Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  Alyson

  You could tell that Troy Emerald was not an athlete. It wasn’t that he wasn’t in good shape. He was fit enough, had a good frame, and probably went to the gym a couple of times a week. He made an effort to surf, even though he was terrible at it. And I suppose some women would call him ‘attractive,’ if you liked that sort of thing. You know, tall, arrogant, city slicker guys. But he was more of a shirt and tie guy. An indoors man. Not one built for the elements or the conditions of a twenty-four-hour hunt. Meanwhile, I was ready to jog onto the next location and to get as far away from the skatepark as possible. But Troy wasn’t so certain. “I’m just not sure that running away from the crime scene was the best idea.”

  “Yeah, well, we can always circle back later, and the hunt clues still need to be solved as well. Don’t worry, Troy, we can do both.” There was no sense in sticking around while Princess and my brother were there anyway, they’d only get in the way. And what was up with those two anyhow? Why were they suddenly such best friends that they were teammates?

  Troy stopped walking all together and took a deep breath, which was against my own personal race rule of ‘never stop at any time for anything.’ I mean, breathing was okay. Just do it while you’re walking. “Alyson, I meant it was a bad idea because it probably made us look guilty.”

  Oh. Right.

  “What does it matter? I’m already a wanted criminal.” I’d slowed down a bit as I contemplated our next best move. Not to the point of stopping, of course, but it seemed that no matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t stop the thoughts of my upcoming court date creeping into my head. I’d probably do okay in jail. It was all a competition in the big house anyway, wasn’t it? I could survive. Fight my way to becoming top dog.

  “I wouldn’t quite put it that way,” Troy said. He tried to laugh to diffuse the situation. He didn’t think I had any chance of actually being convicted. He’d already offered to pay for my defense, but I had turned him down. I was still hoping it wouldn’t come to that. There was no way that they had enough evidence to prove that I was the one who had burned Nicole Marie’s house down, let alone that I’d done it either on purpose or maliciously. I’d just been in the house at the time that it burned down with candle. All I’d been doing was innocently breaking and entering. Ahem. Okay, it didn’t sound good.

  But I didn’t want to accept Troy’s help financially. And this 5k we were going to win would barely put a dent in the fees. But that was okay, because I was ready to go back into firm denial over the whole thing. The plan was that the 5k would allow me to have a proper stall for my surfboard business, because I planned on being free as a bird.

  “Let’s go!” I said, jumping up and down and clapping with newfound enthusiasm.

  Troy sighed reluctantly and looked over his shoulder one more time toward the skatepark. But I knew he would go along with whatever I said at that point.

  We were too far in.

  There was a woman walking past us with her arms swinging and a determined look on her face. She was about my age with pitch black hair that looked dyed, and an attitude on her face.

  She was going in the wrong direction. I kinda, sorta, vaguely recognized her from eons ago during my high school years. I was pretty sure she’d never gone to Eden Bay High but had attended the high school in Rushcutter’s Cove. But she’d been friends with Claire for a while, during their teenage skater girl days. Except while Claire had gone fully corporate and now looked ultra-glam with her icy blonde bob and blazers and pants combo, this girl still looked like, well, a skater girl in her red flannel shirt and ripped black jeans.

  “She’s going in the opposite direction,” I said to Troy.

  “Alyson, not everyone is in on the treasure hunt.” He shook his head as though I was just being silly to assume that every single person in Eden Bay was taking part. “Some people have other things in their lives that preclude them from being available for a twenty-four-hour hunt.”

  I didn’t believe him. He didn’t know this town like I did, and he never would.

  “Nah, she must know something we don’t know,” I said, peering at her.

  “She’s not even in a team,” Troy pointed out. “She’s on her own.”

  I still wasn’t buying it. She could have just been temporarily separated from her partner, or on her way to meet them. Plus, technically, you could complete in the hunt on your own if your partner became sick or injured during the race. But this was a strict technicality that most people didn’t know about, and it was thoroughly looked down on. But it was still a possibility in the case of this woman. What was her name again? I wanted to say Anna.

  “So what now?” Troy asked as he read over the clue and read it out to me. “You might think that the next location is a walk in the daisies. If so, you’d be dead right.”

  I sighed. “The cemetery. Obviously.” These clues were getting easier and easier. And yet I hadn’t quite started to move in that direction yet. There were thoughts rattling around my head like bones.

  “Do we try to find the next item or do we try to find the first clue as to who murdered Brett?” Troy stared at me and waited for my answer.

  I didn’t like having to choose between them. “Who says they are mutually exclusive?”

  Troy shot me a skeptical look.

  I shrugged a little. “Maybe by solving the treasure hunt, we also solve the mystery of Brett’s murder.”

  Troy was not convinced. “You’re acting on a huge presumption there.”

  But I had a hunch.

  I checked the time. An hour into the treasure hunt. That meant there were still twenty-three hours to go. Probably a little bit too early to start breaking into the rations, but I was starting to get hungry.

  “Please tell me you ate before this.” Troy stared down at me when he heard my stomach rumbling. We were heading even further west, even further out of town. After the cemetery, there was only bush.

  Well, I didn’t want to go into too much detail, but I’d been trying not to eat or drink much in the morning leading up to the hunt so that I wouldn’t need any bathroom breaks. I just shrugged and said I was fine, that it was the waves crashing.

  “We are nowhere near the beach, Alyson.”

  That was true. We were almost as far away from the beach as it was possible to get while still being in Eden Bay. And no one had caught up with us yet. Troy thought that was because no one else was still taking part in the race.

  “Ha. You wish,” I said with a knowing shake of my head. But he thought he was right. He thought that everyone in Eden Bay had given up just because a dead body had been found. He didn’t know this town, or our commitment to the treasure hunt, at all. He was in for one rude awakening when all the other teams came crashing down on us. The next clue had something to do with the cemetery. I just hoped we weren’t going to have to dig it out of a grave.

  Troy struggled for breath as he caught up with me. “You really think there are other people still taking part? Even with a dead body?”

  “Especially with the dead body. It sure has spurred me on.” And Claire no doubt. I think she’d even been buddies with Brett Falcon at one point.

  Troy shook his head. “Yeah, well, the other teams don’t even have the motivation of solving the murder. They’ll drop out.”

  I shrugged. For all we knew, they did. For all we knew, the entire town of Eden Bay wanted to figure out who killed Brett Falcon just as much as I did.

  For all we knew, someone we all knew and trusted was the one who had done it.

  6

  Claire

  Matt was starting to slow down as we circled the skatepark. “We can take a break if you need to,” I said, stopping for a moment.

  He raised an eyebrow and shot me a look. “You’d never hear Alyson say anything like that.”

  I grimaced. Right. She was winning the ‘who was more competitive’ competition. And Matt was right. Alyson wouldn’t be taking breaks. She’d have a backpack stuffed with supplies,
and she was probably wearing an adult diaper or something. Personally, I thought that taking breaks during the hunt was the smart move. It saved you from becoming overtired or overworked, and then in the long run, you’d have more energy and brainpower to win. A sort of tortoise and the hare situation. I didn’t mind being the tortoise in this case.

  The tortoise won in the end.

  “I don’t mind stopping for food if you’re hungry,” I said, but Matt wouldn’t hear a word of it. He was ready to go.

  Great. I’d switched partners and wound up with the only-slightly-less-competitive-Foulkes-sibling. I needed water at least and started to walk toward a kiosk not far from the park. The clue told us that we needed to be heading west.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Matt asked. I’d made the mistake of heading east, back toward the beach. The clue for the second item was leading us away from the beach. Big, big error in Matt’s eyes.

  “But I’m thirsty!”

  “Can’t you just wait a little? There might be water along the way.”

  Oh, great.

  This was going to be the longest day of my life.

  Even though Matt was sure the clue was leading us to the cemetery, I was starting to second-guess it.

  “That’s too far,” I said, sounding stressed. Surely there would be stops along the way before the cemetery, just logically speaking. The cemetery was so far out of town it wasn’t even technically part of Eden Bay. Matt told me he was right and I needed to trust him. I wondered if Troy and Alyson were arguing this much. Surely they were. She and Troy were complete opposites, chalk and cheese, and if Matt and I could just figure out how to work more in sync then we could easily beat them

  We were an hour into the hunt. I glanced around as we started to leave the park. I kept expecting to hear a town-wide announcement that the hunt was over and we were all to return to our homes and take cover, but there were no announcements over the speakers. Nothing. Business as usual.

  Fine by me. I needed the 5k.

  “What’s wrong?” Matt asked when I hesitated for a moment.

  I knew that what I was about to say went against logic and went against the clue. We were supposed to head inland. I knew that.

  “I just think we should head back to the skatepark.”

  Matt gritted his teeth. “That’s not what the clue says.”

  “Yeah, but this is about more than just the treasure hunt. I knew Brett Falcon. I mean, I may not have seen him for ten years, but once upon a time, he was my friend.”

  What I didn’t admit was that I wanted to beat Alyson at solving the crime just as much as I wanted to beat her at the treasure hunt. I wasn’t sure Matt knew that, though.

  Moving away from the scene of the crime was not going to help us solve it. “We can catch up on the clues later, but we need to check out the crime scene first. Come on, Matt, don’t you trust me?”

  I waited. Maybe I shouldn’t have played that card. Slightly manipulative. But he sighed and nodded and agreed that we could take a short detour. “But if we don’t find anything, we’re going to have to sprint at double-speed to make up for lost time.”

  I had to admit I was pleased that Alyson was not there when I returned. There was a nice little smug, warm feeling in my stomach. She was the hare, for sure, racing ahead, thinking there was no chance she could get overtaken, but she was going to run out of steam soon enough, and in the meantime, I would be well paced, rested, and ready to race to the finish line.

  The cops had already left and there was tape up around the tunnel so that no one could enter, so anyone who had missed the clue would be at a huge disadvantage. Part of me was a little surprised that the hunt was still going ahead, but the part of me that had grown up in Eden Bay was not. I knew how ruthless people in this town could get about the treasure hunt. People actually trained for this.

  I took one look at the police tape and decided to ignore it. I was going back into that tunnel.

  Once upon a time, rules would have stopped me—would have terrified me, in fact—but now I took them as a mere suggestion. Also, I was conscious of the fact that Alyson could come along at any moment and she wouldn’t even stop for the tape, she’d just go over it like a steam roller. Well, if she had any sense, she would have come back. I had to remind myself that Alyson Foulkes did in fact have very little common sense. It was comforting.

  But Matt, as laidback and chilled out as he was, still had a lot of reverence for rules, especially if they involved the town he had lived in his whole life. He hesitated for a moment before he climbed over the bridge and walked into the tunnel. It was eerily quiet now, the only sound we could hear was the moisture dripping from the top of the tunnel to the pool of water at the bottom. And my slightly raised heels as I walked slowly, trying not to trip as my eyes adjusted to the dimness. Matt was further ahead than I was, in more sensible shoes, and he seemed to see better as well.

  I stood back and watched him for a second, and not just because watching him was a habit I found hard to break. I was observing the way he moved, how at home he seemed in the town. How confidently he walked through this objectively scary tunnel, the one that I had always avoided when I was growing up. Matt was not scared. We really were from such different worlds in a way. Matt had been born in Eden Bay, grown up in Eden Bay, and settled down in Eden Bay. To be honest, I wasn’t sure he’d ever traveled further than half an hour out of Eden Bay. He’d probably die in Eden Bay.

  I shuffled along and looked for anything that might stand out as I thought about it. I mean, Eden Bay was all right for me, for now. But what if Dawn’s bombshell was more than just a worry, and this other granddaughter actually had a claim on the shop? At that moment, I wanted to fight back and claim the bookshop for myself, but I’d still be able to walk away if it came to it. And eventually, I wanted to travel overseas, to maybe move interstate. I didn’t know where I would want to make my home.

  I just knew that Matt didn’t have these sorts of conflicts inside. His home was Eden Bay and it always would be.

  “What’s this?” he said, kneeling to pick something up. I was suddenly pulled back to reality. I raced over to him and had a look at the item he was holding. It was dark in the tunnel and I ended up cozying up to him as I knelt and peered over his shoulder.

  “A wheel,” I said, gently taking it off him. I examined it. “If I had to guess, this is a wheel from a skateboard.”

  Matt stood up. “Do you think it’s only been here today…”

  “Hard to tell,” I said, looking back at the pile of rocks where Matt had pulled it from. The wheel could have been here for weeks, months—years—for all we knew, buried in there. Or it could just be vital evidence that the cops had missed. It wouldn’t shock me that the local police had overlooked something obvious.

  I slipped the wheel into my pocket. Whatever it is, it was a clue—and there was no way I was risking Alyson Foulkes finding it.

  7

  Alyson

  “Alyson, I’m starving. Please.”

  Troy was begging me to stop at a cafe for a meal break. Nuh-uh. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a peanut butter protein bar. He made a face at it and pushed it away. “No way. I need a proper meal.”

  “Well, you’re just going to have to wait,” I said, tucking the protein bar back into my backpack. I was making out like I would be willing to stop at a restaurant in a little while, when I really meant he would have to wait twenty-one hours until the hunt was over. Eventually, he would cave and eat the protein bar.

  We were at the edge of the cemetery and I could already see the bucket that contained about fifty sets of fake novelty teeth where I was sure the next clue would be. It had taken us about an hour to get there, but we had done it. And we were first.

  “Yes!” I screamed, jumping up and down. So stupid. That was just about the dumbest thing you could do in a treasure hunt. Way to let every single other team know where the clue is, Alyson! I stopped and went dead quiet and looked arou
nd. Sometimes, my competitive nature really got me into trouble.

  “We’re ahead now!” I shouted.

  There was another team running up the hill toward the cemetery. Uh oh, my screaming had probably alerted them to the exact spot where the bucket of teeth was. At least it wasn’t Claire, though. Geez. It looked like the Swedes. You could tell from the yellow and blue flags on their backpacks. No one would be pleased if tourists came runner up. Or worse—won.

  I grabbed a pair of teeth along with the next clue and high-fived Troy over the fact that we were ahead.

  “Sure, you’ve got another item,” Troy said and then dared—DARED—to sit down on a bench for a moment to catch his breath. “But what about the other puzzle you’re trying to solve?”

  I just gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to have to explain my strategy to him AGAIN. Couldn’t he just have a little faith in me? I was technically “team captain.” I had made sure that was clear on the signup sheet. There was time to do both. We weren’t even three hours into the hunt yet. No one was going to solve Brett’s death that quickly, not even Claire with her inside scoop into the world of skaters.

  “Can you hear that?” Troy asked, standing up.

  It was a muffled sound over a speaker, sort of like what you hear when you’re at a fun fair and the sound is all distorted. But I just told Troy we needed to get going. “Can’t let this lead go to waste.” I pulled out clue three and started to read it. Yikes. This was a tricky one. Something about a teddy bear? Did we need to go to the toy store? That would be closed this late on a Saturday.

  “It sounds like an announcement,” Troy said, straining to hear.

  Yeah, well, if it was, then we were too far away to hear it and it didn’t count.

  And there were more teams coming up the hill.

  “See!” I said, pointing to our competition. “Everyone is still in this, Troy!”

  No one had given up yet.