Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  “Oh, but I can help out!” J cried out, interrupting us. She’d heard the word “investigation.” Darn.

  “No way, kiddo,” Matt said as he pulled her away. “You’re coming with me. Frozen yogurt place closes in thirty minutes.”

  ‘Dark side of the beach’ was now quite literal as the sun began to fade over the ocean. It didn’t look anywhere near as inviting as it did during the day. Maybe Matt was right. Maybe it was dangerous to be out here. Oh well, nothing to fear except fear itself, right? I stepped down onto the sand and headed gingerly toward the water where a bunch of guys were practicing.

  They must have been crazy to be catching waves like that, that crashed and threw them off their boards, when there was barely enough light to see. But the Rushcutter’s Shore Surfing Comp was the big event of the year, and it brought out the super competitive side in people. They did things they usually wouldn’t.

  Maybe I should head back to the flags.

  I started to turn around and then jumped when I almost walked straight into a strange old man who had apparently been right behind me the whole time. Creepy. “Whatcha doing?” the old man asked me, knitting his eyebrows.

  “Eh, nothin’. Just taking in some cool night air…” I hurriedly backed away, which meant I went back toward the water. Which usually seemed like a safe place. Now it seemed like it was full of sharks. What was happening to my town? It had gone from sunshine to scary overnight.

  But I wasn’t about to stand for that. No way. That just cemented my plan. I had to figure out who killed Adrian Bailey. Then all this would be forgotten, the reporters would leave, and nothing like that would ever take place in Eden Bay again. It would be as though all of this was just a bad dream.

  “What are you just standing there for? You gonna get in or not?” I turned around and saw that a tall, lanky guy with long, blond hair in a ponytail was eyeing me up and down. I only vaguely recognized him. One of the blow-ins who had come to town a few weeks early to practice. “Or are you too scared to?” He seemed to be daring me. Common sense told me not to go in there. The waves were too strong and the sky was too dark.

  But when someone tells me I can’t do something, that only makes me want to do it more.

  I remembered that Claire had that same quality.

  Huh.

  “Sure am. I just need to grab one of my boards.”

  It turns out that being able to see is a big plus when you are trying to stay on top of a surfboard. Within a few minutes, I had fallen into the wave and only just managed to pull myself back up onto a seating position, my blond-haired friend laughing to me from the left. My mouth was full of water and I was coughing and spluttering. “That’s it. I’m getting out,” I said, still trying to get a full lung’s worth of air. My life was worth more to me than my pride, anyway. I couldn’t die—J was depending on me. Matt depended on me too, in his own way. Not that he would ever admit such a thing.

  I hurried out of the waves and tried to find my towel. Oh darn, that’s right, I didn’t bring a towel. I was never supposed to go into the water. I’d borrowed one of my own display surfboards from the light side of the beach. It was going to need a cleanup now before I could put it out for sale again.

  There was an unclaimed beach towel lying on the sand. I glanced around. Huh. Was it really bad to borrow someone else’s towel? Sure, a snotty person like Claire Elizabeth Richardson would never do it in a million years, but hey, I once ate a six-pack of rolls I found in the dumpster behind a bakery, so using a stranger’s towel for a quick dry-off was no biggie.

  There was someone small with fast legs running down the sand toward me. Oh. No. She didn’t. Did she?

  “J!” I cried out, running over to her, the damp stranger’s towel still in my hands. “What are you doing here?!” My tone came out cross and alarmed. I was always the ‘good cop,’ the parent who went the softest on her out of Matt and I. I wasn’t sure I had ever yelled at J in my life, not seriously. But right then, I was angry.

  “I wanted to come and see what you were doing,” she said with a pout. “It’s not fair that I have to stay away and miss out on all the fun…”

  “Matt and I decide what is fair and what is not,” I said, leading her away from the water and back to where the streetlights lined the road next to the beach. “Does Matt know you’re here, young lady?”

  Her silence told me that it was a no.

  “You can’t just run away like that. Matt will be worried sick about you.”

  She told me that he was still at the frozen yogurt joint, that she’d pretended to need the bathroom and then ran away. I had no phone to call Matt, so I grabbed J’s hand and started to drag her right back before Matt contacted the police.

  “What is that?” J asked. I thought she was just stalling so I continued to pull her away. But she stopped, stubbornly, and pointed to something large and dark lying on the sand.

  It looked like a body.

  I started to get a horrible sense of déjà vu.

  I’m a pretty tuned-in individual, when it comes to things like good and bad vibes, and I’ve always had the uncanny ability to sense when something is wrong. All that evening, I had felt like something wasn’t right in my bones. The vibe at the beach had been all wrong, off somehow. You tell Claire anything like this? She would be quick to dismiss it, at least on an intellectual level…but I’m sure deep down, she can sense vibes as well.

  “J, stay back for a moment, okay?”

  “But…” She tried to argue with me.

  “I mean it.”

  I gasped when I saw the body lying there, long-haired, with a face so white there didn’t look to be any life left in it.

  I knelt down. There was still a heartbeat.

  Just.

  J was already back with Matt on the side of the road. I’d been told by the cops to move out of the way, but I was about as good at doing what I was told as J was.

  The paramedics had arrived. And so had someone else—her blonde ponytail up in a perky style and her earphones in her ears. She was wearing a gold velour jogging suit that looked far too expensive for something you just exercised in.

  Claire was huffing a little as she came to a stop where all the commotion was.

  Sure, she made it seem like her appearance there was just a coincidence. But she would have been able to see the scene from her motel window. More than likely, curiosity had gotten the better of her. “You just happened to be out jogging?” I asked.

  Claire took an earphone out. “Lay off, will you…” She stopped talking and turned white as she looked at the body in the sand.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  Claire backed away a little bit, looking liked she might tumble over. Well, she had always been the more sensitive of the two of us. I could handle a bit of blood and guts. Claire, not so much.

  She nodded and gulped for breath. “Ah, well. Yes. Kinda. He’s staying in the room next to me at the Dolphin (F)Inn. His name is Aaron.”

  She looked like she was about to pass out.

  “It’s okay,” I said, wondering if I needed to catch her. “He’s still alive.”

  “It doesn’t look like it,” Claire said with a gasp.

  I helped her back to the road and put a coin into the vending machine to get some water. Matt and J had already left. I hadn’t even said good-bye to them. But I had more important matters to worry about. Maybe Claire was the key to this whole thing.

  “Do you know anything about him?” I asked as I tried to get Claire to take a drink.

  She shook her head. “Just that he was in town for the surf comp next week. Thought he had a chance at taking the title.”

  Now it was my turn for my legs to go wobbly beneath me.

  “Claire, don’t you see what is happening?” I asked her, my voice getting squeaky. “Someone out here is targeting surfers. The best competitors for the surf competition next week. Picking them off one by one. First Adrian, now Aaron.”

  She gulped down the l
ast of the water. “What are you saying, Alyson?”

  “Claire, I could be next. Now will you help me?”

  9

  Claire

  This time, I caught the knock on the door and went outside to grab my breakfast tray before my cornflakes got soggy. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why they added the milk themselves. Why not just put a little carton on the tray so we could add it when we wanted? Oh well, small town charm, I guessed. Pausing, bowl in hand, I looked to the right at the now-empty room. Aaron.

  We’d flirted several times, and he’d even hinted that we should go out on a date. I’d told him I was only in town for a few days. He’d grinned and said that wasn’t a problem.

  But that date was unlikely to happen now.

  I wondered how long he would be in the hospital. Days? Weeks? Either way, it would be long enough for him to miss the surf competition in Rushcutter’s Shore. And I’d never see him again.

  But there was a niggling thought that plagued me. Would the person who’d tried to kill him be back to finish what they had started?

  And would there be another victim?

  I took my cornflakes back inside and sat down with them, digging my spoon in. They had already started to go soggy.

  Alyson met me with a grin wider and brighter than the sun. Which reminded me… I looked down at my shoulders. Had I remembered to put sun lotion on? I had pale skin, whereas Alyson was always bronzed. Alyson put her hand up for me to give her a high-five. “This is just like old times.”

  I reluctantly returned the high-five. I remembered we used to do that all the time when we were in high school, but it wasn’t something I did much of these days. Far too childish.

  “We can head on down to the dark side of the beach,” she said, starting to roll off the list of activities she had clearly prepared for the itinerary in her head. “And then of course we will have to go to the surf club—stopping off for ice cream on the way and maybe lunch. Then we’ll interview anyone we can find on the light side of the beach, tourists and the like. Anyone who might know anything. And then tomorrow, I suggest we get a very early start. We can catch the early morning waves, see if there is anything suspicious going on out there…”

  “I’ve only got one day,” I said, cutting her off. I didn’t want her to get too excited.

  “One day?” Alyson said with a frown. “What are you talking about, one day? You said you were going to help me with the investigation.”

  I nodded. “And I will. That’s why I’m here today. But I have to be back in Sydney by tomorrow. That’s when the movie starts shooting.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t this what you told me last time? That you had to be back in Sydney for work?”

  She had a fair point there. “I shouldn’t have lied before. This time it’s the truth.” I showed her one of the most recent, demanding text messages from Jessica where she was threatening to fire me if I was so much as a minute later.

  “Whoa,” Alyson said. “That woman is your boss?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” I said, putting the phone away. To me, being spoken to that way was no big deal. Well, it had become no big deal, as in I’d learned to accept it as part of the job. Part of the stress that comes with having a real career.

  “You should be like me, be your own boss,” Alyson said, shaking her head, her curly waves flying back and forth over her bare shoulders. “Then you wouldn’t have to put up with anyone talking to you like that!”

  “I can’t just sit on the sand all day and wait for customers to find me,” I said. Besides, I didn’t have the artistic skill that Alyson had, so I could hardly design surfboards for a living.

  “I’m not saying you need to sell surfboards, silly. You already have a business of your own!”

  “I do?” I asked, confused for a moment. Right. The bookshop. “There’s already a buyer interested,” I said as we began to walk down the road, in the direction of the ocean. “And you saw those texts. If I am not back by tomorrow, I can kiss my job good-bye.”

  “Okay,” she finally replied with a big sigh. “Well, I guess we need to make today count then. So where do we start?”

  “We start at the beach.”

  Alyson’s itinerary had needed a bit of adjusting. When there was no one at the dark side of the beach, we’d hurried on, with no time to waste. We were at the tourist section of the beach, the now so-called ‘light side’ where the waves were pleasant, but not challenging, and the sand was white and not pebbly. We were in the exact center of the two flags.

  “So,” Alyson said. “Who do your books say did it?”

  “I…um….” I wasn’t sure how to tell Alyson that the murderess in Murder in The Reeds was, essentially, Alyson. “Haha, if only it was that simple. Unfortunately, not all the answers can be found in books.”

  “Never thought I’d hear you say that,” Alyson replied. “They must give you some clue, though?”

  I stopped and thought about it. “I suppose it would be someone who had something to gain from Adrian Bailey being dead.”

  I still hadn’t put my suspicions about Alyson entirely to rest. There was something that didn’t make sense to me as well. I had to ask. “Why exactly do you think your life is in danger?”

  Alyson looked properly offended. “Why? Do you think I’m not a serious threat at the Rushcutter’s Shore Surfing Comp?” Not many things made Alyson see red. In fact, there were only two. One—someone spelling her name with an I. I am not even kidding about that. Don’t try. Two—someone questioning her surfing ability.

  “I didn’t say that,” I said, trying to calm her down before she blew a gasket. “But the two victims so far have both been male. Surely you’re not competing in the same heats as them…”

  “Well, that’s a whole other story.” She looked very pleased with herself. “As the result of many years campaigning by yours truly, we now have gender equality in all of the surfing heats. Men and women competing in the same categories.”

  “Against each other?” I asked. More for clarification. I didn’t mean to sound so shocked and appalled. I considered myself to be a feminist. It’s just that, well, men and women had different surfing abilities, didn’t they? Maybe I was being awfully old-fashioned. I just didn’t know why Alyson would want to handicap herself like that.

  Alyson grinned at me. “Yep! It’s going to be great! I can beat any of the men, and now I will be able to prove it.”

  Yeah, especially if they are dead.

  We both heard the sound of ‘greensleeves’ playing and getting closer, and looked around us. Sure enough, Old Mr. Peters stopped and pulled up his ice cream van beside us. I checked the time. “Alyson, we don’t have time to get ice cream. One day, remember?”

  “Ah, we always have time for ice cream,” she said, wandering over to the van while I followed impatiently behind her.

  “Free for club members,” Mr. Peters said as he handed Alyson a cone. “In celebration of the comp on Monday. Anyone who is out training and practicing today deserves a little treat!” The business practices in this town continued to astound me.

  I had to pay full price for mine. Alyson scarfed hers down with a grin.

  “It’s too bad you have to be back in town tomorrow or you could sign back up as a member. Get some free ice cream.”

  I glanced over at the surf club. “Dan Fisher told me the club isn’t accepting any new members at the moment.”

  Alyson made a funny face. “We’re always accepting new members. I don’t know why Dan told you that.” She shook her head. “He’s only a regular member anyway, even though he’s an employee at the kiosk. As secretary, I way outrank him.”

  “I know why Dan would tell me something like that,” I said, glowering back at the white building while my ice cream cone dripped onto my hand. “Because he doesn’t want anyone else signing up for the surfing competition.”

  Dan’s hair seemed to have grown another half a foot since the last time I’d seen him. It w
as very…vertical. How’d he get it so spiky? And so blonde?

  “How can I help you today?” he asked in a way that sounded like he really didn’t want to help me.

  “I am here to sign up,” I said with confidence. Why had I ever backed down the first time? Even if he had told me no, they were not accepting any new members, I should have insisted and not taken no for an answer. That was how I always was in my job. It was just that I seemed to have trouble applying those principles to my non-career life at times.

  Dan was dismissive. He turned his back to me and went back to stocking the fridge with sports drinks and sodas. They were the one thing in this town that were overpriced. But the surf club was run mostly by volunteers and always needed money.

  “I already told you we are not accepting any new members.” He ripped open another cardboard box and started to load more cans into the fridge, too quickly, though. One toppled over and caused the whole row to fall in a domino effect.

  “Alyson Faulks told me you are accepting new members. And she outranks you as a member.”

  He turned around and turned red. Now he had no more excuses.

  “I am going to need two kinds of ID. Including at least one with photo identification.”

  I passed him my driver’s license.

  He peered at it and scoffed a little. He seemed pleased. “The address on this is a Sydney one. You have to live within a twenty-mile radius to sign up as a member.” He tried to pass it back to me.

  Rules, rules, rules. This time, I wasn’t having it. “That sounds like discrimination to me… And that is against the law.” I pushed the license back across the desk.

  Dan grumbled and pushed the sign-up form toward me.

  “So why did you lie to me the other day?” I asked him, when my form was completed and signed. There was a yearly membership fee of eight dollars. I paused and then handed over my credit card.

  He shook his head. “ You lied to me first! Don’t think I didn’t remember you from school, Claire Elizabeth Richardson.”