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

by Stacey Alabaster

  We’d been in the water for about ten minutes when suddenly we had company. I knew what Troy Emerald would have been thinking, as he approached the waves and stared at me. What was it about Kieran that was so special?

  I had refused to give Troy a surfing lesson in spite of his constant near begging that I do so, and now here I was, teaching a random shipwreck survivor how to surf. He was trying to catch my eye. Next thing, he’d be trying to talk to me.

  I turned my back. Oh well. I had perfectly good reasons for not wanting to have anything to do with Troy Emerald. The fact that he kept creeping his way back into my life was on him, not me.

  “That was fun!” Kieran said as we sprinted out of the surf after about forty minutes of a brief lesson not too far from shore.

  “You are actually a natural at it!” I said, drying my hair off on my towel. It was hard to believe that that had been Kieran’s first time on the waves. Even though we’d kept it simple, he had pretty much mastered it on the first go.

  He straightened up and shook himself off, water flying everywhere. I giggled as some of hit me in the face. “You are just a really good teacher. You must have students lining up to take your classes.”

  Maybe I would have if I actually offered them. That wasn’t my job, though. I had never charged anyone for a surfing lesson in my life.

  “But how did you do that move?” Kieran asked thoughtfully.

  “Which one?”

  “It looked a little complicated,” he said. “The one where you jumped up onto the board and onto your feet in one move.”

  Well, to be honest, part of that was thanks to yoga. I explained that to him, and he laughed and said he’d have to take a yoga class then.

  “Well, I can show you that one move here on the dry sand,” I said. “If we are just talking about yoga.”

  He nodded, and I put my arms around his waist a little to show him the way that he needed to stretch. “It’s all about power in the arms,” I said.

  “Hmm, sort of like using a fishing rod,” he said.

  I laughed. “Kind of. I guess.”

  The waves were crashing behind us and the sun had almost fully set by the time that Kieran turned around. My arms were still loosely around his waist and I didn’t move them away. “You look really beautiful, Alyson,” he whispered as he picked up one of my curls and held it gently between his fingertips. I hadn’t intended for us to get that close. I definitely hadn’t intended to lean in and kiss his lips. “I’ve been wanting to do this since I first met you here on this beach,” Kieran whispered to me.

  I pulled away, feeling eyes on us. I may have been cold to Troy Emerald lately, but I wasn’t that insensitive. I didn’t want to rub Troy’s face in it.

  But it wasn’t Troy staring at us.

  It was the cops.

  12

  Claire

  Matt was in a slightly hyper mood. So was J. She was running around Captain Eightball’s, squealing at the top of her lungs. Matt told me that she’d spent her lunch money on red frogs instead of a banana for a treat like she was supposed to. He picked up J and placed her on the counter, then turned back to me. “Something weird is going on at Y’s place.”

  I quickly started sipping my milkshake. So fast that I eventually almost choked on the milk and had to pull the straw out of my mouth.

  “Erm, what do you mean?”

  “When I picked up J to take her to school, Alyson wouldn’t open the door properly. She just stuck her head out and then pushed J through the small crack.”

  “Haha,” I said, making a forced laugh. “I am sure that Alyson isn’t actually hiding anything.”

  “I think I know what it is,” Matt said as he returned from the back office. He was technically off-shift that morning, but he had dropped in to pick up his paycheck and now that he was here, he had ordered a side of hash browns and bacon. J was supposed to be doing her homework before school, but she was trying to get one of the snooker balls into the hole. She kept shrieking in excitement every time she got close to it going into the net. I’d already eaten my cereal at the motel. Day 101 of soggy cornflakes delivered to my door.

  “And what is that?” I asked, looking a little enviously at Matt’s food. It wasn’t as though I couldn’t change my order at the Dolphin (F)Inn. No one was holding a gun to my head, no one was threatening me if I didn’t order cornflakes every morning. But it was just that I felt like, if I ticked a different box, if I made a different order—say, jam on toast or scrambled eggs—it was like I was committing to life here. If I kept my order the same though, it was like just being on auto-pilot. Less deliberate decision. At least that’s the way it felt in my head. If I just kept ordering the cornflakes, I could pretend it was all just temporary

  “Rats,” Matt said.

  “Huh?”

  My phone was already buzzing. We were supposed to have a relatively late call time that morning—9:30—because Danielle wanted to wait for the sun to be at a high position in the sky before we began shooting. Again, this was a problem that could be fixed in post, but using the real sun and real sunlight would be far cheaper.

  But she was demanding I get to set immediately to sort out one of the dramas taking place with our lead actress. But I hadn’t even finished my breakfast milkshake. Besides, I’d been planning to open up the shop and at least spend an hour there that morning to make sure that Maria hadn’t given away every new book I had in exchange for old paperbacks that were worth ten cents each. Or even worse, she might have made good on her promise to find a new home for one of my cats.

  I didn’t reply to the text. If she asked, I would just claim that I had never seen it. That I’d been having a sleep-in.

  Matt was still waiting for a response to me. “Rats?” I asked, shaking my head as I remembered what we had been taking about.

  “I think she has rats in her apartment and she’s afraid I’ll find out about them,” Matt said, leaning back in his chair as he polished off the last of his bacon and ordered another serving.

  I wasn’t sure which was worse. Should I go along with the idea that Alyson had giant rats in her apartment or should I come clean on the fact that Alyson was harboring a potential fugitive in there?

  “Maybe it’s just really big cockroaches,” I said. Matt raised his eyebrows so high that they disappeared beneath his floppy hair. Right. That wasn’t any better.

  “Is that your phone ringing?” Matt asked

  Three missed calls from Danielle. But I didn’t want to leave the cafe just yet. It was nice having breakfast with Matt, even if I technically wasn’t ‘having’ any and was just watching him eat his food. My mind started to wander… Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up and watch him eat breakfast every morning? Geez, Claire, pull yourself together. Where did that thought even come from?

  “Uh-oh. There’s a really scary looking woman in the window behind you.” Matt had a slice of bacon in his hands and his eyes were wide.

  I jumped at the banging on the glass. Danielle had found me. Not sleeping in. She was rapping her knuckles against the glass and when I turned around, she made a signal at her watch and then pointed to the door, mouthing, “Get out here now.”

  I sighed at Matt and stood up. “Duty calls.”

  I raced after Danielle, hating that I couldn’t keep up with her. She had longer legs. But also, she seemed to be driven by some kind of inner fire and I couldn’t quite get up that same drive.

  It wasn’t a long walk down to the beach where all the trailers and cameras had already been set up for that day’s shoot. It may have been a late start for us producers and the actors, but the crew would have started at the break of dawn.

  We were at the trailer for Holly V.

  Danielle knocked on it again and then turned her glare toward me when there was no response. “She won’t come out.”

  I checked the time. “We’ve still got one hour before shooting,” I said. Seemed like plenty of time to me. But my time in Eden Bay had made me far more relaxed
when it came to morning routines. These days, I pretty much just rolled out of bed and threw on some slacks and a t-shirt, maybe running a hair straightener through my locks before I went to work. Whereas back in the city, getting ready had been a one-hour job. And I’d never even needed to be in front of movie cameras and heavy lights, ready to be shown on screens twelve feet high.

  “We are going to be hours behind schedule. That means hours behind budget,” Danielle snapped as she tried to pull the door open.

  Holly V had locked the door. The only option left was to take the door off its hinges, as Danielle had suggested. But as I’d pointed out, that would only enrage her more. “She’s likely to walk off set for good if you do that, and then not only will this be today’s problem, it will be every day’s problem.” I shot Danielle a serious look. If she didn’t listen to me, this was going to blow right up.

  Danielle said I had twenty minutes to come up with something or she was taking the door off the trailer.

  I paced, trying to think of a solution. Meanwhile, we were getting closer and closer to 9:30 and the sun was getting higher and higher.

  Hang on.

  I grabbed my tablet and looked through the footage that had been shot so far. I hadn’t had much to do with the leads so far, but in the movie, Holly V was playing a local girl—a girl next door type, who just happened to be caught up in all the drama of the tsunami and had to step up to become the reluctant hero at the end. And of course, she fell in love with a dashing lifeguard along the way.

  But the point was, in the movie at least, she looked like your typical small town surfer girl. That was why it took so long to perfect the look in hair and makeup every morning. Because Holly V looked nothing like that in real life with her short, sleek, dark hair that required a wig and extensions, and porcelain skin that required both bronzer and fake tan to be applied every day - just so that she could be turned into your typical beach bum.

  But I already knew someone who woke up looking like that every day. With zero effort.

  Danielle was storming back to the trailer with that driven look in her eyes. She had some kind of tradesman in tow and was waving him over. He started up the electric screwdriver and headed straight toward the trailer door.

  “No, wait,” I said, standing in front of Danielle. I wasn’t quite brave enough to step in front of live electronics, but I asked her to call him off.

  “I have an idea,” I said, a little breathless. If I could pull this off, it would be brilliant.

  Danielle didn’t even respond, just waited for me.

  “Do we have to shoot Holly V from the front today?” I asked Danielle

  Danielle looked like I had just asked the most stupid question in the world. “Even if that hid her tears and puffy eyes, that is still not going to get her to come out of her trailer, is it?” I hated when she spoke to me—or anyone—like that. Like she wasn’t even listening to the person who was speaking, and she had only heard what she wanted to hear and had already decided that it was wrong.

  “We are not going to use Holly V at all,” I said, cutting her off before the screwdriver started up again. “We are going to use Alyson Faulks.”

  Alyson was strolling onto set with dark glasses and an attitude that she must have picked up along the way.

  “Lights, camera, action,” she said drolly, throwing her wet tote bag (holding her bathing suit and beach towel) onto the floor of the trailer. “Never thought I would be a movie star.” She wiggled in her chair and puffed up her hair in the mirror.

  I warned her that she better drop this attitude before she bumped into Danielle. “Why? I’m not scared of her.” Alyson scoffed and put her glasses back on, even though we were indoors and we needed to put makeup on her face.

  “You’re only saying that because you’ve never met her.” I pulled the glasses off and called the crew member over.

  Alyson only needed a few minutes in the makeup chair to get a touch of powder and some gel in her hair to hold it while we drenched it underneath the rain machines. But she used that time to rant and rave about what a favor she was doing for all of us. “I hope I will be getting paid accordingly. Looks like I have saved the day once again.”

  “Shh!” I said, warning Alyson to keep her voice down. I pulled back the curtain and peeked out to make sure that Danielle wasn’t on her way. She could move fast. Like a snake. Attack you when you least expected it.

  “I can’t believe you even went back to working for her if she is that bad,” Alyson said.

  “It’s only temporary. Very temporary,” I said as I gave Alyson’s head one more spray of hairspray. I wasn’t sure that the hair guy had applied enough. Alyson was going to get drenched out there on set.

  The door swung open without even a knock. I braced myself for Danielle to meet Alyson. For Danielle to roll her eyes and say something scathing. But she just paused and looked around. then smiled sweetly at Alyson. “You look beautiful!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Why, you look just like a lead actress should. Shooting starts in ten minutes, doll.”

  “She doesn’t seem so bad,” Alyson whispered to me as she got out of her chair. Hmm.

  “Action!” Alyson was nailing it on set and Danielle was throwing out words of encouragement. It continued to be all flowers and sunshine until the scene where Alyson had to be lifted up by the lead actor and Danielle picked up her walky talky. “We have a problem here. We’re going to need someone stronger!” Then she just walked right off set.

  Alyson turned to me, her face distraught. “Is she insinuating that I am heavier than the lead actress?”

  This was the kind of mess that Danielle regularly dumped on me. Well, it was less like messes and more like little fires that Danielle set and then left for me to put out. It was always up to me to calm down the talent while she just walked away and started the next fire.

  Well, to be fair, most people on the planet were heavier than our lead actress. But now Alyson was putting her shades back on and stomping off set, saying she was going back to her trailer. Who knew she could play the diva as well as the best of them? There must have been something about sitting in that makeup chair that turned people into monsters.

  I hurried over to her. I wasn’t going to let another one lock herself in a trailer. “I just want to make sure that you don’t get dropped, your safety is of the utmost importance to me and to everyone here on the set,” I said, to make sure she knew how important she was to the rest of us. That’s how you get the lead actress to co-operate—you make them feel like the queen. We can’t survive without our queen.

  Alyson finally relented. “What are we going to do then?”

  She didn’t like my solution. It was another switcharoo. We could get one of the actual lifeguards, and only shoot him from the back as well.

  “Oh, no way, not him,” Alyson said.

  But Simon was the strongest guy on the beach. I wasn’t even sure where he had come from that day, but like an angel from the heavens, he had appeared right when we needed him the most.

  “Who better than an actual lifeguard?” I asked Alyson, who was still pouting. Weird. I’d always thought she and Simon were friends. Well, friends-ish. There was always a bit of friendly tension between the surfers and the lifeguards. It was the lifeguards’ job to enforce the rules and boundaries of the beach and it was the surfers’—unofficial—job to test them. The surfers always thought they didn’t have to abide by the same strict safety rules that the rest of the mere mortals on the beach had to stick to.

  But at the end of the day, if a surfer ever got caught in a rip, or they were drowning, or there was a shark out in the waters, then it would be one of the guards who would rescue them. So it was a symbiotic relationship

  “He thinks I am an idiot. Ever since the incident with the shark.”

  “You mean the incident with the piece of wood?”

  She shot me a little glare. “Exactly,” she said sullenly.

  “Well, come on, princess,” I
said, reversing the nickname that she usually used on me. “You are being invited to set.”

  Danielle was back on set and leaning back in her producer’s chair while commentating on the scene before us. “Now this is where our dashing hero picks up the girl. Though, of course, the people we are looking at are neither our actual hero or our actual girl.”

  I had to laugh a little. The big scene with our two heroes and neither of them were actually the lead actor or the lead actress.

  I heard a squeal and then jumped up as Alyson fell onto the sand.

  “What is it?” I asked, running toward Alyson.

  “He dropped me!”

  “I can’t believe that Simon would actually drop you,” I said.

  Alyson dusted off her sundress and pouted. “Well, believe it, because it just happened!”

  Simon was already stomping off over the sand. “Well, what actually happened?”

  “All I did was mention that you had been really enjoying your time working as a producer here again, and then he dropped me!”

  “What?” That made zero sense to me.

  I was still thinking about what Alyson had said to me when Danielle came up to me on the pier later that afternoon when shooting had wrapped. She cracked open the bottle of beer and handed it over to me, clinking it against hers. Not what I usually drank, but it was a local brew and Danielle was clearly keen to impress the locals with her patronage.

  “You did well today, Claire. Really well.”

  I shrugged a little and took a sip. It was far sweeter than I had been expecting and I was a little surprised. “Just doing my job.”

  Danielle sighed and shook her head as she looked out over the ocean. “That’s the thing though, Claire. You thought of a solution that others wouldn’t have. You saved us tens of thousands of dollars.”