Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Box Set 2

by David Berens

  “Sounds good.”

  He watched her disappear into the house and sat studying the house for a few seconds. Everything seemed okay, so he put the truck into gear and eased out of her driveway. Troy picked up his phone and saw it was twenty past five. He was late.

  “Dangit.” He found the store’s number.

  After a couple of rings, Barry answered. “Hello?”

  “Barry, it’s Troy. I’m on my way. Sorry I’m late.”

  “No worries,” Barry said. “It’s all good. I’ve started on the big clam order. Take your time.”

  The line disconnected and Troy stared at his phone. That’s odd, he thought. Barry’s never sounded so friendly…or relaxed. He shrugged it off and tossed his phone into the passenger’s seat. The trip to the store took half an hour in the slow-moving, post-storm traffic. He stepped through the front door and heard Barry whistling in the back.

  He grabbed an apron off the hook as he pushed through the double swinging stainless steel doors into the kitchen.

  “My bad, man,” he said as Barry looked up.

  He was smiling and slicing into a slab of white meat. The smell was…off. Troy couldn’t help but pinch his nose.

  “It’s fine, Troy. Here grab a knife and help me get this cut up,” Barry nodded toward the table.”

  “What’s up with the smell?” Troy asked as he leaned over the table to inspect the meat.

  Barry tightened his lips. “Power went out for a bit. I had to rescue some of the meat. Don’t worry, I cut away anything that had lost temp.”

  Troy eyed the meat suspiciously. “It’s got a strange texture, don’t it?”

  Barry shrugged. “Hell, I dunno. But we gotta get this order done asap or we’re both gonna get canned.”

  Troy just stared at the table. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was…so, he grabbed a knife.

  “Cool,” Barry said. “Gimme a bunch of one inch strips, about three inches long. Got it?”

  “Yup,” Troy started in on a piece and pushed the tingling suspicions aside as he worked.

  “Then we gotta get some spices on this shit and make sure they don’t taste what we smell, capiche?”

  “Sure, got it.”

  Meira jogged up the stairs two at a time calling out her daughter’s name. She could hear the sound of music coming from Riley’s room and assumed she was probably sitting at her desk, working on homework. The music was loud so obviously Riley couldn’t hear her calling—no big deal—but Meira couldn’t remember her daughter ever enjoying the radio before.

  “Sweetie, I’m home,” she shouted over the Beastie Boys as she came to Riley’s door.

  It was pulled closed, but not quite all the way. A sign on the door posted the warning: KNOCK PLEASE. Another proudly displayed several magazine cutouts of some cute boy from the latest boy band sensation surrounded by a few red, glittery hearts.

  Meira knocked again and opened the door.

  “Riley, I—” she paused, finding the room empty.

  She walked over to the radio on the bedside table. It was blaring. The settings showed the alarm that usually woke Riley up for school had gone off and hadn’t been silenced.

  The bed was made with the quilt laid over the top of two pillows. Meira knew instantly what was happening here. Her daughter, the good little girl, had made a fake body under the covers to fool her mom. But if that was the case, where had her daughter gone? And how long had she been away?

  “Shit.” Meira suddenly realized that she had peeked in on Riley last night and had thought she was still in bed.

  She jogged out into the hall yelling Riley’s name. No answer came back. She ran from room to room, panic starting to set in.

  “Wait, wait,” she told herself out loud. “Duffy saw her at school.”

  She glanced at her watch. School was likely out by now, but Riley wouldn’t have had time to make it home yet. School, Meira thought, gotta get to the school.

  She ran out to the truck, jumped in and backed out of the driveway so fast, gravel spewed out from under her tires. A loud horn blast behind her warned her that she’d almost plowed into the post office truck bring her mail.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she mumbled raising her hand out the side window in an apology and mouthing the word, “Sorry.”

  The man in the truck waved back, but shook his head in disgust as he jerked open her mailbox, shoved in a handful of envelopes, and then slammed it shut. He pulled forward to the next house and Meira squealed out again. No time to worry about appearances, she thought.

  Traffic was heavy in the early afternoon with school buses and carpools flooding the streets to and from the plethora of schools in the Outer Banks. Meira banged her hand on the steering wheel of the truck as she inched forward.

  Unbelievably, she was stuck behind an ice cream truck shaped like a circus tent going ten miles an hour. The driver was an ancient black man with a patent leather brimmed cap and a bizarre patch over one eye. He was trolling all the kids around and was going slow enough to give them time to pitch the appropriate fit until their parents gave in.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Meira said and honked her horn, but it had no effect.

  The ice cream truck inched along and finally pulled onto the shoulder of the road, a sufficient crowd of children waving money collected there.

  She jerked the wheel, surged around him, and sped toward the school. The parking lot was half empty when she got there and she swung the truck into an empty staff spot near the front entrance. She caught the door as a couple of boys walked out and nearly knocked them down as she ran into the building. To her right was the counter that separated the public from the front office. A dark-haired receptionist—Meira had met her before, but couldn’t for the life of her remember what the girl’s name was—was smiling and waving to kids as they left.

  “Riley Carr,” Meira demanded putting both hands on the counter. “Where is she?”

  The woman scrunched her nose in apparent confusion. “She is probably on her way home, no?”

  “I’m her mother.” Meira moved back from the counter and started walking down the hallway. “She’s not at home. I need to know what classroom she’s in.”

  “Eez probably Mr. Grantham’s classroom. She has him for first period and homeroom…down the hall, turn left and he’s the second room on the right. But he’s already outside, he eez on bus duty.”

  “I know where his class is, thank you very much. Bus duty? What’s that mean?” Meira peered out the front doors of the school.

  She had come in that way, but the buses had already left the parking lot.

  “He makes sure the kids get on safely and there is no horseplay when the buses are pulling out.”

  Meira was only half listening as she jogged back through the glass doors.

  “Grantham!” she yelled and startled a few kids sitting around waiting on rides. “Mr. Grantham, are you out here?”

  For a moment, no one said anything and she didn’t see Riley’s teacher anywhere. And then he popped his head up from an old green Volkswagen.

  “I’m Mr. Grantham,” he said cautiously. “What can I do for you… umm…?”

  “Meira. Meira Carr,” she said walking toward him. “I’m Riley’s mother. Can you please tell me where my daughter is? When did she leave? Did you see her get on the bus? Did she get in a car with someone?”

  “Whoa, whoa,” he held up his hands. “I didn’t see her at all. I didn’t see her this morning and she wasn’t in homeroom after school either. She didn’t come to school today.”

  Meira’s world froze. Everything around her seemed to stop moving and the world went dark.

  “Oh no! Hell no!” Troy spat the words out with the cooked meat. “That definitely ain’t it. That tastes like horsemeat with cream dumped all over it.

  “Freakin’ shit,” Barry slammed the ladle back into the pot of stew in front of him. “I dunno what else to try, and frankly, I don’t give a sh
it either. Let’s just pack this stuff up and send it out.”

  “Dude,” Troy said. “We cannot send that stuff out. It’s just bad meat. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

  Barry shook his head. “I do not know what the hell you just said, but we are definitely sending this shit out.”

  “Nope, it don’t taste right at all. You messed up the recipe or somethin’.”

  “Well, here Martha Stewart,” Barry tossed the ladle to Troy. “if you think you can do better, have at it.”

  “Just get out the way junior and watch a pro at work,” Troy said walking toward the pot. “Get me some horseradish…lot’s of it.”

  “Horseradish?” Barry huffed. “What the hell’s that for?”

  “To cover up the awful taste you’ve created in this pot. Currently, it tastes like a pot of mashed buttholes.”

  Barry snorted and walked to the cooler. “Whatever.”

  He pulled out a large bottle of the off-white relish and tossed it to Troy. He opened the lid, sniffed it to make sure it hadn’t spoiled, and dumped the entire contents into the pot.

  “Damn, dude,” Barry laughed. “You ain’t messin’ around.”

  Troy stirred it in and leaned over the stew. He took a long sniff.

  “There we go. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere.” He inhaled deeply and looked at Barry. “Hot sauce. Get me all the hot sauce we got.”

  “What the—” Barry started, but Troy interrupted him.

  “Just get it. I ain’t playin’ no more.”

  Meira was back on the road moving a little faster now that school traffic was starting to clear. She scrolled through her phone and called Riley again. Nothing. Straight to voicemail.

  “Dammit.” She cursed and tapped again.

  The message played again and she spoke trying not to sound frantic. “Riley, this is your mother. Call me right now.”

  She hung up and scrolled over to call Troy. His phone rang, but he didn’t answer. She tossed her phone into the passenger’s seat and sped up.

  “Doesn’t anybody answer their damn phones anymore?” she huffed.

  She wracked her brain trying to figure out where in the world her daughter might have gone. She didn’t have many friends that she would visit or go home with. She wasn’t the type to hang out at the library. Hell all she did was play that stupid game—.

  Her thought came to a halt. The game shop. What the hell is the name of that game shop? She grabbed her phone and searched until she recognized a name. Leviathan, a small gaming shop with video games, board games, models, collectibles, comic books…all that nerdy stuff. She punched the arrow that would start the navigation program and headed toward the store.

  A few minutes later, she pulled into the strip shopping center. The stores were predictable enough—tanning, mattresses, pizza, coffee, and on the end, the game shop. She pulled into the handicapped space in front and ran inside.

  There were a couple of tables inside where several teenaged boys with unfortunate acne problems sat hunched over books and game boards with all manner of dice and figurines scattered around them.

  “Riley Carr?” Meira demanded. “Anyone in here know Riley Carr?”

  Nobody moved. In fact, no one even glanced at her. Meira looked around in shock.

  “Really? Nobody? I’ve spent so much damn money in this place and—”

  She stopped mid-sentence. Next to the register there was a rack of various gift cards in ascending denominations. She reached up to the top of the tower.

  “One hundred dollar gift card to the person who can tell me anything they know about my daughter.”

  One of the boys near the door raised his hand.

  “What is it doofus?” she demanded.

  “Um, I think Riley was in here, like, yesterday or something. She was sitting with a boy.”

  “A boy. Okay, that’s fantastic. Can you be more vague?”

  The kid’s mouth opened in apparent confusion, but he didn’t say anything else.

  The other guy at the table didn’t look up. “Yeah, she was in here with Red Orc.”

  “Red Orc? What the hell does that mean?”

  The kid looked up and sniffed in disdain. “That’s his username. He’s a gamer. Don’t know his real name though.”

  “Great. That’s just great. That doesn’t help me at all.”

  “Sorry, that’s all I got. Guess you’ll have to do the best you can.” The kid held his hand out.

  “Really?”

  “Deal’s a deal,” he said and tapped his palm with his finger.

  Meira slapped the card down in his palm. He looked at it and squinted his eyes.

  “You have to load the balance on the card first.”

  “Sorry, that’s all I got. Guess you’ll just have to do the best you can.”

  Meira ran out and hopped in the truck. Shit, this is going nowhere, she thought. Surely, Riley would know better than to run off with some boy…Red Orc or whatever the hell his name is. Her phone chirped and she jumped. She grabbed it in a frenzy and touched the screen. It showed a message had come through.

  “Oh, thank you sweet Jesus,” she said but then her excitement was crushed when she saw it was from Troy…not Riley. The message was short and odd.

  -You got any good recipes for crab?

  What the hell?

  -Sorry not a good time.

  -My bad, no worries. Catch you after work?

  She typed out a non-committal response and then deleted it.

  -I need to see you now.

  -Ok, well, I’m at the store. You can drop by if you want.

  -On my way.

  -I get it. Just couldn’t wait to see me again?

  She would have smiled, but she was still too worried about Riley. She didn’t answer. Instead, she turned the truck south and headed to the Austin Seafood Company.

  Barry Olsen Barron sat on the counter watching Troy dump all manner of strange spices and ingredients into the pot of…crabmeat. He almost couldn’t help but laugh as the man kept taking spoonfuls of the mix and sipping it, licking his lips thoughtfully and licking them again. The poor bastard had no way of knowing he was crafting a soup made with ten percent crab meat and ninety percent headless girl meat.

  “Man, there’s no way you’re ever gonna get that to taste good.” He sniffed as he said it.

  The man in the straw cowboy hat held up a finger to shush him. “Watch and learn, sonny boy.”

  That pissed him off a little because his dad used to call him sonny boy. But he’d punched that son of a bitch in the face the last time he did and that had taken care of that. Troy held out a spoon of the soupy mix urging Barry to try it.

  “Not a chance,” he grunted. “That shit ain’t goin’ in my mouth.”

  “Seriously,” Troy shrugged. “I need another opinion. It’s not half bad really.”

  Barry eyed the spoon. It didn’t look like there was any meat on it, just the creamy stew. He inhaled slowly and took the spoon. He put it to his lips and took the tiniest sip. He thought his immediate reaction would be to spew it out, but he didn’t…

  “Holy shit, dude,” he looked up at Troy. He was grinning under his beard. “It ain’t too nasty. Hell, it tastes like chicken.”

  Troy laughed and slapped Barry on the back. Barry almost smacked him upside the head with the ladle of crab-human soup, but he calmed himself before he did.

  “I told ya so.” He crossed his arms over his apron and leaned back on the stainless steel counter. “Sometimes back in Afghanistan, we had to make do with dirt and water. You’d be surprised what the right mix will do to fill yer belly.”

  Barry felt his jaw drop in surprise. “You were a Stanner?”

  He watched as the man’s jovial smile became a tight line between his lips. “I think the word you’re lookin’ for is Ganner. And yes, I was.”

  “Whoa, man, I had no idea. How many of those bastards did you kill?”

  He hadn’t expected Troy’s jaw to
clench and unclench so many times. The man had become a face of stone.

  “It’s not somethin’ I talk about.”

  “Hey, it’s cool with me. I’m not gonna hate on you for murderin’ those pieces of shi—”

  Barry was surprised how fast Troy had moved. He’d grabbed his shirt and slammed him up against the cooler door before Barry could finish his sentence.

  “I said…it’s not somethin’ I talk about.”

  Barry felt his vision go red. Nobody talks to Tryon the Tyrannical that way, his mind growled. He put his hands on Troy’s shoulders, prepared to throw the man off him, but he was disappointed that even though he felt like an Orc warlord, he certainly wasn’t one in real life. His eyes twitched to the counter beside them and he saw his knife. Not his special mail order Dadao, but a scaling knife. It’ll gut the man just the same, he thought. He was about to reach for it when he heard the bell on the front door tinkle. Someone was here. He felt Troy’s grasp ease on his shoulders and he felt his feet touch the ground again. Holy shit, had that guy been holding me up off the ground? He made a mental note not to be taken by surprise again.

  “Hello?” a voice called from the front of the store.

  Troy sniffed and nodded toward the sound. “I’ll just um…check it out…see who’s here. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Barry rolled his shoulders back. “Cool, bro.”

  When Troy got to the doorway he turned back. “I’m sorry, kid…I just…sometimes…it’s not my fondest memory.”

  “No worries,” he said and gave him a single thumbs up.

  But when Troy walked out to the front, Barry tucked the filet knife into his pocket…just in case that asshat tried anything like that again. He heard a woman’s voice say hello to Troy and he peeked through the swinging doors out front. She was pretty, but she was old, like Troy…and she was frantic about something.

  Troy was surprised to see Meira Carr in the front of the store. He shook off the confrontation with Barry, held out his arms, and smiled.

  “What’s happenin’, babe?” he asked.

  “She’s gone, Troy. I don’t know where she is. She’s not home. She didn’t go to school. I can’t find her.”