Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  I pondered it for a moment as he wandered off. Hmm. What was wrong with me? It wasn’t as though I wasn’t attracted to him. He was charming, intelligent, flirtatious, slightly older. All the things that were my ’type.’ And yet something was holding me back. I was pretty sure that thing started with a big letter “M.”

  But I built up the courage when I got home to email Simon, at least. Thanked him for the meal and politely refused to mention the almost-kiss. Still pretending. I attached the five chapters I had written and then told myself that it didn’t matter what he had to say about them. If he liked them, great. If he hated them, fine, I could live with it. No bruised ego. Haha. Yeah, right.

  When I hadn’t heard back for an hour, I started to think that he hadn’t even read what I’d sent him at all. Fair enough. It made sense. He was hounded by dozens of writers, why would he make time for the girl who had refused to kiss him?

  Maybe I should have just kissed him.

  But then there was a ding on my phone, and I had a new email. Simon.

  “Stay cool, Claire, stay calm,” I said as I opened it up.

  “This is really promising, Claire. Can I see some more? You’ve got real talent, kid.”

  I could go to sleep with the glow from that praise keeping me warm, because tomorrow, there would be serious work to do. And we were about to enter the coldest, darkest day of the year.

  15

  Claire

  The wind practically blew my umbrella shut, but I managed to make it to Alyson’s apartment without getting too wet. Of course as soon as I arrived at the door, the clouds began to clear.

  “We need to work together if we are going to take down a law enforcement officer, Alyson.”

  It seemed like we spent half our friendship calling truces with each other. She was still furious that I’d gone and told Wells about Maria—because of course she had things “perfectly under control”—but I had to point out that if I hadn’t done that, I never would have found out about Wells’s relationship with Nicole Marie. And now we finally had a breakthrough.

  There were wet footprints all over Alyson’s floor and her hair was wet. She must have braved an early morning surf in the rain. “What do you remember about the night you called him?” Alyson asked as she dried her hair with a towel. “Was he acting weird at all?”

  I shook my head and tried to remember. “You know what Wells is like. He doesn’t give anything away. If he had committed the crime and was trying to cover it up, well, he did a very good job of acting like nothing was the matter.”

  Alyson raised her eyebrows and put the towel down. Something had occurred to her. “What about the fact that there were no fingerprints?”

  I thought about those gloves in Maria’s house. But Alyson was shaking her head. “There were no fingerprints because Wells didn’t want there to be. He was first on the scene.” She raised her eyebrows. “In more ways than one.”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “That’s a very good point.”

  She nodded. “You’re right, we need to work together. And fast. If Wells is the killer, he has the whole police force at his disposal. He’s already erased his prints from the evidence. What else is he going to do?”

  I glanced at her. “He could try to frame someone else.”

  She nodded. Gulped. “Like Maria.”

  I was finally allowed to reopen the bookshop. I wasn’t expecting a single customer, but I was still there at 9am with my key, just in case. Sigh. No one. Not even after standing around waiting for ten minutes. Alyson kept texting me, saying we were letting valuable time slip by. “There is no time for books!”

  But this was my grandma’s shop we were talking about. I couldn’t let her thirty years of hard work die just because Nicole Marie had. I couldn’t give up.

  I knew what I was going to have to do. I was going to have to go home to get my espresso machine. “Meet me at the bookshop at eleven,” I texted Alyson. “I need at least one customer.”

  Funny that a little bit of coffee could make people forget that a murder had taken place inside these four walls. Alyson paraded up and down the front with a sign saying that we were now serving coffee—“Free with book purchase”—and by lunch time, there were a dozen people in the store and I’d made five sales.

  “It’s so fun to sit here and drink coffee and read!” Sadie exclaimed, the cute little white cup in her hand as she perched herself on one of the new stools I’d brought in.

  “It is quite sophisticated, isn’t it?” I smiled to myself as I glanced around and saw the happy customers. If even Sadie was impressed with me and having a good time, then maybe there was hope after all.

  “Hi, Matt,” I said, my heart stopping for a moment when he walked into the shop. I was surprised to see him, but happy. He wasn’t a regular visitor to the bookstore. Maybe Alyson had told him to come in as we needed the extra bodies.

  “What is that?” he asked, pointing to the corner.

  “Ah, that,” I said proudly, “is my own little idea to spruce up the place.” I shimmied a little.

  I thought Matt was going to be happy for me. But he was glaring at the espresso machine. “Do you have a license?”

  I blinked a few times. “A license?” You needed a license to have a coffee machine? Must have missed that law. That would mean that half the apartments in my complex were breaking the law.

  “You need a license to serve food and drinks on the premises…”

  I gulped and looked around. “Aw, I’m not hurting anyone, Matt. It’s just to get the shop back on track after what happened.”

  He shook his head and before he left, he said, “It’s not right, Claire.”

  I was left a little stunned. What the heck was all that about?

  Sadie raised her eyebrows and stuffed another bit of cake into her mouth. “What you’ve got there is a You’ve Got Mail situation.”

  “Excuse me?” I said. I couldn’t see any mail laying on the floor. There’d been a stack piled up during the days we were closed, but I’d picked it up. Had I missed some?

  “You and the guy from the cafe,” she explained, nodding towards the door. “They serve coffee and food there, right?”

  “Uh, yeah. It’s a cafe.”

  She nodded towards the machine. “And now you’re competing with him. Taking away customers from his joint.” She couldn’t help adding something else. “And because the two of you clearly fancy each other, that is making it all the more complicated. That’s the reason he stormed out of here.”

  I blushed a little. There was nothing clear about the fact that Matt and I fancied each other. In fact, it was a well-kept secret. I looked around to make sure that Alyson hadn’t heard, but she was too busy trying to pull in some random passersby through the door. She finally gave up and came in with a sigh. Her duty was done.

  “Is this party over yet?” she asked me. “We’ve got a dirty cop to catch.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I can’t exactly leave the store unattended, can I? It’s not like I have Maria to trust anymore.” She still hadn’t given the books back either.

  “What about Sadie?” Alyson suggested.

  “Could you be any more insane?”

  “It was just an idea!”

  Oh, I actually did have some mail still laying on the floor. There was a flyer that had fallen away to the side and gotten stuck under a bookshelf. I picked it up. It was an ad for a new surf store that was opening in the mall in a few weeks. Advertising 40% off surfboards in the opening week.

  “Geez, Alyson, look at this…” I knew she would be surprised, upset maybe, but she looked like she was about to self-combust.

  She snatched it from me and ran off.

  “Sorry, everyone. The party is over, I’m afraid!” I announced and shut down the espresso machine, much to everyone’s disappointment. Sadie raised a knowing eyebrow at me. This had nothing to do with Matt though, and everything to do with his sister. I was going to have to go after my best friend.

>   16

  Alyson

  “Look at this,” I said, waving my hands toward the mall and trying not to let the tears come as Claire approached me down on the pier. “How could they have gotten it completed so fast? Surely they have been breaking the law! I’ve been woken up before the birds some days!”

  Claire was trying to catch her breath. “Well, council laws do say they can begin heavy machinery work at seven a.m. on weekdays.”

  “Even on a weekend?” I asked her.

  She opened up her phone and carefully read through the council website. “On a weekend, they have to start a little later. Ten.”

  I shook my head and smacked my hands together. “I knew it!” I exclaimed. Got him. “Last Sunday, construction started at five a.m.” I raised my eyebrows at Claire as if to say, ah huh, don’t ya get it? He cheated his way to getting this building constructed.

  But she didn’t look nearly as convinced. “Alyson, he might have stretched a law, but a few extra hours couldn’t have made that much of a difference. Even if you could get him fined for it, you wouldn’t be able to stop construction from happening. This is a multi-million-dollar project. They can handle a fine.”

  I sighed and sat down, explaining that I had wanted her help with trying to catch Troy out for days. “That’s why I came to your apartment with the magnifying glass that morning to call a truce.” But that now it was all too late. The mall was going ahead, and the surf shop was opening.

  She had the good grace to not be too offended that I had only wanted to help her in exchange for help back. Instead she asked a question I hadn’t even realized needed asking. “So, uh, Alyson, why didn’t you actually ask me for help?”

  Was she crazy? “Er, I just did?”

  She was holding back a smile. “Yes. When it’s already too late. Or almost too late.” She turned her head and sighed, sort of contentedly as the sun hit her face. Weird. It was the winter solstice. And yet, it was the first ‘warm’ day all week.

  I had to think about that one. “I…uh… I don’t know.”

  I hated that Claire was smart. Really hated it. But that was why she was my best friend, right? Right then, she seemed to know something I didn’t.

  “Could it be that part of you actually wanted this mall to be built?”

  I took it back. She was not smart. She actually was crazy.

  “Okay, Princess, you’ve lost the plot.” I brushed the sand off my shorts as I stood up. “Why on earth would I want this mall to actually get built?”

  “Because maybe you don’t actually hate Troy Emerald as much as you claim to.” She raised an eyebrow.

  Uh-oh. She knew about the date. Did everyone know about the date?

  Okay, maybe—just maybe—I hadn’t pushed the point because Troy had told me that he wouldn’t allow the surf shop to be there. And I’d started thinking, how bad could the mall be? How bad could Troy be? But he couldn’t even stick true to his word on one little thing.

  “What do you know?” I asked Claire quietly.

  She just stared up at me blankly. “Know? About what?”

  I gulped. If she didn’t know about the date, then I wasn’t going to tell her. In fact, I was going to make sure there was nothing to ever tell. “I’ll meet up with you later. There’s something I need to take care of first.”

  Ugh. He was happy to see me. This was only going to make it all more difficult. I had to toughen myself up and just get on with it. I wasn’t Claire, I wasn’t delicate, born with a silver spoon in my mouth. A princess. I was Alyson Foulkes. Surfer Girl. Tough girl. And I could handle this.

  He reached out to give me a hug, but I went stiff and pulled away. “What’s wrong, Alyson?” He sounded uneasy. He looked down at me like he hoped he was wrong, that he was only imagining my reluctance. “I see the earrings are gone today.”

  “No use wearing them around a construction site,” I said. But of course, that wasn’t it. It was far more than that. I wasn’t the kind of girl who wore earrings to impress a guy. And I didn’t want to have to be. If I was Troy Emerald’s girlfriend, then I would turn into that sort of girl, and eventually I wouldn’t even recognize myself.

  “Can we go for a walk?”

  “Do you know what this building is doing to the coastline of Eden Bay?” I asked quietly. I was genuinely interested to see if he got it.

  There was the slightest hint of guilt on his face. So maybe he did get it. But he still didn’t want to admit it. “Is it arrogant to say that it is improving it?”

  I had to bite my tongue. I knew he was only half-joking, but yes, it was incredibly arrogant for him to say that. Even as a joke. Did he really, truly believe that what he was doing was good for our town, or was that just a lie he told himself so that he could sleep at night?

  “It is obscuring it. Making it look like something that it’s not.” I stared out over the pier and realized that in another week’s time, I wouldn’t even be able to see the beach from this angle. “You don’t get it, Troy, because you didn’t grow up here. Even Claire doesn’t get it, because she didn’t move here till she was nine. But I was born here. Right here, actually. My mum didn’t even make it to the hospital. I was born right on the beach.” I stopped when I saw Troy’s horrified expression. Right. Another story for another time. “And I know what this is going to do to the town. Everything is about to change.”

  He tried to reach for my hand, but I pulled it away. He spoke anyway, sounding a little worried this time. But still hopeful. “Don’t you think that change can be a good thing, Alyson?”

  He was talking about the mall, but he was talking about me and him as well. I just shook my head slowly. “No. Some things should stay as they are. I’m sorry, Troy. I really can’t see you anymore.”

  I felt him withdraw from me.

  “I don’t get it,” he said sadly. “We had a great time on our date. Or at least, I thought we did. Was it all really that one-sided?”

  I hated making other people sad. The way Troy was looking at me kinda broke my heart a little bit. But I couldn’t date him just because he looked at me with sad eyes. That wasn’t right by anyone.

  He was scrambling a little, trying to come up with reasons, justifications, for what I was doing. At some point, it dawned on him that I must have known about the surf store.

  “Alyson. You know I did everything I could to stop that store from opening. And you know I won’t renew the lease as soon as the six months is up.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the store, Troy.” Maybe the flyer had been the final straw. But it was also the earrings. And the 5am construction. And the fact that I was lying to my best friend.

  “We are from completely different worlds…”

  “Why does that matter so much to you, Alyson?”

  I looked up at the sky. Finally, there was a large patch of pale blue that had broken through the clouds we’d had all week. The sun wasn’t that strong, but it was enough to warm my exposed shoulders, and my face, when I closed my eyes. I had this little, unofficial rule. If I was doing something and I felt the need to hide it, or lie about it to Claire, then it was probably the wrong thing.

  I hid my date with Troy from everyone. So how could dating him possibly be right?

  “I have to go, Troy. I’ve got something I need to take care of.”

  “This feels incredibly wrong,” Claire said nervously. We could see Wells through the window of his kitchen from the vantage point of his front garden bushes. He was just going about his regular daily routine. Making himself a pot of coffee, reading the paper. “It’s too voyeuristic. Not to mention illegal.”

  “Yeah, well, so is killing a woman,” I pointed out frankly. But Claire wanted to turn back and give up on the whole thing. She thought we were crossing a line, spying on a member of law enforcement. And also, she said it just seemed strangely wrong to see Wells acting like a regular human.

  He did look almost unrecognizable out of his sergeant’s uniform, dr
essed in jeans and wearing reading glasses. So much less intimidating. Though you could still make out his biceps underneath the sweater.

  “Oh, great,” Claire said as he came out front, holding a large pair of hedge shears. “Shoot, he is coming right towards us!”

  “Shh, don’t panic,” I said. I burrowed down lower and deeper into the bushes to that I couldn’t be seen.

  “Yeah, I’ll just hide here in the bush while he waves those things around!”

  I laughed a little, but partly out of nerves. She was right. If we didn’t move, we were going to be right in the line of pruning. And those things were big. And sharp.

  We watched him angrily attack a rose bush. And it wasn’t just the dead stems that were getting the chop. A few actual roses lost their heads. “Maybe he really cared about Nicole Marie,” I mused. “And he’s got no way to express it, or anyone to talk to about it.”

  “Not like you to go getting all romantic,” Claire commented. She was still looking for a way to escape without us being seen or getting our heads cut off. But I wanted to watch what he did for a little longer.

  I had an idea. “Look,” I said, pointing to the front door. “He’s left it open!”

  Claire glared at me. “Don’t talk about people leaving doors open. Too soon.”

  I thought she was joking and I started to grin at her, then realized she was dead serious. Right. Too soon. But we had to take advantage of the moment while we could.

  “He’s like the queen of hearts out there with his shears, just waiting to say ‘off with our heads’,” Claire whispered, cowering back.

  I grabbed her. “Exactly why we need to run for the door, now.”

  Huh. I glanced around Wells’s kitchen and was surprised to find it so modern and sleek, a perfect view of the jetty through the glass doors. I’d been expecting deer antlers on the wall or something. I asked Claire if she was shocked by the minimalism.