Homicide on the Hunt

by Stacey Alabaster

We had the real clue by this stage, but Matt and I were still arguing about where it was actually leading us. Matt said it was still far too early in the hunt for the clue to be leading us back to the beach, but what else could “wave you in?” mean? Matt thought we should have headed away from beach, but instead, we were heading toward it.

  Yikes, Anna had caught up to me while I was stopped. I didn’t want the Swedes to see that we were a trio—they seemed ultra-competitive—so I whispered to Anna to hang back a little bit and to act like she was just wandering around the beach alone at night.

  “Is she safe, do you think?” Mr. Swede asked, nodding toward Anna who had made her way down the water’s edge and was practical getting washed out with the tide. She didn’t just look ‘alone,’ she looked completely lost.

  “Oh yes, I’m sure she’s fine,” I said dismissively. “I think it’s cool these days, to be down at the beach at night like that. She’s probably taking pictures for her Instagram account or something.” Great. Every attempt I made to sound ‘young’ just made me sound even older. But the Swedes just shrugged and nodded.

  “So you think that this clue is about the beach as well, I see?” I asked them as I nodded toward the waves. But had it really been that literal? Matt was right. It was tradition for the race to end at the beach and we weren’t even halfway through yet. It went completely against tradition.

  Mr. Swede nodded. “Yes, that is what we assumed. But we can’t find the bucket with the next item on the list.”

  No. Neither could we. We wandered along the beach, the two teams together, while I tried to keep one eye on Anna to make sure she wasn’t actually, really lost. “Maybe the clue bucket got washed out onto the ocean,” I said. I thought it was kinda funny, but Matt wasn’t laughing. He didn’t like the fact that we were, in essence, temporarily teaming up with the Swedes. I couldn’t see the harm. We were each as lost as each other. And if the Swedes figured it out, I didn’t want them getting away without us and getting the lead.

  “So what else could this clue be referring to?” Mr. Swede pondered. “Where else in Eden Bay is there a wave?” He asked the question in such a friendly ‘let’s collaborate’ manner that I felt guilty about the fact that as soon as I figured it out, I would sprint away from him and never look back.

  “Well, I suppose people wave at you when they greet you,” I said with a sigh. But that was about as literal as the beach idea, and I couldn’t see how it was the answer to the clue. People waving wasn’t a place?

  Mr. Swede suddenly did a little jump with glee. “And where do people greet you in this town?”

  I shrugged. “Everywhere?” I didn’t think we had narrowed it down whatsoever. “This is a friendly place,” I said, looking around, even though at night, with the waves crashing violently into the sand, it seemed a little less friendly. Also, define ‘friendly’ on an Australian beach. There were sharks in the water. Jellyfish. If you went a bit further north, you’d find crocodiles. “You’d be greeted with a wave and a friendly hello in every shop, restaurant, and home in this town. What are we supposed to do, check all of them?”

  “Yes, but you are originally greeted at the visitor center when you arrive,” Miss Swede said, nodding at her partner, who was on the right track. Right. I got it. They were staring at each other with a glimmer in their eyes as they thought they’d figured it out. Were they going to leave me in the dust, though?

  I inwardly groaned. I didn’t want to go to the visitor center. One of my arch enemies, Sadie, worked there. Not that she worked there in the dead of night, but if it was the site of the next clue, there was a good chance the center would be open and she was there. Plus, it just seemed plain wrong to me that that was the answer to the clue. A bit of a reach. It seemed liked more of the wild goose chase that Alyson had set us on.

  I was surprised, however, that the Swedes were still waiting for Matt and I to come along with them. I shrugged at Matt and thought, well, why not? We might as well tag along with them just in case they were right. Then if we saw a bucket of clues at the center, we could grab ours and run off, ditch the Swedes forever and pretend we’d never known them.

  Uh oh. We were getting too far away from the beach and losing sight of Anna. I turned around and craned my neck. Where had she gone?

  Because the beach was downhill from pretty much every part of town, we were climbing upwards and I was worried that Anna wouldn’t be able to find us too high. She certainly wouldn’t be able to make the ‘wave’ = ‘visitor center’ link on her own. Because, who would, really?

  I whispered to Matt, “Pretend you’re taking a bathroom break and go and find Anna…” Meanwhile, I tried to keep the pace as slow as possible. It was difficult with the Swedes and their long legs. But they were willing to dawdle a bit while we waited for Matt to catch up.

  I was willing to just stand around quietly and mind my own business. It was a bit of an unspoken rule in the race that you didn’t really make friends with other teams. It was a bit unseemly. But Mr. Swede was full of the goss. “What a day it has been,” he said, laughing out loud as Miss Swede joined in. “I never expected there to be a dead body as part of the game.”

  I didn’t really like to hear them laugh about Brett like that. They were only tourists. They didn’t know Brett. To them, I supposed this was just a funny story that they would tell their friends and family when they get back home.

  Yet. Here I was, asking questions. “Did you see anything?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I was asking. I still needed to know who killed Brett. Maybe they could help. If they would just stop acting so jolly about it all.

  “We were the third team there,” Miss Swede said. She seemed suddenly a little nervous now that I was pressing her for actual details. She looked to her partner—I wasn’t sure what their relationship was, no wedding rings—for help in answering. “By that time, the area had been… How do you say it? Tapped up?”

  I nodded. “The police tape went up. No one would have been allowed in the tunnel.” Alyson and Troy had gone in, and Matt and I had been inside as well. If the Swedes had been right behind us, there was a chance they’d had a peek.

  Mr. Swede told me they’d tried to see what had happened, but it had been too chaotic. Instead, they’d focused on getting the pipe, the clue, and getting out of there to find the next clue. Smart move. “We really need that five thousand dollars,” he said, staring into my eyes with a sort of chilling glare.

  I laughed a little, feeling nervous and checking around to see if Matt was on his way back yet. “I suppose we could all do with a bit of extra cash.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, we really need it.” He stared down at his partner. “Don’t we, sweetheart?”

  Well, I supposed I knew more about the nature of their relationship. It was at least romantic, if not a marriage.

  Miss Swede dropped her head, looking sad, like she didn’t want to talk about it. But I noticed her use her right hand to gently touch her left hand where her ring finger was, almost an unconscious action.

  I cleared my throat and tried to break the tension. I also changed my tactic a little bit. Decided to play innocent and naive and let the Swedes’ competitive nature do the work for me. If they knew more—or thought they knew more—than I did, they would be only too willing to spill the goss. It’s human nature. Gossip was the ultimate competitive sport.

  “I didn’t see anything,” I said with a sad little sigh and a shrug. “And I have no idea what could have happened to the poor guy either. I am sure there is no one in this town who would want to hurt him.”

  The two Swedes traded a glance. Mr. Swede turned to me with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, I can think of someone who would want to hurt him. He had a teammate who ran off.”

  “How did you hear about that?” I asked, a little too keenly.

  He shrugged. “People talk. Other racers.”

  I kinda wished Matt had been around to hear all this. Where was he? I was starting to get worried tha
t something had happened to him and Anna. Maybe they had gotten swept away with the tide and were caught in a rip and drowning. Or even worse—maybe they had decided to team up as a duo and leave me behind. He could easily ditch me and run off with Anna and take all the winnings for himself. Meanwhile, I’d be stuck with the Swedes, trying to make another illegal trio. Maybe I should be nicer to them.

  I was starting to sound paranoid. Keep it together, Claire.

  “So Brett had a partner in the race? Do you know who it was?”

  Mr. Swede didn’t know any names, but he did tell me that his partner was a young woman, around my age. They didn’t know anything else, even much about what she looked like.

  “Hey, guys!”

  I spun around and Matt was there, grinning, his pockets still bulging with all the items we had found so far. Not swept out by a wave. And he had definitely not abandoned me.

  And there was Anna behind me. A young woman, about my age. Who I had found skulking around all alone at night, ten hours after Brett Falcon had been killed.

  16

  Alyson

  “Okay,” I said, finally admitting defeat. “This is gross. It kinda tastes like cardboard.” Cardboard that had been dipped in sugar. I spat out the protein bar and wiped my mouth. Yuck. There were still bits of dry surgery cardboard stuck in my throat. I searched for something that actually looked like real food, but the only other food I had was a small bag of pine nuts. I needed a proper meal. Something warm. Not seeds or nuts or protein bars. Plus, I was sick of hearing Troy’s guilt trips.

  Troy was ecstatic. The mere mention of real food made the light return to his eyes. He was still looking a little pale, though. “It’s not like we are getting anywhere with this clue anyway” he said, marching along. The wave clue still had us stumped, and I was getting more and more frustrated with it. “So there’s no harm in just sitting down for a while and eating while we think it over.”

  Hmm. Maybe it was a tactical move after all. If I got some energy to my brain, it might actually start working again and making connections… Wave… What waved? A person. It couldn’t be a person, though. What, was I supposed to go up to every single person in Eden Bay and ask them if they had a clue for me? Dinner it was. Then maybe a light would go off in my head.

  It was almost midnight, though, and there was nothing open in town. All the restaurants and cafes were dark inside, even the fish and chip shop that stayed open till ten or eleven most nights. But then I saw the lights on in Captain Eightball’s.

  “Matt must have used his key to unlock it,” I said, gripping the straps of my trusty backpack while I began to run toward it like it was an oasis in the dessert and I hadn’t had a drink of water in days. I burst in through the doors, so hungry in that moment that I forgot the obvious fact that wherever my brother was that day, another person would follow.

  Claire and I stared at each other. Each of us glaring each other down. It was a standoff. If we’d had guns, our fingers would have been hovering above the handles, ready to draw.

  “Hey, sis!” Matt called out in a jolly tone as he entered from the kitchen, wearing an apron. “I guess the scent of melting cheese and garlic was a little too much to resist!” He grinned at me. “There’s plenty for everyone.”

  Claire spun around and crossed her arms in complete disgust. “Are you really going to serve these two?”

  “She’s my sister!”

  “Fine.”

  Claire knew that he couldn’t exactly turn the two of us away onto the street, starving. I had to wonder what I would have done if the situation had been reversed, though. Letting Matt and Claire starve would certainly give me a tactical advantage.

  Matt wasn’t a chef, but with his keys to the cold room, he had access to all of the ingredients from the day before that were still good—enough to make a pizza and garlic bread. I was practically salivating as it started to cook and began to jiggle impatiently. That melted cheese…the garlic…the tomato sauce heating up. Yum, now I could smell the pepperoni and salami as well. How much longer was this thing going to take!

  I noticed that Troy was looking a little pale and told him to take a seat in the booth while I fetched him a glass of water. It gave Matt and I a chance to be alone for a moment in the kitchen. He was also looking a little worse for wear, scraggly and unkempt with dark bags under his bloodshot eyes. Looked like he was ready to keel over at any second. Haha, of course the women of the teams were in better shape than the men, doing all the carrying, solving most of the clues. Doing all the heavy lifting.

  I was still holding the glass of water. “Doesn’t Troy need that?” Matt asked as he checked on the pizza and a gust of hot air hit our faces.

  “Not sure I want to face Claire out there without you with me for backup,” I admitted.

  “Why don’t you just call a truce,” Matt said as he pulled the garlic bread out of the toaster oven. I grabbed at it and he smacked my hand away like I was a naughty child. He told me to stop and wait for the others, but I just couldn’t, I was too hungry. I pulled away two slices and popped one of them into my mouth. Oh my goodness, it was amazing. I grabbed the rest of the loaf to carry out and share with Troy. Princess could wait.

  “No time for truces in the race,” I said. “This pit stop is just temporary.”

  Matt followed me out with the two pizzas. One pepperoni, one Hawaiian. “Well, please tell me you aren’t going to sit on opposite sides of the cafe just to prove a point.”

  Oh, I was definitely intending to do just that. I had one booth set aside for Troy and I, and I told Matt that Claire and he could sit on the other side. We’d take one pizza each. “Pepperoni for me. And I may as well just keep the whole loaf of garlic bread for myself now that I’ve started on it.”

  Claire claimed that was fine by her. As long as we didn’t have to talk to each other.

  But Matt told me that unless we got into the same booth and sat opposite each other, then we were not going to get any pizza. At first, I argued and said I could survive on garlic bread alone, but then I saw the stretch of the mozzarella cheese as he started to pull a slice out of the circle, and I sat down. Grabbed a slice. But I didn’t speak.

  Claire glared at me and took a slice of Hawaiian. Of course she did. She was the kind of psychopath who liked pineapple on pizza.

  Which one of us was going to speak first? Were either of us going to speak?

  Matt stood up like he was done, even though he had only eaten one slice. I knew my brother—he could devour a whole family-size pizza on his own. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said and kinda nodded at Claire in a strange way, like the two of them were in on a little secret.

  Hmm.

  I smiled as sweetly and innocently as I could, then excused myself to use the bathroom. But then followed Matt to see where he was going. He was heading back toward the kitchen, where I saw him pull something form the oven. A secret third pizza? I was outraged. Outraged, I tell ya. He must have been eating in secret to make me think that he would be weaker than he really was. But he didn’t eat. He had two slices of pizza in his hand and he was sneaking out the back door with them wrapped in a napkin. What was he doing, feeding the pigeons in the side alley?

  I tiptoed after him and stuck my head, ever-so-slightly, out the back door. Matt was indeed feeding a creature.

  Well, it wasn’t a pigeon. It was a woman. I squinted and tried to make out who it was. I recognized that red flannel shirt from somewhere earlier in the day. Some part of the race. Ugh. The day had been so long that I could barely remember where I had seen her. That’s right! I slapped my forehead. It had been right at the start, just as Troy and I were making our way to the cemetery. I had wondered why she was heading back to the skatepark. Going in the wrong direction. And wasn’t she an old friend of Claire’s or something?

  “Who is that?” I demanded to know when Matt came back inside.

  “That was…um, that was just a homeless person who I occasionally give free food to.”
>
  I shook my head. “That wasn’t a homeless person, Matt. I know her. She’s…Anna or something.”

  I saw his face turn red. He tried to step back in through the side entrance, but I stepped in front of him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Explain yourself, buddy.”

  “She’s just a customer…”

  “Nope. The only reason you would be feeding a random person, and hiding them, is because they’re on your team.” I cocked my head to the side like I was genuinely confused and counted on my fingers. “So there’s one—Claire. Two—you. And three—that girl. Three-people teams are illegal, Mathew.”

  ‘Illegal’ might be taking it a bit too far. And I never called my brother ‘Mathew.’ I was fuming. This was beyond screwing around with clues. Having three people on a team was a huge advantage that the other people didn’t have.

  “Alyson, I can explain!”

  I stormed back in with Matt chasing after me. Claire stood up and stared at us, wondering what was going on. Matt just sighed and said, “She knows about Anna.”

  “Yeah,” I said, spinning around to look at Claire. “And I know about her in more ways than one. You’re making a huge mistake having her on your team.”

  Claire was about to ask me what I meant. And she even knew I was right. I could see it on her face. But instead she just picked up her blazer and put it on and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  Well, if she wasn’t going to listen, I was just going to have to shout it at her. I started following her toward the exit.

  “Claire, I saw her this afternoon right after Brett was killed. She wasn’t taking part in the race, okay? She was heading in the wrong direction. She’s playing you.”

  But Claire didn’t want to hear it. “Come on, Matt,” she called out, ignoring me. “If we’re going to keep our lead, we’re going to have to leave now.” She gave me a smug little smile and opened the door. Oh no way, she was not getting the last word, not like that. I chased her and Matt out onto the street. Troy had to leave as well so Matt could lock up. Even after a good meal, Troy was looking worse for wear.