Slaying at Sea (Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Book 3)

by Stacey Alabaster

  J was sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring up at him with wide eyes, ready to hear the tale.

  But he really did not know what to say to her. Poor guy. I giggled through him trying to think of something to say to relate to an eight-year-old. J rolled her eyes and said she was still bored. I pointed out the time and said it was more likely that she was just tired.

  Kieran was just glad to have an adult conversation. “You’re studying?” he asked after J had gone to bed (very reluctantly). He had picked up the part about the poems that I wanted J to read for me. Of course she had taken one look at them and told me they were in a foreign language. Which Old English practically was. Maria was still deciding on whether I was allowed to read Robison Crusoe instead.

  I nodded and told him about how I was getting tutored so that I could apply for university the following year. “It’s a business course, but I need to get my English skills up to scratch as that is a compulsory subject for mature age entry.”

  “That sounds amazing. I’m impressed.”

  We both heard a creaking of the floorboards and turned around.

  “J, what are you doing up?”

  “Why is there a fishing rod in my bed?”

  Whoops.

  I hadn’t known where else to put it when I’d been trying to hide it from Kieran. “It’s, um, it’s mine,” I said, jumping up to grab it out of J’s bed. I tried to shove it in the cupboard, but it wouldn’t fit and just fell over awkwardly in the hallway.

  Kieran frowned. “You went fishing?”

  “Um, yeah, haha, I think I did… I don’t really recall…” I sat back down on the sofa with him. I knew I had to come clean. I could feel him glare at me as I told him how Claire and I had gone out on the water with Kayla and Jarryd. “Kieran,” I said, finally having the courage to look at him. “What do you know about Kayla? I think she pushed Claire into the water. Do you think she could have killed Warren?”

  But he just stared at me blankly. “I told you, Alyson. I don’t remember.”

  10

  Claire

  Deep breath, deep breath. Ugh, why was I so nervous? It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to do this. I had been doing it for the past eight years. Yet, I was like a nervous teen on her first day of high school as I stepped out of my Porsche. I could have just walked, obviously, as I was only staying a three-minute walk from set. But that would not have set the right tone. I hoped that I still looked the part. I had been to get a manicure, my second one of the week, and I’d had a blow out on my hair the day before so that my hair looked just as intimidatingly shiny as Danielle’s. But the way to really assert yourself on set was to strut right on through the crowd of cameramen and producers and extras and stare everyone down. Let them all know who was boss.

  “Claire,” Danielle called me in a clipped, stern tone. Right. Clearly showing me who was the actual boss. I felt myself tense a little bit. After being my own actual boss for the past two months, being spoken to like that made my blood pressure rise.

  It was only temporary, though. I had asked Maria to watch the shop for me for the week while I took on producer duties. Then I’d be right back.

  “I’ve got the call sheet for you,” Danielle said, handing me a sheet of paper before she took a phone call and acted like I was invisible.

  So, here I was thinking that I would be put in charge of the lead actress, Holly V, who I knew was a little difficult to persuade to come to set. She’d just gone through a difficult public breakup and not only was she upset and heartbroken, she was worried that her public image had been destroyed. A total mess. And I was all set to handle it. I always knew how to get them to come to work, even if their eyes were puffy from crying the night before or even if they were about to break down into tears again.

  But Danielle had other plans for me.

  “I need you to take charge of the extras today. Make sure they all sign the release forms and make sure they actually read them.” She handed me a pile of small contracts. Just how many extras did we need for this one scene? “Just wait till Friday,” she said. “We are going to need triple that amount.”

  There was a non-disclosure clause in the release forms which I had to make sure everyone who was in the scene was aware of, which meant I didn’t just need to get signatures, I had to stand there and listen to them all read the clause back to me. It was tedious work. I glanced over my shoulder at the lead actress’s trailer, where she was still hiding away. Why had Danielle even wanted me back if she was just going to give me a task that literally anyone off the street could do?

  Someone familiar with a beard and a beanie came toward me. “Claire?” he said.

  Oh. It was Jarryd.

  I wondered if he had seen anything suspicious during our boat ride. I still didn’t quite buy Alyson’s story about Kayla pushing me overboard, and I hadn’t talked much to Alyson since it had happened, as I didn’t want to cause any further offense. She was not into movie shoots at all anyway. I’d asked her if she wanted to be an extra in one of the crowd scenes and she had turned her nose up at it. Probably for the best anyway—she would have had a lot of trouble sticking to a non-disclosure agreement. She would have spilled the beans about everything she had seen and then claimed that she had never signed anything in the first place.

  Jarryd did look a little shifty when he realized it was me. “I thought you said you worked at a bookshop,” he said as I handed him the contract.

  Hmm. I hadn’t actually told him that. I’d told Kayla. “I inherited one from my grandma,” I said. “But movie producer is actually my real job.”

  He looked a little confused. “Is this what you are here in Eden Bay for then?” he asked, nodding toward the set.

  “Well….no… I have been here for a couple of months…” I had to admit, then suddenly got very busy handing contracts to the next lot of extras who were lining up.

  Herding extras was not exactly a brain strain, but it was a bit of a hassle, like looking after toddlers. Because it was a disaster movie, some of them needed to look as though they had injuries, so they needed to go to hair and makeup, which was causing a backlog and stress for Danielle. We should have started filming an hour earlier and we still needed to do a closeup on an extra who had been banged against hard rocks before we could move on to the wide crowd shot.

  The line was too long. There were too many extras and not enough hair and makeup chairs. Danielle was close to having a meltdown. But I had a sudden idea.

  “Hey Jarryd, can I get a look at your stomach again?”

  “Um, why?”

  “Just trust me.”

  He pulled it up and the nearby extras all let out a collective groan and a few ‘eww’ as they saw the multicolored bruises underneath his bandages. Strange, because those same people laughed when they saw the special effects makeup, which were just as gruesome.

  Perfect. I pulled him away. “Looks like you are ready to shoot.”

  Problem solved. Even if some of the other extras had to lose out on the fifteen minutes of fame. We wouldn’t have time to shoot them all now.

  Danielle gave me a little nod of approval. I had kept the budget under control and saved the day with my quick thinking. That was always what I was good at. That was why she kept me around.

  Jarryd was believable on screen as well. When he was so realistic on the first take and in his first scene, he was moved to the front of the shot on the crowd scene.

  But when he caught sight of the way that Danielle and I were watching him, he suddenly seemed to go camera shy, as though he had only just realized that the cameras were actually there and this was a real life movie set and before that, we’d only been playing make-believe.

  And when the water started to come toward him, there was fear in his eyes. He gulped, pushed past the rest of the extras, and ran away. Which would have been great if he had been part of the scene where the extras were supposed to be fleeing from the tsunami. But this was one of the scenes where they were supposed to
be facing it bravely while they protected their property.

  “What is wrong with that guy?” Danielle asked, keeping her dark shades on.

  I shrugged. “He was one of the shipwreck survivors…maybe this is all hitting a bit close to home.”

  “Well, take care of it,” she said to me.

  Yes, ma’am.

  11

  Alyson

  I’d been warned that I was in for a surprise. I don’t like surprises. Receiving them, I mean. It’s always funny to give them, like when you hide around the corner from someone and then jump out and shout and make the person drop their ice cream cone to the ground. I did that to Claire once when we were twelve. Still makes me laugh to think about it.

  Kieran told me to close my eyes. He was trying not to laugh, and I wondered that if I did what he said and closed my eyes, was he going to hide and jump out at me? At least I wasn’t carrying an ice cream cone. Just a carrot stick that I was chewing on. He told me to open my eyes, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at. All he had done was change positions from the sofa to standing up with his crutches.

  “Tada!” he said, and threw his crutches to the side

  I grinned at him and clapped, kind of like I was clapping for a dolphin for doing tricks in a water park. But it was great news, wasn’t it, that Kieran could walk on his own? “Are you proud of me?” He looked even cuter when he was grinning like this, showing off.

  “Of course I am.” All I had to do was put the other night out of my head. When I’d seen him walking just fine, without crutches, down a flight of stairs.

  I kept telling myself that if it was true that Kieran had been able to walk earlier, then he must have had his reasons for keeping it to himself. Maybe he had been scared to leave here during the daytime, and thus scared to tell me that he was mobile.

  And now he was no longer scared. He was footloose and fancy free. That was worth celebrating. “Should I get the sparkling wine out again?”

  Kieran nodded.

  There was a knock on the door.

  I told him I’d take care of it—“probably just my brother”—and suggested he make himself scarce for a minute. I hadn’t told Kieran this, but Matt didn’t know anything about Kieran staying in my apartment. I had made J pinkie swear that she would not say anything, and neither of us ever broke a pinkie promise. I waited until Kieran hid himself behind one of the dividers and then kicked the discarded crutch underneath the couch.

  There was another impatient knock on the door. Hmm. Matt usually didn’t knock twice. If I failed to answer the first time, he would just let himself in. I paused, making sure that there really was no sight of Kieran.

  I only knew one person who would knock on the door in such a demanding fashion. Well, besides Claire. But she had a key to my apartment. That left just one person. Troy. I glanced in the mirror, by the door, the one framed by shells from the ocean, and made sure I at least looked presentable. I was showing off my shoulders in an off the shoulder white lace crop top and my hair looked ruffled from the sea and the waves. Unbrushed of course. But some people put sea spray in to achieve the same look. It was easily achieved for free!

  I pulled the door back to find two stern-faced men staring me down. Both in uniforms, but one was a fairly casual police shirt and pants, whereas the other had a larger badge that read sergeant and lines on his face that made it seem like he had been around the block a few times. But apart from that, they could have been carbon copies of each other.

  “Alyson Faulks?” the sergeant asked while the other one stood back and observed. He seemed a little nervous.

  “Uh, can you just give me a minute?”

  I shut the door and went to find Kieran. This time, the knocking was twice as loud. “We need to speak to you!”

  Kieran was huddling nervously behind the room divider. I tried to reassure him that I had it under control. “Just stay quiet, okay?”

  “How can I help you, Officers? Sorry about that, just had to freshen up for a moment.”

  “We would like to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Faulks.” The sergeant looked at me warily like he already didn’t trust me.

  “Er, it’s miss,” I said, immediately on the back foot. Who did they think I was married to?

  “Miss Faulks,” he said, impatiently. “We are wondering if you could tell us the whereabouts of a Mister Kieran Douglas.”

  I just pursed my lips, all innocent, and shrugged. “Oh, boy. Haven’t seen him for a few days, I’m afraid.” I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t met him at all because Kieran had already spoken to the cops. And—at least, I’d believed—cleared his name by doing so. But the two men staring at me told me differently.

  The sergeant’s face didn’t crack. “But he has been staying here in your…” He glanced around the apartment, his eyes stopping on one of the cracks in the ceiling. “Residence?”

  I shrugged all casually. “He may have spent a night or two on the couch,” I said, as though I couldn’t really remember the details.

  The one with the junior rank finally said something. It seemed like it took all his nerve to do so. “Tell him to come in to the station as soon as you see him.”

  I shut the door and Kieran finally came out. Apparently, he hadn’t heard much of the conversation. I bit my fingernails as I sat on the couch and wondered if I was doing the right thing by protecting him.

  “Why do we have to wait so long?” he asked, practically chomping at the bit to get out of there. I’d promised him a surprise of my own, but events had to delay it.

  I opened the door, glanced down the hallway, and checked the time. Surely the cops had better things to do then just wait outside my apartment in case Kieran appeared, right?

  “Okay, I suppose the coast is clear,” I said finally, grabbing my surfboard and calling for Kieran to come after me.

  “Clear of what?” Kieran followed me down the hallway and down both flights of stairs. I was still looking around wildly as though we might have snipers trained on us. I must have seemed paranoid to anyone watching.

  But when we got to the bottom, there was no one around and the streets were empty.

  “Phew!” I said and reached out to give Kieran a high-five. He gave me a cautious one back with a curious expression. “That was a close one!”

  “What was?”

  “Don’t worry about it!” I said, starting to break into a jog, then realized that was probably a bridge too far for a man who hadn’t even been able to walk a few days before. I slowed down and waited for Kieran to catch up to me. He had his face up to the sun like he was drinking it in, like it was the first time he had felt sunshine on his face in years, like he had been deprived of it.

  “So what was your role on the boat again?” I asked as we got closer to the water. I had a (nice, not a jumping out) surprise in store for Kieran. We were going to stop by my little business stand on the sand and pick one of the surfboards for him to have. My gift to him.

  Kieran blinked a few times and turned his face down, as though the sun had suddenly become too bright for him.

  “I caught the fish,” he said, as though that was obvious.

  He had said this to me before, but it didn’t tell me what I needed to know. All three of them—Kayla, Jarryd, and Kieran—had been so evasive about what they were actually doing in Australia fishing. Neither Claire nor I thought that their story added up. It wasn’t like they could all just sail back to New Zealand in their tiny little fishing boat and take all the fish back with them.

  “Do you miss it?” I asked as we approached the surfboards. “Being out on the water, I mean.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t remember too much about it. The whole thing is foggy. Like trying to recall a different lifetime.”

  There were seven different boards for Kieran to choose from. “This one is the most lightweight,” I said, picking up the one on the furthest left. “Although it does have a rather interesting…design on it.” I was referring to the penguin that I had
painted with the backward baseball cap, doing the thumbs up sign. I had painted it like that as it had been aimed at a younger audience, someone just starting to surf for the first time.

  Kieran had no idea why I was handing the board to him. “It’s a present,” I explained with a grin. I would take a bit of a loss, not being able to sell it after I had bought it secondhand, repaired it and painted it. But that was all cool with me. As long as Kieran liked it.

  Kieran thanked me and took the surfboard off me. He misjudged how heavy it was going to be—my fault for saying it was lightweight, it’s all relative when it comes to surfboards—and almost dropped it, then held it awkwardly under his arm.

  I tried not to laugh

  “What is it?” he asked, grinning at me

  “It’s just clearly the first time you’ve ever done that,” I said, laughing.

  “I have no idea how to actually use this thing…” he said, trying to spin it around. It almost fell to the ground again. “Your present might go to waste with me.”

  “I can teach you how to surf!” I said, brightening up. “That can be part of my gift to you.”

  He was just staring into the sand. Something was the matter, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I had to finally ask him what was wrong. If he sulked forever, the sun was going to set before we even got in the waves.

  “It’s just… I should be the one giving you a gift, Alyson, not the other way around,” he finally said, looking guilty. “You have been really kind to me, and all I have done is…” Lied to me? I wondered. That’s not what he said, though. Instead, he just kept staring into the sand.

  I told him not to be so silly. He was a guest of mine, in my town and my country, and I wanted him to have the full Eden Bay—and the full Aussie—experience. “It’s probably too cold to surf in New Zealand most of the time,” I said, teasing him as I started to jog to the water. “Now come on, your first surfing lesson starts now!”