Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  Poor Alyson.

  I’d meant to open the mail that Jeff had given me, but I was just too sleepy, and it fell out of my hand. I fell asleep with the letter on the floor beside the bed.

  I blinked a few times and picked up the envelope, then carefully tore it open. There were two smaller envelopes inside. I pulled out the first one and thought I must have taken too much cough medicine. This wasn’t my name on the letter that Jeff had given me. It was Alyson’s.

  I ripped it open. It may have not had my name on it, but it was meant for my eyes. Even if it wasn’t, Alyson and I were close enough that I was sure it didn’t matter.

  “Dear Alyson Foulkes,” the letter began. What followed after that made me CERTAIN I had overdosed on cough medicine. “I am writing this letter to you, fifty years in the past…to let you know that when you open this letter, a terrible fate is going to befall you. And you won’t be able to stop it.”

  What the—

  I pulled out the second envelope and tore it open. This one had my name on it. “Miss Claire, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right with the time capsule so I asked to see the box it was buried in. When I inspected it, I found this letter stuck inside the top. I knew right away I had to bring it to you. There wasn’t just one letter threatening your friend, apparently there are two. If I find anything else interesting I’ll let you know. Sincerely, Clive.”

  I looked at the letter for Alyson and noticed how crisp and white the paper was. It was obviously recently written.

  I called Alyson.

  “Alyson. I have the letter Tina tried to put in the time capsule. It’s a different letter. So that one that you read on the day of the opening? Alyson, that one was real. You were right all along.”

  Alyson had sworn never to set foot inside the Turtle Dove again after what she had witnessed, but there was one thing that would always win her over—the opportunity to gloat that she had been right.

  I was shaking by the time she got back, but it had nothing to do with the letter. The flu germs that Nancy had kindly left all over my apartment had fully infiltrated my system and taken over my apparently very weak immune system. Nancy had apologized profusely and given me the remains of the cold and flu medicine she had been using, but it had yet to take effect and I had gone into a fever. Alyson always claimed she was immune to every kind of germ and illness, so it didn’t faze her in the least. She just looked at me shivering with the blanket over my shoulder and snatched the two letters from me. One from fifty years ago. One from one week ago.

  “I just wish I knew where Tina was,” Alyson said, looking over both letters, one in each hand. Two very different sets of handwriting.

  “You could try asking one of your parents…”

  “I will talk to my dad when he is in his cold, hard grave.”

  Woah. I knew she was upset about him being out with Nancy and everything, but that was a bit extreme. “He might be the person you need right now.” Tina was her cousin on her father’s side. “Didn’t you say he was close to Tina when they were kids?”

  But I wasn’t even sure how much help that Tina could even be now. Even if she could tell us her motive in writing her letter, she wouldn’t be able to know who sent the original letter. She was only thirty-three years old.

  Alyson was coming up with a new scheme. Well, more like an old scheme. “My original plan was right. We need to go and collect handwriting samples from everyone in my family who is over fifty years old. Come on, we don’t have much time.

  But I was starting to get very lightheaded.

  “I think I need to lay down,” I said, my eye lids falling heavily. I was tired, and I couldn’t even move or open my eyes.

  All I heard was a self-righteous grumbling as footsteps moved toward the door. “Fine. I will take care of this by myself. As usual.”

  18

  Alyson

  I pulled the door shut and sighed. As full of bravado as I had been about getting the writing samples from my family, I was unsure how to actually go about it without making myself public enemy number one again.

  “Good evening, Miss Foulkes,” Jeff said as I left the lobby, my confidence draining even further.

  I knew what I needed. I needed my mum. I picked up the phone. “Mum. Can you come over?”

  I pouted at Mum while I lay on the sofa. “It was dumb and mean of Tina to play the prank. But I’m worried about her now.”

  Mum just ruffled my hair and got me a cordial from the fridge, and I felt like I was seven years old again. It was kind of nice.

  But there was that huge elephant in the room. I felt awful hiding what I knew from Mum. Here she was, all happy and cheerful that she had her daughter back with her. While in the meantime, I was holding on to a secret that would rip her heart apart.

  But wasn’t it better to be truthful?

  I sat up and put my cordial down. “Mum. I have to tell you something. I’m not saying this to hurt you. But Dad is being an idiot right as we speak. Mum, he’s on a date right now.”

  I sat back and waited for the words to settle. Was she going to cry? Scream? Yell? But she just sighed and put down her cup of earl grey. “I know, dear. I was the one who told him to tell you. In case you found out accidentally.”

  “Mum! You knew about this and you are just fine with it?” I would have been speechless if I wasn’t so outraged. I hadn’t even realized but I had stood up and backed away from her toward the door of my own apartment.

  She shrugged a little and smiled at me, though I could have sworn she looked a little sad. I mean, surely she had to be a bit sad, right? She was just putting on a brave face and all that. “It’s someone he’s known since he was at school. A very old flame…” Yep. I definitely heard it. She was trying to be light and breezy, but there it was—that little hint of bitterness mixed in with it.

  I took a seat again and searched Mum’s face. “Mum. Are you really okay with this?”

  “Of course, love,” she said, smiling sadly. “I told you, your dad and I have drifted apart.”

  I scoffed a little, quietly. Yeah, well, if he could get back together with Nancy after all these years, then there was certainly hope for mum and dad reconciling after a few weeks’ break.

  “I just can’t believe he’s back with his high school girlfriend,” I said, shaking my head.

  Mum laughed at that and shook her head. She looked a little perplexed, and I couldn’t figure out the reason for her amusement. “No, actually, they knew each other before high school.” Right. I had just assumed. “Nancy was dad’s ‘first girlfriend’ when he was just a wee thing. Eleven years old.”

  “But hang on,” I said, slowly turning to look at her. “That would have been over fifty years ago.”

  “Fifty years exactly.”

  19

  Alyson

  Mum was complaining even more loudly than Claire was when she had to walk somewhere and had her high heels on. “Tell me again, Alyson, why you are dragging me across town at this time of night.”

  “Because I need your help, Mum.”

  She shook her head in a mixture of bemusement and almost admiration. “Is this really what you two have been up to these past few months?”

  I’d told her about all the adventures that Claire and I’ve had since she’d been gone. Until she’d seen it for herself though, I don’t think she really believed that I’d turned into something of an amateur sleuth.

  “Yep, you go overseas and your favorite child goes rogue.”

  She laughed a little, but she slipped on some mossy rock and I slowed down. I had to remember she was over sixty now, even though she was young at heart and looked young for her age as well.

  But Mum’s breathing was coming fairly heavily. Maybe she was getting ill as well. “How much further?” she asked me. “Can’t you just phone Claire and see if she’s okay?”

  “Princess can’t look after herself,” I said, even though that wasn’t necessarily true in all circumstan
ces. She was tough in her own way. But at the moment, Claire was doped up on cold and flu medicine and Nancy was right next door. Ready to pounce. She must have written that letter to Claire, warning her away. Claire had gotten—quite literally—too close to the killer.

  I couldn’t turn back now and leave Claire all alone in that apartment.

  But I ran into problems as soon as I entered the lobby.

  “No unknown guests,” Jeff said, nose in the air as I entered.

  “But I am Claire’s friend!” I exclaimed. “I have seen you several times.”

  His nose was still turned up. “I have no recollection of seeing you here before,” he said stubbornly.

  “Jeff, please. Come on.” As if he didn’t recognize me.

  He started watering a pot plant. You’ve got to be kidding me.

  “Jeff, please. You gotta let me up. It’s an emergency.”

  But he just shook his head and went back to spritzing the leaves of the plant. “I have been under strict instructions from Miss Elizabeth Richardson not to let any visitors disturb her while she is unwell.”

  “But I am not just any visitor! Jeff, I am her best friend! She would let me up there even if she was on her deathbed!”

  I could hear Mum sighing wearily beside me. It was time to call it as far as she was concerned.

  “You go back to the motel, Mum. Let me take care of this one.”

  As soon as Mum was gone, I turned to Jeff and glowered at him. “This is because I caught you going through the letter boxes, isn’t it?”

  I thought he turned a little red, though it was difficult to tell with his olive skin. “I was not going through the letter boxes, thank you very much! And I won’t stand to be accused of such!”

  I stepped right up to the desk. “Yes, you were. You were tampering with Claire’s mail.”

  “I wasn’t tampering…” He was nervous, stammering now. “I was checking, okay?”

  “Ha, checking what?” I asked, now that I was on the front foot.

  “I knew Miss Elizabeth Richardson had received a threatening letter…and I believed it had come from someone in this building.” He looked distraught. “On my watch. I had to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.”

  “So you suspected that and yet didn’t tell Claire? Or the police?”

  His eyes darted around like I had him cornered. “Please do not say any of this to Miss Elizabeth Richardson… I was only trying to protect the reputation of the Turtle Dove.”

  Ha. More like his own reputation.

  “Fine.” I pulled out the second, typed letter that Claire had received. She hadn’t technically told me I could take the letters with me, but she had also been in no position to stop me. Or to realize what I was doing. So I had taken the initiative. Sometimes, I just had to.

  “Tell me who put this letter in Claire’s mailbox, the one that threatened her. Or I will tell her that you kept this from her.”

  He had his head bowed. “Nancy.”

  “Mum,” I said, holding the phone in one hand as I tried to look for a way to climb up to the fifth floor. I knew that I could do it if I could just find the fire escape. I had to save Claire, even if Jeff wasn’t going to be any help.

  She sounded like I had just woken her up. Well, she was 61, so it was already past her bedtime at 9pm.

  “Why did you want to name me Alyson?” I asked as I found the place where the escape ended. It would be a little difficult to jump up onto it and get my footing. But I could do it.

  “What?” she asked, sounding frustrated.

  “I promise you can go straight back to sleep after this,” I said, using one hand to climb the escape wall, looking over my shoulder in case Jeff had decided to come out front and watch what I was up to. I’d promised him I was going home and then made him at least promise to ring me if Claire was actually dying, just to make him think that I was serious about leaving. But I wasn’t confident that he would ring me even if she was dying.

  It was difficult, climbing the escape AND having a phone call conversation with my mother. Anyone would have struggled doing what I was doing, but I was doing my best. I didn’t know it would end in disaster. How could I?

  “Why did you pick the name Alyson?” I asked, losing signal a little bit. It sounded like Mum had the phone too far away from her ear. “Matt told me that it was your choice to name me that.”

  “No,” she said, sounding confused, as though she was recalling an old memory. Ha. I had known that Matt’s memories about that couldn’t be trusted. I should always, always trust my intuition. That was what Rhonda had said to me.

  But my intuition had told me that a member of my family was involved. And this was just Nancy and Claire. Huh. I mean, I guessed I did sort of consider Claire family. At one stage, I had. Maybe this sounded a little harsh, but when she had moved away for ten years and I hadn’t heard a peep from her, I had sort of taken back the ‘honorary family’ card. But I was a forgiving person. She could always earn it back. And in recent months, I had definitely started to feel more ‘sisterly’ toward her again.

  Still. She wasn’t a blood relative.

  I was struggling to hold onto the phone. “Then why did you name me Alyson?”

  “It was your father’s choice. He had picked it out from a young age. Or at least that’s what he had told me. Don’t take any offense, love, but I never really liked the name. I got my way the first time! I got to name Maggie and I told your dad that we would use Alyson if we ever ended up having another girl. And you came along as a bit of a surprise. I had to hold up my end of the bargain.”

  “What—what do you mean young age?”

  “Oh, I don’t know… He told me some story about some girl he knew at school called Alyson who he had a crush on. About the same time he was seeing Nancy. She was jealous, apparently.”

  I gulped. “But that would have been fifty years ago.”

  I dropped the phone and watched in horror as it dropped to the ground and smashed. My horror wasn’t just over the fact that my phone was still under contract and it was going to cost me about a thousand dollars to replace. It was also over the horrific noise it made. I couldn’t believe that such as small machine could make such a loud bang.

  I watched Jeff run out the front of the building. He probably thought the place was being bombed from above.

  He looked up at me and shouted that he was calling the cops unless I came down right that second. But I was so close to the fifth floor. All I had to do was to keep climbing just a little bit more.

  “I am not fooling around, you maniac!” Jeff screamed, jumping up and down and waving his arms around. Wow. I mean, I supposed I got it. Part of his job as doorman was to make sure no unwanted guests or riffraff got in. And I was certainly about to get in.

  I turned around and kept climbing. Well, if he called the cops, that could only be a good thing, considering that Claire was trapped inside the building with a psychopath. Someone who could hold a grudge for fifty years. So maybe I hadn’t even been the original intended recipient. Maybe the original Alyson had been, if she had ever married my dad.

  Little could Nancy have known that the actual Alyson Foulkes would not go down without a fight.

  Claire’s level. Phew. Finally. I pulled myself over onto her balcony and caught my breath before banging on her window. Now I knew why she had been so drowsy before. Nancy had drugged her with medicine so that she could do who knew what to her.

  “CLAIRE!” I screamed, banging on her window. Please wake up.

  She was laying on the floor and sort of jumped awake with a gasp, staggering over to the window. “Where is Nancy?” I asked breathlessly, sort of shoving her aside as she opened the window. I looked around her apartment wildly.

  “Nancy isn’t here!” Claire shook her head. “Why are you looking for her?”

  “She’s always been in love with my dad…” I said, realizing only too late that I was in the wrong place. I had climbed all the way up and smashed my phone for
nothing. It was my mum who was the intended victim all this time. “Oh my goodness, I knew I should have trusted my intuition! Rhonda was right!”

  It was about my family. It always had been. “Claire, seriously, pull yourself together. We’ve got to go!”

  “Fine.”

  But then I got a message from Jeff, a call to the room. Apparently, he’d gotten over his anger at my fire escape climb.

  “Alyson? Your brother called the reception desk. He wanted you to know that someone called “J” is missing again.”

  20

  Claire

  Alyson had just barged into my room and told me that Nancy was trying to kill her mother. It was all a bit too much to take in in my dozy state. I double-checked the label of the medicine Nancy had given me. It seemed legit, but the pills inside could have been anything. I’d thought she’d been so sweet and helpful to offer me the medicine. But all this time, she had wanted me and Alyson out of the way.

  Alyson was ranting and yelling and telling me we had to hurry up and leave.

  It was always up to me to be the sensible one and to save the day. Alyson liked to think that she was always the hero, but it was usually her making a huge mess of things and then me coming to the actual rescue after she had caused unnecessary chaos.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said, heading toward the door. “My mum sounded just as groggy as you do.” Shoot. Maybe her mum had been drugged as well. “We have to go. Now.”

  “Fine.”

  But then there was a call from the reception desk. Alyson picked it up in spite of the fact that we were in my apartment.

  “Hello?”