Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  “I told you,” I said to a desperate Charlie. “I am on it.”

  “I hired you, Claire, thinking that I would have your full attention on this case. The police are no help at all. And you’re not being any better! I need to speak to you, Claire. I just have this horrible feeling that something very bad is about to happen.”

  Geez. Surely it could wait two hours while I was at the venues. It wasn’t quite a matter of life and death yet. I told him that I would be back in town as soon as I could and hung up the phone as Matt stopped the engine and shot me a hopeful smile. “All out!” he said with a cute grin.

  I just hoped that our trip would be a quick one and climbed out and then opened the back door where a nine-year-old was banging on the window begging to get out and run around. “Woohoo!” she squealed as she saw the open grass.

  Jasmine—Matt and Alyson’s niece that we all called J—was tagging along this time. I actually hoped that her presence would stop any arguments from breaking out. I had agreed to go and visit the vineyard one more time now that the ballroom was open to the public and I’d be able to see it. Last time, we hadn’t been able to go anywhere near there since wedding guests were still lingering and it would have been intrusive.

  “Trust me, Claire. This is going to change your mind.”

  I really doubted it. I didn’t care how great a ballroom could be. I was always going to choose books over balls, and I wanted to get married at the library or the shop. Why couldn’t Matt just go along with everything I wanted? Oh. Right. That sounded a teeny bit psychopathic. That sounded like the kind of thing that caused people to skip town four days before their wedding.

  The storm from the night before had settled a little, but there were still strong gusts of wind and there were warnings on the radio to expect more bad weather. I just wished that Byron could have told me what she meant by ‘mistake’ before I’d taken the trip down to the vineyard. I hung back a little and watched Matt take J’s hand and lead her down to the reception hall. His arms were muscly under his white shirt. I did love Matt, really. It was just killing me to not know what Byron really meant.

  Maybe I should still keep an open mind. Maybe the open ballroom would surpass all my expectations and not only would I be sure about the vineyard, I’d be sure about everything.

  “Eh, this is it?” I asked.

  It was just an empty wooden room. The view of the rolling valleys was nice, and there was a low fog that would photograph well, but it wasn’t making me jump up and down with excitement.

  But then again, I wasn’t nine years old. J was tugging at my elbow. “Auntie Claire!” she said, jumping up and down. Well, not quite yet I wasn’t. But soon. “Can I be a bridesmaid?”

  I looked at Matt. We hadn’t discussed that yet. We hadn’t discussed the wedding party at all. How many bridesmaids and groomsmen we were going to have, or who was walking me down the aisle, anything like that. I knew that I would have Alyson as a bridesmaid. That was a given. Probably Bianca would squirrel her way in there. But after that, I wasn’t sure.

  J was way too young to be a bridesmaid and so I didn’t know how to break it to her gently that no, she couldn’t be.

  “What about a flower girl?” Matt said. He was trying to be helpful, but J took that as an actual offer and I started to feel hot under the collar of my Chanel blouse.

  This was all getting too complicated. Flower girls and page boys and all that jazz were starting to make it sound like a ‘big’ wedding. And I wanted it small. Like, bookshop size small. Not ballroom size large.

  “Come on, Claire,” Matt said gently as he led me over to the window so that I could gaze down. “Look at this view. How amazing will this look in the photos?”

  Why was everyone so obsessed with the way that things would look in photos? Wasn’t it more important how it would actually feel on the day? Yes. It was a beautiful view. But so what?

  Bas, the owner, was listening nearby and for some reason, he saw this as his opportunity to step in.

  “If you book now, I can give you a forty percent discount.”

  It was a pretty darn good offer. Almost too good to refuse as far as Matt was concerned. I could see it all over his face. He wanted to sign the contract right there and then, or at least put down a deposit.

  “We need to think about it,” I said firmly. “My first choice is to have the wedding at the bookshop that I own. I actually think it would make a great venue for weddings in general.” I didn’t want to be rude to Bas, but he was overstepping a boundary. We had to be free to make this decision on our own without anyone else breathing over our shoulders.

  And I still had to find out what Byron meant by a “mistake.”

  9

  Alyson

  The waves were too rough to surf that morning. I kept getting tossed off the board and after yet another rough landing, I decided I was done. I didn’t want to still have a bruised arm when it was time for the wedding. I could only assume that I would be maid of honor, even though Claire hadn’t technically asked me yet.

  I picked up my board and took a deep breath as I stared out over the ocean. It had defeated me that morning. I glanced back in the other, drier, direction. But I wasn’t going to let the case defeat me as well.

  Something was seriously up with those bridesmaids. I started to head back to my apartment to change before I headed over to meet up with them again. Maybe I could get some bridesmaids tips from them, actually.

  Or maybe not, come to think of it.

  My phone rang.

  I didn’t recognize the number.

  “This is Charlie.”

  Oh, as in, weird arty Charlie who got left at the aisle? What was he calling me for?

  “You do know you’ve called Alyson, right? Not Claire?”

  Yeah, and he didn’t sound too impressed about that fact. “Your friend, Blondie, had more important things to do so I guess I am stuck with you for now.”

  Gee, thanks.

  Oh well. As far as mine and Claire’s tally at solving crimes went, I definitely beat her at figuring out who the suspect was. So, if he needed my help, he was in good hands. I tried to reassure him of that as I sprinted over to town, still needing to change clothes. “I’ve already got a few leads,” I said, mostly bluffing, considering that the only person I really thought was suspect was Charlie himself. But he didn’t need to know that.

  But it wasn’t a detective task he wanted my help with. He cut me off.

  “I need you to meet me at the bookshop. We still need to clear all this out so that it’s ready by Sunday.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. So he was still planning the wedding? As in, he was still thinking it was going to go ahead that weekend?

  Eek. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his bride was probably dead, but I was certainly thinking it.

  “Alyson? Are you there? I’m looking in through the window now, and I’m really worried about all this mess. It will be such a nice surprise for Lilly if I can get this all cleaned up and ready for her when she finally comes back to me.” His voice sounded so genuine.

  Hmm. Was he still just acting…or was he really innocent?

  I agreed to meet him at the shop in a half an hour’s time to talk about how we were going to fit everything in there, and to help clean up the mess—the literal mess—that Lilly had left behind.

  I looked up “Charlie Lewis” on my phone on my walk over once I had washed the sea water off of me and put on my best ‘wedding planner’ outfit of actual long pants and a top that covered my belly. There were plenty of search results and there were pages and pages of his artwork to scroll through. No acting credits as far as I could see. He didn’t have an IMDB page or anything like that. So, maybe he wasn’t an actor. Maybe it was genuine.

  Oh, hang on! I stopped dead and started to read a page I had stumbled upon. He performed under a different name. Jeremy Hall was his stage name. He had been in plays. Plenty of community plays up in Newcastle and Sydney. Mostly sma
ll local productions and one-man shows with plenty of monologues and weird awkward silences, I was sure.

  So he was an artist and an actor.

  I sped up, ready to confront him. My boots were pounding the pavement and I was getting more and more worked up with every step that I took. No wonder he was so great at all the waterworks. He knew how to cry convincingly. On cue.

  I stopped as soon as I got to the front of Fabled Books.

  I looked around but there was no one there, even though I was five minutes late and Charlie had assured me that he would be there waiting for me the entire time. Maybe he had given up and left. I popped my head in where Bianca was watching the shop and asked her if she had seen anyone of Charlie’s description.

  She rolled her eyes a little. “You mean that weirdo who kept peering in at me through the window? Sure, but he didn’t actually come inside. He was just pacing out in front and talking on the phone.”

  “And how long ago was that?”

  She shrugged. “About twenty minutes ago.”

  Huh. “And did you see which direction he went?”

  She pointed in the direction of the alley to the left of the shop, which was the opposite direction from where I had come. I stomped around that way, not expecting to find him there, just chasing the direction he had gone in.

  But I did find him there.

  Just not alive.

  10

  Claire

  There was a banging on the door. Bianca asked me if I was ever going to open the door and let people in that day. It was a Saturday, and we usually opened from 9 am to 1pm. “She really wants to get in by the looks of it.”

  I didn’t want any customers in the shop, so I ignored it and told Bianca to help me with cleaning up the mess. She had been in charge of the shop all day long the day before and hadn’t even touched one of the fallen books. Just stepped over them instead. But she told me that if we weren’t actually opening, then she was going out for coffee instead.

  I sighed and was about to tell her off for being a lazy-bones when I saw that the person on the other side of the glass had long red hair.

  Lilly.

  Suddenly, I was glad for Bianca to leave and I shooed her out the back door before racing to the front door where our runaway bride was waiting.

  I opened up and she stumbled in. It was the eve of her wedding…or was supposed to be. From the look on her face, she had heard the news.

  But I was just shocked to see her. “I thought you were dead.”

  She burst into tears before she could even respond to that…and slumped forward onto my shoulder. I put an arm around her a little awkwardly because I wasn’t sure what else I was supposed to do in that situation.

  “I can’t believe this is true, Claire. Tell me it’s not.”

  I wasn’t the one who had found the body—that had all been Alyson—but it was true that Charlie was dead. And I couldn’t placate her or make her feel any better the way I’d been able to with Charlie a few days earlier.

  Lilly pulled her head back and I saw the dark circles under her eyes. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot. She had me in a grip just below my shoulders. “I just got cold feet, that’s all… I never meant to… Oh, if only I had never run away.” Her voice was haunted. She burst into tears again.

  It was hard for me to know how to respond, and not just because I was bad with tears. I’d been dealing with a lot of crying people lately. I wasn’t sure her intentions were pure at all. Kind of convenient, coming out of the woodworks right after Charlie was killed.

  She looked limp and I tried to get her over to the old sofa chair I had in the shop, quickly brushing the fallen books off it. But she collapsed right there on the floor in the middle of the mess that she had created.

  I passed her a glass of water.

  “I am sorry about all this, Claire,” she said breathlessly before she gulped down the water. “I mean, about all of it… I should never have asked you to have the wedding here.” Her regret sounded genuine, but apologies weren’t going to do a lot of good then.

  She was so pale that I was worried she might actually pass out. Maybe she needed some sugar. I got some mints out of my purse and passed her one.

  She took it and looked it over carefully. Cautiously.

  “I should have known it would all end like this.” Her voice was thin as she looked down at the mint.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “I got cold feet.” She nibbled on the edge of the mint instead of putting the whole thing in her mouth like a normal person.

  I didn’t understand that at all. “But you seemed so sure the other day. You were begging me to have the wedding here.”

  She looked at me. “I always intended to come back, Claire. Today. See? I am here.”

  I thought yeah right and wanted to roll my eyes at her but considering her fiancé had just been killed by a blow to the head, I thought maybe I should go a little lightly with her.

  “Then why did you leave? Without telling anyone where you were going?”

  “I didn’t want to worry anyone,” she said, waving her hand. “I still thought that I would be back by the weekend. Well, maybe. I hadn’t decided.” She looked around the shop and shivered. Rubbed her right hand over her bare left arm. I looked around for a blanket, but I had nothing to give her. She finally popped the mint into her mouth and I heard her bite into it so hard that it could have cracked her teeth.

  She was getting distracted. I had to pull her back to reality. “Lilly? Why were you so desperate to have the wedding here if you had cold feet?”

  She was still shivering. Clearly, it wasn’t just her feet that were cold. “Because I was desperately trying to convince myself that everything was okay, all right?” For the first time, she sounded like she was being real with her feelings. “It’s like I was even lying to myself. I thought, maybe, that having the wedding here would be an added incentive for me. And convince me that I could go through with it. And it almost worked.”

  I sighed. “Lilly, do you know who might have wanted Charlie dead?”

  She shook her head and the tears fell again. “No, he didn’t have enemies! He was the type of guy that everyone liked.”

  Huh. Did Lilly realize that I’d actually met the guy? I found that hard to believe. It seemed to me that he would be exactly the kind of guy who made enemies everywhere he went. But maybe Lilly just didn’t want to speak ill of the dead.

  Maybe she felt guilty.

  On that note, she looked up at me through teary eyes. “Oh, this is all my fault, Claire.”

  I stood up straight. Was it really going to be that easy? Was she going to admit her guilt right there and then?

  “How so?” I asked carefully.

  She shook her head. “I should never have left Eden Bay. If I hadn’t run away and left Charlie all on his own, then he never would have been killed.”

  “He was a jerk,” Alyson said later. Her salad had been replaced by a chicken schnitzel burger and a side of fries. Maybe the triathlon had been canceled. We were in Captain Eightball’s, a place we had been avoiding since Matt quit, but at the same time, I was avoiding The VRI. We were running out of places in Eden Bay to eat.

  “Don’t go making me have to add you to the suspects list,” I said, warning her to be careful about what she said in public. The police were milling about everywhere and it didn’t look good that Alyson had been the one to find the body. If people found out what she had been saying about Charlie Lewis, it would look even worse.

  Alyson shut her mouth, which was unusual for her. Maybe she was finally learning to listen. But she opened it again a few seconds later to shove some fries in and then asked me a question.

  “Do you believe her?” Alyson asked.

  I swirled my straw around in my milkshake. “No. Not fully. She did seem distressed, but she is definitely guilty of something.”

  Alyson wiped her hands on a napkin. “Maybe she’s just as good an actor as her dead groom
is. Have you looked up her acting credit?”

  I doubted it, but I grabbed my phone out of my purse anyway so I could look.

  There was a missed call on my phone. I didn’t recognize the number, but from the area code, I had a pretty good idea of who it was.

  I hurried out the side door down the alleyway next to Captain Eightball’s so that Alyson couldn’t hear the conversation.

  An old man on the phone told me in a weary—and slightly snobbish—tone that there had been a cancellation at the state library. There was an opening in ten weekends. But I’d better hurry up and decide because there were plenty of people on the wait list that he had in front of him.

  “I’ll take it,” I said quickly and hung up the phone.

  Alyson hadn’t heard anything.

  11

  Alyson

  I thought Princess was going a little too easy on Bride-y. I mean, she had skipped town just days before her wedding, her groom-to-be gets murdered while she is ‘gone’, she shows back up and now we were supposed to feel sorry for her?

  Nah. Didn’t add up, sweetie. Claire was going soft. She was falling for Lilly’s ‘poor me’ routine, but I wasn’t buying it for one second. So I was outside the hotel where the bridesmaids and Lilly were staying. Spying on her. There was a light misty rain that evening, so I had a full sweater and hoodie on while I shivered on the other side of the road. What was up with this horrible weather we’d been experiencing?

  Oh shoot. A police car. I pulled my hoodie on and slipped back into the alleyway out of sight. It was my old mate Sergeant Wells who was prowling around. He would just love to have something over me, and he would have loved to arrest me again.

  So I hovered just out of sight for five minutes and waited until the police car pulled away. But it was interesting that they were watching Lilly as well. Very interesting.

  I crept over the road and made my way to the lobby of the Bayside Hotel. This was not an easy hotel to gain access to unless you were actually a guest, so I had to try and think of a way in.