Slaying at Sea (Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Book 3)

by Stacey Alabaster

  I stormed out and didn’t even realize that Simon was still there.

  19

  Claire

  “Thank goodness she’s gone,” Danielle said, waving at the air. “What was that horrible scent that she was wearing? She smelt like a teenage girl’s changing room.”

  I thought that waving the air was a bit much. “It is just the vanilla-scented body spray that she wears.”

  There was a pile of paperwork on the table. I’d only just gotten a quarter of the way through the first stack. “I am going to leave you to look after that,” Danielle said as she finished off her wine and grabbed her coat.

  “And where are you going?” I asked. We had so much work to get through, it was going to take both of us pulling an all-nighter to even get close.

  “I have a dinner date,” she said with a smug little smile, stepping out the door. “Make sure to check in with reception if you leave before I get back.”

  Well, there wasn’t much chance of that. I was fuming quietly as she left, knowing that I wasn’t going to get any sleep that night.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I jumped. “I didn’t know that you were still here,” I said, trying to regain my composure. Where had Simon been hiding that entire time? He told me that he had just been using the bathroom, but that didn’t put my mind at ease any.

  “Looks like a lot of work,” he said. His muscles were bulging as he stepped toward the table. “I could help you out?”

  I had to laugh a little. Simon would be good at helping me if I was drowning or being pursued by a shark, but this wasn’t quite life or death. Well, I say ‘quite.’ If I wasn’t done with all this work by the time Danielle returned, she would certainly consider it a matter of life and death and my head would be on a chopping block

  “Well, maybe.”

  “So what needs to be done?” he asked calmly as he pulled my chair out for me. It was a gentlemanly move. I thanked him as I sat down. Maybe he could be some kind of help. After all, maybe he wasn’t just a beefcake, maybe there were some actual brains in there amongst all the brawn.

  “Well, these are the call times for all the people we need to get in for the green screen work,” I said to Simon, trying to explain it as simply as I could. Because some of the scenes were reshoots, we had to bring people back who were already done shooting and had moved onto other projects. It was going to be difficult to get them all back at short notice. “First things first. I have to call every single person on this list and make sure that they can be there at the correct time.”

  Simon flipped the page over and saw that it extended to the back. “Some of them are not going to be happy to get a call at this time of night.”

  “Exactly.” So the earlier we got cracking, the better.

  “This is just like old times, hey?” Simon said with a grin as he poured the bottle of wine into the glass for me and settled in. “You know, when we used to date.”

  I was a little surprised to hear him say that. “Huh. I thought you didn’t remember me from school.”

  He poured the wine a little too close to the top of the glass. That was far more than a standard serving of alcohol. I had to be careful when I picked it up that I didn’t spill it all over the hotel room carpet. I could only imagine what Danielle would do to me if she saw that on her return. I doubted the job offer would still be on the table.

  “As if I didn’t remember you, Claire.” He laughed. “You were the love of my very young life..”

  I was starting to get a little bit tipsy and a little bit flirty. “Ah. So you were just playing it cool then. I thought so.”

  He grinned and looked a little shyly into his own wine glass. “Yeah… You are very hard to forget, Claire Elizabeth Richardson.”

  That was what I had always thought! Wow. My ego was loving this so much that I almost forgot we were in the middle of a task. I leaned in a little closer to Simon and realized that I was twirling my hair around my finger.

  But then something on the table caught my eye.

  “Hang on, what is this?”

  Simon seemed disappointed that I had pulled away. I thought I heard him let out a little sigh of frustration as I rustled through the stack of papers.

  “It’s the old shooting schedule…” I murmured. Not such a big deal in and of itself. The only reason it had even caught my eye was because it was color-coded in pink with all the call times and all the ones I had seen had the same info blocked out in blue. The pink just caught my eye, that was all.

  “Why don’t you put those down,” Simon said, trying to take them out of my hand. I pushed his arm away and stood up. The dates on the schedule were strange. As was the blocked-out info. Research into shooting locations.

  Danielle had been in Eden Bay a week earlier than she’d told me. She’d been scouring for locations a week earlier.

  My cell was ringing. It was a call from Alyson. “Is Simon there with you? Claire. I don’t trust the guy. Get out of there.”

  20

  Alyson

  I was pacing, waiting to hear back from Claire to know that she had gotten out of there safely, when a text popped up on my phone.

  “SOS.”

  I had no idea who the number belonged to. It didn’t even look like an Australian mobile number. But I didn’t recognize it as a landline number either.

  “What is this?” I asked, stopping an innocent beachgoer who was walking along, trying to mind his own business, when I shoved the phone into his face.

  “Looks like a New Zealand mobile number to me,” he said with a shrug, then tried to get away from me.

  I tried to call it, but the call went dead and couldn’t connect.

  I sent a text back. “Kieran?? Tell me if this is you.”

  It took twenty minutes before Kieran must have gotten reception again, but he was breaking up as he spoke, and I could hear the waves crashing behind him. “Aly…” It broke up again. “We…stuck…trying….” I could hear a scream that sounded like Kayla in the background. And a male voice. Jarryd.

  “Kieran!” I shouted into the phone. “How far out to sea are you?”

  But the call went dead.

  History was about to repeat itself. I was the only one who could stop it. Or this time, Kayla was going to murder again— and Kieran would be the ultimate victim.

  I ran over to the lifeguard chair and flagged down the lady who was sitting up top, trying to explain everything to her as she climbed down the stairs. “He is out there somewhere,” I said to her. “And you have to go find him.”

  “I think Simon is the one best equipped to deal with this,” she said nervously.

  “Fine!” I said stomping away. “I’ll call the coast guard then! Or better yet, I’ll take a boat out there and deal with the problem myself!”

  I shook my head. Looks like it all fell on my shoulders again, as usual. The responsibility of keeping this beach and all the people on it safe.

  Now, if only I could get my hands on a boat.

  21

  Claire

  “I have to go,” I said, pushing past Simon, the production schedule shoved into my purse. Before I went, I grabbed as much of the rest of the paperwork as I could. Receipts. Contracts. I couldn’t stay in Danielle’s hotel room, doing her work for her, until I got to the bottom of why she had lied to me.

  “Wait,” Simon said, trying to stop me from leaving. But there was no way he was going to stop me. After what Alyson had said to me on the call, I had realized something—Troy had told me that he’d seen Simon hanging around outside Alyson’s apartment. I’d assumed he was creeping on Alyson for some strange reason, or it had just been a coincidence. But now I realized that I was the one he had really been looking for.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I closed the door of my motel room and flipped on the desk lamp.

  What a creep, I thought, shuddering. Lucky I had gotten away in time.

  I unfurled the production schedule and looked over it properly now that I
didn’t have someone breathing over my shoulder.

  This one had Danielle’s name printed on the top, but it wasn’t her private schedule. It had the call times for all the members of the staff on it, as well as the times and places of the location scouring. None of it made any sense to me. It was almost as though Danielle had these totally separate sets of production schedules that she kept secret from me. Did she really not trust me with the proper set?

  Had I made a huge mistake in deciding to go back and work for her again?

  My stomach dropped when I turned the page and saw the schedule for this weekend. According to Danielle’s schedule, she would still be in Eden Bay, doing reshoots here.

  So she was shooting that weekend, in Eden Bay? What about all the work I was doing, trying to get people organized to turn up for the Sydney green screen shoots?

  I frowned and tried to make sense. “Okay!” I finally decided that this must have been an old, out of date schedule that had since been updated. A flush of relief ran through me.

  But when I compared it with the schedule that I had been given, I saw that the date on it was even more recent than the one I had been working off of. The one that I had trusted was the correct one.

  I put it down, stunned. Why would Danielle be keeping this from me?

  I picked up my phone, ready to call Danielle and quit there on the spot. And I would mean it for real and for good this time. No more being dragged back in with stupid promises. With money I didn’t even need.

  But then I noticed something else when I flipped the schedule back a few pages.

  “Location scouring — open water.”

  Open water? It looked as though Danielle had not just been scouring beach locations. She had been trying to find a place to shoot in the middle of the ocean. I ruffled through the receipts I had taken with me. I felt sick. There was one there for a boat hire. On the same day that Warren Reed was killed.

  Then I realized what had happened. Oh my god. Danielle was the one who had killed Warren Reed.

  Alyson was not picking up her phone. It was a little dark and I fumbled for my keys as I walked toward the Porsche. No wonder Jarryd had acted so weird when he had seen Danielle on set. He must have been terrified of her. And not for the reasons that people were usually terrified of Danielle Williamson.

  “Thought I would find you here.” A hand was over my mouth. My screams came out muffled as I kicked and tried to get free as he dragged me into the dark.

  How could Simon have known where I lived, though?

  With a sinking feeling, I realized that I had told him that I was staying at the Dolphin (F)Inn. And I made up my mind that if I got out of this alive, then I was going to move out of the motel the very next day. Take it as a sign, as you will.

  22

  Claire

  “You need to let me go,” I begged him. “It’s not just my life we are talking about here. There are other people with their lives at risk if I can’t get out of here in time.” I knew that if Danielle had killed Warren Reed, then the other three must still be in danger. Kieran was already missing.

  Simon backed me into the corner of the parking garage. What was he going to do to me? He was so big. He could easily overpower me.

  “You can’t just break someone’s heart and get away with it, Claire.” He was sniffling, almost as if he had been crying. “And you can’t just leave town and act like they didn’t even exist.”

  “Look. Simon. Can’t we talk about this at some later time… How about over dinner?” I said, trying to smile at him. It took all the will in the world. Meanwhile, I searched around and noticed a camera in the corner. Okay. Good. The garage was being filmed, but was it being monitored by anyone at that present time?

  I looked up at it with a pleading look. If someone is watching, please, I am being held captive!

  “Can we really?” Simon asked. “Go out for dinner, I mean?”

  “Of course we can.” I was still trying to smile at him, but my eyes were trained on the security camera.

  “What are you looking at!” Simon asked, spinning around. I took the opportunity to grab a piece of wood laying on the ground and lift it up, smacking him in the back of the head. As he leaned over and groaned, I wondered if this was the same way that Warren Reed had died.

  But one hit to the head wasn’t quite going to do it for Simon. He got right back up and I had to kick him in the groin as well before I sprinted for the door. I pushed through the door, passing one overweight, huffing and puffing security guard as I went. “Fat lot of good you did!” I shouted, sprinting out of there.

  My heart was still racing by the time I reached the Porsche.

  “Godspeed,” I said, and started the engine.

  23

  Alyson

  I was just about done dragging the rowboat I had borrowed (okay, technically without asking the permission of the owners) out to the edge of the water when Kieran called one last time. He must have only just gotten the last teeny bit of reception. “Sorr…” He was breaking up again. I finally managed to catch what he was saying. “Jarryd wanted to start filming again…” He told me that he thought if he could just get Kayla and Jarryd alone, he could convince them to band together and tell the truth. That there would be power in numbers.

  But about what? There must have been something I was missing, and the phone was cutting out again. Their engine was broken, and they were trapped.

  “Kieran, where are you?” I asked trying to figure out how far into the ocean they had gotten. But there was no answer.

  “Can you just…stay there?” I asked him as I pushed the boat into the water. “I am coming!”

  I saw someone as I was hanging up the phone. “Claire?”

  She was racing toward me, breathless. “Simon tried to hold me captive in the parking garage. It’s okay, I am free now…long story.”

  I told her that Kieran, Kayla, and Jarryd were all out at sea and there was a stricken look on Claire’s face. “Oh no,” she whispered. “Danielle left the hotel room suddenly. She told me she went out for dinner, but I don’t trust a word she says.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, reaching down to pat my stolen goods. “I’ve got us covered.”

  She looked down at the boat and groaned. “Not again…” she said.

  “Come on, princess,” I said, dragging it to the edge of the water. “You get in first.”

  It seemed as though we had been out on the water for hours, even though only about fifteen minutes had passed. “Woah. The tide has taken us really far out,” I said when I realized the shore only looked like a tiny dot from where we were sitting.

  “There they are!” I called out as I spotted the boat. “Uh-oh,” I said, as I saw the even larger boat coming toward them, looking like it was about to hit it head-on. Actually, it was more of a yacht than a boat.

  And it was dark navy blue.

  “So much for going out to dinner,” I heard Claire grumble beside me.

  “Maybe she was going to dinner on the boat.”

  “We should have gotten something with a motor,” Claire said. Our tiny boat was never going to reach Kieran’s boat before Danielle did. I was trying to row faster, but there was something else in the water. At first, I thought I was only imagining the dark shape below me and I quickly pulled my eyes away.

  But then I pulled them back to it.

  “Claire!” I said, grabbing her as I scurried over to the other side of the boat. She toppled, and I almost pushed her right into the water.

  “It’s a shark,” I whispered, like if I said it too loudly, it might hear and leap right out of the water and snap us up

  She rolled her eyes. “As if it is, Ayl—” But then she stopped talking and her face turned as white as the moonshine above us. “Oh my gosh, you’re right.”

  The fin was poking out just above the top of the water.

  I wasn’t sure which posed a bigger problem of the two, Danielle or the shark, and we were about to get a third one.
r />   There was a large engine noise coming from the other direction—Simon, on the lifeguard boat.

  The seas were a very dangerous place indeed that night.

  “Shark alert! Shark alert! You need to turn around and head back to shore immediately!” Simon shouted at us through the loudspeaker.

  “We can’t go back,” I said to Claire. “Not while Kieran is still out there!”

  “Alyson, there is a shark in the water!”

  “Oh no!” Claire cried out as Simon’s boat got closer to us. I wasn’t sure whether she was more scared of Simon or of being knocked overboard into shark-infested waters.

  Simon reached us and turned his engine off. I stood up and glared at him. “Well, don’t stop here!” I shouted, pointing at the other two boats. “You need to go and save those three people.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I pointed to Danielle’s boat. “She is the one who killed Warren Reed. And unless you go over there and do your job, she is going to kill again.” Claire was shaking beside me. I put my arm around her. “After everything you’ve done today, Simon, this might be the one thing you can do right.”

  We had to get into the boat with Simon, but only to avoid the shark. Lesser of two evils.. Back on shore, I took a shaky step back on relatively shaky ground. But boy, was I proud of myself. Not only had I saved everyone from a human killer, I had saved them from a finned predator as well.

  I’d always known there was a shark in the water.

  And now Claire, Simon, and Troy were all going to have to admit that I was right. That I had been right all along.

  Danielle had been dragged back to shore by the coast guard. Claire was about to turn her back to her, but at the last second, she stomped right up to her. “Why did you do it?” she asked.