Surfboards and Suspects

by Stacey Alabaster

  “I’ve been speaking to the captain of the ship.”

  Matt nodded at me. “Yeah, I know who you mean. He was in here for dinner the evening that Dan Millen was killed.”

  Darn. I was already hoping that that had been a lie. But Matt seemed pretty sure of the fact. Said that Carl had been wearing his captain’s hat and everything. Yep. Sure sounded like him then.

  I wasn’t sure if I should say what I wanted to say, the thing that was on the tip of my tongue. Stupid Dan Fisher with his stupid white blonde hair had put the idea in the back of my head, and I just couldn’t shake it out. “Yes. The captain was. But you weren’t.”

  Matt made a face. “What are you talking about?”

  “You were in the surf with Dan right before it all happened. Claire and I were watching from the shore. There were only the three of you in the water. In fact, there were only the three of you on the beach at that time.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Alyson! What are you saying here, exactly?”

  I took a bit of a breather, just to adjust myself. I just wanted to know the truth, that was all. I wasn’t accusing Matt of anything. He just had to admit that he was one of the few who had been there. Maybe he’d seen something and for whatever reason hadn’t come forward with it so far. I knew that these surfer bro dudes tended to stick together.

  “You were surfing together…”

  “Yeah, and then I came straight here from the waves! I didn’t follow Dan onto the cruise ship, if that is what you are insinuating!”

  “Shh,” I said, asking him to keep his voice down. I didn’t exactly want my brother to publicly put his foot in it. Anyway, the footsteps I had heard were heels, and Matt always wore flipflops on the beach and anywhere he could get away with them. He’d wear them to work at The VRI if he was allowed. He wasn’t, though. They all had to wear closed-toe black shoes. Along with black shirts and black pants. I’d never seen my brother wear so much black in his life.

  “You’re the one who the papers are after,” Matt pointed out as he wiped down the bench with vigor. Wow. Nice way to turn it around on me.

  But this wasn’t going to become sibling vs sibling. Neither of us could handle our family being torn apart by rumors and gossip. J had to be our priority. I was starting to wonder whether I should just back off and stay out of it this time. What if I really had gotten it wrong the first time around?

  Why were so many people staring at me? “I feel like every eye in this restaurant is on me,” I whispered to Matt, feeling incredibly self-conscious.

  “Probably because it is,” Matt said. “Everyone is talking about you and Claire…” He paused for a second like he didn’t really want to say the words. “They think you are both guilty. Or at least, that one of you is. That there’s been some kind of coverup.”

  Time to get the heck out of there then.

  But before I left, I stopped and said to Matt, “If Claire comes in here, asking the same questions I did about Carl The Captain…well… Don’t tell her anything.”

  He sighed. “I don’t want to lie, Alyson.”

  “Matt. Please.”

  I wasn’t sure why I was even asking…but there was something brewing, and I knew that if it came down to Claire versus me, then it might be every woman for herself.

  It was the final dress fitting for the flower girl’s dress, and the shopkeeper—Miss Florence, a forty-something woman who wore pale white powder and plenty of blush—was trying to stop J from wiggling while she stuck the pins in to adjust it. J was not being cooperative. She was grumpy from lack of sleep and too much sugar the night before. I wasn’t in the best mood either. Mandy’s mum hadn’t been too thrilled with me either when I’d been almost an hour late to pick J up. “Hey, it’s a school holiday,” I’d said casually. “No big deal, hey? They can stay up a little later.”

  “That may be the way that you raise your child,” she said, “but I like to keep mine on a healthy schedule.” And she slammed the door in my face.

  Well, way to knock my parenting skills right before I took on the task full-time. Thanks.

  But maybe she’d had a point. J was pouting about the shape of the dress now and complaining that she didn’t like the color blue. Two days earlier, she had been fine with it. Surely she couldn’t be this fickle!

  “But blue is your favorite color!”

  “Not anymore,” she said, sticking her bottom lip out. “Now it’s purple.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  I didn’t like the idea of purple dresses though, and the flower girl’s dress had to match the bridesmaids. A whole swamp of purple seemed really heavy and overpowering compared to blue.

  Miss Florence took the dress off J and took me aside. “What about the bridesmaids?” she asked. “We need to get them in here for their fittings before the end of the week.”

  I wondered if there was a way to get Claire to come in for a dress fitting without me having to talk to her or have any contact with her at all. Probably not. Not if I wanted her to actually wear the right dress anyway—left to her own devices, she would probably wear a long, black, slinky evening gown.

  “I still need a little time,” I said.

  She put a hand on her hip. “Well, how much time do you need?” she asked, sounding a little appalled. “Because the wedding is in two weeks and this is already a rush order.”

  I had options. I could have my wedding without Claire being involved at all. That was certainly one of them. At that time, it seemed like the most logical choice. I mean, I was under police instruction to not have any contact with her. But this was my best friend. I couldn’t just not have her be a part of my wedding.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

  I knew I was going against police instruction, but I phoned her, out front of the bridal shop. Whatever else was happening, we had to put it aside for my wedding. Surely she would know that this was the most important thing to me?

  She didn’t pick up.

  Maybe she didn’t know it was the most important thing to me, then. Or maybe she just didn’t care.

  “J, we need to go!” I called out and strode away from the shop in a bad mood.

  And this time, I knew that there was someone following me. I heard the footsteps. Not heels, though.

  Boots.

  12

  “Wow. I didn’t know that police were supposed to kidnap people,” I said sarcastically, and then had a real worry pop into my head. “Wait. Am I under arrest?” I mean, I hadn’t been cuffed or anything, but maybe this was the new way they were doing it these days.

  Wells gripped the steering wheel as he pointed the car out of town. I’d been inside the car for ten minutes. I’d just dropped J off at Matt’s place and I’d been leaving down his driveway when I’d felt the arms around me again and I’d been pushed into the passenger seat of Wells’s Volvo. “I don’t have the power to arrest anyone right now. Even if I wanted to.”

  “Huh?” I asked, hanging on to the door handle as we took a sharp turn. He was driving fast, as though we were being chased and this was a getaway car.

  “Suspended.” He was breathing a little shallowly, and I could suddenly see how bloodshot his eyes were. I wondered if he had even slept the night before. He was wired, overtired, disgraced. Definitely not happy.

  “So you’re kidnapping me?” I asked in disbelief. “You really think that will get you reinstated on the force?” I tried to pull the door handle, but I couldn’t get it loose. And anyway, what was I going to do? Roll out the door on the side of the busy highway?

  “I’m not kidnapping you,” he said in a slow and steady voice that almost made me believe him. At least, that was what his deliberate tone of voice was trying to convince me. “You can leave now if you want. I’ll pull over.” It was like the time a few nights before when he had grabbed me at Troy’s place. Afterwards, he had seemed to regret it. But he was a man acting out of desperation. “It’s just that you weren’t returning my messages or answering my calls. It
was getting frustrating.”

  Yeah, well, I knew how frustrating that could be. But it wasn’t like I was stalking Claire and kidnapping her just because she refused to talk to me. Though I did understand the urge.

  I stopped pulling on my seatbelt and crossed my arms as we left Eden Bay. The sign I had painted—a mermaid with long, purple hair—waved good-bye to us as we took the turn-off. I knew I wasn’t supposed to leave town. But I also wasn’t supposed to ring Claire either and I’d already broken that rule. To be honest, breaking rules kind of gave me a little thrill. And anyway, by that stage, I was happy to leave Eden Bay behind. At least for a while.

  “At least I won’t have to wear a disguise here,” he said as we took the turn-off into Rushcutter’s Cove. “And you won’t have to either. Might be a nice change for you.”

  “Yeah, except for the fact that my parents live here,” I said, shooting him a look out of the corner of my eye.

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

  Nope, he wouldn’t have bothered to do his basic research. He really was losing it. I smiled to myself a little as we entered the town and pulled into a parking lot. My smile faded when I realized that I really didn’t want to run into my parents, so the joke would actually be on me if we did.

  But luckily, there was no sign of my parents inside the restaurant Wells had chosen. It was a Friday, so they were probably doing the weekly grocery shop. Fridays had been ‘errands day’ for as long as I could remember.

  The restaurant was fairly full but compared to how packed all the shops and cafes in Eden Bay had been, it seemed like a desert in comparison. I felt like I could breathe for the first time in a while.

  We mutually agreed on a table in the back that had no view and was relatively dark. The waitress seemed surprised.

  Wells seemed more settled now that we were in a different town and were out of sight of prying eyes. He told me this was all off the record. Well, considering that he was no longer a cop, I would assume so. But that still didn’t mean I was going to spill anything to him.

  “So what really happened that night on the ship?” he asked me once our meals had arrived.

  I stared at him with my fork of pasta in my hand. I’d ordered the pesto.

  “I told you in my interview. I don’t know.”

  He rolled his eyes in frustration. “Alyson, we have to work together now. Don’t think of me as a cop right now.”

  Sure. I’d just think of him as a kidnapper then. Easy. “What, you think I’m holding back secret information from you? You think I lied to the police?”

  He smiled at me a little. “You have to admit that you were obstinate. Not exactly forthcoming.”

  I was about to argue with that, but I stopped. Well, that may have been a little true.

  I sighed a little. So much of it had happened in a blur. I remembered being flat-out shocked that Dan was stealing my surfboard and that kind of clouded my thoughts. But my shock had quickly been replaced by anger when I’d realized he was running away from me and it wasn’t just a prank. At the time, I thought that he was just doing it to taunt me. Because we hadn’t gotten along at the apartment. But what if there had been more to it than that?

  “Didn’t you have any hesitancy about getting on the ship with the gas leak?” Wells asked in a genuine tone, like he really couldn’t believe I would risk my life and safety just for a board. And he sounded almost—almost—impressed that I had risked it.

  “Not really,” I said, sticking my fork back into my pasta. “I was just acting on instinct, you know?”

  “The ship could have blown up.”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah, well, see, if I’d stopped and thought about that, I never would have gone on board. Sometimes thinking less can be a good thing.”

  He just looked at me.

  I put my fork down. “Okay. I get it. It gets me in trouble. It GOT me in trouble. Clearly.”

  But he still seemed to admire my gumption. Just a little bit. Maybe he needed a little bit of that himself now that he had been expelled.

  “It’s just temporary,” he pointed out to me. “I’ll be reinstated once this is all sorted out. Once we prove that we got the right guy the first time.”

  We would see if that turned out to be the case.

  “Still. Maybe you can think a little less now and feel a little bit more going forward. Especially now that you are suspended. Turn off your brain for a while.”

  But he didn’t seem to like the sound of that plan. “We can help each other, Alyson.”

  “Why are you so determined to get back onto a force that would discard you so easily?” I asked. It was a very good question too, and it took him a moment or two to answer.

  “I might be getting older, Alyson. But this isn’t the way I want to go out.”

  Sure. That made sense. But still. I sighed and went back to my story. “I followed Dan onto the boat. I didn’t see where he went, not exactly, but I was pretty sure I was still on the same level as him, the one with the dining room.”

  “And you didn’t hear anyone else? See anyone else?”

  I shook my head. “Well, except Claire. I heard her footsteps behind me.”

  Wells frowned. “Did you see her?”

  I thought about that. “Well, no. But who else could they have belonged to?”

  He put his fork down. “Well, Alyson, that is the million-dollar question. That is what we are all trying to figure out.”

  We were just paying the bill and Wells was taking his time to pay the cheque. I almost felt bad that I couldn’t give him more information. “I suppose I ought to drive you home,” he said.

  But I was in no real rush to get back to Eden Bay. Neither was Wells.

  I also didn’t really want to get back into the cars with Wells. Sure, he said he’d take me home, but what if he decided to kidnap me and take me even further south this time? I hadn’t packed my bags for cold weather.

  We exited the restaurant and I told him I’d catch the train back.

  Oh. Great. My mum.

  She was coming up the side of the sidewalk and by the time I’d seen her, it was too late to duck and hide. She’d already seen me.

  “Alyson!” She rushed up to me, looking astonished. “Do you know what all the papers are saying about you?”

  “What, is there something new?” I asked with a laugh. I didn’t even bother to introduce her to Wells because she barely even seemed to notice he was there. She was busy telling me in a VERY ‘concerned mother voice’ about all the trouble she was having trying to decipher what the newspapers had to say.

  She told me that there was another article about how Claire and I had conspired together to cover up the identity of the real killer. I interrupted her.

  “Yeah, Mum, that’s just what we have been doing all this time! Hiding the real killer. I keep him in my basement except that he escaped the other day and killed again.”

  She had absolutely no sense of humor about the subject. “Alyson, this is serious.”

  “Mum, I’m getting a phone call…” I could feel the vibration and reached into my bag with excitement, thinking that Claire was finally calling me back.

  Oh. It was Rachael, the editor of the Eden Bay Journal.

  “I can run your side of the story, Alyson, if you want to give it to me.”

  I hung up the phone. My mum’s face was worried—she’d heard some of what Rachael had said. About how if I didn’t give MY side, she was going to go with an angle of her own—that Claire and I were both guilty.

  I glanced over at Wells. I’d always said that if I was pushed to it, if I really, really had to, if it came down to either Claire or I, then I would have to do what was right by my family.

  “Alyson, you have J to think about now,” my mum said, pleading with me. “What is she going to do if she doesn’t have a parent left to look after her?”

  I knew what mum was saying. I understood. J had to come first.

  But could I really do it? Could I real
ly turn on my best friend?

  13

  “I don’t see why you need to hide out here!” Mum said as she handed me an iced tea but at the same time glared at the way I was sitting. She didn’t like feet on the furniture and, so she shooed my feet away from the coffee table where I just had my foot rested against the edge—not even the full way on. “Now your name is in the clear, you can show your face again!”

  Well, not exactly in the clear. I’d just deflected the blame onto someone else. That hadn’t exactly made me sleep easily the night before. I didn’t even want the chance that I would run into Princess. At least in Rushcutter’s Bay, there would be no chance.

  My phone was ringing. I was scared to even take the call in case Troy was going to give me a hard time for throwing Claire under the bus. I answered, still sprawled out on the sofa like a teenager, with a very unsure, “Hello?”

  “You did what you had to do,” he said simply.

  “You really believe that?” I asked him. I sat up a little straighter.

  Troy answered back right away. He sounded confident. “I mean, she probably is guilty, right?”

  Well, I wasn’t sure, but I was starting think that was the most logical explanation. And maybe that realization was what was really weighing me down. “She was the only other person on the boat,” I said heavily. “Even with her skinny arms, in a moment of anger, she could have been capable of it. It’s always the cool, calm ones that you have to be careful of.”

  But then, if she’d only killed Dan because she was angry at him for sealing my board, if she was only being a good, loyal friend, then what kind of friend was I for saying those things? I hung up the phone and settled back there on the couch. And didn’t move for the rest of the day. I felt like I was a teenager again, chucking a ‘sick day’ and telling mum that I had a stomachache and couldn’t go to school because I had a test that I didn’t want to take. Then I’d spend the whole day watching daytime TV—soap operas and talk shows and cooking shows—and mum would bring me Vegemite toast and lemonade, even though I actually felt completely fine.