Slaying at Sea

by Stacey Alabaster

  Slaying at Sea

  A Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery

  Stacey Alabaster

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Bonus Content: Story Previews

  1

  Alyson

  I was flying high on the perfect wave, the sun a perfect sphere behind me, in my perfect town of Eden Bay, when I saw it. A dark, black object bobbing below in the crystal clear blue water. My jaw clenched. Get it? Jaw? Oh, gosh—every surfer’s worst fear. Actually, every beach-goer’s worst fear.

  Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

  But, to be fair, it’s never that safe to go into the water in Australia. There are crocs, jellyfish, stingrays, and there are sharks. I’d never actually seen one up close before, but I had always been on the lookout. I was the first line of defense out there.

  “Shark! Shark!” I screamed, flapping my arms around as I hit the sand and threw my surfboard so hard that it caused a dent. My screams were contagious. No one else had even seen the creature and yet everyone else began to scream and flee onto the dry sand as well. Actually, most people even ran so far as the pier or the sidewalk just in case the shark magically grew legs and was able to chase them. I saw one woman run right to her car and lock the door.

  The head lifeguard, Simon, came jogging up to me once all the warning signs had been put up and the beach was closed. “Thanks, Alyson,” he said, a little breathless. The beach patrol was out to search for the shark before anyone else could get back in the water.

  I nodded and winked at him, a bit breathless too. “You got it. Always here to help, Simon.” I was the one brave enough to go out further and deeper than anyone else, and I always kept everyone else informed of the dangers out there. Rips, rough waves, dangerous wildlife. Ha. They pretty much didn’t even need the lifeguards with me about. Simon and his crew were kinda redundant, if you asked me. All they did was sit up in their little high chairs, lazing about, reading magazines, while I was actually in the water. Actually amongst the danger, scoping it out myself. Protecting everyone else.

  Still a little breathless, I realized that my heart was beating heavily. I placed my hand on my chest and realized how lucky I had been to escape. I glanced out over the water and shook my head. The water was my home. But my home had almost killed me.

  My cell phone was ringing. I’d already sent a text telling my best friend Claire about the emergency. “Hello?”

  Apparently, Claire had heard the screams from her motel room. It was a Sunday, so her bookstore was closed, and she was trying to sleep in.

  I told Claire all about it. She was lucky she was safe and secure on the second floor of her motel, although it wasn’t like Princess Claire would ever be out as deep in the water as I’d been. “There won’t be any victims today, and that’s all thanks to me.

  “Oh, can you hang on? The lifeguard is coming back to thank me again.” I wondered if I would get some kind of reward or something for my bravery. Simon was stomping toward me with a frown on his face, his shadow on the sand longer than it should have been in the early morning sun. He was the largest and tallest of all the lifeguards and he had the most muscles as well. If you were drowning, it was Simon you would want coming to your rescue.

  But I was confused. Why wasn’t there gratitude all over his face? There I was, waiting for my medal of bravery, and Simon was looking at me as though I had just run over his cat.

  “It was a piece of wood.”

  “Huh?”

  “The object you saw. The coast guard just found it. It’s a piece of wood.”

  Gulp. A super dark piece of wood in the shape of a shark though, right? It was a mistake that anyone could have made.

  I opened my mouth again, just to make sure. “But a shark…”

  “It wasn’t a shark, Alyson. It was debris.”

  I went back to my phone call. “Well, the point is I tried my best.”

  2

  Claire

  There were screams coming from the beach like someone had been murdered. Now, around here? Well, lately, that wouldn’t be so surprising. Eden Bay had seen its fair share of murders in recent times.

  I climbed out of bed and ran to the window. Surely not again.

  Alyson’s text just read “SOS.” When I phoned her right away to check what that meant, she told me it meant “Surfer Observes Shark.”

  “You’re kidding me!” I said. Leaving my room, I pulled on a sweater as I descended the two flights of stairs to the bottom of the Dolphin (F)Inn. I know it is a little strange to run TOWARD a beach when there has been a shark sighting, but part of me actually wanted to see the thing. Or at least witness the chaos that it had caused. There hadn’t been a shark sighting on Eden Bay since I was a kid. It was a relatively safe beach. I say relative, of course.

  Emergency warnings had already been put out and there were trucks parked down on the beach with lights and sirens blaring, telling people to stay away. A message was broadcast over a speaker. I was still trying to talk to Alyson on the phone, but it was difficult to hear her over the sirens and the screams. She asked me to hold on a moment as I reached the sand and noticed that the emergency lights had suddenly been turned off.

  Alyson was back on the line. All I heard was something about a piece of wood. “Um, what was that?” I asked, still trying to listen and trying to find her at the same time. There were people running and shrieking, and I was almost barreled over by a large man in a wetsuit.

  So. Not a shark then. All the panic-stricken people around me had fled for nothing.

  “The point is I tried my best.”

  Trust Alyson to cause a local catastrophe. There was actually someone sitting on the sand with an oxygen mask because they’d had a panic attack and the paramedics had been called. Over a piece of wood.

  Alyson came running up to me, sheepish, but then broke out into a grin. Her hair was still wet from the ocean and she was still wearing her wetsuit, but stripped to her waist with just her bathing suit on at the top.

  “Whoops,” she said with a little laugh.

  Yes. Whoops. I looked around at all the empty cafes and the ice cream van that was getting zero customers that morning. And the people still recovering from their near-heart attacks.

  The lifeguards had started to take the signs down and people were starting to gingerly dip their toes back into the water. That was the funny thing about the power of suggestion, though—even though people logically ‘knew’ that the object had only been a piece of wood, they were still cautious about getting back into the water. All of them were glancing about nervously like an actual shark might be waiting there to snap their toes off.

  “How did you mistake a piece of wood for a shark?” I had to ask the question as Alyson and I wa
lked over to the ice cream van so that the poor guy would get at least two customers that morning. But I already knew the answer—overactive imagination.

  But it turned out I hadn’t heard the last of Alyson Faulks’s wild imagination that day.

  “What if it’s not just a random piece of wood?” Alyson asked as we walked along the shore, eating our soft-serve cones. There was a weird tone to her voice. It was all whispery and excited. This ‘random’ piece of wood had been brought to the shore just to reassure onlookers. I hadn’t noticed anything unusual about it other than, to Alyson’s credit, it had been pretty dark.

  “What else could it be?” I was down to my cone.

  “Well, wood doesn’t just come from nowhere, does it?” Alyson said. “I reckon there was a shipwreck.” Her eyes lit up. “And this is only one part of it. Claire, I think there are survivors out there.” She glanced out over the water, which was still very light on surfers and swimmers. “Or maybe worse—victims.”

  Hmm. I had my doubts about this little theory. Part of me wondered if Alyson was just trying to save face after the shark-sighting disaster. You know, try to make out like this was all something more sinister and mysterious than it appeared on the surface. After all, a floating piece of wood wasn’t that interesting, was it?

  But a potential shipwreck. That was interesting. Victims. Survivors.

  Alyson is known for her big mouth. She wasted no time in throwing her theory around to the rest of the town that night as we ate our dinner at Captain Eightball’s, having to take a seat at the bar because there were no spare tables. That just gave Alyson more of a chance to tell anyone who was listening that there had been a shipwreck and she had been the one to spot the wreckage.

  “I don’t think you’ll be getting a medal for this,” I said to her, hoping she would pipe down a bit. I just wanted to eat my cheeseburger and go home.

  The rest of the town thought that Alyson was completely barking mad, and so did I. She was being dismissed, quite rightly, as the girl who had mistaken a piece of wood for a shark and caused half the town to shut down and the other half to have a meltdown. Over wood.

  Except she did have a point.

  I hated to admit it, but she was right. The wood had to have come from somewhere. It didn’t just drop from the air. It wasn’t from an aircraft, and I’d never heard of a UFO made from wood.

  Was it actually from a shipwreck? And were there any survivors?

  We had to find out.

  3

  Alyson

  One good thing about the emergency I had caused—an empty beach. And I LOVE having a beach all to myself early in the morning. I dug my toes into the white sand and grinned as the sun hit my face. But there was another reason I was there at the break of dawn. I was on the lookout. I know, I know—shipwrecks sound like things that only happen in the movies. Or in books. Claire probably had a whole section in her shop dedicated to books about brave souls washing up on beaches and islands and having to start new lives, like Swiss Family Robinson. I’d never read the book, but I had loved the movie growing up.

  Maybe I would have my own Swiss Family Robinson moment.

  I glanced around and thought about the first convicts who had washed up on the shores of New South Wales, not so far from where I was sitting. I always shiver to think of people arriving on the beaches of Australia, not knowing what they were in for. The poverty and hardships. I stood up and decided to go for a wander along the edge of the water. Well, anyone who washed up here and now would be a lot luckier than the first convicts. No prisons, no surviving on rations, and better than anything else, they would have me to welcome them.

  Sigh. The beach was empty. There were a few seagulls, but they didn’t need me to rescue them. In fact, when I went to say hello to one, it just gave me a rude look and flew away. My fantasies of rescuing a handsome stranger and nursing him back to health were not going to materialize on that day. Back to work, then.

  I made my living as a surfboard designer and decorator. That was one bad thing about an empty beach—no customers. But I still had a commission from the previous week that I was finishing up. I mixed the paints on the easel, mixing generous quantities of pink and orange. I was making something that kind of looked like a psychedelic sunset explosion. My favorite kind of design—mix the colors together in a whirl, make abstract shapes and swirls, and then call it a sun. The customers always liked it, anyway. I preferred to work with abstract colors like this rather than to work on the finer details.

  But that day I had a bigger and far grumpier client to worry about. Claire. I checked the time. Yep. Time to be at the bookshop. It was 9am and I had promised I’d be there bright and early.

  She had some kind of low, quiet jazz mix on. “Can we put on the radio?” I asked, trying not to screw my nose up in disgust too noticeably. Usually when I was painting my boards, I had a portable radio down on the sand with me. I just put it on the station that played the newest pop hits.

  Claire blinked a few times. “Not really the vibe that our usual customers enjoy.”

  Yeah, well, maybe it might actually lighten up the place. Entice a few more people inside if it looks like we are having fun in here, not running a funeral parlor.

  But I just smiled at her. She was the one paying me.

  But I was still going to need her to compromise on a few things. She’d asked if I could keep my tools of the trade to one corner of the shop, but I had spread out my paints, tools, ladder, and drop-cloth right into the center of the shop. She was glaring at the mess I was causing. “I told you, this is how I prefer to work.”

  I sneezed a few times. I am not allergic to the two cats that live in the shop, Mr. Ferdinand and Shelby, but I am allergic to dust, just like everyone else is. And I was not used to being around dusty books. Or books at all, really, even though I was being tutored during the evenings so I could apply for university the following year.

  I sauntered over to the front of the shop and popped open the window. “Usually I work in the fresh air. Can’t stand to be caged in like this.”

  Claire stopped stocking the display shelves and shot me a look. I knew what that look meant. It meant, “Do you want the money or not?”

  Well, the answer was ‘yes,’ so I went back to work. The window remained shut.

  “Alyson, there is no way that you need another cup of tea already.”

  Claire was annoyed that I was taking yet another break. But I needed a cup of tea and I also needed to stretch my legs while I considered what I was going to add to the mural next. Claire’s idea had been to paint…wait for it…a row of bookshelves.

  Yep. In a bookshop full of book shelves, Claire wanted the wall to be painted to look like bookshelves. Don’t worry, I’d already shut that idea down. I’d suggested an aerial map of the town instead, with the more colorful and important landmarks large and out of scale to the rest. Which she had agreed to, but now we were in disagreement about what constituted an important landmark in Eden Bay. Claire wanted the skatepark to be larger than the national park near the beach, which was just insane.

  I was sitting on the windowsill, sipping my cup of tea, when I saw something down on the sand.

  Something black.

  Dun-dun-dun.

  “Hang on,” I said, standing up on my tiptoes, so excited that I knocked the cup of tea over. But I barely even heard Claire’s cry of dismay. My nose was pressed against the glass. “What is that?” I just had this tingling feeling in my stomach, like this is it, my fantasy is finally happening.

  “Another piece of wood?” Claire asked wryly as she grabbed the mop and started to clean up my mess.

  She thought I was just trying to get out of work. “Sorry, I have to go,” I said. My gut was telling me to get down to the shore, and I always listen to my gut.

  Yes, there was something dark laying there on the white beach.

  I gulped. Not a piece of wood. Not a shark.

  It looked like a young man.

  But w
as he alive?

  Please still be breathing, I thought as I raced across the sand. I had seen enough dead bodies recently.

  The only reason the beach was so deserted that day was because people were still scared off by the ghost shark that had never actually existed.

  Oh well, it suited me just fine. It meant that I got to be the one who greeted him. The one who rescued him from his terrible ordeal out at sea. I know this was probably the worst possible time to be grinning, but I was, from ear to ear. If only there had been someone there to witness my heroic triumph.

  Oh, Claire is going to have to admit that she was so wrong. Everyone was.

  “Hello?” I whispered as I crouched down onto the sand.

  He was definitely cute. That was all you really needed in a shipwreck survivor, right? Well, that and undying gratitude. He had dark hair to match his black shirt and pants. He kind of looked like a waiter in all black. I wondered if maybe that had been his role on the sunken ship. I glanced over my shoulder, but the ocean was peaceful that day and there was no sign of any ship or any other survivors bopping up and down.

  I leaned down and made sure that his chest was still going up and down and that there was still a beating in his chest. He was alive, breathing quite heavily, in fact. But his eyes were shut, and he was groaning a little bit.

  I pressed down on his chest because I wasn’t sure what else to do, and that is what people always do in the movies, right? His eyes popped open. They were as dark as his hair and a little bit intense and scary—a little like a shark’s. “Where am I?” he groaned.