Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  “I, er…” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. In the end, I just smiled at him and handed him his bag. Usually I threw in a free bookmark. For some reason, I didn’t this time. I smiled while I waited for him to leave.

  But he wasn’t done. There was a bee in his bonnet that wasn’t ready to escape.

  “Of course, there are some people who think they know everything. People who like to tell other people how to run their business when all they do is sit around on the sand all day polishing surfboards and call that a job.” He shot me a look that was meant to say, “You know what I mean.”

  It slowly dawned on me. He was talking about Alyson. No one got to talk about my best friend that way except for me. That was part of the unspoken pact between best friends.

  As soon as he left, I picked up the phone. “Alyson. Okay, okay. I am in. Tell me what you need me to do.”

  5

  Alyson

  Troy’s words were still echoing in my head as I leaned against the pier and looked out over the ocean. I noticed my arms felt a little weak. I’d definitely skimped on my workouts that week. Too much going on to hit the gym recently. But there was a triathlon coming up and I needed to get back to it and stay in peak shape. A few weeks earlier, I had competed in the annual state surf comp but hadn’t been able to complete my routine because there had been a killer loose on the beach. Long story. I didn’t let it get to me too much. It was still a little disappointing to not have the trophy, though. But that was okay. I had my eyes set on the triathlon trophy instead. Swimming would be a breeze, no problem with that leg of the race. Running? That was so-so, as long as I trained I would be all right there. But riding a bike… That was something I’d never been that good at.

  I could have started training right then, but on that day, I was watching someone walking up the jetty. You could always pick them out—out-of-towners, reporters. They wore checked shirts and thick glasses, and they acted like they were better than the rest of us, staring at the town and the people like we were mere curiosities.

  They had first arrived after the surfboard killer had been on the loose. Some of them had still not left town since and they’d gotten lucky when a new controversy had struck right away. But there were quite a few new faces in the last couple of days. Matt loved it. He was hoping it would boost the business and they would all leave him big tips.

  This guy was lost in his own little world. He had curly black hair and was on the shorter side, maybe 5’7” or 5’8”. He was chatting into a microphone attached to his phone as he walked down the jetty. At first, I thought he was just recording notes so that he could write up an article later, but as I edged a little closer to him, I realized that the recording was actually the main attraction. I could tell because he was enunciating every syllable like he was on the radio or something.

  Maybe he was actually recording a radio interview to play later.

  “So what could have happened to take this quiet little hamlet and turn it into Australia’s new ‘murder hotspot,’ as people are now calling it.”

  Excuse me? I moved even closer and listened to what he was saying. Who was calling Eden Bay that?

  “Join me in this seven-part series, where I will be examining everything there is to know about this murder, and delving deep into the mysterious underbelly of Eden Bay. I’ll be talking to locals…”

  Oh, would he just? Well, he could speak to one right now. Must be this young guy’s lucky day!

  I stood right in his way and smiled at him. He glanced at me in shock and had to press pause on his recorder. “Uh. Can I help you?” he asked me.

  I shrugged a little. “I’m one of the locals you mentioned. I overhead you talking into your mic.”

  “Ah, right….” He looked a little embarrassed to be caught out talking about the town in such a way, and so he should have been. He scratched the back of his head and looked like he was about to apologize, but he stopped and suddenly sounded awfully interested. “I’d love to talk to you at some stage, if you are interested,” he said. “I’d love to get your opinion on matters.” Cool. I was a little flattered. But I also wasn’t about to go selling out my entire town just to get a little air time. “We should arrange a time to talk,” he said, trying to take down my phone number.

  “What is this for, anyway?” I asked him, glancing down at the mic.

  “It’s for a podcast.”

  “What is a podcast?” I asked him blankly.

  There was a glimmer of amusement on his face. “Are you being serious right now? Or are you just winding me up?”

  Sure, sometimes people did have trouble telling the difference with me—I can be a little flat and sarcastic—but I was being deadly serious. I had no idea what he was talking about. Never heard of a podcast in my life.

  “Um…” He scratched his head a little like he was thinking of the best way to explain this to a dummy like me. “I suppose it’s like a radio show…except it’s not live. Podcasts are generally recorded ahead of time and people can listen whenever they want. There are a lot of podcasts though, and people need to be able to find the ones they want. So they have themes.” He pointed toward his phone. He scrolled for a bit till he found what he was looking for. There were all sorts of logos on the screen and photos of smiling, posed people. Sure looked like the grinning faces of morning radio hosts to me. Apparently, these were podcasts though. “Like this one.” He showed me one that he had been listening to. It was about a famous set of murders in a small town in America, about a serial killer that was still on the loose. “It’s a famous case,” he said, looking at me to see if I was impressed. “And the podcasters who host it are really famous.”

  I wasn’t that impressed at all. All this mention of the word ‘famous’ made me uneasy. “So why are you recording one about Eden Bay?”

  He laughed a little. “Because of what has been happening here. True Crime podcasts are super hot. Especially the ones that take place in small, seemingly innocent towns. Except all the great mysteries and cold cases from history have pretty much already been covered. But now there is Eden Bay.” He grinned at me and looked around, even took a sniff of the air. “And I just happened to stumble upon this place right while it’s getting hot. I’ll have the first podcast on the subject. The only one at the moment.”

  I didn’t like the way his eyes lit up as he talked, like he was taking glee in our little town turning into a spectacle for the rest of the world to gawk at.

  But I nodded and listened and even managed a grin. “Ooh, let me listen to some of it,” I said, still pretending I was interested in being interviewed. The best way to gain access to the recording would be to flatter his ego. “Once I know the tone of the program, I can fill you in on what I know.”

  “Oh, that would be amazing! Just give me a second.” He’d been wearing fingerless gloves and he had to fumble with them for a moment while he went through his files to find what he had just recorded. “Er, it’s all unedited so far,” he said apologetically. “There’s a guy in Sydney I send the recordings to before I upload them. Kinda like a producer.” Ugh. I knew all about producers. Just like Claire, this guy in Sydney probably thought he was a real big deal.

  He suddenly got a bright idea. “I know, I can just play you a completed one. That will be a lot easier,” he said with a grin, going to the official page of the podcast and playing me some from the last episode. Episode one, apparently.

  I leaned forward a little because the speakers on his phone were soft and the sound was swallowed up a little by the waves crashing and the seagulls overhead. He had a little jingle as the opening and even though the tone of it sounded a little too jolly compared to the subject matter, it sounded professionally done. So did the recording. I heard him introduce himself, “Justin St. Claire,” as a true crime aficionado—what did that mean?—and that he was honored to be taking his listeners through the mysteries of Eden Bay. He started to tell the story of the surfboard killer and the way he had been captured on the beach
a month earlier during a surf competition. “It leads me to believe that this town is a lot darker than it would appear on the surface. That the locals, who all appear innocent, may be harboring dark secrets. Can these surfers really be trusted?”

  I asked him to pause the recording. “Hang on. This has already aired?”

  He nodded, then stopped. “Well, if by air you mean it’s already been uploaded…”

  “So, people have listened to this?”

  He looked at me proudly. “Five thousand people, according to the download stats. And I only put it up twenty-four hours ago. I expect that to quadruple this week. Then who knows? It could be a viral hit.”

  Yes. A viral hit telling thousands of people that the surfers in Eden Bay could not be trusted. It wasn’t the town locals who were the problem. It was the people who came into town, like Troy Emerald and Justin St. Claire, who were the problem.

  I took both the phone and the microphone out of his hand and, without stopping to think through the consequences of what I was doing, I threw both into the ocean.

  “What the…” He was so stunned for a moment that he didn’t even know how to react. “Are you crazy?”

  “You’re paying for this!” he shouted after me as I ran away.

  Claire looked me up and down. “What have you been up to? You look like you’ve just ran a marathon.” I knew I must have looked like a sweaty mess. Nothing like an irate man yelling at you that he is about to call the cops to get you to run at full speed.

  “Oh, just went for a little jog along the pier,” I said. “No biggie. Still in training for the triathlon next month. Don’t want to get any more out of shape than I already am. Well, what I really need to focus on is the riding leg of it. Do you happen to own a bike? I need to practice.” It was true, but I was also rambling. Claire isn’t the type of person who would throw someone’s phone into the ocean. She is the kind of person who would pause and weigh up the pros and cons of throwing someone’s phone into the ocean then realize it was an incredibly bad idea and by the time she finally came to that decision, they would be long gone anyway.

  At least I had gotten away in time. I wasn’t sure how much the phone and recording equipment cost, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have that kind of cash laying around. But he deserved it anyway…right? Right. I kept trying to convince myself of that fact. But I knew I couldn’t tell Claire.

  “Cool…” she started to say

  “Hey, do you know what a podcast is?” I asked. I had to bend over a little to catch my breath. “Oh, wow, this run really took it out of me.”

  “Of course I know what a podcast is,” Claire said with a laugh. As though everyone in the world knew what they were, besides me.

  “Really?” I asked, glancing back over my shoulder. “Surely I can’t be the only one who’s never heard of these darn things.” They couldn’t be that popular, right? I felt like an old fuddy duddy, and I was only in my twenties.

  Claire pulled out her phone. “In fact I am listening to a series now that goes into the etymology of various words. You wouldn’t believe the origin of some of the worse we use every day! The episodes are forty minutes long, but it feels like only five minutes to me.”

  “Sounds just about as thrilling as reading.” Though it did seem like it would take less concentration.

  I glanced over my shoulder again, feeling edgy. At least that guy didn’t know who I was or where I lived.

  “Everything all right?” Claire asked.

  “Yeah. Just don’t feel like this town belongs to us right now. Come on, let’s go do what we came here to do.”

  We started walking toward the empty construction lot. The hole hadn’t gotten any deeper since I’d been there three days earlier. Even though Troy Emerald had begged for my help, I’d told him it was none of my business, and that I hoped the development would never go ahead. And yet here I was.

  There was a crane still poised in mid-air, and it showed how tall the complex would actually be when it was built. I had to ‘crane’ my neck to even see that high. “Look, I’m not saying that what happened was a good thing, but if it stops this monstrosity from being built then, well, maybe some good will come out of it.” Joel had died only a few feet from where we were standing. Would he think he had died for a good cause? If construction started again, would that mean he had died for nothing?

  Claire shot me a curious look. I put my hands up. “Look, I didn’t do it, okay!” I knew what she was thinking. She was wondering if I was so against the development that I would have killed someone to stop it from happening. I wasn’t quite that desperate.

  Claire nodded slowly and turned her attention back to the lot. “Hmmm. But whoever did may have been like you. They may have wanted to stop construction on this lot. So, we’ve just got to find out who had the biggest stake.”

  We crossed over the tape and began to walk on the uneven ground, which was full of pebbles and dirt that might have been there since the ice age. I’m not sure, I’m not great with history. So who did have the biggest stake? The other protestors for one. Hey, I might have even suspected myself if I hadn’t been talking to Troy at the time. Well, hmm… I hadn’t actually been talking to Troy. He had walked away and I had chased him for a bit, losing him.

  One of the other protesters could have killed Joel to stop construction. We were going to have to find them and talk to them. I’d arrange it. I was sure Claire was only along for the ride and wouldn’t even know who it was that we needed to talk to. That was okay. She always had her head stuck in a book or her ears stuck in a podcast. She always needed me for the more practical matters. I would sort her out.

  We really weren’t supposed to be walking across the lot, and not just because it was a crime scene. No one was supposed to be on the construction site unless they were wearing a hard hat and steel-cap boots. Claire was wearing high heels—still hadn’t managed to give those up yet—and a crisp white shirt. I knew I wouldn’t get her perfect hair under a hard hat to save her life. She didn’t look like she ought to be fifty feet within a construction site.

  “So, what made you change your mind?” I asked her. “About helping out.”

  It was a slightly windy day, the type that made tourists skip the beach and go on down to the twin-screen cinema instead… Speaking of which, I could really go a choc top ice cream. If Troy’s development went ahead, the twin cinema would go out of business, with everyone flocking to the giant screen instead.

  “I had a little run-in with your friend in the bookshop,” Claire commented, shoving her hands inside her jacket pockets.

  “Friend?”

  “Troy, I believe his name is. Troy Emerald.”

  I was surprised to hear her say that name. “Ha, he’s no friend of mine,” I said quickly, trying not to think about the fact that his number was in my phone and the fact that I had used it. Sure, he’d asked me for help. But that was not why I was doing this. No way, sir.

  “You know you met him before that?” I asked her.

  “When?” she asked, looking confused.

  “He was the one who stole your wave. The reason you ended up in the sea.”

  “Oh,” she said, and walked quietly for a few moments. “I was thinking that was all my fault. That I was just too rusty to stay on the board.”

  Maybe. That was probably why she’d refused to go near the water since. To be fair, she probably would have taken a tumble anyway. But Troy had still been out of line that day. Acting like he owned the ocean the same way he acted like he owned the town.

  “So what happened when you met Troy in the shop?” I asked, trying not to sound too overly interested, just the right amount.

  Claire seemed to hesitate before she answered that one.

  “I just didn’t like his attitude, that’s all.”

  I let out a hearty laugh. “You and me both, sis. You and me both.” Er… Oh, dear.

  6

  Claire

  Rap, rap. The knocking grew quicker as I stepped o
ut of the shower. I thought I’d misheard, or that maybe it was just a bird who had flown into the wooden door. But it wasn’t stopping.

  I froze. Who was knocking on my door at this time of morning? Usually when I ordered room service for breakfast, they just left it at the door. Those were the instructions I had given on the menu form. Do not disturb.

  Maybe they were out of cornflakes that day. Maybe it was a cereal emergency. I had to attend to that. I needed my cornflakes first thing in the morning before I needed anything else.

  But when I saw my breakfast tray on the ground outside the low window, with cornflakes sitting on top, I suddenly realized who it actually was. Of course it would be Alyson. I stumbled over to the door in my bathrobe and froze when I pulled the door open. It was Matt. He looked like he’d just been for a surf, his hair only just air dried and still a little damp on the roots. He was wearing flip flops and there was a dusting of sand on his feet.

  I quickly tied my robe tighter and thought about my own soaking wet hair. Great.

  “Matt, what are you doing here?” Please tell me I wiped off all trace of my face mask.

  I wasn’t sure if I should invite him in. He kinda stuck his head inside the door frame and had a curious look around. “This is where you live?”

  I made sure the robe was tight again. “Temporarily.”

  He raised an eyebrow, then spoke like he was trying to be helpful. “You should look at the rentals down at Brown Street. There’s a few vacancies at the moment.” It was a part of town that was close to the beach but was relatively easy to rent because all the apartments were only one bedroom and Eden Bay was more of a family town.

  “Maybe later,” I said, just trying to be polite so that he would leave and I could dry my hair and put some makeup on. I hated that he was seeing me like this. More than that, I hated that I cared.