Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  We had wandered away from the construction site after Princess had left, apparently because she was going to tidy up at the shop. I couldn’t believe she was even brave enough to go back into the shop after what had happened, but good for her, I supposed. Somehow, we had found ourselves approaching the surf, the blue waves quite gentle that afternoon, with white froth where the waves crashed gently on the shores.

  Troy was doing his best to be understanding about what had happened, even though his initial reaction had been complete shock. But he’d seen how hurt I had been by what Claire had said and he was trying to make me feel better, and when he spoke, he almost sounded like a real human being with a soul.

  He nodded towards the same waves that I was admiring. “Why don’t you go for a surf? That always seems to cheer you up.”

  “There are some things that even surfing can’t fix, Troy.” I never thought I’d say that, but this time, it was true. Surfing couldn’t bring a person back to life, it couldn’t turn back time, and it couldn’t repair a friendship. I glanced over my shoulder where there was a crane lifting scaffolding. Surfing certainly couldn’t stop a mall from being built.

  “So, I have some news for you,” he said, sounding a bit heavy, as he stared out into the ocean.

  “Oh goodness, I don’t think I can handle any more for today,” I said. What bad news was Troy about to lay on me now? “Really, Troy, I’m pretty sure I don’t even want to know.”

  Maybe us drifting towards the sea hadn’t been such a coincidence after all. He’d brought me down here to disarm me. We were just about at the little spot of sand where I ran my surfboard design business.

  He was grimacing a little, but he did finally open up and tell me the truth. “There is supposed to be a surfboard shop opening up on the second level of the mall. It will also sell clothing and accessories. I know that you only sell boards…”

  I stopped breathing for a moment and realized I had rolled both my hands into fists. “Well, this is just great, Troy…”

  “Alyson, wait, let me explain. I wasn’t aware of it until yesterday. My assistant is in charge of all the leases and the shop contracts. She’s already organized the lease. But I had a look at the contract last night and I believe I can still void it, if you want me to…”

  Right. I got it.

  I shook my head and then scoffed. “Oh, so now you can look like you are doing me some kind of huge favor,” I said, rolling my eyes as I considered just grabbing a surfboard and running away into the water. He’d never be able to chase me—he was a terrible surfer.

  But he didn’t get it. He was still staring at me like he couldn’t quite believe I was ignoring his offer of generosity.

  “I am just telling you, Alyson. I could be out a bit of money by doing so. For all I know, this owner could sue me for breach of contract. So I am asking you now—is that something you want me to do?”

  In theory, of course it was.

  But I was stubborn. I didn’t like taking favors from anyone. I didn’t need them. Especially not from Troy Emerald. Besides, why should I be afraid of a little competition? My designs were handcrafted and done to special order, and there was no way that a chain store inside a mall could compete with what I had to offer.

  “No,” I said, picking up a surfboard for real this time. I was going to go deep into the waves where he couldn’t follow me. “Don’t void the contract, Troy, and don’t do my any big favors. And also, maybe don’t give me any more bad news while I’m on a drama cleanse.”

  5

  Claire

  Monday morning. Back at work and open for business. What could be more normal? That was what I told myself. It was easy enough to be inside the bookshop. All I had to do was not look up at the second level and not think about the rope and not think about the dead body of Nicole Marie. Easy. Simple.

  I glanced up and saw the bookshelf out of the corner of my eye. The one that Nicole Marie’s body had been propped up against. Shudder. Maybe this was not so easy. And we were certainly low on customers that day.

  There had to be a way to find out what happened to Nicole Marie. She was a member of our book club, and the book club always stuck together.

  There was only one thing to do in a time of great emergency, and that was to call an emergency book club meeting. I put the word out in the online group that I was moving the meeting up by two nights and assured everyone that it was fine if they hadn’t read that week’s book yet. “We will be talking about something far more intriguing than Emma,” I typed, knowing that would get everyone more than interested. I even promised to supply all the food and drinks this time and told everyone not to worry about bringing a plate. “See you all tonight at 6:30!”

  But 6:30 came. And went. There were zero people. None. Crickets.

  I checked the time again. It was only five minutes past 6:30. People might still arrive, just a little late. There hadn’t been any replies to the email either, but I hadn’t taken that to mean much. I waited another fifteen minutes, but the pie I had bought from the bakery was going cold.

  The windows were starting to rattle a little as a wind set in and I could hear rain start to fall, just softly. It was after dark and I didn’t want to be in the shop all on my own for much longer. Was there really not a single soul who was going to turn up?

  There was one person I could call. Begrudgingly. But there was very little chance of her actually answering. And so just as I was about to hit ‘call’ on Alyson’s number, I put my phone away. She didn’t want to help or be accountable for anything, so why should I bother with her?

  But one soul finally did arrive. Wearing a long velvet cape in a shade of dark crimson. A little like a very rounded Little Red Riding Hood.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Maria said. She was glaring at me like she was doing me a huge service.

  “Why not?” I asked, ushering her in from the cold. Darn, it was raining heavily now. The New South Wales winters were fairly mild but compared to the summer, it was awfully chilly, and this was an unusual cold snap.

  Maria’s coat dropped on the floor while thunder clapped outside. I felt a little like I was being visited by the ghost of Christmas past, but it was only July.

  “We all made a vow to never return to the book club again,” Maria said, her voice low and steady. “And a vow is a very serious thing to break.” She stared at me with the whites around her eyes getting wider and wider, like she was making sure I understood the extreme sacrifice she was making just to be inside the shop. It was all I could do not to slap her in that moment, though. Did we really need all the theatrics?

  “Well, that’s a little unfair!” I cried. “It’s not like I had anything to do with what happened to Nicole Marie.”

  But Maria shook her head as though I had deeply misunderstood what she was trying to tell me. “This vow has nothing do with you, Claire. Nor does it have anything to do with the bookshop. Well, not really.” She glanced around and shivered.

  Right. I wasn’t supposed to take it personally even though they were boycotting the book club I had started in the bookshop that I owned. Yeah. Definitely not personal at all.

  “It’s the book club itself,” Maria said, finally using a normal tone of voice. “It makes no difference where it is held, or what book we read, or who the owner of the store is. We’ve all agreed that it should just be disbanded for the time being just in case…well…” She paused for a moment like she was going to continue, but then she just stopped.

  Maria sat down, and Mr. Ferdinand jumped up into her lap. Which was very strange as he was not the most sociable cat. But he knew Maria well, as she had been coming into my grandma’s book store since Mr. Ferdinand was a kitten.

  “Did you know that Nicole Marie was writing a murder mystery novel, Claire?” she asked, peering up at me as she stroked the cat who was starting to fall asleep on her lap. He had one eye shut and one still slightly open, like he was winking at me. “And that she was going to get that book published?”
>
  Well, I did now.

  Just as I was locking up, I was blinded by blue lights flashing onto the glass of the window. I turned around and shielded my eyes as the door of the cop car opened and someone very angry-looking climbed out.

  “Just what are you doing, going inside the shop?” Sergeant Wells asked as he stomped over to me, the veins in his neck bulging. Just how does one go about getting neck muscles like that anyway?

  Well, I was coming out of it, if you wanted to get technical about it.

  “Umm, I own it,” I said, even though it was still technically in my grandmother’s name. Actually, apparently, there was some complication with my grandmother’s estate, and my solicitor Dawn Petts-Jones was still leaving me messages asking me to call her back, but I had been avoiding it. So, I started to feel a little guilty. Did this guy know that I didn’t technically own the store? Surely, he wouldn’t be down here after dark just to tell me off for that, though, would he?

  Come on, Claire, this is crazy.

  He was not playing around. It was like being told off by a parent, school teacher, and well, a cop, all at once. “This is a crime scene. I thought my officers were perfectly clear with you about not stepping foot inside.”

  Actually, they really hadn’t been clear with me at all. Or perhaps I just hadn’t been listening. Both seemed like viable options.

  “It’s not like we had any customers today anyway—”

  “This is not a time for jokes.”

  Didn’t know I was so hilarious.

  “I’m not joking,” I said, pointing inwards towards the shop. “I have cats in there that need to be fed. Or are they part of the crime scene as well?”

  He peered in and screwed up his nose when he saw Mr. Ferdinand staring back up at him. They each shared the exact same grumpy expression and just for a moment, I had to try not to laugh at the almost mirror image.

  “Well, you’d better take them home with you now then,” he said. “Quickly. While I supervise.”

  “This is the cat’s home,” I replied, not willing to back down an inch. “I am not going to disturb them. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “One of our officers will feed them in the morning then,” he said. “Now get out of here.”

  “I will leave in my own time, thank you.”

  But he just glared at me. “I better not see you down here again until I give you the all-clear. Or there will be consequences.”

  6

  Claire

  Of course the house had two levels, and of course the only possible way in—a window that could be pried open—was on the top floor. All the doors and windows on the bottom were deadlocked. I sighed. These were the times I needed Alyson. And of course these were also the times she disappeared. No coincidence there. Unreliable.

  Maria had told me that there was a paper copy of the manuscript that Nicole Marie kept on her desk. It had taken her three years to write and polish the book, and now it was all printed and ready to be released out into the world. Maria had said that there was a digital copy, but that would be a little more difficult to get to as it was locked inside a safe. To me that made zero sense, but Maria told me that Nicole Marie had never intended for the paper copy to be left unattended either.

  And the big deal about it all, Maria said, was that Nicole Maria had a book deal. As in, someone was going to take this manuscript and turn it into a real book that was going to be in bookshops around the globe. Maybe even my own. I knew our book club was full of writers, most of them wannabe writers. If one of them knew about Nicole Marie's stroke of good fortune, then they very well might have flown into a jealous rage. “But as far as I was aware, Nicole Marie wasn’t telling anyone until it was all official. I was the only one she had confided in,” Maria had told me before she had taken off for the night, leaving Mr. Ferdinand meowing at the door for her to come back.

  I couldn’t help but get a visual of Sergeant Wells’s face in my mind as I looked up at the second floor and thought about what I was doing.

  Hmm. All I was doing was breaking and entering a dead woman’s house. What could go wrong?

  It was a relatively easy ascent up the side of the house, or maybe I was just getting too good at this. Not a skill I ever thought I’d want to excel at, and not one I ever thought I would. Not for the first time, regrets about ever moving back to Eden Bay filled my head as I gripped the railing and pulled myself onto the balcony.

  There was a screen in the bedroom window that popped out. I only had to slide the glass back and grab a chair from the deck to stand on so that I could pull myself up to the window ledge and climb through the window.

  I could hardly even believe what I was doing. I used to be the girl who never even returned a library book late.

  But there I was, in Nicole Marie’s bedroom. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust, but the moonlight was strong enough that I could see without turning on a light. I definitely couldn’t turn on a light. The room looked strangely still lived in. The bed was only loosely made with the blue doona pulled up crookedly, and there were a few items of clothing scattered over chairs.

  I found the desk and crept towards it. So this was clearly where Nicole Marie did her work—it was full of notebooks and a laptop that was still open and gathering dust now. Why hadn’t the police taken it?

  And there, beside the laptop, was the printed manuscript. I reached for it like it was a pile of gold and read the title. The Girl in the Meadow. Flipping through it, I could see that it was just over four hundred pages long. The last page had “The End” printed right down the bottom. I was impressed. I never knew that Nicole Marie had it in her to write a book nor to get the end. For a moment, I felt a little like I was on the outskirts of the inner circle of the book club. Most of the members all knew each other from long before I’d come back to town. Was it only Maria who had known about the book deal, or had others? At the very least, the others must have known that she was writing a book.

  I shook my head. For just a second, clarity struck me. What was I doing? I couldn’t even see what the point of taking the manuscript would be. Maybe I should just put it back down on the desk and make my way back out the way I’d come. Forget the whole thing. But Maria had been pretty adamant that the answers could be found in it.

  You’ve come this far, Claire. Just do it.

  I was just about to try and figure out how I was going to climb out the window and back down the side of the house with the stack of loose papers when I heard a door opening and shutting from the floor below.

  My heart began to race. Shoot, shoot. I clutched the stack of papers to my chest and tried to find an exit or a place to hide while a male voice called out, “Hello, is there someone in the house?”

  The footsteps were already coming up the stairs.

  Uh-oh.

  Sprung.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked the man standing in front of me. We were on the ground level of the house by that stage, and the lights were on. Nicole Marie’s living room was filled with books, most of them as old and falling apart as the ones in my shop. She had a frayed rug on the floor and mismatched furniture. No wonder she had gravitated so much towards my shop. It must have felt like home to her.

  “Nicole Marie gave me a key. Though I really don’t see why I’m the one explaining myself to you,” he said with a hint of amusement as he raised an eyebrow. “After all, you are the thief here.”

  His name was Simon, and he told me that he was an editor at a publishing house. I certainly believed it. His appearance fit the bill. Checked shirt underneath a sweater. Thick black-framed glasses. Late forties and stubble on his chin. Someone I would have found attractive in another life—or at least one where I wasn’t being caught breaking and entering.

  I’d thought he was going to demand the manuscript back, at the very least, but he just shrugged and told me I could keep it. “She’d probably just be happy that someone was reading her work.”

  I took a seat gingerl
y on the sofa, even though I wasn’t sure that was allowed, and looked at Simon for some kind of approval. He didn’t seem to care what I did, though. He was making himself at home, flicking on the light to the kitchen area and asking if I wanted a cup of tea. “But aren’t you her publisher?” I asked, confused. “Surely you don’t want the book out and about illegally before it is officially published…”

  He laughed a little and reached into the pantry for some tea bags, the kettle now boiling. “I said I was a publisher, not that I was Nicole Marie’s publisher,” he said as he shut the door and raised a bushy eyebrow at me. Everything he did had an air of flirtatious energy about it and it made me a little nervous as I sat there, clutching the manuscript as though it could be snatched from my arms at any moment.

  “Oh. Right.” What did that mean though?

  He sighed and looked a little sad as the he stared at the kettle, not quite ready to pour the water. “I was a friend of Nicole Marie’s,” he said. “A good friend.” He reached over for the kettle and sounded a little choked up. For the first time, he seemed less cocky and flirty. “I would have loved to have helped her by publishing her book, really I would have. I had extremely high hopes for it when she first told me she had finished a book and sent it to me. It was just… Well…” He paused, like he was thinking of a polite way to phrase things. “It wasn’t quite ready for publication, I suppose you could say.” He handed me the cup of tea and I had to set aside the manuscript I was still clutching to so that I could take it.