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  Neptune’s Tear By Joseph Baneth Allen

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  Ruby Lioness Press Houston, Texas Neptune’s Tear

  Copyright ©2012, Joseph Baneth Allen ISBN: 978-1-938397-22-6 Edited by Rosa Sophia

  Cover by DJ Westerfield All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  Dedication

  For Marilyn Dolores Allen, the greatest Mom in the entire Universe!

  Neptune’sTear

  Normally, it took Buddy only one good bark to rouse Bob Crisci out from the blissful depths of Nod’s Kingdom.

  The Irish wolf hound’s bark had caused Bob to shift around a bit, where he had collapsed fully clothed the night before. Nothing more—except a lone, raspy, snore-snort.

  Buddy tilted his head to the side as he studied the sleeping form of his human companion. Only one viable course of action now remained to wake Bob before an indoor accident of sizeable proportions occurred. He trotted out of the bedroom and down the hall.

  Upon reaching the living room, Buddy turned around and raced back down the hallway. By the time he was back in the bedroom, the wolf hound had gathered more than enough momentum to carry him forward as he leaped onto the bed. He belly flopped right onto Bob’s stomach.

  “ Oooaafffffff,” Bob moaned. He rolled out from under the attacking canine bulk and tongue and sat up. “I’m awake, all right, I’m awake. I’ll take you out.”

  Buddy barked triumphantly for good measure. Bob was grateful all he had to do was stand up and walk outside with Buddy. Yesterday, it had taken him a good seventeen hours to drive up I-95 from Jacksonville, Florida, to Topsail Island, North Carolina. Thankfully, his fourteen-year-old Pontiac Bonneville had made the trip without any problems.

  He suspected Buddy had only let him sleep a blissful six hours before demanding his wakeful attention.

  As Bob dragged himself off the bed, he dug out his cell phone from his pants pocket to confirm his suspicions. His last conscious memory had been collapsing into the bed around two o’clock in the morning after fishing out the house key from the beak of the weathered wooden pelican relief on the front entrance of the house. Appropriately enough, the house was called Pelican’s Perch. Debra Harvey; the rental agent, had emailed him where the key could be found—right after his online payment had cleared a day earlier. It was now a little bit after eight.

  Good fortune had definitely smiled upon Bob when his frantic web search had turned up an available pet friendly beach house rental on Topsail Island so late into the summer tourist season.

  He had been commissioned to illustrate and write an article for American Military History Magazine about how the small touristy island was the location for America’s infant space program in the early 1950s before it was relocated to Cape Canaveral.

  Martin Ellsworth, the magazine’s current editor, had given him a week’s deadline on short notice to research and write a five-thousand word article. He also had to provide photographs and illustrations.

  Buddy patiently stood waiting by the sliding glass doors. Bob snatched up the leash he had left atop the couch last night. His luggage rested out in the middle of the living room. He spied the pooper scooper in the pile and snagged it. No sense in making a bad first impression with his temporary neighbors.

  Buddy didn’t give Bob a chance to hook up the leash to his collar once the sliding glass door was open enough for him to get through. He made a beeline dash into the gentle morning surf.

  “Buddy!” Bob was feeling more than a bit exasperated as he followed after the wolf hound. Having to towel dry a gigantic wet dog wasn’t part of what he had planned for this morning. “Come on boy. Get out of the surf!”

  Buddy was completely happy to ignore his human companion for as long as he could get away with it. Unlike Bob, he liked swimming. When he heard true annoyance in Bob’s vocal tones, he attempted to head back to shore. But he couldn’t. The current kept pulling him out into the ocean.

  “Buddy, swim with the current,” Bob called out when he realized his dog was trapped in a rip tide. He dropped the leash and scooper as he began running down the beach after Buddy. No one was around to help Bob rescue Buddy. It was still a bit too early for a lifeguard or anyone else to be on the beach. A wave drenched his sneakers and he froze. He was reliving almost drowning in Emily Atkinson’s back yard pool at her tenth birthday party all over again.

  Bob tried to force his breathing to remain calm. Panicking wouldn’t save Buddy. Yet the instinct to avoid drowning had him completely paralyzed, unable to act to save the dog he loved.

  To Bob’s utter amazement, a pair of tanned, muscular arms wrapped themselves around Buddy’s mid-drift. Within seconds, both the swimmer and Buddy were free from the rip tide and headed back to shore, where Bob had collapsed to his knees.

  Buddy did his best to shake off the remaining waters of the Atlantic Ocean from his close-cropped fur, but he still managed to drench a very relieved Bob.

  “Buddy, you’re safe, but don’t you ever do that again,” Bob said. He made sure the leash was attached to the collar as he hugged him.

  “Hope everything’s all right.” Buddy’s savior walked up alongside them. “Thank you, yes,” Bob stuttered as he looked up, and then quickly averted his gaze. The young man who had saved Buddy was every bit the bronzed, muscular, and midnight-haired Adonis. A very wet, naked, and well-endowed Adonis of a damnably undeterminable young age. Bob averted his eyes from both the endowment and the neatly aligned treasure trail that led to it. “Oh, my, yes. Thank you.”

  Bob quickly stood up, only to be directly level with a pair of brilliant sapphire eyes. He had never seen such a friendly pair of eyes before that sparkled with such confident amusement at the world around them.

  “Buddy never was in any real danger,” the young man reassured Bob. “I can tell he’s a smart dog. He’s a good swimmer, too. He would have figured out how to swim out of the current’s pull. Now as for you, I thought I was going to need to perform CPR. How long have you feared the ocean?”

  “Nearly drowned once as a child in a friend’s pool,” Bob admitted reluctantly. He was a bit surprised at the young man’s forwardness. “Uh, how did you know I’m aquaphobic?”

  “You were on your knees way before you saw me,” Buddy’s rescuer laughed. He glanced beyond Bob’s shoulder for a moment. When his eyes turned back to Bob’s face, they expressed painful old sorrow mixed with bright new hope.

  An odd combination of emotions, Bob thought. He stole a quick glance backward to see who had moved the young man so. A middle-aged woman was helping an elderly one—probably her mother— make the trek from a nearby sand dune and onto the shore. It looked like the elderly woman was carrying a child’s plastic sand shifter and toy bucket in her hands.

  By the time he turned back, the young man was already striding back into the ocean, which conveniently concealed his unabashed nudity. He turned back to face Bob and Buddy.

  “I can’t interfere anymore than I already have. Mary has already lost so much. Even now, she stands to lose her last best chance for hope and love if I persist,” he told Bob. “Help Mary find her lost treasure and return it. By doing so, I think you’ll discover one of your own.”

  “Wait, I don’t understand. I don’t even know your name,” Bob said, exasperated. He felt more than a little confused b
y his new acquaintance.

  “My name is Connor,” the young man replied. “Maybe we can walk along the beach later this evening, if you’d like. I promise to be wearing clothes.”

  With that said, Connor completely vanished into the oncoming waves. Buddy’s sole attention was now focused on the approaching women. He stood panting and eagerly wagging his tail.

  The elderly woman had now taken the lead. An oversized straw hat sat upon shoulder length silver hair that still stubbornly clung onto its former youthful ebony glory in places. The hat was secured, at least for now, by a draw string under her chin. She wore an overflowing blue beach dress, and flat black sandals. Bob was a bit worried that the wind off the ocean might inflate the dress and carry her away into the sky like a kite.

  “Aunt Mary! Please wait!” the blonde middleaged woman following her called out. She was struggling with a basket, an over-sized beach towel, and beach umbrella she carried in her arms.

  Mary gave no indication that she had heard her niece. She was too fixated on Bob and Buddy. She stopped only when she was within proper smiling distance to Bob. Her brown eyes mirrored her joyous smile. Buddy’s tail was now threatening to leave bruise marks on Bob’s right hip.

  “Hello. Oh, what a nice doggie!” Mary told Bob. The toy bucket and sand shifter dropped from her hands as she stopped down a bit and began petting Buddy. “Nice doggie!”

  Buddy returned Mary’s love by licking her cheek. She laughed and clapped her hands. “Aunt Mary, you should have asked the gentleman here if you could have petted his dog,” her niece gently admonished as she caught up with her wayward aunt. She was wearing a loose fitting tan safari dress with matching flats. Mary ignored her.

  “I’ve got to go now, nice doggie,” Mary told Buddy. Her smile faded and worry dimmed her eyes. “My, my, my . . . bucket. Where did I put my bucket?”

  Bob let Buddy’s leash drop as he scooped up the toy bucket and sand shifter and placed them gently in Mary’s hands. “Here you go, dear.”

  Mary stood up on her toes and rather shyly kissed him on his cheek. She then took off toward the oncoming waves. Buddy followed in full protective mode.

  “Shouldn’t we stop her before she goes into the ocean?” Bob asked Mary’s niece. She stopped alongside him, letting the gaudy red beach umbrella fall from her arms onto the sand.

  The woman shook her head as she set the basket and blanket on the sand. “Aunt Mary only wants to fill her bucket with a bit of the sea. She uses it to clear away sand from anything that might resemble the treasure she lost decades ago here.”

  Still keeping a watchful eye out on her aunt, she held out her free hand. “I’m Carol Morgenstein.” “Bob Crisci.” Carol shook hands like a lawyer sizing up a prospective client. He suspected she was one, since her hazel eyes sized him up in a nononsense sort of way. “Nice to meet you, Carol— and your Aunt Mary. Connor mentioned that your aunt had lost a treasure. Only he didn’t say what it was.”

  “So that’s the little island nudist’s name.” Carol laughed. “Believe it or not, Bob, I’ve been bringing Aunt Mary here every summer for the past ten years. He must have been at least ten years old back then. You’re the only person Connor has ever spoken to that I know of. Not so surprising that he should take a liking to you. You’ve got a friendly face. Plus, your dog likes you, even if you can’t swim.”

  Bob found himself seriously doubting any well-built and hung exhibitionist like Connor would be sexually attracted to a forty-something man of average build with dirty blond hair like himself. Slight paunch aside, his male pattern baldness alone had been many a deal breaker on many an attempted hookup, after his partner, Todd, had dumped him for some hot young Peruvian stud.

  “As for what the treasure is, you’d have to ask Aunt Mary, if she can tell you.” Carol sighed, shaking her head. “She never told me what it was. I doubt I’ll ever really learn now. She had a stroke last year that left her with aphasia and short-term memory loss.

  “All I know is that she lost something here decades ago. Back when she was a young woman in love with a beachcomber. It could be ambergris or a translucent pearl. It could also be a gold-coated necklace that would now turn your neck green if you wore it.”

  “Yet you bring her here every year,” Bob marveled. “She must mean a lot to you.” “Aunt Mary is my treasure,” Carol said. “She’s always been a pillar of strength and love when I needed her.”

  Mary beamed at them both as she carried the sea-filled bucket back to the edge of the sand dunes. Buddy trotted vigilantly beside her, his dangling leash cutting a narrow swath across the sand.

  Bob picked up the beach umbrella that had dropped from Carol’s hands. “What corner of the beach are you planning to conquer with this?” Buddy interrupted Carol’s reply by suddenly growling low and menacingly. Bob and Carol turned to see what had set the wolf hound off. A potbellied man, probably in his mid-seventies, wielding an outlandishly oversized metal detector was on a direct path to bulldoze over Aunt Mary from where she was sitting. He was wearing an oversized bright red and yellow Hawaiian button-up shirt and tan shorts. A white Gilligan’s hat sat atop his pudgy, bald head. Way too much sun had roasted the visible skin on his bulbous body a bright beet red.

  “Oh, jeez, why can’t Kenneth Rizzo just leave Aunt Mary alone,” Carol muttered angrily. Her tone matched Buddy’s protective growl. “Any treasure she may find rightfully belongs to her—not to him, or anyone else.”

  Rizzo came to an abrupt halt a few feet in front of Aunt Mary. As he shook a finger at her, Buddy snarled, barring all his teeth.

  “Dogs aren’t allowed on the beach,” Rizzo said. Tiny white flecks of spittle flew from his lips. “Especially dangerous dogs like that one.”

  “Car . . . Caro . . . Carol, mean old stinky puss is back,” Mary stammered. With a fluid grace Rizzo hadn’t been expecting, she quickly stood up, and flipped the toy bucket sideways in her hands. Sea water flew out. The front of Rizzo’s shorts were thoroughly drenched.

  Bob struggled to keep from bursting out laughing. Carol had to turn away, or she would have made the situation worse by howling with laughter. Even Buddy seemed to have found the humor in what Mary had done to Rizzo for needlessly antagonizing her. His protective stance remained, and he seemed to be grinning.

  Rizzo was now quite the shade of livid red. “Mary went too far this time, Ms. Morgenstein,” he raged. “Chief Hazelton can’t keep letting her assault people. Now I’ve got a witness. It’s a psych hospital for her.”

  “All I saw was you wetting your pants,” Bob retorted. He was all too familiar with the type of bully Kenneth Rizzo was and how to deal with him. “Now if you don’t leave Aunt Mary and Carol alone, I’m going to sic Buddy on you and claim it was self defense.”

  Buddy growled as if on cue. “Just wait till I get hold of Chief Hazelton.” Rizzo backed away. “Either he’ll lock all of you up for assault and put down that dangerous dog of yours, or I’ll start a petition to have him fired.”

  Carol placed a grateful hand on Bob’s shoulder as they watched Rizzo hurriedly run down the beach. She gave him a sad smile.

  “I’m afraid you’ve made an enemy who will make your stay here as utterly miserable as he can,” she warned. “But thank you for coming to mine and Aunt Mary’s aid.”

  “Stinky Puss will never let me find Neptune’s Tear,” Mary wept. She was kneeling back down on the sand, tears running down her fragile cheeks. “I must find it and return it or I’ll . . . I’ll . . . never see George again.”

  Carol knelt down beside her aunt and gave her a comforting hug. “You’ll find it, Aunt Mary. I know you will. Besides the name, is there anything else you can tell us about the treasure? Why do you need to return it to see George?”

  Fresh fear now danced in Mary’s eyes. She tried to speak, but the aphasia from her stroke now kept a tight choke hold on her vocal chords.

  Bob knelt in front of Mary. Connor had told him to help her find the treasure and return it.
He had also hinted at a need to be careful about breaking the rules regarding the treasure. Was Mary bound by the same rules that Connor was? Had naming the treasure put her in jeopardy of losing the hope and happiness Connor had spoken of? The unabashed nudist had neglected to tell him who Aunt Mary was meant to return it to. Perhaps she had to give it to George, whoever he was. Hopefully, George wasn’t the rule keeper. For that matter, Bob still didn’t know where Connor fit in.

  “If Carol agrees, I’ll let Buddy stay and keep an eye on you,” Bob told her. He smiled. “Buddy’s awfully good at sniffing and rooting things out. He’ll also protect you if Stinky Puss dares to come back.”

  Mary looked pleadingly at Carol. “May good doggie stay?”

  “Are you sure?” Carol asked Bob. “After all, you hardly know us, and we you.” “Be a shame to keep Aunt Mary and Buddy apart. Both like each other,” Bob reassured Carol. “Besides, you’d be doing me a favor, too. I’ve got some interviews to do in town for an article on the towers I’m working on. My mind would be more at ease, not having to worry if Buddy destroyed the furniture in the rental.”

  It was a little white lie he had told Carol. As long as Buddy had his toys, he didn’t usually go on destructive rampages brought on by separation anxiety.

  Carol looked indecisive for a moment. “On one condition,” she told Bob with mock sternness. She hadn’t been taken in at all by his good intentioned fib. She smiled. “You and Buddy have to join us for breakfast here on the beach.”

  “Agreed!” Bob held out his hand. Aunt Mary grabbed it before he and Carol could shake hands and seal the deal.

  “Blue . . . it’s blue,” Mary said suddenly. “You mean the treasure?” Bob asked.

  Mary nodded. “Yes, yes, blue . . . the Tear is blue as sky.” He clasped her hand. “If I find anything sky blue, I’ll bring it right over and put it in your hands,” he promised.

  “Okay, good,” Aunt Mary said. She looked down at her empty bucket. “I need more of the sea,” she decided. She got back up and went to gather some more of the incoming surf in the toy pail. Ever vigilant, Buddy trailed after her.