Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  “I didn’t exactly have time to cancel the order. I had other things to worry about.” I wasn’t even supposed to step inside the shop. Oh, but what was Sergeant Wells going to do about it anyway? Arrest me for entering my own shop?

  Probably.

  I sighed and checked that no one was around before I quickly unlocked the front door and told him to hurry.

  He rolled his eyes at me even once the door was open. Looked like I couldn’t win with him. “Should have been done with this delivery half an hour ago,” he said as he dumped the boxes near the door and handed me the portable machine for me to enter my card details.

  “Next time, be here,” he said before he climbed up into the front seat of the truck and slammed the door. I coughed as the exhaust smoke hit my face.

  I checked the time. Good. I hadn’t left Alyson unsupervised for that long. If I could just lock up quickly, I could be done in five and be back over at Nicole Marie’s house before she could do any real damage.

  I quickly looked over all the stock—since I had gotten the delivery, it better at least contain all the books I ordered—hoping that no one was watching. And I hoped that if the police came back, they wouldn’t notice five boxes of books that hadn’t been there the day before.

  Oh gosh. My cell phone showed an incoming call from Maria. She must have been walking past and seen me. I was going to have to quickly explain myself and ask her not to tell anyone, least of all the cops.

  But she was ringing to tell me something far more serious.

  “There’s a fire down on McCall Avenue…and it’s Nicole Marie’s.”

  9

  Claire

  I had no words.

  Literally, none. I didn’t even want to speak to Alyson. There was no way she could possibly spin this situation.

  I was in a daze as I made my way into the center of town. Maybe after all this time, I was being given a sign. Maybe it was truly time to cut off my friendship with Alyson Foulkes.

  I looked up and realized I was at Captain Eightball’s. It hadn’t been on purpose, but it seemed like the right place to be.

  It was the first time I had seen Matt in weeks. Somehow all the drama had made the kiss seem like less of a big deal, and it seemed natural to pay him a visit. Maybe he wouldn’t even remember it. Maybe I could just act cool and natural as though nothing had happened.

  Matt had already heard about the fire. Everyone had. He was behind the bar, pouring drinks when I walked in. He seemed concerned but not entirely sure that it was Alyson’s fault.

  “I’m sure that Alyson will have a perfectly reasonable explanation for this…”

  “For burning a house down?” I was going to need something a little stronger than a milkshake for this. I ordered a cheap whiskey and Matt raised his eyebrows as he poured it into the short glass.

  “Ugh, speaking of burning,” I said, and winced as the cheap spirit hit the back of my throat. I blinked a few times and felt my eyes water.

  “Looks like you can handle it all right.” Matt winked at me.

  I grinned. It was good to be talking to him again. I’d missed him. Maybe it was the whiskey talking, but I had just opened up my mouth to tell him just that when the door opened in walked a long, leggy brunette with hair cascading down to her backside. She was tanned the same way that Alyson was, the way you only can be if you spend your life out in the sun.

  “Hey, you!” she said and ran up to give Matt a peck on the cheek.

  I was a little stunned. Inside I was thinking, who the heck is this? But I sat there, cool, trying to pretend that I hadn’t seen anything. Unfazed. Unmoved. While on the inside I was burning up like a volcano. The feeling started bubbling in my stomach, then moved its way up to my chest, where it burned. I could feel the sides of my face start to heat up, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. Oh god, I wasn’t going to cry, was I? I was not a crier. Claire Elizabeth Richardson did not cry.

  She had her very long arms wrapped around his neck, and even with bare feet, she was almost his height. She must have been almost a foot taller than I was. I was glad I was up on the bar, perched high.

  “This is Kate,” Matt said, turning to me. He seemed embarrassed.

  “I’m Claire,” I said when he failed to introduce me by name in return. I somehow found myself with my arm outstretched and I was shaking her hand. Her hands were soft and delicate. Of course they were. I pulled my own back.

  “I’m an old, um…” She paused and giggled as she looked at Matt for guidance of what she should say next. He just shrugged unhelpfully. “Friend of Matt’s.”

  But the way she said ‘friend’ implied a whole lot more. Add to that the fact that Matt was blushing, and I knew what that really meant. She giggled again.

  Right. An ex.

  And what was I?

  I pushed my empty glass aside. “I need to go. I…uh…need to go for a surf.”

  I’d been intending to wait till the dust had settled—or the ash, as it were—before I saw Alyson again, but the beach was where I ended up later that afternoon. I wasn’t even sure I would actually see Alyson there that day, but down by the shore, I could see surfboards and painting equipment set up. If it wasn’t her, it was someone doing a very good impression.

  I couldn’t believe they had let her out of the police station. Apparently, she was claiming she had nothing to do with it and they had actually bought her story. But I knew Alyson. She had everything to do with it.

  I got closer and sighed to myself. Was that…charring in her hair? She probably hadn’t even noticed it. Hair care wasn’t Alyson’s priority. She was lucky she had gotten out of there without smoke inhalation at the very least. At the very worst, she could have been burnt to a crisp. I stopped and thought about this for a moment. Maybe I ought to go a little bit easier on her.

  But she did tend to bring all these things on herself.

  “Is that ash on your shoulder?” I asked. I wondered what had happened to the detective kit.

  She glanced up at me like nothing had happened.

  “Matt tells me you were at Captain Eightball’s today. So you’re back on the sugar then?”

  Sure, of course she wanted to change the subject. This was just a topic I didn’t want to talk about. I mean, not the sugar, though I didn’t want to talk about that either as the line I was still sticking to was that my dental problems were all minor and dealt with. What I didn’t want to talk about was being at Captain Eightball’s.

  “Just needed a quick refreshment,” I said, shrugging, looking over my shoulder at the ocean, hoping that would be the end of it. But I knew it wouldn’t be. I hadn’t been to Captain Eightball’s in a month and I knew the whole thing was suspicious.

  She glanced up at me, a paintbrush in her hand. “He told me you ran out of there fairly quickly.”

  “Ah well, I’m surprised he even noticed,” I said, kicking the sand a little. “He seemed pretty preoccupied with a friend of his.”

  She shrugged. “Kate is just an old ex of his. She’s back in town for a couple of weeks visiting her folks. They’re just friends now.”

  “Looked like they were more than just friends,” I grumbled.

  “What?” Alyson said, looking up at me again. She looked quizzical.

  “Nothing,” I said. “None of my business anyway.”

  Alyson could never ever find out what had happened between her brother and I, so I had to play it cool. Anyway, I was cool about the whole thing. Who cared if an ex of Matt’s was back in town? Why would that bother me at all?

  I just couldn’t understand what he saw in her or how she was his type. I mean, she had long, brown hair. How could that be his type? I had short, blonde hair. And she was tanned and tall. I was short and had pale skin.

  Something didn’t compute there. He couldn’t like both of us.

  “So, I suppose you got absolutely nothing out of the house before it burned down to the ground,” I said. It was time to return focus.

&nb
sp; Alyson stood up. “Actually, I did. And it’s not burned to the ground. Only the living room is completely gone.”

  I shook my head. “Alyson. How on earth did you manage to start a fire in Nicole Marie’s house? You’ve made things fifty time worse for us!”

  She glared at me. “I told you I had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you were sneaking around in there in the dark with a candle?” I asked. Word had already traveled about how exactly the fire had gotten started. “And you put the candle down in the living room, right? Next to a pile of paper manuscript?”

  Well, the manuscript that I had left there. We could ignore that little factoid for now.

  She crossed her arms and looked uncomfortable. “I know you don’t believe me, okay? So why don’t you come out and say it?”

  “Umm, I thought I had.” Was I being too subtle? “I don’t believe you. You left my shop unlocked and caused a disaster to happen there, and now you have burnt down the house where all the evidence was. You are completely irresponsible, Alyson, and I’m sick of having to clean up your messes. Have I said it clear enough for you now?”

  Her face turned bright red and she screwed up all her features. I thought she was going to yell. Or self-combust. But instead, she just reached down, picked up a board, and started to run.

  What was she going to do, surf right away from me? Oh no, she was not getting away that easily. I grabbed a surfboard and followed her into the waves.

  10

  Alyson

  It had not been the best of days. But at least Claire had been knocked out by the very first wave and had to head back to town, head hanging low, while I stayed out in the surf for hours, fuming.

  I mean, at first, it had been a little funny to watch her climb out of the water like a drowned rat and retreat. I’d even laughed a little.

  But now I was starting—just starting—to feel bad about the entire thing. I wished that we could just work together and solve this thing. It was threatening our friendship and in spite of everything that had happened, I still valued that above everything else. I wanted us to work in tandem. To have fun. For it to be like it was when we were kids—the two of us against the rest of the world.

  But more often than not, Claire and I tended to find ourselves on opposite sides even when we were working together. So for now, I was going to have to work on my own because I needed to redeem myself.

  And that was how I found myself around the corner of Fabled Books.

  Sure. What I was about to do could lead to more trouble. But I had to something. Claire was too scared to go inside her own shop. But I wasn’t. Sergeant Wells didn’t scare me, and he never would.

  As I was approaching the shop, I felt more and more certain. “This is where all the answers lay,” I said to myself.

  But there was someone at the door. Maria. I was about to jump out and surprise her with a great big hello! After all, she had been my favorite teacher in high school, and she was my current tutor.

  But something made me hang back.

  She pulled out a key and started unlocking the front door. Hang on, why did Maria have a key to the bookshop? Okay, think, Alyson, think. Maybe Claire gave her one after your own disastrous screwup. But Princess had made such a big deal about me having the only spare key and her not trusting anyone else to have one.

  Maybe it wasn’t an actual key to the shop. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It definitely opened the front door though, because she was stepping through it.

  My heart started to race. Maria had a secret key. It must have been Maria all along.

  I had to tell Claire.

  11

  Claire

  There were rules. And one of them was about to be broken. By the girl who had no respect for rules anyway. Typical Libra.

  But I was a Virgo. And I was going to have to put my foot down. I stomped through the cafe, the floor—sticky from spilled sodas and who knew what else—catching my shoes as I approached the interloper.

  To be fair, it wasn’t as though Alyson was officially banned from book club meetings. It was just that we had a strict three strikes policy. You had to actually read the book. Maybe one slip-up was fine, one week where you ran out of time—we all had busy lives. But Alyson had already used up her first strike. And her second one. And once you had been to three meetings where it was obvious that you hadn’t read the book, your luck was up. No more book club for you.

  “We’re all full,” I said, pointing to the small group behind me. There was loud music playing so I had to yell a little to be heard.

  She was holding her hands up in surrender. “I’m not here for the book club. I need to tell you something.”

  “Alyson, I finally convinced everyone to meet, you’re not going to ruin—” I caught Kate out of the corner of my eye. She was leaning over the bar, saying something obviously flirty to Matt, who was laughing and ignoring the customers at the bar who were waving bills at him and trying to get their drink order taken. Kate was showing off her very long legs in cut-off shorts, even though it was the coldest day of the year so far. Having the meeting at Captain Eightball’s was a real double-edged sword.

  After a fair bit of giggling, she looked around and then, when she thought no one was looking, ducked in behind the bar. My mouth dropped open a little. Was that within the rules? She wasn’t an employee.

  But there was no manager around to see or to tell them off. Not that I could find, anyway. “That doesn’t seem very hygienic,” I muttered under my breath.

  Kate had her arms hanging around Matt’s neck and she was sort of hanging off him while he tried to pick up a tray of potato wedges and sour cream to take them to a table, and he made little move to shift her off. She was very, very friendly for an ‘ex.’

  Alyson cleared her throat. “Um hello, I am trying to tell you something important here.”

  I looked at her warily. “I doubt it.”

  One of the members of the book club—a woman named Sadie—stood up and whistled and waved me over. I checked the time. We should have started the meeting five minutes earlier. She looked cheery enough, but I could tell my tardiness was getting on her nerves.

  “Come on,” I said, reluctantly leading Alyson back to the table with me.

  We sat down in the booth that was large enough to hold the six members who had turned up, none of them Maria. She was taking her vow very serious apparently.

  “Okay,” I said, smiling at everyone. “I’ve ordered us a couple of servings of the fried shrimp tails and a jug of sangria.” I was hoping those two things might make the ladies a little loose-lipped. “Oh, excuse me one moment,” I said when my phone buzzed. I caught Sadie giving me a bit of a shady stare.

  Simon. Even though I wasn’t completely into him, there was a little flutter in my stomach. Maybe I just liked the attention from someone a little older and wiser. And someone who worked in publishing as well.

  “We still meeting later?” the text said.

  “Yes, perfect,” I quickly replied. And it was perfect. I could gather the intel I needed here from the ladies and then get the gossip from Simon to either confirm or go against what they had said. I was planning to subtly find out which, if any, of them were writing books. Then I could narrow my list of suspects right down.

  I grinned at them all.

  Sadie opened her mouth to talk before I could. “So, Emma. What did we all think of it?”

  Oh gosh, we weren’t going to actually discuss the book, were we? Alyson grabbed a shrimp tail and started chomping on it but paused in excitement. “Oh gosh, isn’t she just one of the greatest protagonists of all time? A true feminist icon.”

  So, she had read it. Trust me to pick the one classic book she’d actually read that week. I had to actually lean forward and interrupt her enthusiasm before this conversation got completely derailed with discussions about the actual book.

  “What did you think, Claire?” Sadie asked me.

  “About what?”

>   “Emma.” She stared at me blankly, and I realized that everyone else at the table had gone silent. I shifted back and forth a little, and I caught Alyson trying not to grin in smug satisfaction. Okay, okay, I hadn’t actually read it, all right? But in my defense, I had an awful lot to deal with that week.

  Thankfully, there were enough distractions in the cafe-turned-bar that I wasn’t pressed on the matter. Phew. I realized this was my own second strike; the second time I had turned up at a meeting without having read the book. I picked up one of the loose copies of Emma and started fanning myself with it, my attention once again being drawn back behind the bar where Kate’s face was just close enough to Matt’s cheek that she looked like she was about to kiss it. And he didn’t seem like he was going to pull away.

  I could hear Sadie over my shoulder, telling the other women, Alyson in particular, about how she also liked to write strong female protagonists in her own work. Including the book she was currently working on.

  Well, that got my attention.

  “Sorry, you are writing a book?” I asked, interrupting Sadie.

  “Yes,” she said, stopping mid-sentence thanks to my interruption, looking around at the circle a little perplexed. Apparently, this was common knowledge. Just not common to me. “Well, I am writing the words. It’s a bit of a co-creation.”

  “Who is the other creator?” I asked, reaching for the shrimp tails, while glancing, covertly as possible, over my shoulder to check on what Kate and Matt were getting up to. Had I missed the kiss or had it not happened?

  Sadie was answering my question, though I was only half-listening. “He’s an illustrator. Zed Addams.”

  “Oh?” I asked, turning back. Zed? Why did that name seem familiar to me? I wiped my hands clean on a serviette. And then I saw it. Kate fully leaned in and gave Matt a kiss—not a full tongue kiss, just a lip-press—behind the bar. Wow. This was very unprofessional to say the least. Wasn’t anyone else watching this? Weren’t they all as outraged as I was?