A Time for Murder

by Stacey Alabaster

  J and I hadn’t seen too much of each other since the incident at the skatepark, although Matt had told me she’d been to school that day and there were no more middle of the night escapes.

  J came up to me and said she wasn’t hungry. “But it’s sausages in bread,” I said. “Your favorite. You can have it without the onion that your Uncle Matt is piling on top of everyone else’s.” We should never leave Matt in charge of the BBQ.

  I turned away a little when Mum came up to me, like a sullen teenager. “Alyson, please, let me explain. You haven’t been replying to any of my texts.”

  “I don’t even want to know, Mum.”

  She sighed. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to know, she was going to tell me anyway. “We realized, while we were traveling, that your father and I just don’t have that much in common anymore.”

  I didn’t want to hear it. I stomped away to the BBQ where Matt was making a token effort to fry up some eggplant for vegetarian Aunt Daisy. “So you’ve decided to join in now, have you?” he asked. “Good job too, because you aren’t making yourself very popular today.”

  But I was about to make myself even less popular with my family on that day.

  At least J had cheered up a little. “What are you doing?” I asked her when I noticed her sitting on a seat near the swings.

  “Making a family tree,” she said, glancing up at me. “Grandma said it would be fun.”

  Fun was probably a generous term. I knew she would much rather be out skating or even just playing on her tablet or phone, but she was at least giving it a go, trying to figure out where everyone fit on the tree.

  “Hey,” I said, having an idea. “Why not, instead of writing everyone’s name on the tree, you get everyone to write their own name? That would make it more special.”

  J shrugged and nodded as though it was kind of a good idea, only she couldn’t actually be bothered going up to each person individually and asking for their signature. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it,” I said, grabbing the tree off her. I pulled it so hard that it almost ripped in the corner. J just stared at me in slight horror. But once I had an idea in my head, there was no stopping me.

  “Should I sign it?” Matt asked, a little offended when I walked right past him without stopping.

  I sighed. “I guess. You’re not over fifty though, so not much point.”

  Matt paused in the middle of writing his name. “What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. Are you done?”

  My cousin Tina was only in her thirties so I was keen to get right past her as well, but she stopped me and looked over the drawing, oohing and ahhing at J’s skill. She’d never had any kids of her own and she was pretty clucky from what I could tell. “Oh, isn’t she clever to come up with this?”

  “Not really. My mum told her how to do it.” I just wanted to get moving onto the oldies of the pack. I had my parents, of course, then my aunt and uncle and my second cousin Jane who was in her sixties. Yes. These were the people I needed to get a sample from.

  Tina just stared at me with her mouth screwed up like it had been pickled. “You don’t know how lucky you are, Alyson, to have J in your life…”

  Then she just huffed and puffed and returned to the refreshment table. She never even ended up signing her name. Oh well. It couldn’t be her, anyway. I checked that J wasn’t looking and quickly wrote Tina’s name on the sheet, making it look slightly different from my own name so that J wouldn’t get suspicious.

  “Oh, are you talking to me now?” Mum asked with a raised eyebrow as she put down her glass of chardonnay to write her name on the tree.

  “It’s for J,” I said as I watched her carefully. Her name was Jo. I realized then that this name writing plan was not going to work. For the members of the family that had short names, two letters were not enough to go on. I was on the right track though. I just had to take it to the next extreme.

  “I want you to write your full name,” I said, passing the pen to Aunt Stacy.

  “Why—why do you want me to do that?”

  Mum walked up behind me with a heavy sigh and interrupted. “Because she thinks one of us is the person who wrote the letter.” She stared at me with that disappointed look that only mums can give. “Isn’t that right, Alyson?”

  Everyone was staring at me in horror while they waited for my response. I saw Aunt Daisy’s eggplant sandwich go limp in her hand and the onion fall to the ground below.

  “Well, one of you had to have written that letter!” I said, before I stormed off again, past the BBQ, trying not to look at the offended faces of everyone in my family.

  Matt just shook his head in disappointment as well. “Nice one, Alyson.”

  “Well, I’m a little offended that I wasn’t invited,” Claire said while I accepted a second glass of lemonade. I had my feet up in front of me and was staring at the impressive view out of Claire’s next-door neighbor’s apartment.

  “As if you would have wanted to come to another BBQ!” I said with a laugh.

  Claire shrugged a little. She sure looked like she had made herself at home here. “I thought we considered each other family.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was only teasing or not, so I didn’t answer for a moment. I think she was only trying to wind me up a little, but there was a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

  Finally, Claire spoke. “So, your plan failed then.”

  I sighed and sat back, closing my eyes. “Yes. But it was still a good plan. I wonder if there is a way I could get everyone in my family to write my name…”

  “Too bad it’s not your birthday,” Claire said. “Or I could pass a card around.”

  Hmm. It wasn’t my birthday for another three months. But she might have been onto something there.

  I opened my eyes when I smelled the scent of chicken pie. “There’s plenty to go around,” Nancy said while I scarfed a piece down. I had completely missed out down at the BBQ. For a few fleeting moments, I started to wish that Nancy actually was my mum and Claire really was my sister. When Nancy turned on the TV to watch the local news, it reminded me even more of home and of growing up. Mum and Dad had always put the local news on in the evenings when we’d eaten dinner together as a family.

  My appetite suddenly started to wane. “I’d better get going,” I said hurriedly, and headed for the door, thanking Nancy for her pie and her hospitality.

  “You okay?” Claire asked with a hug.

  “Yeah, course. I’m always all right.”

  I was hurrying out of the lobby, in no mood to linger or make small talk with the doorman, but when I walked through the lobby, he didn’t even glance up. Wasn’t it his job to make sure that only authorized people walked through? It didn’t put my mind at ease much, regarding Claire’s safety. I noticed he was going through one of the mailboxes. It was funny. I paused to look—it was number fifty-five. Nancy’s had been number fifty-six. Off the top of my head, I wasn’t sure what number Claire was in, but logic did point to that being hers.

  “Good night,” I called out loudly.

  He turned around, his tanned face gone red. “Good—good night, miss.”

  9

  Claire

  I was walking toward the sand, with a little wriggling stowaway gripping my hand. Well, I was more gripping hers to make sure she didn’t run away again while we waited for her uncle to get off his surfboard and onto dry land. I felt a funny tingling in my belly as he started to jog toward me. But I didn’t let go of J’s hand.

  He nodded at me and I nodded back, then he turned his attention back to J. He kept his voice calm even though I could tell he was a little startled to see her there with me. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Mandy’s?” he asked, still catching his breath after the surf and the jog up the sand. J just shrugged and looked at the ground, swinging the arm she had linked to mine back and forth.

  “I found her hanging around inside my shop,” I said, raising my eyebrows. Though it was more like “hiding” inside my sho
p.

  “Right,” Matt said, looking down at her. There were droplets of water falling off his hair and onto his bare chest. “Just looking for something to read, were you?”

  J wasn’t the biggest reader, no. Sort of took after her aunt in that way. That was how I’d known something was up when I’d saw her hidden away in the corner of Fabled Books, next to a sleeping Mr. Ferdinand. Very unusual for J to be so quiet. I’d only noticed she was there when I’d been restocking the local history non-fiction shelf. I’d knelt down and asked her if there was anything she wanted to talk about, but she just shrugged and leaned over to pat Mr. Ferdinand, while shooting me a strange pouty look like there was, but it wasn’t going to be easy getting it out of her. Then she’d shown—feigned?—interest in a book about local sea creatures and had buried her head in it for about ten minutes while still not saying a word. I’d let her take the book with her, free of charge. She was still clinging to it with her free hand.

  “Thanks for bringing her down here,” Matt said, smiling at me, though I could tell he was still worried. He grinned at J and told her that if she was good for the rest of the night, he would cook her favorite meal—spaghetti and garlic bread.

  “That sounds delicious,” I said, trying to be extra enthusiastic. “Doesn’t it, J?”

  She shrugged a little and said that it sounded okay. Trying to play it cool. I could tell she was trying not to smile.

  Matt looked back at me and smirked a little. “Well, if it sounds so good to you, Claire, then maybe you can help me out?”

  Uh-oh. Cooking and childcare. Two things that were not really my areas of expertise. “I really ought to be getting back to the shop.”

  But it was already after 4:30, which was closing time. I could have made an excuse about needing to balance the register or do stock-take, but I was coming up short with a way to make it sound believable. “Umm, I don’t really know how to cook spaghetti.” I said it in a way that implied that by “cook spaghetti,” I really meant “look after children.”

  “It’s easy,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll show you how it’s done…”

  But to be fair, I really didn’t know how to cook spaghetti. I’d assumed that Matt just got it out of a jar, but to my surprise, he started chopping onions and garlic once we’d gotten through the door. And the pantry contained a full herbs and spice rack, which he used liberally. He even made the tomato sauce from scratch by roasting the tomatoes and then putting them in a blender. Even though I was there to “help,” I really just ended up watching him in awe. Meanwhile, J was no help at all. She had perked up to such an extent that she was completely hyper, running through the kitchen at different intervals, yelling like someone was chasing her, at one stage sending a jar of thyme crashing to the floor.

  I shook my head and picked up a broom. Matt kinda just shrugged like it was no big deal. Or at least nothing that he hadn’t seen before.

  “I can’t believe you do this every day,” I said with high respect as I wiped my hands on a tea-towel after draining the pasta in the sink. The oven dinged to tell us that the garlic bread was done. “Coming home and cooking and baby-sitting after you’ve already worked a shift at the cafe.” I usually just put a bag of steamed veggies in the microwave for three minutes and called that dinner.

  “I guess it’s not really babysitting when it’s your niece and you are her guardian…”

  “Good point.” But that just made it even more impressive. It wasn’t that Alyson’s efforts as a parent didn’t impress me as well. It was just that she had about the same skills and put in about the same amount of effort as me when it came to cooking. And I knew that she was more of the ‘fun parent’ who was really more of an older sibling or friend to J. Whereas a lot of the big responsibilities—school, doctors’ appointments, etc.—usually fell to Matt to take care of.

  “So Alyson told me Maggie is supposed to be arriving any day,” I said as I dished the spaghetti into three bowls. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to make them even or not—did a grown man eat more than an eight year old girl, or the other way around?—so I decided to play it safe by doing so. I thought this was good news and so I kept my voice fairly loud and cheery. I hadn’t seen Maggie in over ten years and it would be good to catch up with her. She was a bit older than Matt and Alyson, and hadn’t been well in several years, but Alyson and Matt didn’t like to talk about that a lot. But from the sounds of it, she was feeling a lot more like her old self.

  Matt looked a little uncertain as he grated the parmesan cheese. “She was supposed to arrive tomorrow. We’re not sure. We’re never sure with Maggie. Until she is actually here, I won’t believe it.”

  “But you think she will be here?”

  “I hope so.”

  Alyson was always telling me that J had a terrible habit of pretending to have her earbuds in while she was playing a game on her iPad, but really just having it on silent and listening to what the adults were doing and saying, and that was what she was doing that night, much to Matt’s horror when he realized she had been listening to the whole conversation.

  J was red-faced and looked like she was about to throw a tantrum. “Why don’t you just butt out of my business, Matt! You don’t know anything!”

  I gulped a little and looked at Matt to see how he was going to react. I wished I was anywhere but that house at that moment, with two hot bowls of spaghetti burning my hands, unsure of which way to turn or run.

  Matt tried to chase after J as she fled the kitchen. “Your mum will be here, J!”

  She stopped and turned around. “But I don’t want her to!”

  Matt and I just looked at each other as it suddenly dawned on each of us what J’s bad mood had really been about all this time. It wasn’t that she was upset that her mum wasn’t there. It was that she didn’t want her mum to come back.

  “Everything will be different!” J cried out.

  Matt placed an arm around her. “Nothing will change, J.”

  “So I will still live here with you?” She looked up for reassurance. I noticed she didn’t say, “and also at Alyson’s,” but I wasn’t sure if that meant anything or not. She was distressed.

  “If that is what you want.” Matt was still kneeling. “No one is going to make you live anywhere you don’t want.”

  After a bit more reassurance and once the tears were dried, J finally ate her spaghetti and even agreed to go to bed at a decent time. I thought the tantrum had worn her out.

  Matt looked wiped.

  I took another chug of wine as we sat down on the sofa. “I think this is why I don’t have kids.”

  “Aww, come on, you’ll be great at it,” he said with a grin. He reached over and sort of patted my leg a little bit. I didn’t know if it was the wine, or the fact that I had just seen him be so great with J, but I suddenly really, really wanted to kiss him. I shot him a long, lingering look that told him that I didn’t want him to move away from me; in fact, I wanted him to move closer.

  He reached out and stroked the back of my neck before gently pulling me toward him. Then all of a sudden, I was kissing my best friend’s brother.

  Uh-oh.

  10

  Alyson

  Claire rang me to tell me again that it was no big deal. That I shouldn’t worry about it. Live my life, be free. Let it go. I hung up on her again. I didn’t want to hear it.

  Sure, I could just let the whole thing go. But I was starting to get angry about it. Whichever way you looked at it, it was just a rude thing to do during the town’s birthday celebrations. This town had been through enough recently with the various shenanigans—murderers on the loose, shipwrecks, movie sets, a new construction site that was ruining the look of the town. Couldn’t we just have one week to celebrate everything wonderful about the town? Instead, we had this letter to deal with.

  Hmm. Claire had actually sounded pretty strange on the phone when I thought about it. It wasn’t like her to tell someone else to just chill out and go with the flow. It
was almost like she was hiding something. Anyway, I was sure she hadn’t been up to anything too salacious. She probably just got an exciting new shipment of hardback books into the shop and that was getting her all riled up.

  Concentrate, Alyson.

  I was back at the scene of the crime. It seemed fitting that it was a rare overcast day as I walked back to where the earth was still raw from being upturned. The hole had been filled in, of course, in case any children were running across the park and fell into it, but you could see the spot of fresh earth where the time capsule had been. I knelt down and ran my hand through it and shivered, almost like I was running my hand over the top of a grave.

  The park was pretty empty because everyone was in town for the drawing of a raffle competition held by a local radio station that was being drawn in front of a shop on the main drag. First prize was a trip to Bali, and second prize was a meat plate with three hundred dollars’ worth of meat from the local butcher. Most people were probably more interested in the meat plate. After all, we already lived on the beach.

  I frowned as I looked down at the ‘grave.’ It was strange. There was another spot a few feet away that also looked as though it had been dug up—or attempted to be dug—and there were little deposits of dirt all around it even though the original hole was filled in. Rabbits?

  “Yes, I thought it was a little unusual too,” a gravelly voice called out and I jumped to my feet and spun around.

  It was one of the men—the very old men—who Claire and I had shoved out of the way on the day the time capsule had been opened. He introduced himself as Clive. Oh, I thought, that was where I recognized the voice from. He hosted the golden oldies program on the local radio station. He played a lot of gospel music. Claire refused to listen to local radio, but I enjoyed it.

  “Was this like this even before the time capsule was dug up?” I asked, pointing at the ground at the two spots, just to clarify what he was talking about. For all I knew, he could think anything about modern life in general was strange.