Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  There was a J-like shape sitting on the top of the half-pipe.

  “Oh, thank gosh,” I whispered as we ran toward the skatepark. It was still a little dark and I tripped over a tree root as I ran, passing a woman walking a dog in the early morning—the dog barked at me wildly as I ran past. I probably looked quite the sight, fleeing through the park in my rocket pajamas with my robe flapping wildly behind me.

  I had to climb up to the top to reach J. She saw both of us approach but pretended she didn’t. “What are you doing here J?” I tried to keep my voice calm, as though I might scare her away again if I spoke too loudly or crossly, but my brother didn’t have quite the same idea.

  Matt gave her a big lecture about how he trusted her and how terrified everyone had been after she ran off in the middle of the night like that. “I expected better from you, J.”

  But J just pouted and stared at the ground, her legs dangling over the edge of the half-pipe. She didn’t say anything.

  It looked like it was up to me to play good cop. “She’s your responsibility now,” Matt said throwing his hands up. “I am due at work in half an hour. With almost zero sleep, by the way.”

  J just glared at him as he walked away.

  “Come on, champ,” I said, helping her to her feet. “Matt is just grumpy because he missed his morning cartoons,” I said, smiling. “So, do you want to tell me what you were doing out here all night?”

  J shook her head. Then shrugged. “Just felt like it.”

  Yeah, well, I just felt like laying around on the couch and eating cereal all day, but it didn’t mean I actually did it. Well. Sometimes I did. But that wasn’t the point. What J had done was dangerous, and she didn’t seem to even realize it. Maybe Matt and I did go too easy on her at times. Especially me. Matt was more of the strict ‘parent’ and I was more of the fun one, the one who never had the heart to punish her. But it had been hard ever since Maggie had gotten ill and Matt and I had been left to raise her. Fun parent was the best I could manage sometimes. But sneaking off at night was pushing my good nature too far. This time, I was going to have to give her some kind of punishment.

  “Do I have to go to school today?” J asked. She looked up at me and yawned for good measure.

  I sighed. Considering she had been up all the night without any sleep, she wouldn’t exactly be in the best state to learn anything. But I didn’t feel like letting her get the day off school was a good idea. It was only rewarding bad behavior.

  “Yes.”

  She pouted and ran away across the park. “I hate you!” she called out. “No one cares about what I want!”

  “J, come back!”

  I had to chase her across the park. Oh, she was definitely going to school that day.

  6

  Claire

  The clock was ticking. “Four days to go,” I murmured, staring at the calendar. It had come out so absentmindedly that I hadn’t even noticed I’d uttered it. Outside there was music coming from a street busker, and there were still balloons and signs hanging from most of the shop fronts celebrating 100 years of Eden Bay. Even though the crowd had been a little horrified and amused by Alyson’s letter at the time, most of the people in the town had forgotten about it by then. Just as I had tried to. But it was a funny thing when you tried not to think about something—it only made you think about it more.

  “Till what?” Maria asked, bumbling past with a box full of donated books that I was unhappy about having to store. Most of them would have absolutely no resale value so I told her to put them all in the library bin where people could take books for free. I’d kind of stuck my nose up in the air when I did so and then sneezed at all the dust that came flying up from the box.

  But Maria thought we were performing a community service.

  “Um, four days to go till my next hairdresser appointment,” I said, not wanting to sound too insane. Except that I’d just made myself sound insane by counting down to a hair salon appointment. Maria knew about the letter, of course. Everyone in the town knew about it. It was just that no one was taking it seriously except Alyson Foulkes.

  Yet why was I so focused on the time that morning?

  “It looks like you have your hands full with those books, Maria,” I said, trying not to sneeze again, wishing I had never allowed her to bring them into my shop. “I might have to duck out for a bit of fresh air I think, while you dust them off!”

  I made a mental note to return to the bookshop with some scented candles.

  Normally, Alyson is one of the most vibrant and youthful-acting people I know. We are the same age, but most people would think she was a few years younger. But on that day as I approached her on the shore, her hair was limp against her back and there were dark wrinkles under her eyes. Strange. She almost looked old enough to have received that time capsule letter for real.

  “You look terrible!” I said, shocked by how tired she looked.

  “Thanks,” Alyson muttered as she pulled on her wetsuit and kind of tried to stand up before sitting back down again. I glanced around at her collection of half-painted surfboards. Alyson worked as a surfboard designer. Her paint box hadn’t even been cracked open that day. It didn’t seem as though she had done any work at all.

  “What’s going on?”

  She stared into the waves. “J ran away last night.”

  I gasped, but Alyson told me the full story. “Well, will she try that again?” I asked. “You’ve gotta come up with a plan to make sure she can’t escape!”

  Alyson shrugged and looked a bit dejected. “Well, we can’t exactly chain her to her bed, can we?”

  “No, but you can install a deadlock and put locks on the window as well,” I said. I was more pragmatic than Alyson, she was a little more freestyle. Still, I got what she was saying. If J was running away, there was a bigger problem than just the efficiency of the locks on the door.

  I sat beside her on the sand. “Maybe she doesn’t want to stay with Matt anymore. Maybe she’d rather live with you full time?”

  Alyson shook her head. “But she didn’t come to my place, did she? She came to the park.” Then she told me that when she’d found J and not let her have the day off school that J had told Alyson she hated her. She looked crestfallen as she told me that bit.

  I shook my head. “You know she didn’t mean it. It’s just something that kids say when they don’t get what they want. She loves you.”

  I knew that Alyson knew that, deep down. But in that moment, she didn’t look like she knew it.

  Hmm. I thought it over for a minute. I wondered how Matt was dealing with the whole thing. I’d have to drop into Captain Eightball’s later to check that he was all right.

  “What did you want today anyway?” Alyson asked as she pulled her knees up to her chest. Even though she had her wetsuit on, she had made no moves to go into the waves. I didn’t think it was such a good idea for her to surf while she was that exhausted anyway.

  “Couldn’t I just be checking in on my best friend?”

  She looked up at the sky, in the direction of the sun but not quite at it. “Not at this time of the day when you’re usually at work or getting your hair done. What’s up?”

  I hated that I was going to ask what I was about to ask. “Do you still have that letter on you?”

  There was an early nineties song playing on the jukebox and the TV was set to a cricket match, the two noises competing with each other and drowning out most of the other chatter in the cafe. There was a group of guys at the bar watching the match, their cheering occasionally breaking through. I hoped that all the noise would distract from what I was doing

  Alyson and Matt were going through a tough time. But if I could just figure out who the letter was talking about, maybe I could help.

  I quickly hid the letter. I knew that Matt would think the whole thing was foolish. But also, if he knew exactly what the letter said, he might be as worried as Alyson was. I knew he knew about it, but he hadn’t read the whole thing.
He’d been down at the beach getting ice cream when Alyson had read the letter out loud.

  The ice cream in my thick shake was melting. Oh well, I had a coffee coming anyway. I needed the caffeine that day. While I’d been sitting there, I was starting to ask myself a very troubling question. The letter seemed to be threatening someone close to Alyson. And there was one person who was closer to her than pretty much anyone else. I glanced up as my waiter came toward me, his floppy hair falling across his face.

  Could the letter’s author be talking about Matt?

  “You know whoever wrote that might very well be dead in their grave by now,” Matt said, sitting the coffee beside me.

  Gulp. So he had seen me reading it.

  “I was just interested,” I said, trying to play it cool. “After all, it is a bit of a strange one.”

  “I guess even I have to admit that,” he said, sitting down. He told me he could take a short break during his shift and that he chose now. He looked about as exhausted as Alyson had, even though the bags under his eyes weren’t quite as dark.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Better now that you’ve asked me that question.” He managed a smile.

  I wish I could have made things better. Told him what to do about J. But I didn’t have much experience with kids myself.

  “You want to get back to that letter, don’t you?” Matt said. He always had a way of guessing the truth. Then he gave me a suspicious look as he walked away. “I know at least you’ll be sensible, Claire. I know you don’t think the letter is real.”

  But I was starting to believe that it was real. As in, fifty years in the ground real. The only question was—how could the person writing it have known that Alyson Foulkes was going to exist in fifty years?

  The shop was called “Positive Vibes.” There were just beads on the door frame instead of, you know, an actual door, and they hit me in the face as I walked inside, tangling in my hair as well.

  I couldn’t believe this had actually been my idea.

  Alyson was thrilled, though.

  “I am so excited that you have finally come to believe in all this stuff,” Alyson said, practically bouncing as we walked through the aisles, passing boxes of scented candles and crystals. At least this had perked her up. “Hello, Rhonda!” she called to a woman in her seventies who was sitting behind the counter with her nose tucked in a book about reiki healing.

  “Woah, woah, woah, that is not what is happening at all,” I said as we moved through the gift section. “I’m just visiting this place because everyone in here is ancient. Someone in here might know something about the letter.” I picked up a candle labeled ‘Cosmic’ that smelled like raspberries. “And I needed one of these for the shop.”

  Alyson just grinned at me. “Yeah, right.”

  I could smell the nag champa incense as soon as we walked in and as we got closer to the desk, I saw that the source was a stick burning near the till.

  “Just this one please,” I said, getting out my purse.

  “That will be twenty-five dollars.” Geez, the first store I’d been in in Eden Bay that actually overcharged.

  Behind Rhonda, there was a chalkboard covered with drawings and writing in rainbow shades of chalk. There were a few inspirational quotes written on it, some flowers, and a butterfly, and beside that the details of classes and workshops being held at the shop in the upcoming weeks. There was one that Friday about learning how to harness the power of intuition. I could hear Rhonda asking Alyson about the letter. Alyson filled her in on all the details.

  I already had my candle. I could have just walked out. But instead, I said to Rhonda, “Theoretically, is it possible for someone to have known that Alyson was going to exist, before she existed?”

  “Yes, someone with psychic abilities could have known that, quite easily…” Rhonda shot Alyson a look like she knew exactly what Rhonda was talking about. And Alyson nodded sagely.

  I sighed. I wasn’t willing to dismiss the idea entirely. But it just seemed too ridiculous. Before we left, I stopped and asked Rhonda, out of earshot of Alyson, if I could book myself into the Friday workshop.

  Alyson was scuffing her heels out the front.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I thought an afternoon like this would have thrilled you?”

  She sighed. “Sure. But a bit hard to stay super chipper when someone who you care about is going to be killed in four days. Sort of haunts the back of your mind.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “Even if this letter is real.” I waved it about. “EVEN if. It may have been a joke. Or an idle threat. Or the person who wrote it could be dead. Or long moved on by now. Forgotten all about it.”

  Alyson pondered on this as we walked along. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you would write and then forget about. A murder threat.” She shot me a look. “Seems like the kind of thing you would come back to town for even if you HAD moved away long ago.”

  “Hmm. Well maybe we should be looking for people who only arrived back in town recently then.”

  Alyson had a haunted look in her eyes. “Like my family.”

  Yes. Well. They had been meant to be there for the time capsule opening. Only delayed flights had caused them to miss it.

  And they were all here now.

  7

  Claire

  “Hi, Jeff!” I said brightly as I entered the lobby. In spite of my gift basket, he still acted a little cold with me after the incident on the phone. He was polite, of course, but only as polite as he had to be. I had decided not to let it bother me. I was just going to be as nice to him as possible until things were back to normal between the two of us. “Got any mail for me today?”

  He turned around to check my box, but he moved as slowly as it was possible to move without not moving at all. I waited patiently and thanked him as he handed me a stack of letters. Wow. I sure was popular these days. “See you in the morning, Jeff! Hope you have a wonderful evening!”

  He just nodded at me and didn’t wish me the same.

  There were the usual bills and a letter from my solicitor Dawn Petts-Jones saying that there had been a development with my grandma’s estate. That was a little bit interesting. I would have to call her first thing in the morning to find out more about that.

  But then there was one letter, in an aqua envelope that didn’t look like a bill at all. It had a stamp with the Eden Bay town hall on it—one of the special limited-edition ones celebrating the centenary. The letter had no return address on it and my name was typed on the front. But there was no “Miss.” It looked personal, not business-related.

  I dropped the letter as soon as I read the first line.

  “Watch out Claire. There are only four days to go. And if you don’t stay out of it, you will be joining the other victim…”

  I didn’t know why, but it was Matt who I rang first.

  “Another letter?” he asked as he came in through the door. I had spoken to Jeff before and told him to allow Matt upstairs to the fifth floor. He picked the letter up off the floor. I hadn’t been game enough to go near it. “Do you think it’s from the same person?”

  “This one is typed,” I said, gulping. So I couldn’t compare it to the first one if I even wanted to. “I’m not sure there is a link, anyhow.”

  “Seems like more than just a coincidence.” He shook his head. “They are saying you will be one of the victims!”

  He was right. But it was starting to make me think that the letter to Alyson was not fifty years old at all, and in fact was far more recent.

  Matt told me that he would take me down to the station. “Maybe this time the police will take it seriously.”

  Someone named Sergeant Wells walked into the interview room and I immediately felt my whole body tense up. This is not the sort of officer I had been hoping for. His face was like stone. He was not exactly the kind of person you felt reassured around, like you can reveal all your innermost thoughts to. Or expect any sort o
f sympathy from. I looked around. “Is there anyone else I can talk to?”

  “Just me, I’m afraid.” His voice was gravely and monotone. I gulped. Matt was out in the waiting area, so I didn’t even have him in there for support. I’d been told it would be better if I spoke to the sergeant on my own.

  I told him the basics, about how the letter had been there waiting for me in my box when I’d gotten home, how it must have been recent due to the stamp, and that I had only moved into the Turtle Dove just over a week earlier. “And at this stage, I am wishing I just stayed living at the motel,” I said, and to my surprise, I could feel tears stinging the back of my eyes. I am not a big crier. Hardly ever. I was just disappointed. The Turtle Dove had meant to be a new start, somewhere that felt safe, somewhere that felt like home, and now this?

  Sergeant Wells seemed interested in this and started scribbling notes. “How many people know about your new address?” he asked.

  “Umm.” I had to think about that. “Well, mostly just people I know here in town,” I said, not thinking too much off it. “Matt and Alyson. I gave my parents my new forwarding address, but they’re in Sydney.” As far as I could recall, that was it. Even Maria didn’t have my actual home address. There was no need for her to have it. “I prefer to keep pretty private,” I said. “I don’t just give my address out to anyone. I don’t like people just randomly turning up to my front door.”

  Sergeant Wells continued writing, then looked up at me. “So how well do you know this Alyson Foulkes?” he asked.

  I was a little taken aback by the question. “Well, we were childhood friends and we recently reconnected. I moved away when I was nineteen, and I just moved back to town three months ago.”

  He paused his notes and looked up. “So you have no idea what she was doing in the ten-odd years in between then?”