Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  I ordered a short black with a side of sweetener and noticed the waitress make a face as she walked away.

  I glanced over the wooden table at Matt. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “You just stick out a little here, that’s all…strange considering that you grew up here.”

  Well, that was both true and not true. I’d moved to Eden Bay when I was nine years old, then moved away again just after I’d turned 19. Still, a decade in this town did count for something, I supposed. It was the place that most felt like ‘home’. Whatever that word meant. Sometimes when I woke up in the Dolphin (F)inn and rolled over and saw the cheap bedspread and heard the amateur radio announcers, I had to wonder why I was making that my temporary home. I was having trouble finding somewhere I belonged. The shop had always felt like home. But that had been lonely as well recently. I told Matt about the incident with Maria and how she had decided to start a rebellion, taking her books and my customers to the library.

  He shrugged a little. “Never been to the library.” He laughed a little awkwardly. “Never been much of a reader.”

  Right. I was silent for a few moments. Reading was a pretty big pastime for me. My biggest pastime, actually. I mean…I ran a bookstore. What did Matt and I even have in common, besides the fact that I was friends with his sister?

  “But, um, maybe I should check out this library,” Matt said as his iced coffee arrived. Not only was it full of ice cream—at nine in the morning—but it was also topped with whipped cream from a can and sprinkled with chocolate shavings. I was happy with my espresso and no calorie sweetener.

  I couldn’t help being offended. I raised my eyebrows. “Um, okay then.” Huh. I was going to lose Matt to the library as well. And he wasn’t even a reader! I knew Maria had been his drama teacher in high school. Maybe he had more of a loyalty to her than he did to me.

  “No, no, you misunderstood me,” he said as he picked up his spoon, whipped cream falling off the drink and on to the table. “I mean, to check it out for you…scope out what’s going on.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “I guess you would call that going undercover?” He laughed and thought about that. “At least Alyson has quit doing that.”

  “She has?” I asked a little too quickly. “Because when I last saw her down at the development site, she didn’t seem like she was ready to drop it. But I am glad she has decided to take a step back and leave it to the experts.” Interesting. That meant that I was the only one left on the case.

  I was busy musing away, lost in my own thoughts on the matter. But it was only when I caught the confused look on Matt’s face that I realized what I had said. “Hang on,” he said. “You and Alyson were down at the development site? Investigating?”

  “We were just checking it out,” I replied quickly. I finished off my espresso and slammed the empty glass down like it was a shot glass.

  The check arrived and Matt reached for it before I could.

  “Well, I’ll report back to you when I am done,” he said, standing up, a morning at the library awaiting him.

  Walking back to the bookshop, I put the buds back into my ears and took my time. The sun was bright that day and I had to take off the jacket I had started the day with. I was starting to get one of these famous Eden Bay tans, at least on my shoulders. I was up to episode two of the podcast by this stage. Before I’d hit play, I had to wonder what episode two could possible entail. Hadn’t the surfer killer mystery been wrapped up in episode one? What other mysteries had been solved since?

  I soon realized that episode two would not revolve around an already solved case, but a current one. He was investigating the murder of Joel. In podcast form, at least.

  Justin St. Clair took a more opinionated tone in the second episode. He was as keen to solve the case as Alyson had been. “…but some of these locals are as deranged as the killers that run loose here.” I had to let out a little laugh at that. I covered my mouth and tried to contain myself as I attracted some strange stares while I walked. That’s the problem with listening to podcasts in public. “And some of them are a lot crazier than others. Let me tell you about the time I was accosted a few day ago while I was innocently walking down the pier, recording this very podcast.”

  There was someone coming toward me on a skateboard. A tanned young woman my age with long golden hair that had not been brushed for days, but still managed to look okay.

  I had to pause it. Even though I couldn’t wait to find out who these crazy locals were. And what this insane event had been.

  Alyson rolled up to me and gave me a lazy greeting. “Hey, what’s up?”

  This was the Alyson I knew. Acting like nothing had happened. Acting like we hadn’t just had a massive falling out. She hopped off her skateboard and picked it up. “So, I’m heading down to the surf later today if you want another lesson.”

  “Maybe,” I replied. After my last incident, I wasn’t keen on embarrassing myself again.

  She nodded and said that was cool. But there was some kind of underlying weird tension in her voice. She still hadn’t mentioned our disagreement as she rolled along, and I continued to walk, telling her I needed to get back to the shop.

  “So, you seen any interesting people lately?” she asked breezily, like she was only making conversation, but she was waiting intently for my answer.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. What interesting people were there? I felt like I was being led into a trap.

  “You haven’t seen anyone who works for Emerald Development in the past two days then?”

  I stopped walking, just for a second. Oh no. She must have found out that I had been investigating the case without her. So, she was in a sore mood now. Well, she only had herself to blame, really. She had pushed me away, thought she knew better. Of course I was going to continue working without her.

  “Listen, Alyson, I can explain…”

  “Oh, so now you finally admit it.” She wobbled on her skateboard a little, but kept her eyes on the pavement like she wasn’t really troubled by it. But something was brewing, in spite of her cool, flat tone.

  I hadn’t meant to offend her. Now I regretted even following Troy that day, but I’d only spoken to his VP, Stephanie. “I was only doing a little digging, that’s all. I didn’t even mean to talk to anyone.”

  “Really? Because it looked like the two of you were getting pretty cozy.”

  I stopped walking. “I’m not sure we were getting cozy,” I said, confused. I just gave the woman a few—false—compliments about the terrible shirt she was purchasing. “I was just investigating.”

  “It didn’t look like you were investigating anything Claire. Except for how hot you find Troy Emerald.”

  “Um, what?” Seriously, come again? “We barely even spoke about Troy…” I said, blinking a few times against the sun, trying to make sense of what she was getting at. “Though I did discover that Troy is not very popular with his employees.”

  “Looked like you were discovering a lot more than that.”

  She finally stopped skating and picked up the board, a wild look in her eyes.

  I can only describe the way she was acting as ‘crazy with jealousy.’ That might be a harsh way to describe it, but it was certainly how she was acting in that moment. “If you were going to hang out with Troy, and hang all over him, you could have at least told me first.”

  “Alyson, whoa, calm down. What are you talking about? I never hung out with Troy Emerald yesterday. I only saw him briefly from across the road.”

  She crossed her arms. Flicked her hair over her shoulder. Composed herself a little bit. A real little bit. “So I didn’t see you with him at the construction site?”

  “That wasn’t me, Alyson!” How could she have even made that mistake? Then I remembered. That woman, the VP, looked like me, at least from a distance.

  “Wait, wait.” I held my hand up and grabbed my phone with my other, finding the site I’d been looking at the day before.
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  “Is this who you saw Troy with?”

  Alyson leaned forward and looked at the photos of the woman in red. “Yes. Possibly.”

  I sighed. “She looks a bit like me, I know. She’s not me, though.”

  I first met Alyson when we were nine years old. It was at Eden Bay Primary School. Back then, she had always been a very confident child, but she’d always had a way of going into her shell when she’d been embarrassed or told off. That was the Alyson I was seeing right then. The nine-year-old Alyson.

  “Alyson. Why do you even care so much about who Troy is spending his time with?”

  She passed the phone back to me. “I don’t.”

  She sure could have fooled me. What was going on? There was no way she could have had a crush on him. I mean, seriously no way. He was the exact opposite of her type. And she hated him. Something else had to be going on.

  “I found out something about Troy, okay?” She looked at her hands and refused to meet my eyes. “And he might not have as much time left on this Earth to spend with people who are bad news, that’s all.”

  10

  Alyson

  Gosh. White tablecloths. All I could think about was all the things I could spill on them. I’d have to order beer, not wine. I glanced around. Did five-star restaurants even serve beer on tap? Maybe I’d stick to water. Hmmm. What kind of food was clear colored?

  “I am really glad that you came to meet me,” Troy said, pulling out a chair.

  “This isn’t really my kind of place.”

  Troy smiled at me. Didn’t make a deal of it. Tried to soothe my nerves “The crab is amazing. Comes with a great side salad.”

  I glanced over the menu. Yes, it sounded appetizing. But now that Troy had told me to order it, it was the last thing I was going to order. “I’m in training for a triathlon,” I said before I ordered the risotto with chicken and mushroom. “So I need to stack up on my carbs.”

  “That’s impressive,” he said, and asked me if I had ever competed in one before. Our appetizers had arrived—more carbs for me with the bruschetta, though Troy had ordered the prawns. I tried to take a mouthful of mine without spilling the red tomato onto the tablecloth. Success. At least the first go.

  “I have. Swimming—no probs at all. Running—pretty good there too. But I am terrible at riding a bike. If only it was a skateboard, hey?”

  “Well, cycling is kind of my thing,” Troy said, raising an eyebrow as if to say, I can teach you if you want.

  Of course it was his thing. It was the kind of trendy thing city slickers like him did. They rode to work every day so that they could make it look like they cared about the environment, when really, they made their cash by polluting small towns with eyesore shopping malls.

  “I wouldn’t mind moving down here,” he said quietly. “Or to a place like this anyway.”

  “You don’t have to pretend that you are really a country boy at heart, Troy.”

  By this stage, I had finished my bruschetta but not without casualty. There was a small red and green stain—how festive!—right beside my elbow where the tomato and pesto had found a new home. I tried to hide it. Troy politely tried to ignore it. Lucky my dress was black. It was a cheap dress—I don’t have any other kind, I’m not Claire—but black always makes things look more expensive.

  “I am being serious, Alyson. Eden Bay has grown on me.”

  “Troy…” I put down my fork and tried to think of a delicate way to put this. One that wouldn’t sound completely insensitive. But I am not that great with tact. Ask anyone who knows me. And there was a reason I had agreed to this dinner, after five requests from Troy. I had to get to the bottom of this. “You are not actually dying.”

  I said it as a statement, not as a question, and it rested like a lump of clay in the middle of the table along with the mess I was making with my risotto.

  He raised an eyebrow. There was almost— Hang on, what was that look in his eyes? I leaned forward. Yes, it was amusement.

  “You think I’m making this up?”

  I picked my fork back up, then shrugged. “I don’t know you, Troy. How do I even know that you are telling the truth?”

  “Why would I lie about something like this?” Troy asked.

  He hadn’t told me too much. Just that he had been feeling off—lack of appetite, low level fever, dizziness, for months now. And that the doctors couldn’t find any obvious cause. But his liver was in danger of shutting down completely and they had no idea what the cure could be. “Sympathy,” I said. “You want people to feel sorry for you. Make the public think that you are not such a bad guy after all.”

  Had I just called a dying man a bad guy?

  Troy looked at his crab salad. “Then answer me this. Why would I keep it a secret if I wanted to gain sympathy for it?”

  Well, yeah, he kind of had me there. But there still had to be an ulterior motive behind it. There just had to be. I didn’t trust Troy Emerald as far as I could throw him. “I’m sure you have your reasons.”

  “Well, we can only hope that the doctors are wrong.”

  He started to talk about the development again.

  “I know you aren’t going to believe me when I say this, Alyson…” He looked up at me and I braced myself to hear something that I was definitely going to disbelieve. And yes, that was exactly what I heard. “But I actually want to leave behind something as a legacy. Something that means something for the next generation.”

  Would it be super rude to roll your eyes at a dying man?

  “And the thing that you want to leave behind is a giant eyesore that is going to ruin an entire town?” I stood up. I just wanted to get the heck out of there. He was always working an angle. I should never have agreed to this dinner.

  “You are only seeing this from your perspective, Alyson. Have you ever stopped to consider that there is another way of looking at this issue?”

  No, I hadn’t. I thanked him for his time and walked out of the restaurant. I assumed that with Troy Emerald’s billions of dollars, he could afford to pick up the check.

  But Troy Emerald didn’t muck around, and he didn’t waste any time in replacing me with a new date. In the time I stood out front waiting for Matt to pick me up, I noticed a car pull up and a woman with icy blonde hair step out of it and make her way into the restaurant, alone, at least at first.

  I craned my neck and watched her make a beeline for Troy’s table. I stepped out of the way and hid in the shadows so that Troy wouldn’t know I was still watching. I was slightly seething at how quickly I had been replaced. Or I would have been if I actually cared. She sat down and joined Troy. He excused himself for a moment, probably to use the bathroom. Geez, was she taking a sip of his drink? She reached right across the table and just took it. That was kind of an intimate thing to do.

  Why did I have such a bad feeling in my gut?

  Shoot, she really did look like Claire. I guessed, up until that point, I still hadn’t quite believed it wasn’t Claire I saw that day with Troy.

  Matt finally pulled up and I got into his car.

  And then I phoned Claire.

  11

  Claire

  I popped another antihistamine and turned the ‘closed’ sign around on the door of the bookshop, feeling my phone buzz in my pocket. Alyson left another voice message, saying she wanted to apologize. But last time I had spoken to her, she had accused me of snuggling up to Troy. Eww. I would never. I left it for now.

  Mr. Ferdinand’s cat bowl was empty already. Again.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, picking him up and sneezing violently as I did so. “You are going on a diet after this.”

  There was a tapping on the door. We were already closed, and I was about to point this out, but it was Matt.

  He held out a tote bag. It was lumpy. And clearly heavy. “Been to the library,” he said. He placed it down on the counter and emptied it. There were a bunch of old detective novels from almost a century ago, you know, the Fam
ous Five and all those series.

  “Hmm, interesting selection.”

  He looked kinda embarrassed. “I guess these were the books I liked to read as a kid.”

  I pointed out that we had plenty of that genre in the store. We had kids’ books, detective books, and both. There was no point making him feel too guilty, though. He had been trying to do me a favor, after all. “So what happened while you were in enemy territory?”

  He leaned forward and looked quite pleased with himself. He was grinning as he told me the story. “It was fully like I was undercover,” he said and told me how he’d even worn a button-up shirt and glasses to fit in.

  I sneezed and interrupted the story. “Sorry,” I said. “Allergies.”

  He frowned in a strange way, said ‘bless you,’ and then went back to telling me what had happened at the library. “I overheard these two women talking in the cookbook section. Maria donated tons of those apparently. They were saying that now they could get them all for free, that they’d never be paying full price here again.”

  I leaned forward and accidentally brushed my hand against his. “You mean they are never going to come back into this shop again?”

  Matt thought about it for a bit and leaned back. Our hands were no longer touching. “You’re painting the place?” he asked, squinting at the can of white paint in the corner

  “Modernizing the joint,” I said.

  He clicked his tongue and paused. “I don’t mean to step over a line here, but if it was me, I would do the opposite. I would keep this place vintage.”

  My feathers had been ruffled. I never like to be told what to do. I was sure that Matt meant well, but I knew what I was doing

  “The library has the monopoly on old and moldy,” I said, putting Mr. Ferdinand on the ground. “I am going for the sleek and modern brand. I’ll attract the right customers to go along with it.” The cat ran back up to the second floor, and I coughed and sneezed again. Matt looked at me strangely.