Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  “Excuse me,” I said, standing up. I was cutting off Sadie, again. Boy, she really wasn’t a fan of me that day, judging by the look on her face. “These are on the cold side. And I think I should complain to management.”

  I waltzed up the bar and slammed the tray down with a large, “Ahem!” Kate jumped away from Matt in surprise. “Can I speak to the manager please?” I asked, holding my nose in the air so that I was both looking at them and not looking at them at the same time.

  “About?” Matt looked worried. He’d worked at Captain Eightball’s for almost a decade and I knew he prided himself on being a stellar employee with a pretty spotless track record. He hated when people complained to the manager.

  The manager, a man named Ian who was in his early fifties and who took complaints very seriously, wandered out of his office to see what all the fuss was about.

  “These are cold,” I said, waving the basket around. Then I couldn’t help myself. I glanced at Kate and looked down my nose at her. “And I believe there is a strict rule about only having employees behind the bar.”

  “Indeed, there is,” Ian grumbled while Kate darted off and Matt turned red. He was keeping a polite smile on his face while Ian was watching, but as soon as he was gone, Matt glared at me and threw down the tea-towel he’d been holding, took his apron off, and stormed to the back.

  Geez. I was making a bunch of friends that day, wasn’t I?

  “What’s really going on, Claire?” Alyson asked, one arm against the bar. The rest of the group had already gone back to their own conversation and not one of them had even bothered to come over and check on me or say thank you, even though I had gotten them a second serving of shrimp tails and another jug of sangria on the house.

  “You know that complaining to management is my specialty,” I said, trying to shrug it off. I’d been standing there for several minutes and Matt still hadn’t come back from wherever he had stormed off to. If he had gotten fired, I would never forgive myself for what I had done.

  “Yeah, except I overheard what you really complained about,” Alyson said.

  Yikes.

  I paused and composed myself before I turned to her and really hoped that I hadn’t turned red. How was I going to spin this one? “It’s not professional to have just anyone behind the bar. You know how I get about germs.”

  Alyson raised her eyebrows. “Whatever you say, Princess.”

  So desperate was I to get the subject onto anything else, I asked her, “So what have you been trying to tell me all morning then?” I waved down another bartender and ordered a whiskey before I steeled myself to hear Alyson’s tale.

  She took a deep breath. “I saw Maria. Down at your bookshop.”

  I took a sip of my drink. “Not earth-shattering news, Alyson. Did you also see the moon in the sky last night?”

  She didn’t bother replying to that. “She had a key. She was breaking in.”

  I had to stop and blink a few times at that little explanation. Does that count as breaking in? If she was opening the door with a key?

  I also wasn’t sure how to break the news to Alyson. I cleared my throat. “Well, yes, I got a pair cut for her the other day actually.” I got distracted again. Hang on. Are you kidding me? Kate was still in there behind the bar. Ian had left for the day and as soon as he had, her and Matt were back at it again. Was this just to spite me now? Was I going to have to escalate the matter?

  Alyson didn’t care about Kate. Only Maria. “You gave Maria a key?”

  “Shh, keep your voice down!” I didn’t want to advertise the fact. No one was supposed to go inside the shop, but I did not trust the cops to take care of my little feline friends. “She’s just feeding the cats and changing their water,” I whispered. “And don’t tell anyone what you saw, okay?”

  Alyson was frowning, lost deep in thought. Like she had already come to her own conclusions about things and now she couldn’t reconcile these conclusions with the truth. “But she looked so suspicious…”

  I sighed. Alyson always wanted things to be more than what they were. She always wanted there to be a greater mystery lurking underneath. I shrugged. Sometimes there just wasn’t.

  “She probably looked suspicious because no one is supposed to be going inside the shop.”

  Alyson was still not happy with that explanation.

  “So…what did you think of Sadie?” she asked, peering over her shoulder at the booth where the rest of the group were huddled in conversation. Clearly, someone had said something hilarious, because Sadie had her head thrown back in laughter.

  I was still distracted by the behind-the-bar action. “What about her?”

  Alyson snapped her fingers at me. “Have you been paying attention, Princess? Sadie said she is writing a book.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, children’s book, so what? That’s hardly in competition with anything Nicole Marie wrote, is it?” Totally different genre, audience, probably even different publishers and editors would be involved. I’d been hoping to discover that one of them was a murder mystery writer.

  Alyson sighed. “That wouldn’t stop her from feeling jealous that someone else got what she wanted…”

  I glanced behind the bar where Kate was hanging on Matt again. Alyson was right. When someone else got the thing you wanted, it was like battery acid burning away in your stomach.

  “I’ll follow up on it,” I promised.

  But right then, I just wanted to get away from the place.

  12

  Alyson

  The sound of waves crashing soothed my nerves a little bit as I stepped off the train and onto the platform. I was a little unsteady that day, like a newborn calf. I wasn’t wearing heels, not exactly, but the wedges I had on were higher than I was used to. And the dress was a little shorter and tighter than what I would usually wear.

  But this was a very usual day.

  “Ally!” Mum called out as she pulled the car to a stop and waved me over to the passenger seat.

  Rushcutter’s Cove had a better surf than Eden Bay, which was why it was the location of the yearly surf comp. But the actual town was smaller than Eden Bay and less of a tourist destination. It was a little rockier on the coast, and the sand was a little rougher. And bigger waves didn’t necessarily make it a better beach. But it was where my parents had moved a few years earlier and they loved the seclusion. When we got back to their house, Mum gave me a hug and asked how I was dealing “with everything.”

  I knew what she meant. She was talking about the fact that Matt and I were no longer, strictly speaking, splitting custody of our niece. J was still staying with me every other weekend, but she was pretty much full time at Matt’s place at the moment. It was to give her stability. It was what J wanted. I just missed her, was all.

  “J will be at my place next weekend, I’m just looking forward to that.” I was trying to engage, but I was distracted. I didn’t really love talking about the living arrangement. Matt had asked me to move in with him and I knew that Mum thought it was a good idea as well. I just wasn’t ready to be pushed into it. And I particularly wasn’t interested in getting pushed into it on that day.

  She must have wondered why I was sitting there, back straight, so nervously looking at the clock, twiddling my thumbs and avoiding any serious questions.

  Mum always thought any problem could be fixed with food.

  “Come on, dear, have another scone,” she said.

  But I shook my head. “I really can’t, Mum.” There was another reason I was in Rushcutter’s Cove that day, and I could definitely not eat another scone. I didn’t want to make myself too full.

  She looked up at me in surprise, before she set the tray back down. “You’ve got somewhere else you need to be?”

  “I, uh, just want to check out the surf,” I said. “You know what they say about not going into the water within two hours of eating.” Though I was pretty sure that had long been proven to be a myth. My mum was old. She probably still believed it.
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  But what she didn’t believe was anything I was saying. She looked me up and down and took note of the dress I was wearing. “You’re wearing earrings, Alyson.”

  Clip-ons. I didn’t have my ears pierced.

  “Now why would you be wearing those if you are about to go surfing?” She tilted her head. “And you look like you’ve actually brushed your hair for once. What is the special occasion? I know that’s not all just for my benefit.” She looked over her shoulder. “And it’s certainly not for your dad’s, seeing as he’s been banging away in the shed all morning.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay, Mum?” Nothing personal. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. I didn’t want anyone to know, or to see, what I was doing that day. That was why I was in the next town over from Eden Bay. So no one saw. Even dropping in on my parents that day was partly just to make sure they were at home and not ‘out and about’ on the loose.

  I glanced at the clock again. Time had come. I stood up and checked myself in the hallway mirror. One of my earrings was about to come loose. I noticed my hands were shaking when I reached up to fix it.

  I’d declined my mum’s offer of a lift into town and walked to the restaurant myself. It was one that I’d only been to once before in my life, to celebrate my parent’s twentieth wedding anniversary. It was the kind of restaurant that put out fresh long-stemmed, white candles for every service.

  Troy was already out front, waiting for me. In a strange way, he was dressed ‘down’ from how he usually was, in a plaid shirt and capri pants, but that was only because he usually wore a full suit around work. Whereas I had gone in the opposite direction. I was more dressed up than I had been in years.

  “You look nervous,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not. Just slightly chilly.” I even shivered a little more for effect.

  I felt like I had to make it clear before we sat down. “This isn’t a real date, Troy.”

  But the hostess was smiling at us and waiting for us to take our seats. She didn’t care whether it was a real date or not. And so I sat.

  Troy had a look of bemusement on his face. “Actually, Alyson, that’s exactly what we agreed it was. That’s the whole reason you made me meet you out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  I just looked at him as if to say, are you serious? Rushcutter’s Cove was only a twenty-minute drive from Eden Bay, so hardly the middle of nowhere. Though, I supposed it was even further out from the city and because it was south, it was even colder than Eden Bay.

  “We’ll have whatever wine you recommend,” Troy said and handed the drink menu back. “A full bottle. Don’t worry about the price.” The hostess was thrilled. But he couldn’t impress me by throwing his cash around.

  Fine, all right? We had agreed that it was a real date. But that didn’t mean that I wanted anyone to see me with Troy Emerald. This was just to…test the water. See if he could actually be a real human being. I felt like I needed to scratch the itch or it was never going to go away. And yet, I still couldn’t believe I’d said yes when he’d sent me the text message two days earlier.

  At least we weren’t in Eden Bay. And I had made it a lunch date to keep it a little casual. Not that Florentine’s was anything resembling casual. The wine arrived, and I quickly checked the list for the price. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Gulp. It wasn’t the price itself that made me nervous. It was the fact that this was nothing to him. Sometimes it felt like Troy Emerald and I weren’t even the same species.

  Our steaks arrived. Choice cuts, of course. Mine was so tender it almost melted in my mouth, and I almost didn’t want to admit how much I was enjoying it.

  “What are those?” he asked, using the end of the knife to point in the direction of my ears.

  “Don’t go thinking I got dressed up just for you, okay?” I said, taking a sip of the wine, which, to be honest, I couldn’t really tell from cheap wine. “I also had to drop in on my parents and they have a thing about good presentation.” They didn’t.

  Troy just looked amused. He always looked amused with me. I never knew if that was a good thing or not. Sure. I actually liked being entertaining and amusing. But what would happen when he stopped being charmingly amused by my antics and started getting annoyed by them instead?

  Claire always said that it was the thing that most attracted you to someone at the start that winds up being the thing that most annoys you about them at the end.

  Of course, I could never, ever tell Claire that I was on a date with Troy Emerald. I did feel bad about keeping it from her. As much as we argued about the cases we were working on, one thing we were always honest about was the personal stuff that was going on in our lives. I knew she would never keep something this big from me.

  I peered up at Troy. Before I told anyone—ANYONE—I had to suss him out first. Was he a good guy who occasionally acted like a jerk, or was he a jerk who occasionally acted like a good guy? He might say why did it matter which way around it was? But it did matter. A lot.

  Troy finished up his meal and lay his cutlery on the plate. He leaned forward. “So, that surf shop that I told you about. I cancelled their lease.”

  I was shocked. Thanks to nerves, I had only eaten a quarter of my meal, and now I set it aside completely.

  “I told you I didn’t want you to do that for me,” I said, trying to seem like I was annoyed. But okay, I had to admit, there was a big part of me that was pleased that he did. But I made sure not to crack a smile. To let my mouth even curl at the edges. To let my eyes shine a little. He had to know that this was not acceptable and that I was not impressed at all.

  But somehow, he could see through that. “I know,” he said gently. “But I wanted to do it for you, okay?” He reached out and put his hand over mine. I didn’t pull mine away.

  “It is okay to accept help, Alyson.”

  Yuck. Accepting help was the worst.

  I told him that I would catch the train back to Eden Bay even though he told me that was ridiculous as he was about to drive straight back. But I couldn’t risk it. “Maybe you should have worn a wig,” he said as dropped me at the train station and got out to walk me to the platform.

  There was a gentle breeze as we waited. “I suppose this is the ending of our official real first date,” I said, and then realized I’d implied there were going to be more. He stared at me to ask if there would be. But I glanced away. I wasn’t even sure what answer my face was going to give. I didn’t want to give any.

  “So last time we got to this point, we got cut a little short,” he said. He came closer to me and I looked up at him. This time, his face was asking a question. Were we going to kiss?

  I still wasn’t sure I wanted to kiss him. I wasn’t sure about a single thing about Troy Emerald.

  13

  Claire

  Sadie worked as a receptionist in the town’s visitor center. As I paced out front, I tried to think of an excuse to go inside. I wasn’t technically a ‘visitor’ to Eden Bay. I had a lease on an apartment. I’d spent ten years in the town, for crying out loud. And yet I did feel like an outsider.

  I finally just pushed the door open and walked in with confidence.

  “Oh. Claire.” Well, she didn’t have to be so happy to see me.

  I smiled at her—a little coldly, I had to admit, which wasn’t part of the plan—and started leafing through a stack of tourist brochures even though all of this information would have been available online.

  “Can I help you with anything?” Sadie asked, putting on an overly fake ‘customer service’ voice.

  I returned a smile so wide that it hurt. Boy. Pulled some muscles I rarely ever used there. “I was just wondering…” Something came to me. “If there were any cottages for rent in the area.” I pulled a musing face like the idea had just occurred to me. “You know, the kind that a writer could use to finish a book.”

  Sadie took a few moments to adjust her face. “Is this…is this for yourself?” she asked.

 
“It is, as a matter of fact,” I said, leaning over the counter a little. “I’m writing a book.”

  Sadie’s smile grew even wider and faker. “That’s wonderful news. Maybe we should exchange notes sometimes. Seeing as you are a fellow writer.” She tapped her nails on the desk. “So have you tried to find a publisher yet?”

  I was going to have to lie if I was going to get her true reaction. “Yes,” I said blatantly. “I have a publisher very interested.” I lowered my voice. “But keep that a secret please. It’s just between the two of us.”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “So,” I said, glancing around. “Do you know of any cottages?”

  She hesitated a moment. “There is one really wonderful place, down on the cliffs. I have used it myself a few times. There is something magical about the place. It will inspire you.”

  Interesting. Was she talking about Simon’s cottage? “And can you give me a contact detail for this magical place?”

  “There’s no official brochure. More of a word of mouth thing.” Again, she hesitated before she reached for her own purse and pulled out a business card. I recognized Simon’s number at bottom before she even handed it to me. Before I could take it, she paused and asked, “So, what is your book about anyway?”

  I smiled at her. “It’s a murder mystery,” I said. “About the events that have happened recently here in Eden Bay. I am calling it The Bookshelf.” I took the card and left. As I glanced back over my shoulder, I saw her smile slip.

  I would have liked backup for what I was going to do next. But Alyson was over in Rushcutter’s Cove, visiting her parents or something. Or maybe she was just trying to gain anonymity again. I knew that she was tired of all the looks and stares she got when she walked around Eden Bay. Well, she said she was tired of them. She kind of looked like she enjoyed them sometimes.