A Time for Murder

by Stacey Alabaster

  “At least you won’t be the black sheep now,” I said reassuringly. That honor was now firmly going to belong to Tina. Then again, I knew that Alyson did have a lot of loyalty, in spite of what Tina had said. She probably wouldn’t even tell anyone what Tina had done.

  It took a little extra effort, and by the time I was finally tucked up in my bed at the Turtle Dove, I was ready to pass out. Since there was no threat to my life, it made sense to move back.

  And I was a little relieved to be out of Alyson’s apartment.

  14

  Alyson

  I wandered around the empty apartment, back and forth, contemplating a surf. There wasn’t really that far to go. I stopped and gazed out at the ocean. That was the reason I loved my little apartment, mostly. The view. And the fact that at any time of the day (or night for that matter), I could grab my board, run down to the beach, and be in the water within three minutes.

  Yep. My prime little spot of real estate. The place I refused to move out of. But when the place was so empty—J gone, Claire gone—was staying, even for such an amazing view, worth it?

  I grabbed my towel and headed out the door.

  “Alyson!” I heard a cheery yet gravelly voice call out to me from the pier.

  Even though she was smiling, I could see in her eyes that Rhonda was very disappointed in me. For a moment, I considered pretending that I hadn’t even seen her. But there was no point. She was the only person on the pier and she was wearing a bright purple tie-dye dress.

  “Sorry,” I said, walking over to her. “I’ll be there for the next workshop.” But I had to admit that what had happened had shaken my confidence in my own gut instinct, as well as my belief in what Rhonda taught. That all the answers were within. Still, it wasn’t cool that I had just run out of the shop like that. Rhonda had always been a good friend of mine. And she’d always been supportive of my business. She’d been the first person I’d ever sold a surfboard to, actually. She’d been part of a golden oldies’ surf group that had to disband after too many broken hips.

  I told her about what had happened with Tina. About how I had been wrong.

  Rhonda reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You need to trust yourself more…”

  I was starting to get annoyed. “Look, I did trust myself, okay!” I said, cutting her off when I could no longer stand to listen to it. “And look where it got me? I almost got thrown out of my family.”

  Rhonda looked a little taken aback, at first, by the way I had spoken to her. And I immediately regretted my outburst. But then her face settled, just like it always did, into one of support. “So it sounds to me like you were right? You believed a member of your family was involved in some way, and in the end, your intuition was right.”

  Huh. I had never stopped to think about it that way. Rhonda raised her eyebrows. There was a twinkle in her eye like she was waiting for me to agree with her. I hated admitting that I was wrong, even when being wrong meant that I was right. Hang on. I was making my head spin.

  “Thanks, Rhonda. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I think there’s something I need to do.”

  Even though I had made things right with Mum—well, Mum could never stay mad with me—with Dad, it was still a little icy on the surface. He didn’t like anyone to make a fuss or a drama, and that was exactly what I had done at the family picnic.

  When I’d asked him to join me for lunch at Captain Eightball’s though, he had jumped at the chance. He was sitting across from me with a strange expression. “I have something to tell you, Alyson.” I could tell from his tone of voice that this ‘something’ was not going to be something I would be thrilled to hear.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that then?” I asked, taking a sip of my milkshake.

  “I have a date tomorrow,” he said. He was still chewing on his salad, casually, as though this was no big deal at all.

  I was so outraged that I was stunned. “I hope you mean with Mum,” I said. Suddenly, the burger I had just taken a bite of felt heavy in my stomach and I couldn’t get down one more bite.

  He just raised an eyebrow at me like I was the one who was acting outrageously. But that was the thing with my dad. He was pretty unapologetic. He had some fairly old-fashioned views, and always considered himself the head of the household. That his word was law.

  “Actually, it is with a lovely woman who I used to know in my school days.”

  I was about to stand up and run out. It would cause one of those scenes that dad hated, which only made me want to do it more, but Matt was on shift that day and at the end of the day, he would have to be the one to clean it up after I stormed out. So instead, I sat down, ate my burger, then calmly left Dad to pick up the bill. And causally vowed never to talk to him again.

  15

  Claire

  A lot of things had been dug up that week in Eden Bay. But there was one secret that had to stay buried. And I was at Captain Eightball’s to make sure that happened.

  I spotted Alyson—was that her dad with her?—and quickly slinked back out into the garden area. Just a touch too late, though—Matt had already seen me and he followed me out to the kids’ play area and surprised me while I was hiding under the slide trying not to get caught.

  “I, uh, lost an earring,” I said. Unlike Alyson, my ears were actually pierced and so the lie was believable. Almost.

  Matt looked incredibly awkward, like he suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands. He ran one through his hair, then laced them together and wriggled them about. “I haven’t seen you in a few days.”

  I straightened up and stepped out of the sandbox. There was enough sand randomly strewn around Eden Bay without purposely going and standing in a pit of the stuff.

  “Alyson is right inside there,” I said, feeling as though she was going to spring us at any second. Like we were doing something bad.

  He looked over his shoulder. “So what? You and her are best friends, right?”

  I was surprised that in spite of his awkward demeanor, he didn’t even seem to know what I was worried about. I had to admit that I was a little hurt. He was acting almost like the kiss had never happened. That he didn’t even remember it.

  And now I was going to have to be the one who mentioned it and made it awkward.

  “Matt. Alyson can never know.”

  He laughed. “That you were here today?” He nodded toward the play area. “Well then, you better get back down underneath the slide.”

  I gritted my teeth a little. “If you are making a joke, Matt, it isn’t funny. Swear to me that you will not tell her about the kiss.”

  He sucked in his breath. Almost like I had spoken the unspeakable. “Okay. Fine. It’s not something I’m in the habit of discussing with my sister anyway, you know.”

  Alyson was storming out with her head down. She saw me but didn’t stop. I just straightened up and hoped that I hadn’t been acting too suspiciously.

  “Hey, you! What’s going on, buddy?” I asked casually.

  “Oh, my dad is just the world’s biggest traitor, that’s all.”

  I followed her out the gate, just pleased that she hadn’t asked what I was doing there, while Matt watched us go. I asked where she was going in such a hurry.

  She was heading back toward the Dolphin (F)Inn. “To warn Mum about what is really going on.”

  It seemed like I couldn’t get away from the place. But Alyson’s mum wasn’t in her room. “Let’s try Tina’s room, maybe she’s in there,” Alyson said, which sounded like the most ill-advised plan in the world. I was feeling a little better thanks to a good night’s sleep, but I still didn’t quite have the energy to jump in front of Alyson and stop her from knocking on Tina’s door.

  But before Alyson could knock, she was pushed aside by a cleaning trolley and we both stared into the room in shock. Aside from the furniture that came with the place, the room was empty.

  We looked at each other.

  “What happened to the woman who was stay
ing here?” I asked the cleaning lady. She just shrugged. “Checked out,” she said as she walked past us and headed down the hall.

  “Maybe she decided to turn herself into the police?” I asked. But Alyson shook her head.

  “Nope. She skipped town. The only question is, why?”

  16

  Alyson

  “She did a pretty decent job of making it look old,” Claire said, turning the letter over in her hands.

  “Yeah, well, she’s clever.”

  I sat down on Claire’s dusty blue sofa chair. She only had the one. This was minimalist design really taken to the extreme. I mean, I know it’s trendy and all at the moment to only own, like, fifty items, but I wasn’t a fan of it. Give me a home filled with junk any day of the week.

  “Did you ever get a sample of Tina’s handwriting, that day you made an enemy of everyone in your family?” Claire asked. Her tone with the last part was pretty wry, but I wondered why she was asking when we already knew that the letter belonged to Tina.

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering…” She coughed a little and put the letter back down on the table. “I suppose I’m just a little flat as well, now that it’s all over.”

  “Well, it’s not all over, is it?” I pointed out. “Tina is on the run.”

  Claire had filled up a hot water bottle and sat with it on the floor, seeing as I had taken her only chair. “Or she just left town. I suppose she didn’t do anything wrong to be on the run.”

  “She sent a threatening letter.”

  “True. She can be charged for that. Still, that doesn’t seem to be a reason to go on the run, does it?” Claire seemed to think it was more likely that she was just embarrassed and didn’t want to see any of us Foulkeses for a while. I still hadn’t decided if I was even going to tell the cops. She HAD admitted that the whole thing was just a joke.

  “But what about the letter to you?” I asked Claire. We’d never been able to ask Tina about that one. It just all felt so unfinished. I stood up. “I think we need to go after Tina. We need to find her and ask her some more questions.”

  Claire started coughing violently. “I’m sick!” she cried out. “Please, Alyson, can’t we just leave it be now? For my sake,” she pleaded with me. And when I tried to object again, she cut me off. “I feel perfectly safe now. Tina was just playing her idea of a stupid prank. I’m over it.”

  I decided it was time for me to leave. If she was really that sick, then I supposed I should let her have her one chair to rest in.

  “I’ll walk you downstairs,” Claire said, hobbling over to the door like she was an old woman who had just had a hip replacement. Boy, she sure made a big fuss about having the simple old flu, didn’t she? “I need to get my mail from Jeff. He won’t bring it upstairs to me, even when I am sick.”

  Hmm. I stopped and turned to her. “So he can access your mail any time, right?”

  Claire’s nose was red and her eyes were puffy. She looked confused by my question. “Yeah, of course. Why?”

  I shrugged a little. “Never mind.”

  Right as we were heading out the door, we almost walked right into Claire’s next-door neighbor. Nancy came out of her apartment, dressed to the nines.

  “Don’t mind me, girls—just off on a date!” She giggled like a girl. “A lovely young man I knew from my youth, Dan Foulkes!”

  17

  Claire

  I had never seen Alyson move so fast. She was down the lift and out the door of the Turtle Dove before I even reached the ground floor.

  Jeff was watching her fly out the door as I hobbled into reception.

  “You look terrible, Miss Elizabeth Richardson,” he said.

  Even though I knew this was the absolute truth—my face was red and puffy enough to be mistaken for the fact I’d been up all night crying at that stage—I still couldn’t help but take offense. Maybe he only meant to be sympathetic. But I didn’t think it was the doorman’s place to comment negatively on my appearance.

  “Is there any mail for me, Jeff?”

  “There is one envelope,” he said, reaching into my box. “I’m sorry, miss, I didn’t mean to…”

  “It’s fine,” I said, taking the large envelope upstairs with me, not caring in that moment that I was probably making an enemy of Jeff again right after we had sort of made peace. I walked past Nancy’s room and thought about her being out on a date with Alyson’s dad. I couldn’t believe the news Alyson had told me. Even in my ill, woozy state, the thought of that almost made me chuckle. How had the two of them even met up again after all these years? They’d probably used one of those dating apps.

  Poor Alyson.

  I’d meant to open the mail that Jeff had given me, but I was just too sleepy, and it fell out of my hand. I fell asleep with the letter on the floor beside the bed.

  I blinked a few times and picked up the envelope, then carefully tore it open. There were two smaller envelopes inside. I pulled out the first one and thought I must have taken too much cough medicine. This wasn’t my name on the letter that Jeff had given me. It was Alyson’s.

  I ripped it open. It may have not had my name on it, but it was meant for my eyes. Even if it wasn’t, Alyson and I were close enough that I was sure it didn’t matter.

  “Dear Alyson Foulkes,” the letter began. What followed after that made me CERTAIN I had overdosed on cough medicine. “I am writing this letter to you, fifty years in the past…to let you know that when you open this letter, a terrible fate is going to befall you. And you won’t be able to stop it.”

  What the—

  I pulled out the second envelope and tore it open. This one had my name on it. “Miss Claire, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right with the time capsule so I asked to see the box it was buried in. When I inspected it, I found this letter stuck inside the top. I knew right away I had to bring it to you. There wasn’t just one letter threatening your friend, apparently there are two. If I find anything else interesting I’ll let you know. Sincerely, Clive.”

  I looked at the letter for Alyson and noticed how crisp and white the paper was. It was obviously recently written.

  I called Alyson.

  “Alyson. I have the letter Tina tried to put in the time capsule. It’s a different letter. So that one that you read on the day of the opening? Alyson, that one was real. You were right all along.”

  Alyson had sworn never to set foot inside the Turtle Dove again after what she had witnessed, but there was one thing that would always win her over—the opportunity to gloat that she had been right.

  I was shaking by the time she got back, but it had nothing to do with the letter. The flu germs that Nancy had kindly left all over my apartment had fully infiltrated my system and taken over my apparently very weak immune system. Nancy had apologized profusely and given me the remains of the cold and flu medicine she had been using, but it had yet to take effect and I had gone into a fever. Alyson always claimed she was immune to every kind of germ and illness, so it didn’t faze her in the least. She just looked at me shivering with the blanket over my shoulder and snatched the two letters from me. One from fifty years ago. One from one week ago.

  “I just wish I knew where Tina was,” Alyson said, looking over both letters, one in each hand. Two very different sets of handwriting.

  “You could try asking one of your parents…”

  “I will talk to my dad when he is in his cold, hard grave.”

  Woah. I knew she was upset about him being out with Nancy and everything, but that was a bit extreme. “He might be the person you need right now.” Tina was her cousin on her father’s side. “Didn’t you say he was close to Tina when they were kids?”

  But I wasn’t even sure how much help that Tina could even be now. Even if she could tell us her motive in writing her letter, she wouldn’t be able to know who sent the original letter. She was only thirty-three years old.

  Alyson was coming up with a new scheme. Well, more like
an old scheme. “My original plan was right. We need to go and collect handwriting samples from everyone in my family who is over fifty years old. Come on, we don’t have much time.

  But I was starting to get very lightheaded.

  “I think I need to lay down,” I said, my eye lids falling heavily. I was tired, and I couldn’t even move or open my eyes.

  All I heard was a self-righteous grumbling as footsteps moved toward the door. “Fine. I will take care of this by myself. As usual.”

  18

  Alyson

  I pulled the door shut and sighed. As full of bravado as I had been about getting the writing samples from my family, I was unsure how to actually go about it without making myself public enemy number one again.

  “Good evening, Miss Foulkes,” Jeff said as I left the lobby, my confidence draining even further.

  I knew what I needed. I needed my mum. I picked up the phone. “Mum. Can you come over?”

  I pouted at Mum while I lay on the sofa. “It was dumb and mean of Tina to play the prank. But I’m worried about her now.”

  Mum just ruffled my hair and got me a cordial from the fridge, and I felt like I was seven years old again. It was kind of nice.

  But there was that huge elephant in the room. I felt awful hiding what I knew from Mum. Here she was, all happy and cheerful that she had her daughter back with her. While in the meantime, I was holding on to a secret that would rip her heart apart.

  But wasn’t it better to be truthful?

  I sat up and put my cordial down. “Mum. I have to tell you something. I’m not saying this to hurt you. But Dad is being an idiot right as we speak. Mum, he’s on a date right now.”