Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  I hopped up and decided I’d better hit the gym instead. Maybe there was no chance of me actually beating the top-ranked surfers in the world and taking home the 20k prize money, but I could at least make sure I qualified for the first round and didn’t totally embarrass my friends and family in Eden Bay by bombing out before I’d even gotten a chance to compete.

  The gym just happened to be on the twentieth floor, the same as our room. Super convenient and something I’d been super pumped about when the concierge had told me. Well, and also kinda disappointed, to be honest—it meant I didn’t have any excuse not to go when I didn’t even need to take the elevator to get to it.

  I passed our suite on the way and popped my head in the door just to check on what Princess was up to, and to make sure that she hadn’t escaped to greener pastures. “Hello?” I called into the empty room. What was going on? The hotel had suddenly become a kind of ghost town. Have you ever watched The Shining? Claire would tell you to read the book, but I could never be bothered. The movie was more my thing. But if you’re familiar with either you will know the way I felt, creeping down that hallway.

  And there Claire was, standing in front of the suite next to mine. She looked a little startled when she saw me approach. The look on her face said, you do not want to see what I’ve just seen.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  That was when Claire said the three little words I loved to hear. “You were right.” No, hang on. I blinked a few times and realized what she had actually said was, “I was right.” As in, she had been right. Oh no. Those were the three words I dreaded to hear. That couldn’t be possible.

  “Right about what?” I asked, thinking that there really had been a mistake. This luxury suite had never been meant for the likes of me. I was probably being kicked out immediately and forced to check into one of those motels that didn’t even have a concierge, where you just used your debit card to check into rooms like they were a vending machine.

  “The screams. Someone has been killed in this room. Someone very glamorous looking,” she added with a little murmur.

  “Who is it?” I asked with a gasp.

  “Well, that is none of our business, is it?” Claire suddenly snapped at me.

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “You know very well that we are going to make it our business.”

  But it was about to become some other people’s business. We both heard the footsteps barreling down the hallway as a half-dozen detectives and cops approached.

  “Quick,” Claire said, grabbing me out of the way as we ducked around the corner. We were only a meter away and could still hear them. They were all discussing what had happened, in hushed tones. We heard the name “Emily Ryan” mentioned a few times. And the words: “This is such a tragedy” and “So many people will be devastated.”

  We finally stepped out into the light when they were all gone, about forty minutes later—“I really need the bathroom,” I stated—but there was another woman heading down the hallway, wearing black slacks, a white dress shirt, and a loud gold necklace. It looked like she was taking a selfie with her phone. Or maybe she was video chatting. She was doing a lot of pouting and eye fluttering either way.

  “Oh shoot,” Claire said, her mouth falling open. “That is Bianca! My cousin! I was supposed to be at our meeting ten minutes ago!”

  “How do you even know that’s her?” I asked, but I already knew it was as well. She had the same blunt blonde hair and the same constant pout and like she was looking down on the rest of us mere mortals. Another princess. Two peas in a pod. But Claire explained that they had already chatted over Skype and so she knew exactly what Bianca looked like. But what I couldn’t understand was why Bianca was on the twentieth floor of The Onyx. Sure, the lobby I got, but only paying guests had access to the top floors.

  But Bianca looked just as shocked to see Claire and I as we were to see her.

  Still, she ran up to give Claire a giant, overenthusiastic hug like she was greeting a long-lost friend or relative. I mean, I supposed that in a way they were long-lost relatives—certainly they were relatives who had never known the other one existed until a month earlier—but I still thought it was a little bit over the top. Like the hug was just for show, you know?

  “What are you doing here!” Bianca exclaimed, gripping Claire by the arms. She laughed in surprise as though Claire had been the one to turn up at HER hotel uninvited. “I’m only a few minutes late, I thought, and you’ve already come looking for me?” She stuck her tongue out in a teasing way.

  “Huh?” Claire asked, confused. Me too. Claire quickly introduced me, and I was worried I was going to get one of those overenthusiastic bear hugs. But Bianca just extended her hand and shook mine limply, giving me a look up and down like she was looking at an insect she had just discovered on her wall and couldn’t quite decide whether she should swat it herself or call someone else to do it for her. Well, I suppose snobbish behavior ran in the family, then.

  Ah well, I was used to it.

  I was still confused as to what Bianca was doing on our floor, but the confusion extended both ways because Bianca asked US what we were doing in her hotel.

  “You’re staying here as well?” Claire asked, blinking a few times.

  Bianca threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, I see!” she said. “Wow. This place must really be popular.” She explained that not only was she staying at the same hotel, but her room was just around the corner on the same level as ours.

  Great. The more the merrier.

  Bianca’s smile slid off her face when she saw the final detective exit the hotel room—we hadn’t known he was in there either—and she saw him wearing gloves and carrying a bag of evidence. “Oh my goodness, what is going on?” She even made a little jump away from the scene. The detective eyed us all carefully and told us we needed to move along. Claire told them we were guests of the hotel and we were only standing in front of our own room and that was allowed, wasn’t it?

  He looked like he was about to argue, but then only told us to stay safe and keep out of the way and to move along as soon as we could.

  “So?” Bianca asked. “You’d better fill me in on what on Earth has been happening down this end of the hall. It looks like I’ve really missed out!”

  Claire jumped in. “Welcome to our world, cuz!” she exclaimed. “You’ve certainly chosen to enter it on an interesting day.”

  “There has been a murder,” I said matter-of-factly, interrupting the bonding session. “So you might want to check out and find a new place to stay.” I smiled at her a little smugly. Surely, from the looks of her, that was precisely what she was going to do. She looked posh and scared. “That kind of thing doesn’t scare us, though.”

  Bianca’s eyes grew a little wide, but she looked intrigued, not intimidated. “Ooh, it doesn’t scare me either. In fact, it fascinates me. I listen to all the true crime podcasts, you know. And I watch all the series on TV. I’ve always wanted to be an amateur sleuth, you know!”

  I glanced over at Claire. No way. This random cousin of hers was not getting in on our case. What was Claire thinking, anyway? Getting all buddy-buddy with this woman who was trying to take her grandma’s bookshop from her?

  “Excuse us for a moment, will you, Bianca? Claire, I need to show you something in the gym. It’s an emergency.”

  Claire rolled her eyes a little and apologized to her cousin, saying that this would only take a minute. Well, it would take as long as I needed it to. I dragged Claire away and down to the end of the hall where the gym was located. Well, here were all the missing guests of the hotel at long last. There were at least twenty other people on the bikes and elliptical and another half-dozen on the weights.

  “Ugh, it stinks in here,” Claire said, making a face.

  I shrugged. “I kinda like the smell.” The leather, the steel, the air of triumph that people carried after a hard workout—it smelled like inspiration to me.

  “What is this emergenc
y?” She crossed her arms and glanced around the gym. “Is it a severe lack of deodorant? Because I can call reception for that one.”

  “The emergency is that we need to ditch this cousin of yours immediately.” I stomped my foot a little. “You don’t even know her and yet you’ve practically invited her to join the case with us.”

  Now Claire wasn’t just rolling her eyes a little, she was rolling them a lot. “I did no such thing, Alyson. She just happened to be staying on the same floor and happened upon the same thing we did! If she is interested in investigating what happened, we can hardly stop her, can we?”

  Yeah, funny she pointed out how Bianca “just happened” to be staying on the same floor as where the murder took place.

  “Er, don’t you think it was a bit too coincidental that she was the first on the scene of the crime?” Then I added under my breath, “Well, aside from us and the detectives of course.”

  “She is staying here in this hotel!”

  “Exactly.” Far, far too coincidental. And I would not be convinced otherwise.

  “You just don’t like her, Alyson. That is a pretty flimsy reason to pin a murder on her.”

  I was about to defend myself but didn’t bother. Yeah, maybe I didn’t like her. But I didn’t trust snobs. And I didn’t trust coincidences either. I didn’t believe there WERE any coincidences in the universe. It was all a synchronicity. Claire didn’t buy into any of that, but I did.

  “This is rude,” Claire said, pushing past me. “Bianca will wonder what I’m up to. If you don’t want to hang out with her, then suit yourself and suffocate in here. But Bianca could actually help us, you know.”

  Fine, I thought. I would play along, let Bianca in on the case, let her tell us everything she suspected, and then let her hang herself with just enough rope. Was better to keep your friends close, and your friend’s mysterious cousins even closer.

  3

  Alyson

  I actually thought I might get some peace from the two of them that evening while they had their meeting with the lawyers, but Claire and Bianca’s meeting was canceled in favor of what Bianca called ‘Incredibly Important Detective Work,’ and Claire ended up inviting Bianca into our hotel room. Not how I had wanted my first afternoon in Sydney to go at all. My plan had been: pool, gym, surf, massage, then room service. Not pool, murder, and Bianca’s antics.

  But it seemed that no matter where Claire and I went, trouble followed. This was not the first murder we had investigated. We were old pros. But to hear Bianca yammer on, you wouldn’t have thought that mine and Claire’s presence was even needed. She was already leaning over the coffee table, taking charge of everything. She even asked me to fetch her a glass of water. I didn’t do it, of course. I do have some pride. “What, are your arms painted on?” I’d asked before she had waltzed to the tap and gotten it herself.

  “So! What do we know about this victim?” Bianca was rubbing her hands together with what appeared to be glee. Claire had already told her what old pros we were at this and that had only made Bianca even more excited to join in with us. She asked us what our process was and Claire and I just kinda looked at each other in panic and ummed and ahhhed for a few moments.

  “Well, we don’t really have a process per se,” Claire said, mumbling something about using our intuition and following wherever the case took us, then she looked at me, clearly hoping I would jump in with something that made us sound a bit more professional.

  Nope. No chance there. I was far less professional than Claire could ever hope to be. She should have known that.

  “No, we usually just bumble along while Claire jumps to the wrong conclusions, and then in the end, I wind up being right and she agrees that she should have listened to me from the start.”

  “Er, is that how it usually works?” Claire asked, frowning at me.

  Yes. Usually.

  But Bianca had seen too many of those crime shows and listened to too many podcasts. She’d already gotten out a pen and notebook and was already scribbling things down. “Start with what we know,” she stated. “If we don’t have facts, we don’t have anything.”

  I sighed. This was all far too professional for my liking. It was just a murder investigation. Time to chill out a bit. Oh, right. Maybe I should be taking it more seriously. I leaned forward. “We know she was staying on the twentieth floor of the hotel, in room number two-oh-four.”

  Bianca nodded and wrote the details down. Well, the few that we had. We knew her name was Emily Ryan and that she had long, blonde hair, and we knew that the guests staying in the room next door were named Alyson Foulkes and Claire Elizabeth Richardson.

  And we know that staying around the corner on the same floor was a woman named Bianca who just so happened to arrive very coincidentally shortly after the crime was committed. I wished I could say that, but maybe Claire was right. Maybe I was just being petty.

  “We know that the body was discovered by a maid,” Claire said. “I saw her. She had dyed pink hair and a black uniform, and she was sobbing. For all we know, that could have just been for show, though. To make her appear less guilty.”

  “Ooh, good point,” Bianca said, reaching over to give Claire a high-five. “Well done Claire. We’ll have to be sure to speak to this maid as soon as we get the chance.”

  Why was Claire getting all the praise for her basic observations? All of my suggestions had been pretty good as well. Now I REALLY wanted to say to Bianca that she’d better write her own name down on that suspect list.

  My tongue was practically bleeding from how hard I had to bite it.

  “So who is this Emily Ryan?” Bianca mused, looking down at the notes. “I guess we can assume that she was pretty well off, if she was staying at this hotel.”

  “I think it’s foolish to assume anything,” I said bluntly, and I knew I had a very good point. Claire and I were staying at the same hotel, on the same floor, and neither of us were swimming in cash. Claire ran a bookshop and I sold surfboards on the beach.

  Bianca conceded that I had a point. “Well, what we can assume is that SOMEHOW she was able to afford the room. Whether she paid for it herself or not. Or maybe she snuck in. Maybe that was not her room at all.”

  But we already knew that she had checked in under the name Emily Ryan, so it had to have been her. I sighed. I still thought that I could be right. Maybe that woman we had seen was only impersonating Emily Ryan. Maybe she was her twin. We would be stupid to dismiss anything at that point.

  But Bianca and Claire weren’t listening to anything I said, just high-fiving each other over incredibly obvious observations and writing them down like they had struck gold.

  And they didn’t even look up, or notice, when I told them I was leaving to go for a surf.

  4

  Claire

  I had braced myself for a fight for the past few weeks. A grubby one, at that. And more than anything, as horrible as it sounded, I had braced myself to hate my own cousin. I mean, I didn’t know this woman, this Bianca Richardson, from Eve and then out of the blue one day, she turns up and says she has a claim on my bookshop! I didn’t care if we were related—that was just wrong.

  She seemed lovely, though. In a way, I was disappointed. If I was going to fight someone for my grandma’s shop, wouldn’t it be much easier if I hated the person? It would certainly provide a much more satisfactory victory. Because I intended to win. It didn’t matter how lovely Bianca was, she was not getting my bookshop.

  It was hard to kind of readjust, though. Swivel. We’d gotten along so well. We were so similar.

  Of course, Alyson hated her. But Alyson hates anyone who spends over fifteen dollars on a clothing item. Just don’t tell her that some of the things I own cost 100 times that.

  Bianca had left our suite to go get a massage and change, and we’d made arrangements to all meet in the hotel restaurant that night at seven for one of these complimentary meals that Alyson’s competition organizers were paying for. It had already been
a very long first day in Sydney. I was looking forward to a glass of red.

  “It’s quiet,” Alyson commented as she sat down, her hair still wet from the waves. Couldn’t she at least have run a towel over it?

  “Someone was murdered upstairs five hours ago,” I reminded her.

  Alyson pulled out her napkin and straightened it on her lap. “So, do we know what time Bianca checked in? We ought to check that. You know, for these important notes.”

  I sighed. When was she going to drop that already? Bianca had nothing to do with Emily Ryan’s murder.

  Alyson pulled out her phone, and I scolded her for being so rude at the dinner table.

  “I am trying to find an Emily Ryan on social media!”

  Fine. She had a point. We had to use every resource available. This wasn’t Eden Bay where everyone knew everyone, and we knew everyone. Emily Ryan could be anyone, could be from anywhere in the world in fact.

  Alyson was still scrolling through pages and pages of profiles, but I was starting to wonder if we should even bother. “We are only in Sydney for five days. Is this really our battle to fight?”

  Alyson put her phone down and looked at me in surprise. “We were first on the scene. She was staying in the room next to us. Plus, we have experience in these matters. That means we have a responsibility.”

  I shook my head a little and sipped my wine, wondering where Bianca had gotten to. It all seemed rather futile to me. Still, maybe Bianca would have a suggestion that would help. She was very clever, thinking up all sorts of things that Alyson and I had missed.

  Alyson was frowning. Ten minutes of scrolling and nothing. “I can’t find a single Emily Ryan that fits our description.”

  “Well, it’s a pretty common name surely,” I said. “There must be hundreds of profiles to scroll through.”