Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  “This town is full of idiots,” Justin scoffed. “They’ll never figure it out. But you…” He paused for a moment, his voice turning sinister. “You’re the one who needs to be careful. It was your big screw-up that Joel saw you in action and figured things out. One of these days, someone else might figure out that you want to run the company yourself and you’ve been poisoning your boss a little at a time. Now that’s the kind of story that would increase listeners and make a podcast go viral.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed. “I’ve taken care of you and paid for everything this whole time we’ve been dating. You would have nothing without me!”

  “I’m not saying I would… I’m just saying don’t push me.”

  We heard the line go dead and Justin laughed. “I wasn’t about to let Joel get the glory for turning you in,” he said like he was still talking to Stephanie. “Not when I can do it myself.”

  We all stopped and stared at each other. I was stunned. Speechless for a moment. “Should I…rewind that back?”

  Claire shook her head and grabbed the USB stick from the lap top.

  Stephanie may have been poisoning Troy. But Stephanie wasn’t the one who had killed Joel.

  Ugh. The carpet at the Flower of Life was far too plush. I kept tripping as we raced back down the hallway. Troy was livid. “Not only did this guy kill that poor protester, he was going to sit back and watch me get killed as well.”

  “Yep. Because he had a perfect episode three, and four, ready to go as soon as you were dead,” Claire said as we hurried along.

  I almost laughed. This guy probably would have just stuck around and killed the whole town off one by one as long as it meant he had new topics for his podcast every week.

  I banged on the door and yelled for Justin to open up. When he didn’t—of course—I made my voice syrupy sweet. “We’ve got your money, Justin. We just want to pay you back!”

  He still didn’t open. I looked up at Troy. “Something is wrong if that didn’t work.”

  I looked down at the doorway and noticed a long blonde hair. It was longer than Claire’s, now that she had been to the salon. Oh, shoot. “Have you heard from Stephanie today, Troy? Do you know where she is?”

  He shook his head. We had to get inside, quick.

  Troy warned us that his strength had suffered a bit lately. Well, yeah. Being poisoned would do that to you. After a few attempts, however, he was able to get the door to open by ramming at it with his shoulder.

  There was Justin, tied up in his interview chair, with Stephanie standing above him with a knife in her hand. “Help!” he tried to scream through the rag in his mouth. She was going to make sure he never had a chance to turn her into his next murder mystery podcast.

  Troy, Claire, and I all looked at each other. What should we do? There was never a question of whether to stop her, of course. But, you know, I think the temptation was there for a split-second.

  Stephanie tried to run for the door, but Troy grabbed her and held her down. It was impressive to watch, especially knowing that his strength wasn’t what it used to be. How strong must he have been before he was poisoned? With Stephanie under control, I strolled over and made sure that Justin’s hands were tied extra tight while Claire phoned the police.

  We may have just saved Justin’s life. But he would be going to jail for a long time. And Stephanie would be following suit.

  I wondered if we still owed him the money for his phone and his recording equipment. Huh. Guess that debt was cleared.

  Troy met me down by the water’s edge the following evening. It was a pink and orange sunset, dipping into the ocean. I felt a calm wash over me.

  “What did the doctor say?” I asked him.

  He looked a little better. More color in his face. “The effects can’t be reversed,” he said, staring off into the ocean. “But now that I’m away from Stephanie, it won’t get any worse.”

  I nodded a little. “I’m glad you aren’t going to die,” I said.

  “Thank you, Alyson,” he said quietly, moving toward me. He took my hand. I wondered if we were about to kiss. “I should have believed you right away. You had my back.” He got a phone call and apologized, said he had to take it. I heard him talking. Something about construction starting again first thing in the morning. That he’d be there to supervise. I was shocked.

  “So, this doesn’t change anything?” I asked. I was not about to kiss a guy who was going to ruin my town.

  “The development is still going ahead, Alyson. At least, I hope it is. This isn’t anything personal. This is business.”

  But I pulled away and shook myself off. Common sense had to prevail eventually, right? And this was the moment for it. I could never fall for this guy.

  The moment was broken anyway, at least for me. Troy hesitated and just for a second, I considered changing my mind. Kissing him. But I told him I had to go. Triathlon training.

  Troy called after me. “Maybe I can still take that surfing lesson.”

  For a second, I thought about answering him. But instead I ran on, never looking back.

  Epilogue

  Claire

  Three weeks later

  The blank white wall was still staring me down. It was a reminder of the compromise I had made. Like most compromises, it kind of pleased no one. Something had to be done.

  I sighed. Even paint stripper would never return it to its original state, so I was just going to have to live with it.

  I watched Alyson approach the shop. She was skipping. Hmm. Or was I?

  There was a medal around her neck. “Lucky I’m still good at something,” she said, settling into the new sofa chair in the corner of the shop. Both cats jumped up into her lap. I’d put the chair there for the book bucket readers to use, but it had been claimed by the cats almost immediately.

  Alyson was referring to the ill-fated commission, the turtle looking up at the moon that she had never been able to complete. She’d returned the money and the surfboard, telling the client she couldn’t do it. She had all but given up her design business since, and had instead been focusing on polishing surfboards for paying customers instead. But there was far less money in that and, even more importantly, there was no creative outlet.

  I turned around and looked at the blank wall.

  “Alyson,” I said. “I think I have a job for you.”

  Slaying at Sea

  Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery, Book 3

  1

  Alyson

  I was flying high on the perfect wave, the sun a perfect sphere behind me, in my perfect town of Eden Bay, when I saw it. A dark, black object bobbing below in the crystal clear blue water. My jaw clenched. Get it? Jaw? Oh, gosh—every surfer’s worst fear. Actually, every beach-goer’s worst fear.

  Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

  But, to be fair, it’s never that safe to go into the water in Australia. There are crocs, jellyfish, stingrays, and there are sharks. I’d never actually seen one up close before, but I had always been on the lookout. I was the first line of defense out there.

  “Shark! Shark!” I screamed, flapping my arms around as I hit the sand and threw my surfboard so hard that it caused a dent. My screams were contagious. No one else had even seen the creature and yet everyone else began to scream and flee onto the dry sand as well. Actually, most people even ran so far as the pier or the sidewalk just in case the shark magically grew legs and was able to chase them. I saw one woman run right to her car and lock the door.

  The head lifeguard, Simon, came jogging up to me once all the warning signs had been put up and the beach was closed. “Thanks, Alyson,” he said, a little breathless. The beach patrol was out to search for the shark before anyone else could get back in the water.

  I nodded and winked at him, a bit breathless too. “You got it. Always here to help, Simon.” I was the one brave enough to go out further and deeper than anyone else, and I always kept everyone else informed of the
dangers out there. Rips, rough waves, dangerous wildlife. Ha. They pretty much didn’t even need the lifeguards with me about. Simon and his crew were kinda redundant, if you asked me. All they did was sit up in their little high chairs, lazing about, reading magazines, while I was actually in the water. Actually amongst the danger, scoping it out myself. Protecting everyone else.

  Still a little breathless, I realized that my heart was beating heavily. I placed my hand on my chest and realized how lucky I had been to escape. I glanced out over the water and shook my head. The water was my home. But my home had almost killed me.

  My cell phone was ringing. I’d already sent a text telling my best friend Claire about the emergency. “Hello?”

  Apparently, Claire had heard the screams from her motel room. It was a Sunday, so her bookstore was closed, and she was trying to sleep in.

  I told Claire all about it. She was lucky she was safe and secure on the second floor of her motel, although it wasn’t like Princess Claire would ever be out as deep in the water as I’d been. “There won’t be any victims today, and that’s all thanks to me.

  “Oh, can you hang on? The lifeguard is coming back to thank me again.” I wondered if I would get some kind of reward or something for my bravery. Simon was stomping toward me with a frown on his face, his shadow on the sand longer than it should have been in the early morning sun. He was the largest and tallest of all the lifeguards and he had the most muscles as well. If you were drowning, it was Simon you would want coming to your rescue.

  But I was confused. Why wasn’t there gratitude all over his face? There I was, waiting for my medal of bravery, and Simon was looking at me as though I had just run over his cat.

  “It was a piece of wood.”

  “Huh?”

  “The object you saw. The coast guard just found it. It’s a piece of wood.”

  Gulp. A super dark piece of wood in the shape of a shark though, right? It was a mistake that anyone could have made.

  I opened my mouth again, just to make sure. “But a shark…”

  “It wasn’t a shark, Alyson. It was debris.”

  I went back to my phone call. “Well, the point is I tried my best.”

  2

  Claire

  There were screams coming from the beach like someone had been murdered. Now, around here? Well, lately, that wouldn’t be so surprising. Eden Bay had seen its fair share of murders in recent times.

  I climbed out of bed and ran to the window. Surely not again.

  Alyson’s text just read “SOS.” When I phoned her right away to check what that meant, she told me it meant “Surfer Observes Shark.”

  “You’re kidding me!” I said. Leaving my room, I pulled on a sweater as I descended the two flights of stairs to the bottom of the Dolphin (F)Inn. I know it is a little strange to run TOWARD a beach when there has been a shark sighting, but part of me actually wanted to see the thing. Or at least witness the chaos that it had caused. There hadn’t been a shark sighting on Eden Bay since I was a kid. It was a relatively safe beach. I say relative, of course.

  Emergency warnings had already been put out and there were trucks parked down on the beach with lights and sirens blaring, telling people to stay away. A message was broadcast over a speaker. I was still trying to talk to Alyson on the phone, but it was difficult to hear her over the sirens and the screams. She asked me to hold on a moment as I reached the sand and noticed that the emergency lights had suddenly been turned off.

  Alyson was back on the line. All I heard was something about a piece of wood. “Um, what was that?” I asked, still trying to listen and trying to find her at the same time. There were people running and shrieking, and I was almost barreled over by a large man in a wetsuit.

  So. Not a shark then. All the panic-stricken people around me had fled for nothing.

  “The point is I tried my best.”

  Trust Alyson to cause a local catastrophe. There was actually someone sitting on the sand with an oxygen mask because they’d had a panic attack and the paramedics had been called. Over a piece of wood.

  Alyson came running up to me, sheepish, but then broke out into a grin. Her hair was still wet from the ocean and she was still wearing her wetsuit, but stripped to her waist with just her bathing suit on at the top.

  “Whoops,” she said with a little laugh.

  Yes. Whoops. I looked around at all the empty cafes and the ice cream van that was getting zero customers that morning. And the people still recovering from their near-heart attacks.

  The lifeguards had started to take the signs down and people were starting to gingerly dip their toes back into the water. That was the funny thing about the power of suggestion, though—even though people logically ‘knew’ that the object had only been a piece of wood, they were still cautious about getting back into the water. All of them were glancing about nervously like an actual shark might be waiting there to snap their toes off.

  “How did you mistake a piece of wood for a shark?” I had to ask the question as Alyson and I walked over to the ice cream van so that the poor guy would get at least two customers that morning. But I already knew the answer—overactive imagination.

  But it turned out I hadn’t heard the last of Alyson Faulks’s wild imagination that day.

  “What if it’s not just a random piece of wood?” Alyson asked as we walked along the shore, eating our soft-serve cones. There was a weird tone to her voice. It was all whispery and excited. This ‘random’ piece of wood had been brought to the shore just to reassure onlookers. I hadn’t noticed anything unusual about it other than, to Alyson’s credit, it had been pretty dark.

  “What else could it be?” I was down to my cone.

  “Well, wood doesn’t just come from nowhere, does it?” Alyson said. “I reckon there was a shipwreck.” Her eyes lit up. “And this is only one part of it. Claire, I think there are survivors out there.” She glanced out over the water, which was still very light on surfers and swimmers. “Or maybe worse—victims.”

  Hmm. I had my doubts about this little theory. Part of me wondered if Alyson was just trying to save face after the shark-sighting disaster. You know, try to make out like this was all something more sinister and mysterious than it appeared on the surface. After all, a floating piece of wood wasn’t that interesting, was it?

  But a potential shipwreck. That was interesting. Victims. Survivors.

  Alyson is known for her big mouth. She wasted no time in throwing her theory around to the rest of the town that night as we ate our dinner at Captain Eightball’s, having to take a seat at the bar because there were no spare tables. That just gave Alyson more of a chance to tell anyone who was listening that there had been a shipwreck and she had been the one to spot the wreckage.

  “I don’t think you’ll be getting a medal for this,” I said to her, hoping she would pipe down a bit. I just wanted to eat my cheeseburger and go home.

  The rest of the town thought that Alyson was completely barking mad, and so did I. She was being dismissed, quite rightly, as the girl who had mistaken a piece of wood for a shark and caused half the town to shut down and the other half to have a meltdown. Over wood.

  Except she did have a point.

  I hated to admit it, but she was right. The wood had to have come from somewhere. It didn’t just drop from the air. It wasn’t from an aircraft, and I’d never heard of a UFO made from wood.

  Was it actually from a shipwreck? And were there any survivors?

  We had to find out.

  3

  Alyson

  One good thing about the emergency I had caused—an empty beach. And I LOVE having a beach all to myself early in the morning. I dug my toes into the white sand and grinned as the sun hit my face. But there was another reason I was there at the break of dawn. I was on the lookout. I know, I know—shipwrecks sound like things that only happen in the movies. Or in books. Claire probably had a whole section in her shop dedicated to books about brave souls washing up on beaches
and islands and having to start new lives, like Swiss Family Robinson. I’d never read the book, but I had loved the movie growing up.

  Maybe I would have my own Swiss Family Robinson moment.

  I glanced around and thought about the first convicts who had washed up on the shores of New South Wales, not so far from where I was sitting. I always shiver to think of people arriving on the beaches of Australia, not knowing what they were in for. The poverty and hardships. I stood up and decided to go for a wander along the edge of the water. Well, anyone who washed up here and now would be a lot luckier than the first convicts. No prisons, no surviving on rations, and better than anything else, they would have me to welcome them.

  Sigh. The beach was empty. There were a few seagulls, but they didn’t need me to rescue them. In fact, when I went to say hello to one, it just gave me a rude look and flew away. My fantasies of rescuing a handsome stranger and nursing him back to health were not going to materialize on that day. Back to work, then.

  I made my living as a surfboard designer and decorator. That was one bad thing about an empty beach—no customers. But I still had a commission from the previous week that I was finishing up. I mixed the paints on the easel, mixing generous quantities of pink and orange. I was making something that kind of looked like a psychedelic sunset explosion. My favorite kind of design—mix the colors together in a whirl, make abstract shapes and swirls, and then call it a sun. The customers always liked it, anyway. I preferred to work with abstract colors like this rather than to work on the finer details.