Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  Troy stood up and dusted off his pants. We had the next item on the list, a small toy bird. My backpack was starting to get very, very full. “Yes, but there is a little thing called integrity that should mean something.”

  Woah. Was he really going to talk about integrity? This was the man who cut corners and bent rules to get his multi-million-dollar mall built in a small town that didn’t want it or need it.

  “What is up with you and Wells anyway?” I asked. I was just making conversation. It was going to take us at least forty minutes to walk back into town, and the sun was starting to set. Luckily, I had a flashlight and a spare set of batteries in my trusty backpack. Troy had nothing. Well, he had a helicopter.

  But I wasn’t ready for Troy’s flustered response.

  “I—I just…nothing… We’ve met a couple of times, that’s all….”

  All right. Settle down. “I just noticed a weird vibe between the two of you, that’s all.”

  “Sure wish we had that helicopter,” he grumbled. Then he really laid into me. “Alyson, I am starving now. We have to stop for food as soon as we get to town. And, no—before you push one of those disgusting protein bars on me again, that doesn’t count.”

  “Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth even though I had no intention of actually doing so. We’d just sat out a thirty-minute penalty!

  Troy was exhausted by the time we finally got to the bottom of the hill. It was six p.m. Dinnertime by any normal standards. Time to go home, put the kettle on, and settle in for the night in front of the telly. But this was treasure hunt night. And we were only just getting started.

  “If you start to get cold, just jog,” I said, digging around in my bag for the flashlight, even though I wouldn’t need it for a little while since the town center was well lit.

  Troy had been the one to figure out the clue. We were supposed to head to the local crab farm. The item to collect was a shell, and the shells contained the next clue.

  And here was Princess, waving her shell around in the air. With Matt beside her, giving her a high-five.

  “How the heck are they already here?” I asked. I spun around and glared at Troy as though he had all the answers. Or as though this may all be his fault somehow. I did realize that I was taking out all my anger and frustration on him, somewhat unfairly, and yet that wasn’t enough for me to be able to stop. “They must have cheated!”

  I mean, they MUST have. There was no other explanation for Claire and Matt to be in the lead. We would have seen them up at the cemetery, up at the hill, in the woods at SOME point if they had gone that way. But they had skipped that leg of the hunt all together. I was fuming. I thought there was actual smoke coming from my ears.

  “Let me check the rulebook,” I said, pulling it out of my backpack. An apple fell out and hit the ground. “Oh no!” I cried and reached down to pick it up.

  I don’t know which Troy was more horrified about—that I’d picked food up off the ground and dusted it off or that I had been hiding apples from him. “You’ve had real food in there all this time and you haven’t told me!”

  I handed the apple over to him. “Here you go then,” I said with a straight face.

  He stared at it for a moment. “I am not going to eat food that has been on the ground….”

  “Ugh,” I scoffed and put it back in the bag. “You are sounding like Claire. Believe me, there will be more horrifying things to deal with tonight than food off the ground. That’s nothing.”

  I groaned in frustration when I couldn’t find any technical rules that forbade skipping ahead if you accidentally stumbled on a clue. “But this unfair!” I said, stomping my foot on the ground. It was at this point that Troy said my blood sugar might be a little low, so I ripped the apples back out of my bag and started munching on it furiously while he just stared at me in horror.

  “See? My blood sugar is just fine.” I threw the core down.

  “I can’t believe you just ate food that’s been on the ground.”

  “Wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last time.” I shot him a look. “And now that I am feeling more like myself again, I can make this decision with a clear head.”

  There was a look of utter fear on Troy’s face as I approached him. “What-what decision?”

  “Sabotage. Claire is not getting ahead in this race.”

  “I don’t want any part of this, Alyson.”

  “Well then, don’t take any part of it then,” I said as I got a pen out of my pocket and found a notebook, tearing out the page. Matt was still hanging about nearby. He was the one holding the shell. He placed it in his back pocket. I could see it sticking out. All I had to do was scribble a new clue, sneak up to Matt, and switch it.

  So the trap was laid. I just had to wait for Claire to walk into it.

  10

  Claire

  A car pulled up and out climbed poor Mayor Strang. He congratulated us on being in the lead, but he looked horrified. He dabbed his head nervously. There wasn’t really time to stop, but I felt bad for the guy. “This was not what was supposed to happen,” he said. “This was supposed to be a fun town event, and now someone is dead.”

  Yikes. Yep. I felt terrible for the position he was in—fifty years of the treasure hunt, and nothing like this had ever happened.

  “It will all be all right in the end,” I said, trying to reassure him. My own spirits were up now that Matt and I had pulled into the lead. Alyson and Troy were stumped over the next clue PLUS Troy was insisting that they stop somewhere for dinner.

  “I don’t want to have to cancel this race,” he said, looking at me in a pleading manner as though there was something I could do about it. I sighed.

  “Look, there’s not much I can do now, but if I come across anyone, I can explain that what happened at the skatepark has nothing to do with the race. That it was just unfortunate timing.”

  He nodded in gratitude. “I want to keep town morale up. That was the reason I made the prize money so high. Oh, it has all backfired now.”

  I nodded and reassured him again as he got back into his car. But something struck me for the first time. As soon as the mayor’s car had left, I turned to Matt. All this time I had been thinking that Brett’s death was just an unfortunate coincidence, just bad timing for the race, but what if it wasn’t a coincidence at all? What if the two things were connected?

  “Matt…” I started to pace as I pieced together my theory. “What if whoever killed Brett did it because he found the first clue?”

  I turned to Matt expecting some kind of compliment, some kind of ‘wow you’ve really done it! Eureka!’ moment, but he just looked confused.

  “Who would kill someone for finding a clue?”

  Wow. I had to laugh at that. I mean, really laugh. It was a loud, barreling laugh that made me actually double over.

  “Well, I can think of one person.”

  He laughed, but only a little. “Alyson is a lot of things, but she’s not a murderess. She didn’t kill Brett.”

  No. I didn’t think she did either. But Alyson Foulkes wasn’t the only person in town with a super competitive streak. People took the treasure hunts as a matter of life and death. Perhaps quite literally in this case.

  “We need to find out more about Brett’s last day alive,” I said. “Even if it takes us way off course.”

  11

  Claire

  “A bit weird that this clue is handwritten,” I said as we arrived at the carousel down by the shore. The clue had been about horses and lights, so there was nowhere else it could be. Hmmm. I knew we had a strong lead, but I still expected SOMEBODY to catch up with us. I also couldn’t find the next item on the list, which was apparently a horseshoe. Matt pointed to a nearby bar and pointed out that it was, in fact, called The Horseshoe. Aha! I decided, seeing as we had such a strong lead, that we could take a little time out to take a break and maybe even have a drink.

  I pushed my way through the doors of The Horseshoe. It wasn’t the skate
park, but it was a popular hangout for skaters, so sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking it was.

  “Boy, why do I feel like the oldest person in here?” I said, suddenly self-conscious of the nice blazer and the heels that I was wearing.

  Matt pointed out a balding old guy propped up at the bar slumped over a pint of beer. “He’s older than you.”

  “Geez, thanks. I’m not sure that guy is even still breathing.”

  I ordered a whiskey and tried to fit in. With his long hair and ripped jeans, Matt was doing a far better job than I was. And he was heading over to a group of skaters, saying a ‘hey’ to them and doing a cool guy handshake. Huh. There was definitely overlap between the skater and the surfer community in Eden Bay, although there was a bit of rivalry as well.

  “You know those guys?” I asked as I brought our drinks over to the table. Matt shrugged a little and just said that he pretty much knew all the cool people in town.

  I sighed. “I used to be cool once, you know. Doesn’t even seem like that long ago.”

  Matt grinned at me over the top of his glass. “I remember,” he said with a cheeky look in his eyes.

  “Ha-ha.”

  “So, can you see any actual horseshoes in here?” I asked, looking around.

  Matt shrugged and put his beer down while I subtly checked the time. I didn’t want to spend too long socializing. Sure, we were in the lead, but the race would slip away if we weren’t careful. “You know I’m not so young and cool myself anymore,” Matt said thoughtfully. “I mean, I’m practically a full-time parent.”

  “Must be nice to have a night off?” I asked him.

  I thought Matt was going to insist that actually he missed J, but instead he agreed with me. “Yeah, it’s nice to be able to just let my hair down for a change.”

  Matt’s mates were all shooting pool. I stood up and decided to take the opportunity to speak to them. I cleared my throat and tried to stand in a cool and relaxed posture, which wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “So, none of you guys are taking part in the treasure hunt?” I asked as one of the guys broke, sending balls scattering everywhere.

  They just stared at me, dead eyes. No, I suppose they were all too cool for that.

  “So, Brett wasn’t in a team then?” I asked. “He wasn’t part of the treasure hunt?”

  This one girl who’d been hanging back and watching us all spoke up. She had pink hair and about ten piercings in each ear. And she seemed to be the only one who actually cared about Brett. “Oh no, Brett was taking part all right.”

  I leaned in closer. “He was? Who was his teammate?”

  She had a sour look on her face as she used the chalk on the tip of her pool cue. “Was supposed to be me. But I suppose he found someone better.”

  I pulled Matt aside. “Maybe this chick here was so jealous at being pushed aside in favor of someone else that she freaked out and killed Brett.”

  Matt laughed at me. “I don’t think anyone is going to kill anyone for a spot on a treasure hunt team.”

  ‘This chick’ butted in and told me her name was Stacey. She was glaring at me. I didn’t know how much she had heard, but my face flushed. “You know that Brett was the reigning champ, right?”

  No. I did not know that.

  This time, I pulled Matt aside so that no one could hear us.

  “How could you not tell me this?” I asked him. I mean, I’d been living in Sydney at the time. I had no idea who’d won the treasure hunt last year or any of the eight years before. But Matt never left Eden Bay. He should have known.

  He looked slightly amused as he held his hands up in response. “Hey, don’t blame me. I was in Bali at the time. Family holiday.”

  “Oh.” I was a little stunned. “I didn’t think you’d ever been overseas.”

  “Gee, thanks.” He shook his head and tried not to look offended. I knew I had offended him, though. Matt’s zodiac sign was Cancer. They tended to be an oversensitive bunch.

  Maybe there was a lot about Matt Foulkes that I didn’t know.

  I took a deep breath and thought about this new information. So, Brett had won the treasure hunt the year before. And he had an enemy. Stacy. I glanced over my shoulder at her and she caught my eye. She had definitely gone to the top of my suspect list.

  Brett would have been a good shot to win this year as well. He was probably expected to win.

  So this changed everything.

  “Hang on,” I said, asking Matt to show me the horseshoe clue again. He handed it to me and I read it carefully, this time focusing more on the handwriting than the actual words. I shook my head.

  “Your sister,” I said, pushing it back at him. “That is Alyson’s handwriting. She gave you a fake clue.”

  I would have been angry, furious, except that we now had a lead that she didn’t have.

  And she was the one who had given it to us.

  Classic Alyson.

  12

  Alyson

  There was a spring in my step as I tossed the real clue into the garbage can. “Even if they circle back, they won’t find it now.” I dusted my hands off and winked at Troy. Just to show him that it was all in good fun, you know? What was the point of playing if you couldn’t have fun?

  Well, the point was to win. But I might as well have fun while I did it.

  Troy was still torn between pretending he was playing no part and wanting to tell me off. I was almost daring him to say something to me, though, because I had something I could throw right back in his face if he wanted to play the whole ‘moral superiority’ game. Troy Emerald was getting a name for himself in Eden Bay, all right! To be honest, it was mostly a good name, because a lot of people were really excited about the mall he was building. I thought about that as we walked away from the crab farm and toward the site of the next clue. Surely people were only excited about the mall because it was a novelty. We didn’t have many chain stores in Eden Bay, and most of our clothing stores were boutique and fairly pricey. But people would get sick of sales and neon lights soon enough and want their views of the beach back.

  But by then, it would be too late.

  Troy was looking over the next clue. “This village needs more people,” he said. I could tell he was still biting his tongue over the whole ‘sabotage’ situation. He liked being the one in charge of solving clues, though. I’d figured it out. Must have been good for his ego.

  “There’s a Village Cinema in the next town over,” I stated absent-mindedly.

  “I doubt we are supposed to walk seven hours to get the next clue, Alyson.”

  I shrugged. Who knew? That year’s race wasn’t following the usual rules. Whoever wrote the clues that year clearly wanted us to get our fair share of exercise. “I should write the clues,” I grumbled. “I would be amazing at it.”

  There were a few other teams milling around nearby as we approached the center of town again. I kept a curious eye on where they were all headed. None of them seemed like they were heading to Rushcutter’s Bay, where the cinema was, but they also looked just as confused about the clue as we were.

  “I’ve got it!” I said with a gasp.

  Troy tried his best not to look disappointed. “Oh?”

  I stared up at him. “I can’t believe you didn’t get this one, Troy. It was a clue made just for you.”

  Village People. Construction crew. The mall was the spot of the next clue. I high-fived Troy when we were the first team there. He was still a little embarrassed that he hadn’t figured it out himself.

  But the construction site was huge. Not only did the actual mall take up a full block, it was three stories high. “The clue won’t be inside,” Troy said, pulling me back when I tried to enter it through the bottom door. He almost seemed angry at me for trying to enter. I’d never seen him actually be angry at me before. Not when I’d tried to stop construction on his project, not when I’d organized a protest, not when I’d gone on a date with him and then told him we could never see each ot
her again. Troy had every reason in the past to get cross with me and he never had before. Until now.

  “Fine,” I said, pulling my arm back. He was right, it probably wasn’t inside, but what did he not want me to see in there? “You take a walk around the east side of the building and I’ll take the west side.” Made tactical sense to split up. But also, I just needed a breather from the guy.

  I could see three other teams not too far off, but they were walking slowly and seemed confused. No sight of the Swedes. Maybe they had given up and gone back to their cozy hotel rooms. I kept an eye out for the clue bucket and hoped I’d spot it before the other teams figured out the Village People reference.

  I was so happy that we were in the lead that I was practically skipping. “YMCA” was in my head and I was whistling along when a car pulled up. Out stepped a very nervous-looking man with a sweaty brow.

  “Oh hi!” I said, waving to Mayor Strang. I stopped for just a moment. I’d always thought the mayor and I were friends. I mean, not like the sort of friends who met for coffee or texted each other the goss, but friendly enough. I was always telling him my ideas for how the town could be improved and what he should be doing differently and better. Which I was pretty sure he loved and appreciated! But I weirdly saw a grimace on his face as I approached him. Wow. What was that all about?

  It was especially weird when he quickly tried to fix his face into a smile when I got right up to him. A nervous smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. I was starting to get nervous myself. I checked around that no one else was listening. My stomach was starting to sink.

  He looked little distraught as he told me the awful news

  “I’m sorry, Alyson, but as much as I have tried to keep this race going, there’s just no way that I can, due to what has transpired down at the skatepark.”

  I crossed my arms. “Is this because of Sergeant Wells? Because I can deal with him if you want.” I didn’t know how I could ‘deal’ with him exactly, but I knew that Wells was not going to ruin our race. “All he can do is keep people away from the crime scene. He has no jurisdiction over the race.” Only the Mayor had that.