Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  A waitress asked me if I wanted to order anything while I waited. “Water is fine,” I said as I glanced around the restaurant which mostly served wood-fired pizzas. I was a little on edge as I waited for Simon to arrive and kept sipping my water. The place was cozy, and I’d chosen a place by the fire. Yet I didn’t feel comforted.

  Simon walked in with a grin and took off his scarf.

  “I am counting down the days to winter solstice,” he announced after ordering some wine and we ordered our meals. “Then it is all uphill from there. We rush back towards summer.”

  “I’m also a summer girl,” I said, clinking my glass against his. And it was only three days till the shortest day would come and go—I was counting down as well.

  I asked him how his award ceremony in Newcastle had gone and he cringed a little as he took a gulp of wine. “All these amateur writers trying to get me to read their manuscripts…” He was grimacing a bit. “Don’t take this the wrong way. They mean well.”

  Well, now I really didn’t want to tell him about my idea for a book series. Because what I had said to Sadie was true. I’d been writing, in secret, ever since Nicole-Marie’s body had been found in my shop. And I thought I had a really good tale—including a twist at the end.

  “Everything okay, Claire?” Simon asked, nudging me with his foot. “You’ve gone a little quiet.”

  “Oh yes, everything is more than wonderful.” I smiled at him. I was sick of talking about Sadie and thinking about Sadie, but I knew Alyson would follow it up, so I had to at least ask. “Do you know a woman named Sadie…” I tried to think of her surname, but then realized I didn’t know it.

  He laughed quite forcefully and rolled his eyes a little. “Oh. Yes. I know Sadie.”

  “Oh, Right.” I was a little surprised by his reaction. “And how well do you know her?” Strange reaction to have towards someone who’d just rented his cottage a couple of times.

  He started cutting into his steak. Sighed. “Well, we dated for a little while…”

  Oh. I was surprised to hear that. Only because Sadie was at least a decade older than him. Not that she was unattractive for her age, I was just surprised that Simon would go for someone that much older, that that was his type.

  Or maybe I just wasn’t anyone’s type lately.

  I forced a smile back onto my face. “You also seemed to know her collaborator?” I asked. “Zed?”

  He put his wine glass down. “Yes. Ah, the one we had the lucky escape from that night.” He winked at me a little. In spite of the danger and drama that night, it had been kinda fun. “Zed is an interesting character…to say the very least.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Was there another reason you wanted to run that night, Simon?”

  His eyes were shining a little. “You’re a perceptive woman, Claire Elizabeth Richardson. Yes. Zed doesn’t like me much. I think he was always a little jealous. I think he wanted to ‘collaborate’ with Sadie in more ways than one.” He swirled the wine around in his glass. “You’re good at this, you know? Making connections. Maybe you have a real talent for it.”

  Maybe I did. But I still wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about my book.

  I almost needed a sweater that afternoon as I wandered through Eden Bay to the other side of town. I was trying to put it all together, and my head was spinning. Maybe Simon was just flattering me—I wasn’t sure I did actually have a talent for making connections—but I was becoming certain that Sadie had played a part in Nicole Marie’s death.

  I laughed a little and shivered as the cool sea air hit me. I was going to have to tell Alyson that her hunch had been right. I sighed as I approached Maria’s house and wondered… If Alyson had been right about one person, who was to say she wasn’t right about another one?

  I knocked and waited. I had never actually been to Maria’s home, but Alyson was a regular visitor now that Maria was tutoring her. I wasn’t sure how seriously Alyson was taking her studies though, seeing as she had missed today’s session and had sent me instead.

  Maria blinked at me. “I was expecting Alyson.”

  “I know. She can’t make it tonight, so she asked me to come by and get her homework,” I said, trying to step inside. I was cold.

  Maria didn’t look too sure about letting me inside. Maybe her instincts were right—I was there to get more than just homework.

  “How have the cats been?” I asked her as I entered her teaching room, which was set up like a small classroom. There was a reading for Alyson on her desk and an assignment where she was supposed to analyze a short piece of poetry. Boy, was she going to hate that.

  Maria just nodded a little. She looked nervous. “I don’t mind doing it, Claire, but it’s stressful, sneaking in there every night.”

  I hadn’t realized I was asking so much of her. “It will only be a few more days,” I said. “Then we will be allowed to open again.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t do it, Claire.”

  She was almost sound weepy. What had gotten into the woman? Gosh. Please don’t tell me Alyson was right again. My voice was quiet. “Alyson told me that you looked suspicious the other night. She was watching you.” Okay, that sounded a little creepy. Especially in the tone of voice I was using.

  It seemed like I had broken the usually-jolly woman.

  “Okay, okay, you’ve got me,” she said. She was actually dabbing at her forehead with a handkerchief. My questions had actually made her break out into a cold sweat.

  My voice remained steady. “How have I gotten you, Maria?”

  She gulped. “I’ve been going there to do more than just feed the cats.”

  There was a sickening feeling in my stomach like I was on the downward part of a rollercoaster. This was not what I had expected at all.

  “What have you been doing then, Maria?”

  “I’ve been rearranging a few things,” she said, looking down at the carpet. “Taking out some of the new books and replacing them with old books—”

  “You’ve been stealing from me!?”

  “Not stealing! Just trying to improve what is great about the shop, what has always been great about it…”

  “Oh, this is beyond unacceptable…” I was burning up. Was there a single person in this town I could actually trust? “Where are these books you’ve taken then?” No wonder she hadn’t wanted me inside her house.

  “Claire, I was only trying to help.”

  “Do you know what the police will say if they find out about this? Huh? Because I intend to tell them.” I was so mad that as I spun around, I knocked over one of the desks and the top lid came undone. I saw Maria’s face turn bright red. Now her whole face was wet.

  I glanced down. A pair of gloves.

  “Maria…what is that?”

  I wanted to reach down and grab them, but then my prints would be on them. But I thought I’d just found the reason there were no prints found at the murder scene.

  “Well, the door was open,” she said quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You can’t blame me for that.” No remorse whatsoever.

  Oh, this just got better and better. The sinking feeling was threatening to pull me right down. I had to steady myself. Get off the rollercoaster. This was really happening. Someone I trusted was a murderer.

  “So, you were there the night that Nicole Marie was killed?”

  Maria was staring at the gloves, neither of us game to go near them. “I was showing Nicole Marie the improvements I was making to the shop. She was helping me, actually. She and I always talked about how the bookshop needed to go back to the way it was before.”

  Great. So not one but two people I thought I could trust were going behind my back.

  I stepped forward. “So what did Nicole Marie do that night to make you kill her, Maria?”

  She stopped sweating. She turned white. “No-nothing. Claire. I thought she had left! Honestly. As far as I knew, when I left the bookshop that night, Nicole Marie had gone safely home to bed.”<
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  And all this time, I had been blaming Alyson. Well. She still had left the door open. But she hadn’t been the one sneaking into my shop to steal things and change things.

  “What are these gloves?” I asked quietly.

  “I—I don’t know. They must belong to a student.”

  I shot Maria a cool look. Told her I was going to need every single book back and that all the old ones were going in the trash. And that she needn’t bother coming back ever again. She pleaded with me as I walked out.

  “I have been tormented by guilt ever since, Claire. It has been eating me alive.”

  Yeah, but not enough to actually come clean, or to tell the cops what she had seen.

  “What are you so dressed up for?” It was the first thing I said to Alyson when she walked in, because it was the first thing I thought when she walked into Captain Eightball’s. I had seen Alyson Foulkes dressed up one time in my life and that was ten years earlier at our school formal, where she had worn a full-length, baby-pink gown her mother had chosen, and even then, the night had ended with her dress getting torn to shreds when she’d climbed over a fence to escape the official school party to go to an off-campus party.

  “You know how my parents get about us sticking to a dress code in their house.”

  No. I didn’t know that.

  She sat on the barstool. She looked like she was bursting to tell me something but wasn’t allowed to.

  Well, I didn’t have time to squeeze it out of her. “You were right. Something was up with Maria all along. She was there the night Nicole Marie was killed.”

  I let that sink in for a moment.

  Alyson nodded a little as she took it all in. “She probably went back in there the other night to cover her tracks.”

  “Well, and to feed the cats.” It was still my instinct to calm Alyson down whenever she jumped to a wild conclusion. But maybe she was right about this too. She was on a bit of a winning streak.

  “So, what do I do?” I asked, sure that Alyson would be so pleased about being right that she would want to come down to the police station with me to tell them everything she’d seen. And thought. But of course, she had to have the opposite reaction.

  “She might have been in the shop that night, but I don’t think she killed Nicole Marie.”

  “What?” I said, almost spitting out my drink. Except that Claire Elizabeth Richardson did not do things like that. “You have spent the last forty-eight hours trying to convince me she was guilty, and now that I believe she is, you say she isn’t?” It would have been frustrating if it weren’t so utterly predictable.

  Alyson shrugged. “I thought she was hiding something. And she was. But, I dunno, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I really don’t think Maria would kill a woman.”

  I stared at her. “You just can’t stand to agree with me. About anything.”

  Alyson tried not to smile. I knew I had hit on the truth.

  “Just saying. Keep this between us for a while. Maria trusts me. I’m her student.” Her plan was coming to life, I could see it in her eyes. “I’ve actually been her favorite student for fifteen years. And she has no idea that I suspect anything.” She shot me a look. “So I might actually be able to get more from her than the police ever will. And it’s not like the cops are gonna share anything with us, is it? Wells isn’t exactly a warm and open, cuddly teddy bear.”

  Now, look. She did have a very good point. There was logic to what she said, and I was starting to be convinced. Alyson could be charming. And before she left, I even agreed to her plan.

  But as soon as she left, I knew it was a bad, bad idea. I pulled my phone out and called the police station.

  What would be would be. It was out of my hands now. But I couldn’t knowingly break the law just because Alyson had a bright idea.

  I jumped a little when I saw Matt come out of the kitchen. I didn’t know he was even working that day. He shot me a cautious smile. Was I in the good books or the bad books? “Claire. Hi. I feel like I haven’t spoken to you in ages,”

  “You’ve been busy,” I said, trying not to sound too pointed and bitter. I wasn’t sure I succeeded. Oh well, lucky it wasn’t that far from my usual tone anyway, so he may not have suspected anything.

  “I can always make time for you,” Matt said, shrugging a little.

  It didn’t seem that way. “I’m not sure we should even be talking, Matt,” I said to him.

  “So what, we kiss one time and the entire friendship is over?” He sounded hurt. But I was more hurt by what he had just said. So it was just a friendship to him. And that was the only thing he wanted to preserve.

  “Sure, we’re still friends,” I said, standing up and walking off into the rain.

  14

  Claire

  “This would have been helpful information to know from the start,” Wells said dryly. The rain was starting to pound on the roof of the station. We were almost at the shortest, darkest day of the year.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know it right from the start, did I?” Unbelievable. You try to do the right thing and you get into trouble for it.

  “And she has a pair of keys to the property.” That same wry tone again. He wasn’t understanding.

  “Well, yes, but I only gave those to her after this happened.”

  “Can you be sure?”

  “Yes. I know when I gave her the keys.” For crying out loud. This guy was the worst. Wasn’t there a single other cop in Eden Bay that I could deal with? I actually looked around in the hope that someone might relieve him of his duties. No one.

  “Can you be sure that she didn’t have access to a pair before that?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not relevant. The door was left open that night.”

  He checked his notes. “Yes, by an Alyson Foulkes. Can’t say I find that too surprising.”

  I almost laughed at that. At least we were on the same page about one thing.

  “Thank you for coming in today, Miss Richardson.” He stood suddenly, striding to the door and holding it open for me impatiently.

  “Is that it?” I asked incredulously. “Can you at least keep me up to date with what happens next with Maria?”

  He almost seemed amused by that. Except he’d probably never been amused by anything in his life. “I am not going to give you a transcript of my chat with a suspect.”

  Well, that seemed a little unfair. I mean, it seemed thoroughly legal. But still unfair.

  I was leave, but I’d gotten a little wet in the rain coming in, so I ducked into the bathroom for a moment to check my reflection in the mirror. Ugh. Flat hair. A little bit frizzy. Mascara running just a touch. Boy, was I going to be glad when the rain finally eased up. I decided I’d call a cab rather than walk home and destroy my hair even further.

  Right outside the bathroom, there were two female police officers hovering, about to come in. They mustn’t have realized that I was there. “Seems like he is taking this case a little too personally,” one of them said to the other.

  The other replied, “I’ve never seen Wells this emotional about a case before. Nicole Marie must have really gotten to him.”

  I stopped and listened in, almost in a state of shock. I wanted to laugh.

  Emotional? Not the word I would ever use to describe Sergeant Wells. But I could say he had seemed extra ‘invested’ in this case.

  “Well, I guess it is hard having to investigate the death of an ex.”

  My heart stopped for a moment. Nicole Marie was Sergeant Wells’s ex?

  I took a deep breath. I’d been shy. Nervous. Worried what Simon would say if I told him the truth. But this was too good of an idea to just keep to myself, right?

  Simon was more than pleased to meet up with me when I told him I had something I wanted to discuss. I wasn’t going to tell him all the details. I had to speak to Alyson first. This case was mine and hers, and my loyalty was still with her, even if she annoyed the heck out of me half the time.

&n
bsp; “I know you get this all the time,” I said, staring across at him at the same restaurant we’d been to two days before. I needed to be back in front of the warmth of the open fire.

  Simon burst out laughing and threw his head back a little, then he nodded knowingly. “So. You’ve got a book idea.”

  I sighed. “I know what it sounds like. I sound like all these other wannabe writers that you deal with every day. The ones you have to fend off with a broomstick.”

  He pursed his lips and shrugged a little. “No, I am remaining open-minded. You never know who the next young literary sensation will be. She could be sitting right across from me.” He winked.

  I wish I could have said that his opinion didn’t mean anything to me, but the truth was, it did. He was an editor at a major publishing house and it sounded like he was brutally honest in his critiques of writers. So he wouldn’t just tell me what I wanted to hear.

  “I have actually written a little something…” I was a bit coy to tell him that I had actually finished five chapters. So I made it seem like I had just written a few paragraphs. Less pressure.

  “Show it to me,” he said, sounding encouraging.

  “What, now?” I paused with my soup spoon midair.

  “Why not?”

  I coughed. “Oh gosh no, not while I am sitting right in front of you.” I couldn’t think of anything more traumatizing than watching someone read what I had written. I’d be holding my breath the entire time, checking for every little change in facial expression. I’d have a heart attack.

  “Okay,” he said with a bright smile. “Email it to me then. Is that less terrifying?”

  I nodded and went back to my soup with a laugh. “Far less frightening. Thanks, Simon.”

  We left with him giving me a peck on the cheek. The awkward thing was that for a moment, it seemed as though he was going for the lip kiss, but I turned my check at the last second and we both just pretended it had never happened.