Oh, shit, Remington thought, here it comes again… God, not again, please Gram.
“… about the time I went to Italy?” she continued.
It was the same story. The damn tomato pie story! It literally went on for hours. The same details about the cobblestone streets. The same details about the bicycles they’d been riding. The same details about the roads they’d taken down out of the hills. The same details about searching for the perfect café for lunch. The same damn details… every damn time. And it went on and on and on and on and…
“And we found that café and ordered our lunch,” she droned, beaming at him with a twinkle in her eye, “and ohhh, I wish you could’ve tasted it, Remi. It was the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.”
Remington felt his anger rising. He couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t sit here and listen to it anymore. He boiled at the thought of Gram droning on and on with her story. She’d forgotten that she’d told him the story before, of course, but Remi hadn’t forgotten it. No, he knew it all too well.
And the first hundred times or so, he had been interested… and then faked being interested… and then he got completely bored and ignored it. But something snapped in him today. Something about her insistence that he listen. Something about the goddamn story broke him inside. She rocked back and forth in her creaking chair, reaching the part of the story about smashing the grapes with her feet and then drinking the wine from last year’s batch that she’d probably smashed on her last visit and yada, yada, fucking yada.
Oh, God, Remington’s mind screamed at him, just stop. Please make it stop.
And then she reached it, the climax, the punch line, the whole reason for the story. The stunning revelation that you’d been waiting for, for at least two hours. The insight into the universal truth that she’d discovered and just had to let you in on…
“And, wouldn’t you know it Remi,” she said, laughing as she slapped her knees, “this lunch we ordered, that we thought was so delicious and unlike anything we’d ever had before… it was pizza!”
Okay, that’s it! Remington stood and clenched his fists. I can’t freaking take it anymore.
Gram let it rip. “But we didn’t know it was pizza! Because they called it tomato pie!! She tilted her head back and laughed raucously.
Remington was furious, and leaned over Gram and yelled at her. “How could you not know it was goddamn pizza, Gram?!” he yelled. “If it looks like a pizza, smells like a pizza, and tastes like a pizza, I don’t care if they called it freaking tomato ass sandwiches, I would know it was a freaking PIZZA!!!”
He grabbed her by the arms and slammed her backward into her chair. Her eyes jerked open wide.
“Oh, Remi,” she whimpered, “you’re hurting me.”
But he didn’t hear her. “I’ve heard that story over and over again, Gram. I don’t want to hear the story again… EVER! And I don’t like fucking pie!!”
He threw her backward into the chair so hard it tipped back, struck the wall, and then slid sideways and spilled the old woman into the floor.
She moaned once and then stopped.
It was the last time he’d ever go to Gram’s house, because she was moved to intensive care. Her eyes had glazed over, taking on a far-away look, and she didn’t speak for over a year. He visited every day, and apologized every single one of them. He begged her to tell him the story… every single day… for over a year. The only time she ever responded in any meaningful way was when she spotted a girl walking down the hall with a doll. Just a cheesy little baby doll from the hospital gift shop.
That was the day Remington started bringing them to her. A new doll every day. She loved them. He would bring them to her, and she would hug them and rock back and forth. And right until the day that he brought her the last doll, she hadn’t spoken a single word… until the end.
“I love you, Remi,” she had said with tears in her eyes, staring at the new doll.
She rocked it gently, smoothed its hair with her hand, and kissed it on the cheek.
She handed the doll to him after a few minutes. “I want you to have her… something to remember me by.”
And the next day, she was gone. Remington went straight down to Charlie’s Pizza, ordered a large, deep-dish pepperoni with extra sauce, and ate tomato pie with his Gram doll sitting next to him.
He still had the doll… her name was Gram, and he was her Remi. He closed the door behind him and locked it with the skeleton key.
He took off his robe and folded it. Laying it down on the chair beside the bed, he slipped into the nightgown that was hanging on the hook behind the door. It was Gram’s nightgown… the last one she had ever worn. He hadn’t always worn it when he came in here, no, that had only started six months ago or so. It made him feel… closer to her. He put an old John Denver record on the old Victrola that came from her house, turned on the old black and white television set—tuned to nothing in particular—and sat back in the old armchair from her house. It still squeaked something awful, but that reminded him of her too.
He picked up his Gram doll and clutched it close to his chest. He rocked back and forth, and sang John Denver’s Greatest Hits to her.
Taz froze when he heard the music start in the next room. A chair squeaked and he heard a man’s voice warbling to the tune of Rocky Mountain High. This guy’s a freak a’ nature, Taz thought.
When he was certain he was still undiscovered, he crept further into the living room. It was sparse; generic décor, likely purchased from a picture in a European catalog, no photos of any kind, no magazines, nothing personal. The only thing that looked like it could offer any clues as to who this dude was, was the briefcase by the front door.
He tiptoed across the room, convinced he could get away with the briefcase and that the man would never know what—
At that moment, the floorboard he’d stepped on let out an incredibly loud groan. Taz froze. The music in the next room suddenly stopped. He heard the loud creaking of the chair and footsteps toward the door. He heard the key clinking into the lock.
Shit, he thought and bolted toward the door. He grabbed the briefcase and flung the door wide. As he ran through, the edge of the case caught the frame of the door and flew open. Papers shot out and fluttered everywhere. Taz knelt down and shoved several of the loose sheets into the briefcase, and jammed a thick manila folder into his pants. He heard the man behind the door curse and fumble more with the key.
“Who’s there?” the man called out, “I’m calling 911!”
Taz ran into the hall and slammed the man’s apartment door behind him. Twenty steps away, the elevator door was open, but closing too fast. Knowing he’d never make it and that he’d surely be caught by the man if he took the stairs, inspiration hit. He flung the briefcase down the hall. It bumped once on the floor and tumbled end over end, spilling a trail of papers as it went. On its last somersault, it flew in between the sliding doors of the elevator as they whooshed shut. With a quick jump to the side, Taz leapt into the next-door apartment he’d first gone in and closed the door behind him.
He slumped down with his back against the door and fought to slow his breathing. He could hear the muffled thumps of the man opening his own door and running down the hall.
“Dammit!” the man yelled.
Taz was certain he’d be slamming his fist against the door he was leaning on any second now, certain he was caught. But the echoing footsteps of the man running down the hall approached, got louder, and then passed him by and continued down the hall toward the elevator. Next he heard the furious clicking of the elevator button.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” the man said as fast as he clicked, “slow ass, piece of—”
He was interrupted by the ding of the elevator opening. Taz heard the man get in and start the process of shuffling papers back into the case. The door closed, and Taz was left in silence.
He knew he had just a few seconds to make his escape before the man would be coming back up. Run
ning down the hall, he grabbed a few more of the loose papers and stuffed them into his shirt. He jerked open the stairwell door and clip-clopped his way down as fast as he could. Reaching the bottom, he crouched below the narrow, wire-lined window in the door. He peeked through the bottom of the window just in time to see the elevator door closing and the numbers start counting back up.
He opened the door slowly, still crouching, and stuck his head out. No sign of the guy.
He shuffled across the parking garage, jumped into the Ritz-Carlton maintenance truck, and squealed out of the lot. At the first red light, he dug the folders out of his pants, along with the random pages he’d grabbed in the hall. The folder on top, crumpled a bit and damp with his sweat, had a label that read: Gil Dickerson. He had no clue who that was and could care less.
The second folder had no label. He flipped it open and found a yellow legal pad sheet of paper with some scribbled notes in black, perfectly scripted handwriting:
Missing girl—Caroline Colpiller
prob off on bender
check Bonnaroo, Coachella, Burning Man
Father—Jack Colpiller
internet entrepreneur, millionaire
Sister—twin—Mindy Colpiller
no contact with CC, phone off/dead
Below these notes, in blue and clearly more hurried, he’d obviously added to his previous observations:
CC car found—check Ted email
Voicemail from JC
check out Taz (?) at Tennis Garden on KB
boyfriend?
lesson scheduled 10:45 am
Under this last line, he had scribbled:
Taz—NO SHOW.
He’d circled Taz’s name several times in red ink.
“Shit,” Taz muttered, “this bloke’s on to me. Some kind of investigator or something.”
There were another couple of pages. One was an 8x10 photo of Caroline—probably a school yearbook picture. The second was a printout of the staff page of the Ritz-Carlton Tennis Garden. Taz’s picture was circled in that same red pen.
Behind him, a car honked angrily. He hadn’t noticed that the light had turned green. He screeched out and flipped the bird at the driver behind him as he raced away. As he drove, he wondered if the private investigator’s body would fit in the trunk in the lighthouse with Caroline’s.
He reached up to turn on the radio and his eyes flitted to the time.
“Aw hell yeah,” he said as he sped up, his grin at last returning. There was still time to make his lesson with Mindy.
Maybe this day wasn’t going so badly after all.
10
Hedge Holes
Troy Clint Bodean, former Afghanistan Apache AH-64 chopper pilot, sat on the edge of his bed staring at the shoe box sitting in his lap. His shift had ended at the beach and he’d taken a long, cold shower. The sand, sunscreen, and windburn had done a number on his skin, so he preferred not to rinse in hot water. He wasn’t sure if he was shivering from the cold… or the fact that he’d just gotten tangled up into another crazy situation with a possible dead gir—
He made himself stop that line of thinking. They couldn’t be sure that Caroline Colpiller was dead—she might just be on some hippie road trip. He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. His black hair was turning gray at the temples.
In his best Danny Glover imitation, he said, “I’m getting’ too old for dis shit.”
Or wait, was it Mel Gibson who’d said that line? Maybe both. Either way, he felt the truth of it today.
He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. He hadn’t opened this box since all the trouble back on Pawleys Island. Opening the lid slowly, he took the cleaning cloth off the Beretta M9. It was the same one he’d brought back from Afghanistan, an unusual thing to happen, but he’d asked for it in return for solving the case of the knucklebones. The powers-that-be had immediately denied his written request but two weeks later, when he was back stateside, an unmarked, no postage paid package arrived on his doorstep. It was his gun. Someone, somewhere in some clandestine agency, had apparently taken it upon themselves to grant his request. Troy decided not to ask any questions, and just accepted the mysterious gift.
He laid the gun back into the box and slid it under his bed. He wouldn’t need it just, yet but he knew the time would probably come when he would feel more secure with it tucked into his waistband.
Clicking open his cell phone, he tapped out a message to Mindy.
-I’m off. Ready to meet?
He waited a couple of minutes. No answer.
-You there?
Nothing.
Then it flashed into his memory… she’d said something about a tennis lesson with Taz. He jumped up and pulled his door open. Stopping short, he turned back to look at the box under his bed… not yet, he thought. But something nagged at him about not being prepared for the worst, and he knelt down to retrieve the box. He opened it, grabbed the gun, slid a magazine in, checked the safety, and shoved the gun into his waistband behind his back.
“In for a penny,” he muttered as he headed out the door, “in for a pound.”
He jogged all the way to the front gate at the Ritz-Carlton. The entrance was guarded by a row of huge palms that were obviously only recently planted. The guard at the gate recognized him and waved him in past the cross bar. Troy nodded at him and sped up.
The Tennis Garden was the first building on the right, a yellow, stucco job with a green metal roof and white awnings over every window. The entire perimeter of the building was a raised porch overlooking the ten immaculately groomed rubico clay courts. Troy had no idea what that was, but people claimed it was so much easier on the body to play on clay. The edges of the courts were not enclosed with the usual chain link fence, but rather a nine-foot-tall hedge, trimmed into a perfectly straight outer wall. Netting buried in the manicured bushes made entry into the courts impossible without going through the lobby. Troy jumped up the five stone steps in one bound and grabbed the door handle. Just as he was opening the door, a voice called out behind him.
“Whoa there!” the man said, “where are you headed in such a hurry?”
Troy turned and saw a Ritz-Carlton security officer walking toward him, hand on his holster. The holster held a terrifying can of pepper spray.
“Just lookin’ for a friend of mine,” Troy said and held his hands, letting the door swing closed. “There a problem, sir?”
The resort’s equivalent of a mall cop seemed to relax a little, seeing Troy hold up his hands. His belly was rotund, his armpits were slightly damp, and his forehead was sunburned up to a line where a hat must’ve shaded his face. In fact, his hair was slicked back on his head as if he’d been wearing a hat all morning. He had beady yet friendly eyes… not really a threatening character at all. After a second, a look of recognition flashed over the man’s face.
“Don’t I know you?”
“You might,” Troy said, lowering his hands a little, “I work down at the beach. You know, rentin’ sailboats and surfboards and such.”
“Ahhhhh, yeah,” the man said, nodding his head a little, but Troy guessed he didn’t really remember and was just being polite.
“Yup.” Troy took a step toward the tennis building. “So, I’m just hoppin’ in here to say hi to a friend on my way to work.”
“Huh,” said the security officer, whose name tag said Billy, “you don’t look like you’re dressed for work.”
Troy looked down at his cargo shorts and white t-shirt—definitely not a Ritz-Carlton approved work uniform. For employees who weren’t in-house staff, it was all white, all the time.
“Oh, um, yeah,” Troy stalled, “well, today is… it’s kind of um…”
Inside the building he spotted a maid spraying glass cleaner on some sort of display case. Inspiration hit.
“It’s a cleaning day,” Troy said suddenly, “you know, scrubbing the scum off of all the boats and boards.”
“Ahhhh yeah,” Billy said, still not quite fully under
standing.
An awkward silence fell between them; Troy looking at Billy, Billy staring blankly back at Troy.
“Hey!” Billy said suddenly, startling Troy, “you wanna see something cool?”
Troy glanced back at the building, concern for Mindy trickling back into his mind.
“I dunno, man,” Troy said, trying to protest, “I really gotta get going.”
Billy pointed over toward one of the hedges. “Seriously, man, check this out. Just take a second.”
Troy inhaled slowly. “Okay, okay, just a second. Then I gotta go.”
Billy walked quickly toward the hedge wall and grabbed a branch. He pulled the branch to the side, exposing a small hole through the hedge. He beamed with pride.
“Nice,” Troy said, not sure what he was looking at.
“Go on,” Billy said, nodding toward the opening. “It’s Linda Morgenstern having her lesson.”
“Oh, uh… okay…”
“Wait,” Billy said, a wry smile spreading over his face, “you don’t know about Linda?”
Troy shook his head.
Billy laughed, and winked. “Just take a quick peek. Let’s just put it this way… tennis balls ain’t the only thing bouncin’ on that court.”
Troy leaned into the hedge and peered through the opening. Sure enough, a truly gifted lady was gyrating in all sorts of breast-bouncing maneuvers. Troy was certain she had practiced these attention-getting moves to ensure proper boob placement for maximum male enticement. It was quite a show. Troy could overhear snippets of the conversation.
“Right,” her tennis pro was saying as he put his hands around her waist, “be sure to put your shoulders back, left arm up, firm grip, and proper unit turn.”
Linda licked her lips and shoved her hips back into the young man teaching her.
“Oh, Josh,” she grinned, “you know I have a firm grip for your proper unit.”
Troy leaned back from the hedge. Dangit, that ain’t Taz, he thought, and that sure as heck ain’t Mindy.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 55