Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

He was just playing mind games with me. He just wanted us to turn on each other. I said nothing. I wasn’t about to be drawn into his games.

  But we had been the only two people on the ship.

  And I hadn’t seen Alyson the entire time I’d been on board.

  “I suggest you get a lawyer, Miss Elizabeth Richardson. And in the meantime, I suggest that you don’t have any contact with Alyson Foulkes.”

  It sort of reminded me of this one time in eighth grade when I had been going through my awkward growing up phase. It was summer in Eden Bay, and I had really wanted to skip the upcoming swim carnival because I was going through a phase where my hair was the most important thing to me and I was very protective of it. Well, to be fair, I am still going through that phase. But anyway. I didn’t want to get my hair wet and I also didn’t want anyone to see me in a swimsuit. I was fourteen years old and feeling self-conscious about my body.

  Alyson always loved the water, at that age and any age and never had any issue with getting her hair wet or messy. So she was actually pretty pumped to go to the swim carnival. She even had a pretty good shot at coming first place, or at least one of the places. She would have taken home a medal that day if she had competed.

  Yet, because she was my best friend—and because she was such a GOOD friend—she was sympathetic to my plight. One night on the phone, I told her all about it and about how much I didn’t want to go and so she came up with a plan—we would skip the carnival. We would skip school, essentially, and not tell our parents or our teachers that we were doing it.

  The plan made me nervous because I had always been a total teacher’s pet, and I was terrified of getting in trouble. I was more worried about what the teachers would say, rather than my parents, if I was caught, although my parents worried me too. The whole scheme worried me. But Alyson assured me that it would be fine and we wouldn’t get caught. We would go to a park nearby and just hang out for the day on the swings and under the shades of the tree, munching on apples and gossiping, and then at the end of the day, we would take our bags and head home as though nothing had happened, like it was just a normal day and we’d attended the carnival like we were supposed to.

  The plan had started off fine. Because of all the commotion at the school on the day with everyone heading over to the pool, it was easy for us to sneak off without being seen once our name had been crossed off the list. And the park was out of the way, blocks away from both the pool and the school, so I felt safe there. Hidden. No chance of getting caught. And if we were caught, we had a pact to say nothing.

  “It’s much nicer to be here under the shade of the trees than in the gross chlorinated water,” I’d said, taking an apple out of my lunchbox and munching on it.

  Alyson had smiled at me and nodded like she agreed, even though I had known deep down that she wanted to be at the swim carnival. But I was grateful for her being with me—being on my side. There was no way I would have skipped school on my own. I wouldn’t have had the guts to. And Alyson always made me feel braver than I was.

  It was just after 2pm and I was starting to think that we had gotten away with it. We were giggling about boys we liked and girls we didn’t, and Alyson had just said something so funny that I had thrown myself onto my back in fits of laughter.

  And then the vice principal of our school walked into the park.

  I still remembered the sickening way my stomach sank. The way I stopped laughing. My heart froze. Knowing that we had been sprung and knowing that we were about to be in big trouble.

  Our pact to say nothing had quickly dissolved as we were both quick to blame the other one. Alyson said she would never have skipped school if it wasn’t for me being nervous about the swim carnival, and I said that I never would have skipped the swim carnival if it hadn’t been Alyson talking me into it. Both true accounts. But both of us against the other one.

  But what had happened after that was far worse. Our parents had told us that we couldn’t be friends with each other. Separately, my mum and Alyson’s mum both went into the school and said that we were not allowed to be seated next to each other in class and we were banned from hanging out together at recess or lunch. The teachers rapidly agreed to it as part of our punishment, which also included three lunchtime detentions scrubbing graffiti off the school desks.

  Even though I had been mad with Alyson and she had been mad with me when we’d gotten caught, neither of us wanted to stop being friends, and so this was the worst punishment we could have been given. We had other friends, but it wasn’t the same. We didn’t like them as much. None of my other friends were as funny or as brave. But for three weeks, we were separated—no talking, no hanging out, no giggling at each other and passing notes in class. No walking to and from school together. Two totally separate lives. It was a lonely time.

  Till one day when Alyson had had enough and decided to end it. Of course it was up to her. She stomped home one night and demanded that her parents lift the ban. And she wouldn’t hear a word of argument from either them or our teachers either. And after that, we were friends again.

  Only we never skipped another swim carnival again.

  <<< INSERT SECTION BREAK ??? >>>

  “I think you’ll be better off without her influence,” Bianca commented as she sloshed the ice around the fresh jug of lemon and lime iced tea that she was making at my kitchen counter. Roger was still sleeping in my bedroom—the only room in the apartment that had proper air conditioning, especially when he kept the door shut. Temperatures were soaring above 105 and neither Bianca nor I wanted to be cooped up inside the shop when there were only about ten books left on the shelf anyway.

  I wasn’t sure that was true—the being better off without Alyson part—but I was going to have to take the advice of the police. My solicitor, Dawn Petts-Jones, had had the same opinion when I met her later on that day.

  “Sorry about the heat in here,” she said, fanning her face.

  Yep, no sign on the door of Dawn’s office saying “Air Con in here.”

  Dawn was a real estate lawyer, but for the moment, that was all I needed. Nothing had gone to trial yet and Dawn was sure I would be in the clear as long as I kept my head down and stuck to the truth. “And don’t have any contact with Alyson Foulkes. It will look bad…like you are conspiring. And there are already enough rumors and speculation floating about.”

  I leaned back in the seat. The heat wasn’t bothering me so much as something else was. “What rumors?”

  Dawn looked up. “You haven’t heard what people are saying?”

  I shrugged. “No. I haven’t been out of the apartment since this happened.” I sighed. I mean, how bad could the gossip be, really? “What are they saying, that one of us killed him?” That seemed kinda obvious to me. That people would say that, I mean. Not that one of us had done it. I wasn’t quite willing to actually entertain the idea that Alyson had killed Dan just for stealing a surfboard.

  Though she did really love those surfboards.

  Her babies.

  Dawn stared at me, stopped fanning her face, and raised an eyebrow. “I think you’d better take a look at today’s paper.”

  “You are my lawyer, Dawn. Just tell me what is up. What is going on here?” I was starting to get irritated, and it suddenly felt unbearably hot in her office.

  “Maybe I have a copy here…” she mumbled, sorting through all the junk and stacks of paper on her desk before she went “Aha!” and pulled out a copy of that day’s edition of the Eden Bay Journal.

  On the cover was just a surfboard. I supposed it was a little bit of a strange choice. But that was before I knew what the angle of the story was.

  The cover story had been written by my old “friend” Rachael, the editor of the Eden Bay Journal. I say “friend” in quotation marks because once upon a time, we had been friends, but she had a habit of betraying me in the newspaper that she wrote for and edited all on her own.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, reading over the headline
and the first paragraph in a sort of low-grade shock. Because I really didn’t get what the article was saying… None of it made any sense to me. It was dredging up the past. The very first case that Alyson and I had ever worked on together and solved. At the time, the murderer had been branded “The Surfboard Killer” because it appeared that he was targeting surfers. But in the end, that had only been a coincidence. The killer had been my old English teacher, Mr. Carbonetti, and he’d actually been targeting former pupils who just happened to surf.

  Dawn stared at me. “He was a surfer, right?”

  “Who? Dan?” I asked, the paper going limp in my hands as I turned my head up to stare at Dawn. “Well, yeah, he was. An incredible surfer, actually. A pro. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything?”

  Dawn had completely stopped fanning herself and now her face was deadly serious. “They are saying that maybe the so-called Surfboard Killer was never actually apprehended. That maybe, a year ago, you guys caught the wrong guy. And he is still on the loose.”

  3

  There were stares. Murmurs. All the blame was being heaped on my shoulders and I didn’t know why. All I had done was step foot on a cruise ship. Did I really deserve all this hate?

  But was it possible? Had we gotten the wrong guy one year earlier?

  I’d been walking around town all day with the same sick feeling I’d had in my stomach the day that Alyson and I had been sprung by the vice principal in the park. Like we had done something very wrong and were about to be in big trouble. Only it wasn’t my teachers or parents I’d have to answer to now, it was the whole town. Maybe even the whole world.

  Matt. I ducked behind a parked car and hoped that he hadn’t seen me. But of course he had. It hadn’t exactly been the most subtle duck in the world.

  “Claire? What are you doing?” he asked with a laugh.

  I straightened up and looked around nervously. “I am not supposed to have any contact with Alyson.”

  He was trying to keep a straight face. “In case you haven’t noticed, I am not Alyson.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him a little. “Okay, okay. You know what I mean. You are her brother.”

  I wanted to ask him a million questions. How was she? What was she doing? What was she thinking? What had she said to the police? But I had Dawn Petts-Jones’s voice in my head. It would look like we were conspiring if we knew what the other person was doing and saying. Like we had purposefully put the wrong guy behind bars all those months earlier and now were covering our tracks.

  Or killing again.

  And it really didn’t look that great that I was hanging around with her brother either, as innocent as it may have been in reality. We had all the eyes in town on us. And there were still a LOT of eyes in town. Even if the gas leak had been fixed early, there was no way anyone was leaving town. The cops had told everyone to stay close by incase they were needed for questioning.

  Matt was smiling down at me like everything was normal. And he was making regular conversation. “So what are you plans for the day?”

  I couldn’t believe how casual he was being…like I would just be having a normal day with ‘plans.’ Oh, you know, just running errands, going to the bank, going for a swim, trying to clear my name now that I was accused of being involved in a murder conspiracy… The usual.

  Although it was a good question. I didn’t have any plans at all. I was lost and rudderless. But I was going to have to focus.

  I shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. Bit of a blank slate at the moment.” The heat was beating down on me and I could feel my face starting to burn a little. Uh oh. Couldn’t risk the wrinkles. I sidestepped so that I was underneath the awning of a shop.

  Matt shrugged. “We could go to the park?”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, right, I get it. It’s still a little awkward.” Matt smiled at me and shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “I guess we still need a little time before we can hang out as just friends, right?”

  “Oh no, it isn’t that.” And it really wasn’t. Only I didn’t know how to explain the truth either. Because the truth was, I was going to have to spend the day investigating and there was kinda one main suspect that I had.

  The only other person on that boat.

  Matt’s sister.

  Yes. Alyson had always been close by when a murder took place.

  And she had a short temper.

  And she had been arrested for arson once. Well, she’d been arrested for many things. Trespassing, protesting, driving a motorbike without a license.

  But she couldn’t actually be a killer.

  Right?

  I knew her too well.

  At least, I thought I did.

  There wasn’t a sign on the front of the Eden Bay Journal saying there was air conditioning, but I knew that there was. The editor, Rachael, was just smart. She didn’t want to be overrun by all these stranded people.

  The cool air hit my face and so did the cool glare that Rachael gave me as I pushed the door open and stepped into the office.

  “Sorry about the headline, babe,” she said as though she wasn’t sorry at all. “But it’s the truth. And people are starting to wonder.”

  “You do know that if the wrong person got put behind bars, that is actually on the police, not Alyson and I?” I asked after I’d taken a seat on the other side of the desk. Curiously, the article had made basically no mention of that. No blame on the people who were, you know, actually to blame.

  Rachael smiled a little smugly. “No, but that wouldn’t make such a riveting read, would it?”

  “No. Not such a good story.”

  “Exactly.” She was entirely unapologetic about the whole thing.

  But I had come for something more than just a confrontation. “Do you still have the newspaper articles from the time it happened? The original Surfboard Killing, I mean.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you really are second guessing yourself?” she said in a bit of a shocked whisper. She was trying to hide her gleeful amusement, but she wasn’t succeeding.

  I just lightly shrugged my shoulders and refused to give much away. I made sure my voice stayed heavy and cool. “Someone is still out there. On the loose. I just want to be thorough.”

  She stood up and went over to a large cupboard, pulling out a long drawer. She started to leaf through the archives. “No one is going to trust your judgement this time, you know.”

  I didn’t say anything. Eventually, she found the articles that were printed at the time, although I felt like she purposefully made the process longer than it needed to be. Then she kinda threw them across the desk at me.

  There were all the details of the original case. Nothing I didn’t already know, but I wanted to be refreshed on how it had all been presented by the press. How sensationalized. How much they latched onto the concept of “The Surfboard Killer,” even when that turned out to be a misrepresentation of what had happened. The later articles even seemed to imply that the person who was caught—Mr. Carbonetti—didn’t fit the picture. Well, no, he didn’t fit the picture that the press had painted because he was a mild-mannered English teacher and the newspapers wanted the killer to be a muscly, seven-foot-tall maniac who was terrorizing the seas and all who dared to surf there.

  As I leafed through the old papers under Rachael’s watchful eyes, I started to wonder if she was right. Would it matter what I tried to do to clear my name and apprehend the correct suspect? Everyone had already made up their minds that Alyson and I were wrong. To blame. Here it was, in black and white, in today’s paper.

  If only I could call Alyson.

  If only I knew who else was on that boat that night.

  4

  I hadn’t been this close to the ship since the night Dan Millen had been killed. But it was the only way I knew how to get the phone number I needed. The sign at the front still had it printed, black on a yellow background. Garish. I was just punching the nu
mber into my phone when I heard someone clearing their throat behind me and I spun around.

  He was wearing a captain’s hat. A middle-aged man, but wiry and spritely, tanned with lean muscles.

  “Thinking of giving me a call?” he asked, looking me up and down in appreciation. “Feel welcome to any time, miss.”

  Well, that was not the best way to get me on his side. Definitely not a great first impression. I mean, I know some men think they are awfully charming when they say things like this, but I was appalled. He was practically old enough to be my father. I tried not to let my disgust show too much on my face, but I also didn’t smile at him too brightly.

  “I suppose you’ve saved me the cost of the call,” I said, putting my phone away.

  He peered at me with piercing gray eyes. “So what did you want to discuss with me?” he asked, and I realized he had a trace of an American accent.

  I shrugged coolly. “Just wanted to see when the ship was setting sail again.” I smiled.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why? You a passenger? You don’t look too familiar.”

  “Well, there were three thousand passengers on board—how can you be so sure?”

  He pursed his lips. “I got a good memory. And a good instinct. And something tells me you are digging around for info. You from the press?”

  I shook my head. “Just an Eden Bay local. One with my bedroom being taken up by a grumpy old man who should be heading to the South Pacific right about now.”

  He made a little humming noise. “Hmm. Well, it will still be a few days till we are on board again. Maybe up to a week.”

  “You’re keen to set sail again soon, I guess,” I said.

  He didn’t answer that. He just stared down at me and his face had changed. Like he had realized something. “So you were one of the girls who was on the ship the night it happened.” A statement, not a question.

  I didn’t like the use of the term “girls.” “One of the two women, yes,” I said, making a point but wanting to keep things civilized.