“The leases are only for six months.”
I wasn’t even ready for the commitment of a six-month lease. “What are you doing here, Matt?”
He scratched his head nervously and looked over his shoulder when a man in a neighboring room poked his head out to see what was going on. Great, we were being watched. “I came to talk to you about Alyson.”
“Oh.” I was relieved and disappointed at the same time. This wasn’t a personal visit then. “What has she done now?” I let out a little laugh. The possibilities were endless with Alyson. At school, I had always been the one looking after her, covering for her when she had lost track of time and was late for math class because she was picking four-leaf clovers on the football field.
Matt was still smiling. I knew how much his easygoing persona meant to him, but he was struggling to hide the fact that something was troubling him. “I’m a little worried about her, that’s all.”
“Worried?” I asked, leaning forward a little. My robe fell open a little. I quickly pulled the string tighter.
“Ever since you came back to town, you’ve been dragging her into these things,” he said. “It’s not good,” he added. “It’s a distraction. She’s got her studying, and her training, and J to look after…”
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute. My mouth dropped open. Um, excuse me? “Alyson is the one who drags me into these things,” I said in disbelief. She was practically forcing me to work on this case with her. “I didn’t want anything to do with it.”
He actually looked happy to hear this. He nodded a little and gave me a slightly stern look. “Great. Then it sounds like we’re both on the same page then, Claire,” he said with relief. “Just leave this one alone, okay?”
But when someone tells me not to do something, that is when I double down.
I tried to get another hour of sleep, a little morning nap to reset after Matt left, but I was woken by the clock radio alarm beside my bed after I’d only managed to doze off for five minutes. Ugh, the radio. Who still listened to the radio? I rolled over to turn it off and popped my earbuds in, listening to my favorite podcast while I dressed and got ready. Who did Matt think he was to turn up like that and tell me what to do? It wasn’t like he was my brother. Even Alyson never listened to him, and he was her actual brother.
I picked up my phone and looked over the schedule I had prepared for that day. Hmm. Maybe I should write it out in hard copy as well, just so that we could make use of the limited time we had. I knew that Alyson would appreciate me taking charge of the investigation. With her scattered brain, she has difficulty keeping her thoughts in a straight line. She certainly wouldn’t have produced anything resembling a schedule.
We met out in front of Captain Eightball’s. I was relieved not to have to go inside, because I didn’t want to face Matt. Had Alyson told him what we were up to? “Right,” I said, showing her the piece of paper. “I’ve come up with a list of possible suspects for us to interview,” I said, trying to hold it steady in the sea breeze. “First of all, we will head back to the construction site and try to find any witnesses that might not have come forward yet.” I figured that Alyson and I were a lot less intimidating than the police. Plus, I had heard on the radio, briefly, that construction was due to start again that day. Perfect timing for us. We could talk to the crew, who may have seen something. “And after that, we should try to speak to some of Joel’s friends. He was a student in Sydney so a lot of them will be there, but he must still have some friends here in Eden Bay.”
Alyson snatched the list right out of my hands. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, this is not at all an effective strategy…”
“Excuse me?”
She pulled a map out of her backpack and pointed to a spot in the middle of the town that was nowhere near either the construction site or the beach. “We need to start at the school.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but I remained civil. She had to be kidding me, right? The school? What did that have to do with anything? I kept my voice as even and calm as I could. “We need to start at the scene of the crime if we’re going to investigate properly.” I refused to take no for an answer, even throwing in a, “If you want my help, you will do it my way,” before I stomped off.
That turned out to be a mistake.
When we got to the construction site, the hole was filled with mud and water and there was absolutely no one there working, in spite of what I had heard. There had been heavy rain overnight and the whole construction had been stalled for the day.
“See?” Alyson said. But not in the happy and chirpy way she normally had when she was proved right. More in the way that she wanted to strangle me. She crossed her arms. “If you had just listened to me, we could have been at the school by now interviewing people before they leave.”
“Okay, I was wrong about this one.” But big deal, right? It was just our first setback.
But Alyson had not forgotten what I had said twenty minutes earlier. This is the thing with Alyson—she will forget her keys and her wallet and even what day of the week it is, but if you say something that she personally takes offense to, then she remembers every detail. “You just had to go and pull a mardy tantrum, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Typical Claire. You don’t get your way, so you throw a strop and threaten to take your toys and go home. I’m not your hostage, okay?”
I had been well and truly told off. “Fine. We will do it your way…”
She had already started walking toward the center of town. I wish I’d brought my car, but I’d had no idea we’d have to walk this far. “If this was my way, we would already be at the primary school!” she called out.
I paused and tried to catch my breath after a hasty walk through the suburban streets of Eden Bay. We were in front of the local primary school, the one that Alyson and Matt’s niece J attended. There were protesters there surrounding a picket line, arguing in favor of teachers having their wages increased. It wasn’t at the level of a strike just yet though, because I could see inside that classes were running as normal. Yet, there were protestors out front.
“Who are these guys?” I asked Alyson when I finally caught up with her. I even took a step in front of her just to show that I was still the one in charge. I just needed to know what exactly it was that I was in charge of.
“They are sort of professional protesters,” Alyson said. She looked a little embarrassed. Shuffled from foot to foot. “I didn’t know that at the time of the protest at the construction site,” she explained quickly, trying to assure me. “I thought they were just as passionate about stopping the development as I was. But some of them, maybe Joel even, were there just to get their faces on camera.”
She must have been confusing me with someone who actually had a stake in this. “It’s fine, I don’t care,” I said, cutting her off.
I don’t know if she was still angry at me for what I had said earlier or whether this was a new issue, but she took immediate offense to that. “What do you mean you don’t care?” She lowered her head a little, shaking it. “Of course you don’t care about this town,” she muttered quietly. I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to hear it.
That wasn’t what I had meant. I had meant I didn’t care whether the protesters were ‘real’ or not. But if she was going to go down that route then I actually had something to say on the matter.
“I actually think that the complex would be a really good idea for this town,” I said with a shrug. I hadn’t overthought it too much, and Troy was kind of a pain, but Eden Bay needed something to drag it into the modern ages. Hey, I might have even considered sticking around for good if there were actually a decent mall here to shop at. And a cinema screen that was bigger than a home TV screen.
Alyson looked like she was about to burst.
“You’re telling me you are on Troy’s side? I thought you said the guy was a jerk?!”
I sighed. “I am not on anyone’s side,” I explained. “I j
ust want to find out who killed Joel. Isn’t that why I’m here today? Isn’t that what you have been begging me to do all week?”
She stomped off toward the front of the school and the protesters.
“Alyson, you can’t just interview people without me,” I said, trying to catch up with her again. She was definitely fitter than I was. She was in training for a triathlon, though. I’d spotted her working out the day before, going for a fast sprint along the pier. I had actually been impressed with how fast she could run.
“Why not?” Alyson asked.
“Because I am in charge of this investigation,” I spat out before I could stop myself. Uh-oh. Another mistake.
She gave me a little glare before turning her back to me. “And who put you in charge, exactly?” she asked. “Except yourself?”
Not far down from the school was the library. There must have been a certain logic in putting it there when it was first built—children just getting out of school would walk past and want to go inside. However, in reality, that never really worked. But seeing as I had nothing to do, having been thrown off the case by Alyson, I stopped for a moment and peered in when I saw a familiar face inside. Was that Maria?
She barreled her way out of the door and stopped when she saw me. At least she had the sense to look a little embarrassed as the pile of library books toppled out of her arms and onto the ground. She should have brought a library bag with her. “Claire. Oh, um, hi…”
I glanced back into the small building. Hang on a moment. I walked up to the glass and pressed my nose against it. What once had been a small collection was growing. There were now books piled up on the floor between the aisles, like the place was overflowing. Maria walked up to me and I jumped when she started to talk to me.
“Looks like they are going to have to get some new shelves. Actually, they might need to extend the whole building.” She gave a little satisfied sigh.
“What are you talking about, Maria?”
She shrugged and juggled the stack in her arms. “I donated all my old books to the library, seeing as you don’t want them.”
It was never that I said I didn’t want them. I just didn’t want to lose money by swapping ancient, moth-eaten secondhand books for brand new hardbacks. She could have swapped any of those old books for books I had of a comparable value. But she was clearly too stubborn to concede that.
She still looked far too satisfied. “And from what I’ve heard, your customers might be looking elsewhere for books from now on.”
7
Claire
Maria may have won round one. Over the next couple of days, I found customer numbers dwindling and rumors that they had started borrowing books from you-know-where. Well, we still had the book club running at my shop. I decided that I would talk to my customers when I saw them at the meeting and explain that I was still doing swaps, just within reason. That there was no reason for them all to start going to the library.
But first, I was going to have to tidy the place up. Upstairs constantly looked like a bomb had hit it with books stacked on the floor because we were out of shelf space. I climbed the stairs to confront the task ahead. The pile was a bigger mess than I had seen at the library. Right at the top of the pile was a very comfy-looking cat.
I had to pick Mr. Ferdinand up off the top and place him on the ground. He did not look happy about being moved. It must have been comfortable up on top of the musty books.
I know that many people love the smell of books. I do as well—but as I like to say, within reason. A fresh new book smells crisp and amazing. But books that have been sitting around for thirty years without even being opened… Well, they smell like moldy paper. Good luck trying to convince anyone else of that fact, though.
I coughed quite violently as I started to sort through the books. I’d been taking anti-histamines for my cat allergy, since it had started kicking up once I started working here, but dust was another matter. Or maybe I had accidentally skipped my pills that morning. It was weird, though. Mr. Ferdinand had never made me sneeze quite that bad before.
If I was going to compete with the library though, I was going to have to market my shop in the complete opposite fashion. Libraries were all about pre-owned items, about borrowing, about ancient things. I was going to make the bookshop modern, perhaps with a refreshment stand and definitely a fresh coat of paint. I was thinking white. Crisp and fresh like a blank page.
I stacked another book and couldn’t help my wandering mind. Was stacking books a distraction? I kept thinking about Joel, and the protestors, and the case. Alyson had told me that if I was just going to try and take over, then I could just ‘butt right out.’ A bit rich considering that she had all but begged me to stay in town and help her with the investigation.
I stopped stacking. There was a man across the street wearing an expensive suit and talking into a cell phone…with dark hair that was just flecked with a bit of salt and pepper grey.
Troy Emerald.
Hmm. I couldn’t exactly leave Mr. Ferdinand in charge of the shop. But while all my customers had abandoned us in favor of the library, I could take a short break.
Once Troy had ended his phone call, he had waved to someone, a blonde woman who didn’t look much older than me. She kinda looked like me, actually. She waved back to Troy—slightly less enthusiastically than he had—and walked over to meet him. They walked down the street side by side and seemed to be having an intense conversation. I was not getting any sort of romantic vibe from the two of them at all. No smiling, and they were at least a foot apart from each other. I was almost certain that they were business colleagues. I reached into my purse, pulled out my cell phone, and looked up “Emerald Development.” A website came right up. I quickly searched ‘staff’ to see what information was publicly available. Troy was the one at the top of the page of course, but I quickly found the woman a little lower down, same blonde hair in the photo and even the same suit she was wearing that day. She was actually the vice president of the company.
Back in real life, she was wearing a red suit that must have cost thousands of dollars. She looked young, a little too young to be an executive, but I supposed people could say the same about me. That was one of the reasons for the envy I’d gotten in Sydney, being a senior movie producer at such a young age.
She smiled up at Troy in a sort of moon-y way. Great. She probably had a crush on him. I kept my distance, staying a hundred feet or so back, surprised at how good I was at trailing someone. I didn’t even need Alyson for this. In fact, it was all going a lot more smoothly without her. If she’d been with me, she probably would have insisted that we follow them on skateboard, and it would have ended with us colliding with the two of and probably with a broken arm. Troy’s, hopefully.
The woman turned around and I ducked into a shop so that she wouldn’t spot me.
I glanced around. I was in some kind clothing shop. “Can I help you?” a young chirpy voice called out. A sales assistant. She had tightknit curls and brown skin, and she was wearing a white mesh top that looked cute on her with her toned abs but would not look so cute on most people.
I looked at the items for sale. T-shirts that had outdated 90s slang on them and cartoon characters. The kind of things I would never wear in a million years. The kind of clothes that I would not even be buried in.
“Um, no thanks,” I started to say, about to head for the door, when the lady with the red suit came in. I stopped and suddenly became very interested in a rack of jackets with faux sheepskin collars and rough material.
The shop assistant shot me a little glare then gave up on me and turned a cheery smile to the lady in red. “Hi, how are you doing today?” she asked in the kind of broad Aussie accent that I rarely heard in Sydney.
To my surprise, the woman in red seemed incredibly interested in the items on the sales rack. She picked up a pink t-shirt with Tweety Bird on it and held it against her chest with a little laugh. I was shocked. I’d pegged her as someone more li
ke myself—someone with taste.
“That could be a fun souvenir,” the sales assistant said, eager to make the sale.
The woman in red looked a little confused. “Oh,” she said, re-folding the item. “I was actually more thinking of it being something I would wear out and about.”
The assistant realized she had said the wrong thing and tried to convince the customer to buy it anyway. She agreed to try it on.
I turned my head quickly when they passed me on route to the changing rooms, turning my attention to a baby pink jacket with faux sheepskin lining. Not the kind of thing I would ever, ever wear. I hated the color pink. “Can I try this on?” I called out, taking the stall next to the woman in red.
I heard the curtain being pulled back and stuck my head out while she was spinning around in front of the full-length mirror. “Looks great,” I said with a beaming smile. I held up my jacket. “Looks like we are both a fan of the color pink.”
She smiled at me. “I love it,” she said, still admiring the shirt. “Too bad it’s not something I could ever wear to work.”
“Oh?” I asked innocently. “Why not? It’s something I could wear to work. But of course, I just work in a humble bookshop.”
She looked a little downhearted. “I’m not so lucky,” she said with a sad sigh. “I’m stuck in the corporate world. I don’t get to choose the dress code.”
I acted a little surprised. “Corporate world? Here in Eden Bay?” I added a little laugh for good effect, like I just could not believe what I was hearing.
She looked at me a little surprised. “You haven’t heard all the fuss about what happened down at the development site?”
I shook my head and acted innocent. “Nope. I just keep my head down and sell books.” Geez. I was starting to sound like Alyson.
She hesitated for a moment and then checked to make sure the shop assistant wasn’t listening. “Can I tell you something?” she asked me.
Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 13
