It was true. “Well, I am going to have to go to the store and pick up some more dry food before the end of the day,” I said with a sigh. I was still staying at the Dolphin (F)Inn Motel and I could not keep a cat there, so Mr. Ferdinand lived at the bookshop. And I had no intention of finding a more permanent residency at the moment.
“I can look after the shop for five minutes,” Maria offered cheerfully.
Sure, why not? We’d been low on customers all afternoon, so I couldn’t see what harm it would do to leave Maria in charge.
“I’ll be back in ten,” I said, pulling the door shut. “Make sure you don’t allow any customers to exchange books while I am gone.”
I was carrying a bag of dry food back, struggling with it and trying to do the math in my head. It was the third bag I had bought that week. Could that be right? Surely cats didn’t eat that much. I tried to balance the bag while I reached into my pocket for my phone so that I could Google it. Suddenly, someone jumped out in front of me and shouted, “Aha!”
I almost dropped my phone face-down onto the concrete. I would have made her pay for the screen replacement.
I placed the bag on the ground and straightened myself up. “Alyson. Jumping out at people? Isn’t this a little immature?” I picked up the bag again once my phone was safely back in my pocket. I tried to sidestep her. Then I stopped and glanced around. How did she know I was here? “Did you follow me here?”
Alyson shrugged. “Well, you weren’t answering any of my texts. You didn’t leave me much choice.”
“I’m in a hurry, okay?” I said, pushing past her. “I’ve left Maria in charge of the shop. I could arrive back to find my whole store exchanged for old books.”
I was hoping she’d get the point and head back to wherever it was she’d come from, but of course she just started following me like a lost puppy.
“Claire,” she said, finally, grabbing my arm so that I was forced to stop. “It’s happened again.” Her voice was low.
“What has happened again?” I asked wryly, juggling the bag of food. Knowing Alyson, she could be talking about anything. She’d probably spotted that eel in the water again and mistaken it for a sea monster.
“There’s been another murder.”
I just stared at her for a few moments—surely this was some kind of joke—then it dawned on me what she was up to. It might have been a little sad if it wasn’t so predictable. I just shook my head and kept walking.
“Are you really walking away?” she asked. “Did you not hear what I just said?”
Sure. I’d heard her desperate plea for my assistance. And I knew exactly what she was up to. I had to give her some credit. Last time, it had worked. Last time there had been a murder in Eden Bay, it was the thing that had bonded us, brought us back together. We’d needed to work together to catch the killer. But I wasn’t about to be fooled by this latest ploy. As if there had been another murder! What were the chances of that actually happening? Eden Bay had never had a murder in its entire existence and suddenly, there were two in two months?
I tried to get away from her again.
“Claire, I’m being serious.”
“Sure you are.” I actually believed that in Alyson’s own head, she was telling the truth, but she had an overactive imagination. And sometimes a slight problem telling fact from fiction.
“I’m going to take my cat food and get back to work.” I thought about all her surfboards laying there unattended on the sand. “And if I were you, Alyson, I would do the same thing.”
3
Alyson
“I can’t believe she’s acting like this again!” I finished off the last of my milkshake and winced as the banana syrup alone hit my tongue and throat. Banana milkshakes were not my favorite flavor. It wasn’t anyone’s favorite, which was the point. Matt had told me that if I was going to drink there for free, it had to be stuff that they had an abundance of and was about to go bad. I pushed the glass away. I kinda wanted to order another one.
“Who is acting like what again?” My brother Matt was trying to solve a mystery of his own. One of the pool balls had gone missing and he was searching underneath all the tables. As a waiter at Captain Eightball’s, it was his responsibility to make sure that all the recreational activities were fully operational during his shift. The ball had probably rolled into one of the cracks in the side of the building and was lost forever. He shook his head and gave up, grabbing a handful of napkins to fold and place on the tables. They were always folded into ducks—the employees claimed they were swans—before they were set on the table.
“Claire,” I said. Matt quickly looked at his hands and started folding the serviettes at double-speed.
“Alyson, I think you should stay out of the whole thing,” he said. His most recent duck looked very misshapen, its head bent to the right.
“But don’t you think Claire is just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn?” I asked, shaking my head. “I can’t believe she won’t even listen to me.”
“She probably has the good sense to stay out of a murder investigation.” He nodded toward J, who was playing one of the arcade games in the corner. School was out for the day and it was Matt’s day to have her stay at his house. Matt and I had been splitting up our time watching J for some time now since her mum, our sister, had gotten too ill to take care of her. “Do you really think this is wise, getting involved in these things, with J?” She was only eight years old and even though she liked to think she was way older, it was true. These were things she shouldn’t be exposed to at her age.
Fine. He was right. I hated when my older brother was right. It was gross to admit that, though. I just sulked a little and shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, okay.”
And I meant it. I did think Matt was right, and I did intend to stay out of the whole thing.
But that was before I got a visitor I never expected to get.
A few hours later, I was back down on the sand, paintbrush in hand, trying to figure out how to get the water to look realistic. Ironic really, considering the board would have actual water on it. Maybe I could explain that to my client when he arrived to pick it up and complained that I hadn’t made it shimmery enough.
So that was who I was expecting at 5pm on that day. The project had already been pushed back a day, so I thought he’d be happy to pick up the board. But instead, it was an entirely different man. This time, he wasn’t wearing an expensive suit, but he WAS wearing expensive-looking capris as he crossed the sand to get to me. He had the nerve to extend his hand. “I suppose I should introduce myself formally.”
“I’m not sure that is necessary,” I said, trying to reach past his ankles to get to the paint. I’d made a mistake and put green in the water where I’d meant to put black.
“My name is Troy. Troy Emerald.”
I’d already learned that from the radio reports I had been listening to. It sucked that yet another murder scandal was rocking our small town. I’d been listening to the local news, but I was sure that if I’d switched to the national, I would have heard it being covered there as well. We were becoming infamous.
Troy waited a few moments before he spoke again, breaking the silence. “You know, you could take these designs to a proper production company. Maybe even get them mass produced. Do you know anything about patents?”
I glared up at him. “I don’t need business advice from you.” Especially when it involved the words ‘mass produced’ and ‘patents.’ If he thought I was interested in either of those things, he had gotten me seriously wrong.
He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t need business advice from a person who owns a multimillion dollar international corporation? Well, okay…” Of course, he said it in such a smug way that made it seem like he had been trying to do me a huge favor. When he had actually only annoyed me. Didn’t he understand that people in a small town like Eden Bay didn’t like outsiders coming in and telling them how they should do things? The word for this guy was defin
itely ‘clueless.’ Even though he thought he was the smartest one here.
Even though he’d given me his name, he was still waiting for me to return the favor.
I still wasn’t ready to give him mine. I dunked the brush into the paint and started to dot it onto the board, concentrating on a reed I was painting since the water was giving me such trouble. “It’s Alyson. Spelled with a Y,” I added very quickly. “It’s important.”
“I’ll try to remember that, Alyson with a Y.”
He was trying to be charming. Okay, he sort of was. Well! Alyson Faulks was not the kind of person who fell for charm that easily. I could see right through those kinds of tricks.
“So you are one of those people after all,” I said.
“One of which people?” He seemed quite baffled. Maybe he wasn’t used to people speaking to him like this. Looked like the kind of guy who got told what he wanted to hear.
“One of those people who just treats surfing like it’s a hobby you can take or leave. Something trendy. It’s a whole culture, you know. A whole lifestyle. For those of us who live it.” I picked up a ball of wax and started to rub it on the board over the turtle decal. It was already shiny enough.
Troy cleared his throat. I could see his silhouette in the sand. He’d placed his hands in the pockets of his capris. “I’m sorry I gave you that impression, Alyson. I’d still love for you to teach me sometime.” But his face turned grim. “That’s not what I’m here for though, I’m afraid.”
Fine. He had piqued my curiosity. “And what are you here for then?”
“You were there,” he said quietly, suddenly lowering his voice like he was afraid we were being listened to. “Two days ago. When it happened.”
I gulped a little but tried to stay cool. I was an old hat at this murder stuff now. I didn’t want to show Troy Emerald that I was rattled at all. So I just shrugged and went back to polishing my board. “Yeah, so what? I already spoke to the police about what I saw.” I tried to make my account of things sound more intriguing than they really were. In reality, I hadn’t seen anything.
“And what was that?” Troy asked. Ooh. He sounded a little desperate.
“Er, well, not a lot,” I had to admit. I paused my polishing and looked up to find a disappointed expression.
He gulped a little and shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. His hair didn’t have quite the bounce it had had last time I’d seen him. I also noticed for the first time that it was slightly greying. “People are asking a lot of questions…” he said. He glanced around the town, still looking slightly paranoid. “It’s not good for the development, as you can imagine. I’ve had to pause construction until this whole thing gets sorted out.”
I stood up. “Ah, I see. So this is all about your business,” I said. “Not about the fact that an innocent young man’s life was taken.”
He took a sharp breath. “I care about that as well,” he said as he stared straight into my eyes. “You might not believe that, but I do.”
“But you care about your business more.”
He glanced at my assortment of surfboards. I hadn’t lined them up very straight that day. Well, I usually didn’t anyway. I always thought it looked more charming when they were all lopsided. Sometimes I tried to spell words with them. But on that day, if they spelled anything, it was only ‘MIM,’ which isn’t really a word. “I don’t expect you to understand this, Alyson, but reputation matters a lot in the business world…”
I was outraged. “You think I don’t understand basic business?” I asked, appalled, dropping my polishing wax into the sand. “And you think that my business doesn’t survive on reputation and word of mouth?”
He looked down at my crooked boards again, this time with more disdain. “Well, I can see that it clearly doesn’t rely on much else.”
We were about to reach that point of no return, the one where we had both said too many mean things that we couldn’t take back. It was Troy who waved the white flag first.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disrespect your business. Alyson with a Y. I came here today to ask for your help.”
4
Claire
The cat food bowl was already empty. Again. I had only filled it up ten minutes ago and I had filled it to the brim, expecting it to last Mr. Ferdinand the day, if he was able to pace himself. Clearly not. I picked him up and carried him to his cat bed in the front window. “If you are going to eat me out of house and home, then you can at least sit here and try and tempt customers inside.” At least thirty percent of the people who came through the door did so because they wanted to pet the cat in the window.
I needed him to give me all the assistance he was capable of. When he was curled up in a little grey ball of fluff, his magic started to work, and a man wearing a red plaid shirt with a leather jacket stopped and smiled at Mr. Ferdinand. He walked through the door and asked if he was allowed to pet the cat. “Some places have rules about not petting the animals,” he said, “but I couldn’t see any sign.”
“Go for it,” I said with a grin, while I re-arranged the “New Releases” section. I tried to figure out what kind of book he would be most likely to buy. Maybe he was a true crime nut. I spun the rack around so that he could see the new non-fiction and biography section. Then I made a snap decision to place a 20% sticker on the front cover. I needed to make the sale.
Ooh, it worked. Something piqued his interest. He stopped petting Mr. Ferdinand and strolled right over to the display. “I’m surprised you need to discount this book,” he said, picking it up. It was a book about a murder in another coastal town, about two hours south. Not Eden Bay but a similar kind of place. He laughed a little. “Considering what took place two days ago, I would have thought this would be a top seller. Tourists will love it. Locals, hmm, maybe less so,” he said with a laugh. “It might scare them to think that we’re turning into a murder hotspot.”
“What did you say?” I asked, leaning forward. I must have looked completely clueless, because he looked befuddled at my ignorance.
“You didn’t hear?” he said. “Two days ago, a man was killed down at the docks, on that lot of land where they’re trying to build the new mall and cinema.”
I felt a little lightheaded as I let the news sink in. Great. Alyson had been telling the truth.
“Do they know who did it?”
He shook his head. “Nope. But the whole town is talking about it.” He put the book back on the rack with so much force that the 20% sticker fell off onto the floor. “Except for you apparently.” He left without buying a single thing.
A text came through from Alyson as soon as the man left, but I put my phone away. Yes, she may have been telling the truth and not simply making up stories, but that didn’t mean I had to get involved again. Eden Bay had a way of drawing you back in and I still wanted to keep my options open. Be my own person. Solid. Still. Not swept out with the current. I wished Alyson could just respect that. This was not my battle to fight.
The bell at the front door jingled. Another customer. I straightened up and prepared myself to make the sale. I was sure my grandma had never had to try this hard. She’d always just sat here day in and day out without pushing, without advertising, and sales and profits seemed to come in. I looked around the otherwise empty shop and wondered, what was I doing so wrong?
The man who walked in looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.
“Where is everyone today?” he asked with a laugh as a way to break the ice. But it only made it chillier—no shop owner likes a customer to point out how dead they are.
But this guy looked interesting. Why was he familiar to me? I didn’t recognize him from school or my time growing up in Eden Bay. Even though he was only thirty or so, he had a few flecks of grey in his hair, sort of in a young silver fox way. “You’re not from around here, are you?” I asked, taking an educated guess.
He pulled off his sunglasses and laughed. “How did you know?”
He sort
of had that slick, stuck-up Sydney vibe to him. The same one I was often accused of having. But I wasn’t about to phrase it quite that way. Especially not if he was a paying customer.
“I’m from the city as well,” I explained with a smile. “I suppose it takes one to know one…”
He smiled at me, looked me up and down, and sort of nodded in approval, even though I did not need or want that from him. “I can see that. You sort of stick out like a sore thumb around here,” he said.
“So, do you live in Eden Bay now?” I asked. I had to admit I was a little intrigued.
“No, but I’m thinking about sticking around for a while,” he said, as he browsed the non-fiction new release stand. He picked up a thick hardcover on the subject of leadership and started to flip through it. He brought it up to the counter without even looking at the price. For all he knew, that book could have cost $80. He probably wouldn’t have cared if it did.
I was intrigued about what might make a man like him stick around Eden Bay. “What is keeping you here?” I asked as I rang up his purchase. It was $35 dollars.
“I own Emerald Development.” He paused for a moment and let that sink in for a moment. “You may have heard of us.”
Oh. He was the one who was building the development down near the pier. I had heard a lot about that development, actually, because Alyson had been droning on about it all week, but it had only been five minutes since I’d learned about the recent controversy. That was probably what he was referring to. I decided to keep the topic of conversation on the lighter side.
“And you think Eden Bay is ready for that sort of thing?” I asked. “A cinema and a shopping mall? You might be up for a bit of a fight from the locals.”
“Oh, please,” he said with a bit of an eye-roll as he handed his credit card to me. “The people around here are a little bit backward. They don’t know what is good for them. That’s why they need people like you and I to tell them what is good for them, right?”
Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 11
