Bodies on the Beach

by Stacey Alabaster

  I sat up. “But how would I ever learn all the materials I would need to know to get my high school certificate?”

  Mr. Carbonetti shrugged a little. “I could always tutor you a little bit. I help plenty of mature age students prepare for the exam.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised at how excited I sounded.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’d enjoy doing it.”

  Hmm. “I suppose you charge a fair bit…”

  “Half-price for former students of mine.” He finished off his cappuccino. “Just don’t forget to leave me a good review online.”

  A waitress came out and cleared his empty cup and glanced over at me. Normally, they didn’t mind if you sat there indefinitely, but I felt obliged to order a second smoothie when I had been there for more than two hours and was still only halfway through my book.

  I was just about to call it a day, when something very bright, white and gold, blinded me pulling up out front.

  I put my book down on the table and leaned forward. Was that bird poop on the top of the infamous, all-important Claire-mobile?

  “Claire?” I asked, standing up. I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re back?”

  She placed her bag on the ground. “I’m back,” she said with a firm nod. “And I am here to compete in the surf competition on Monday.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said, looking her up and down. She was still dressed in her thousand-dollar suit. “We’d better get practicing then.”

  12

  Claire

  It had been a while. Seven years, in fact. But my feet were not itching to get up onto the board, and as the wave came toward me, I panicked and lost my footing, recalling a broken ankle I’d received when I was thirteen. The second time, I crashed again. I found my footing and stood up a third time, this time, finally catching the wave…for a few seconds anyhow. Then, another crash.

  I was coughing by the time I hopped out onto the sand, but I was still proud-ish of myself. Until I saw the look on Alyson’s face.

  Alyson took a very honest appraisal of my skills. “I think you’d better compete in the beginner’s division.”

  “Look I know I am a little rusty, but I am not a total beginner!” I cried defensively, dripping wet.

  She sighed. “Well, we are going to have to do a lot of work if you want to be in division two or three.” She was competing in first, of course. She shot a judgmental look at my midsection, which I did not appreciate. “I think your core could do with some work.”

  “My core is just fine, thank you very much.”

  There was someone tall and muscular with a very good core walking toward us on the beach. He gave me a wave.

  I pretended I hadn’t noticed him and turned around, feeling a nervous little tingle.

  “What are you two up to?” Matt asked with a little laugh. He tried to catch my eye, but I looked away.

  Alyson was just pleased to have one over on me for once.

  “Trying to teach this one how to surf.”

  “Hey! I know how to surf!”

  “We think she might be better off in the beginner’s division. Fourth division.”

  Matt laughed a little and looked at me. “You’re entering the surf comp?”

  I nodded. “Just getting some last-minute practice in.”

  Alyson was already in the waves by the time I had turned around. I took a deep breath and started to pick up my board, ready to follow her back in. My plan was to try and last more than thirty seconds without falling off. Small goals.

  But Matt pulled me aside and away from the water.

  “I thought you were gone,” he said.

  I shrugged like it was no big deal. “Yeah, well, I decided to stick around for a little while longer.”

  He glanced out toward the surf. “You haven’t told Alyson anything, have you? About what you saw the other night?”

  Why was he so worried about Alyson knowing? “Would it matter if I did?”

  He inhaled, then paced a few steps to the left and then to the right.

  “What’s really going on, Matt?” I asked.

  He ran a hand through his long hair. “I’ve been meeting with Dawn Petts-Jones in a professional capacity.” He placed his hands on his hips and waited for my reaction.

  I was confused for a moment. “But she is a solicitor. What do you need legal advice for?” I had to laugh. Matt was a surfer who worked part-time in a cafe. Not a mogul.

  But he was also the guardian to a small child.

  Alyson was riding a wave, oblivious to the conversation taking place on the shore.

  “It’s not right with J going back and forth between the two of us,” he said. “I just wanted to get some advice about what to do. From a legal perspective.”

  I blinked a few times. “You are really going to do that to Alyson? Take J off her?” I was outraged.

  “No,” he said firmly, cutting me off with a short laugh. “Of course not, Claire. I would never ever do that. She is J’s aunt. I just wanted to light a fire, I guess. Tell her I have options if I need to use them. You know how stubborn she is. She is never going to agree to leave her shack of an apartment, even though I have a big house and plenty of room for the three of us.”

  I had to agree that he was right. It would be better for J if they were all living together under the same roof. It would be better for Alyson as well, if she’d only just be open to hear it. She loved her little ‘cozy’ third-floor apartment that overlooked the beach so much, though. Sure, it may have had a good view, but it also had a hot water tank that ran out after two minutes and floorboards that were coming up.

  “Alyson has a right to know what you are up to, Matt.”

  She was climbing out of the surf and going for a sprint. Cardio. She could definitely compete in division one with the best of them—both male and female.

  Matt looked at me. “Please, keep this to yourself, Claire.”

  “Fine,” I said reluctantly.

  “Everything okay?” Alyson asked, running toward us.

  “Everything is great,” I replied. “Come on, let’s get back into the surf.”

  13

  Alyson

  I never thought I’d be hanging out with a teacher voluntarily. Especially in my spare time. Mr. Carbonetti opened the door and looked down as I stepped into his house “Are the wheels on that clean?”

  “Er, more or less.” I placed the skateboard down in the hallway and followed him.

  “Here is the classroom,” he announced proudly, opening a door and revealing a brightly lit room full of colors and posters.

  “Oh. Wow. This is way more professional than I had expected.” I thought that we’d just sit around his kitchen table with a couple of books and a bowl of chips in the middle, but he had a full room, decked out to look like a mini-classroom. Ugh, classrooms. It was not bringing back the most pleasant of memories.

  Mr. Carbonetti laughed proudly. “Well, yeah, I do use my tutoring side business as a way to bring in a bit of extra money. Teaching doesn’t exactly pay rock star money, as you are probably well aware.”

  Yeah, I supposed teachers were underpaid. At least, that was what you heard about on the news and stuff, wasn’t it? I never really paid much notice to what was ‘going on’ in the news, though. If you asked me, teachers were paid just the right amount—how much more did they want to get paid for sitting around all day bossing kids about? It was surfers who should earn more money, if you asked me. No one ever did, though.

  I nodded. “Where should I sit?”

  “Any desk is fine.”

  I chose one right in the middle. “Are we expecting anyone else to join us?” I asked, looking around the room. Seemed a waste to just have me there.

  “Just you today, Alyson,” he said, clapping his hands together. Even though it looked like there were a couple of other desks set up, just sitting empty. “So. Let’s say we get to work, hey? Lesson one.”

  I decided I was just going to be as enthusiastic as possib
le about the whole thing. Rather than dreading it and just getting through it, I’d decided to think of the class as kind of like a wave. It might be intimidating at first, but I just had to catch it and ride it toward my goal. Not that I actually thought I could cut it as a university student. Nah. That was silly. But still. The thought was tugging at the back of my mind.

  “So, I brought the book I would like to study,” I said, pulling the ice murder book out of my backpack. I was eighty percent of the way through.

  “Well, it won’t all just be reading murder mystery novels,” he told me with a laugh. “Sorry to break it to you, but we are also going to have to go over basic grammar. We’ll have to study the classics of fiction, as well as poetry…”

  I groaned at the mention of the word ‘poetry.’ This all sounded like too much work. Grammar? Next, he’d be telling me we’d have to have spelling bees.

  There was a knock on the door. Mr. Carbonetti apologized and said he would be right back, and gave me a grammar book to look through. But I was bored after three seconds, so I walked to the doorway to listen in.

  “Oh. I am surprised to see you here,” I heard Mr. Carbonetti say. “After the things you told me…”

  Then I heard Matt’s voice. Matt? I peered out into the hallway.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you. I just need Alyson to watch J for a while. I got called in to work unexpectedly and my manager is on my back about having J there all the time.”

  I walked out into the hallway and greeted a shy-looking J at the door. “It’s okay if she sits in the classroom with us, isn’t it, Mister Carbonetti?”

  “Er…sure.” He looked a little ruffled.

  “Hey, she might even learn something, this one. Stranger things have happened.”

  J was perched on one of the desks, watching a show on her iPad. I’d told her to either keep the volume down or use headphones, but suddenly, we were all startled by a loud, irritating song blasting out of the speakers right when Mr. Carbonetti was trying to explain to me the correct way to use a semi-colon.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “J! Sit still and read quietly, okay?”

  She went back to the table and I sighed at her. “I am reading!” she said. She turned the screen around to show me some kind of text.

  “Better than nothing, I suppose…”

  Mr. Carbonetti shook his head. “I don’t think anything beats the real thing.”

  “I didn’t know that ebooks were imaginary?” I said, unable to resist the urge to be a smart aleck. He managed to ignore me and we went back to the lesson.

  “So what book has Claire picked for this week’s book club?” I asked after a while, my mind drifting.

  I thought he knew I was just trying to procrastinate. It’s also difficult for me to go more than ten seconds without saying something, but he walked over to his desk and pulled the book to show me. Another murder mystery. “Looks like you’ve already read it,” I said, seeing that the spine was well worn.

  “Coincidentally, it is an old favorite of mine.”

  I took note of the title.

  I was going to pick up a copy of my own.

  And this time, I was going to read it before the book club meeting.

  “So, this is where he was staying?” I asked Claire as I peered through the window at the Dolphin (F)Inn. The sheets were all freshly made and his bags were still there on the floor. I guessed he hadn’t been discharged from the hospital yet. “And you didn’t see anyone suspicious hanging around at all?”

  I had taken my cues from my ice mystery. This was what you had to do. Go back to the places where the victim had been and ask witnesses if they had seen anything suspicious. People skulking around, strange noises in the middle of the night, that kind of thing.

  Claire shook her head. “I only spoke to him a couple of times.”

  “What happened between the two of you?” I asked curiously. I had been wondering. I saw her blush a little.

  “Nothing happened!” she finally said, and let out a little giggle. Okay. Claire never giggled.

  “Okay. Stop right now. You need to tell me exactly what happened.”

  Claire sighed a little and then couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “Okay, okay, I thought he was cute…”

  “Really?” I asked, without really thinking. “Because I thought he sort of looked like Matt.”

  I saw Claire’s face change and she looked totally embarrassed. She cleared her throat. “Come on,” she said, “we need to get down to the beach.”

  “Sure thing, Princess.” With the surf comp only two days away, I needed to get in all the practice I could.

  14

  Claire

  “Good morning, Mister Ferdinand,” I said, picking up the cat who was purring around my feet. “You are pleased to have me back, aren’t you?” Gosh. I was speaking in a baby voice. What was happening to me. Come on, Claire, you’re at work. Yes, I may have been working. But from where I was standing, I could see the beach. It felt like a vacation to me.

  My phone was strangely silent. I kept opening and checking my messages and emails just out of habit.

  Jessica had not been pleased when I had arrived five minutes late on the day of shooting. Only five minutes. And it had all been down to the fact that I’d pulled over to talk to Alyson about Aaron waking up in the hospital. I’d even hung up on Alyson when I realized just how late I was going to be. Hung up on my best friend just to make it in time for my job.

  But I’d arrived on set, only a few minutes late, slammed the brakes on my Porsche, ran over to Jessica, and asked her where she needed me to be.

  “This is not good enough, Claire.”

  Was I supposed to drop to my knees and grovel? Apologize for being five minutes late when I’d just left behind everything that had suddenly become important to me?

  She essentially put me on probation for the day—and I was back at the bottom of the ladder apparently, having to fetch coffee for everyone and run errands. Way, way below my pay grade. Humiliating.

  Finally, the following morning, I had to stand up for myself.

  “Can I remind you that I am a senior producer, Jessica, not an intern who fetches coffee for the camera crew?”

  Jessica had just peered at me through her dark shades. “I told you. I’ve got a thousand other young women just like you, just waiting to take your job…”

  I’d shoved the coffee cup into her chest. “Well then, why don’t you give the job to one of them.”

  I hadn’t even bothered to go to a car wash before I left Sydney and drove straight back to Eden Bay.

  The door of the bookshop opened and sea breeze hit my face. Right now, this was where I wanted to be. Maybe not forever. Maybe not even for very long. But for now, I could stand here and just breathe.

  “Hi, Maria,” I said, still holding Mr. Ferdinand.

  “Aww…” she said, reaching out to give Mr. Ferdinand a pat on the head. “What a sweet boy.” She moved over to the new release section and started to browse.

  “I might get this one today,” she said, setting a new bestselling novel on the counter. Hardback.

  I looked at it curiously, at the tall fonts and the shadow of a knife on the cover. There was a lake in the background. ‘Murder Lake.’

  “But I thought you didn’t like murder mysteries, Maria?” I asked.

  “I’ve developed a taste for them.” She pulled out an old dogeared copy of an old famous kid’s book. “And I would like to swap it for this one today, please, dear.”

  I steeled myself. No way could I make that deal. The book she’d given me was worth only cents. But it was important to have boundaries. A lot of people were scared to put up boundaries. They are scared that when you tell people ’no,’ they are going to be disappointed and they are going to like you less. But I had learned to. And when I started saying ’no,’ I realized that, yep, people were disappointed and they liked you less. But that was okay. It was still important.

  “I’m afraid
that we no longer offer that deal,” I said to Maria. “That will be twenty-two…”

  She stood back, fully offended, and her entire demeanor changed. “This shop was better before you came along, Claire Elizabeth Richardson!” she said, storming out and banging the door shut. But she’d still paid for the book in the end, which I found strange.

  Wow. She really had a temper, didn’t she?

  I banged on the door. Expecting Alyson, I started to say hello, ready to barge in, but the person standing there only came up to my waist, so I had to readjust. I directed my words downward.

  “Oh, hi, J…”

  For a moment, she didn’t seem like she was going to let me through. She stood there with her arms crossed like she was a bouncer outside a nightclub and she didn’t approve of the outfit I was wearing. A tiny nightclub bouncer. But a formidable one.

  “You can come in,” she finally said, stepping out of the way. “Alyson is in the living room.”

  A generous term, seeing as the apartment was basically just one room, with room dividers serving as makeshift ‘walls.’ Matt was right. Alyson and J would be better off living with him. But I still thought he was going about it the wrong way.

  “Alyson, you’ve gotta see this,” I said, then stopped. “Wow, are you reading?”

  She quickly placed the book behind her back and claimed that she hadn’t been. Too late. I’d seen her. She’d been reading. Well, well. Would wonders never cease.

  “Anyway,” I said, pulling the book out of my bag. There were plenty of copies of ‘Murder Lake’ in the store, seeing as it was on the bestseller’s list. I’d grabbed one and come straight over. “Look at this, will you?”