recovering just like she should.

She’s going to be fine. But, she
needs rest to build her strength. We’re checking on her every half hour. She’s
recovering
 
nicely. She’ll be fine.” He
was very considerate and kept repeating how well Roberta was doing. Vanessa sat
in the chair I’d been filling in her absence, holding her hand that I’d held,
and staring into her face. I stood behind her and watched the two sit silently
together—mother and daughter. When I left the room Vanessa hadn’t even noticed.

***

At one o’clock in the morning the
phone rang. I scrambled to it.

“Hello.”

“Georgie, it’s me, Van.”

“Oh, hi, hon. How’s Roberta
doing?”

“She’s doing better, I think.”

“Thank god , Van. Thank god .”
“Yeah.” She paused.

“Van?”

“Oh, Willy came by after you
left. I didn’t know you’d gone, Georgie.”

“You two needed to be alone. I
didn’t want to disturb you by saying that I was leaving.”

She sniffled a little and I
realized she was crying.

“I can come back, Van. Do you
want me to come back?”

* * *

Using my fingers as a comb I
tried to fix my hair as I climbed from the car in the hospital parking lot. My
breath smelled like hell so I stuffed a piece of cinnamon gum in it and chewed.

She looked used-up but smiled at
me anyway when I walked into the room again.

I whispered. “How’s she doin’?”

“She’s great.” She paused again.
So, I pulled up a chair to sit next to Van.

“She’s a strong girl, Van. She’s
gonna come out of this with shining colors, you just see.” Van smiled at me and
tears filled her eyes and she covered her face. “It’s all I’ve done tonight,
you know, cry like this.” “Hey. It’s
 
understandable. You cry. Cry good and hard if you want, I’ve been doing
my fair share.” “Willy told
 
me,
 
Georgie.” Her eyes were wet and focused deep
into mine. “He told me everything. He told me if you hadn’t…”

“Shh…” I stopped her with my hand
up to her. I knew what she meant.

“Did he tell you about José?” Her
head nodded slowly.

“If I’d only gotten there a
little sooner, Van, maybe…”

My strength slipped away without
a care—I couldn’t contain my sorrow. She pulled me into her and we sat, for a
long time, just consoling each other. We sat there just holding each other,
holding each other up.

CHAPTER 26

“This is what we know so far,
Mrs. Carlisle,” Willy spoke
 
pointedly
 
without
 
giving
 
me
 
too
 
much information, “the lock on the desk
drawer in your office was pried open, maybe with a crow bar, and Vanessa
Carlisle’s gun was the weapon involved. We suspect that José and Roberta both
interrupted a burglary. José first, then Roberta after they’d shot José.”