Bianca still looked like she was about to faint. “Is this a very common experience around here?” she asked. She sounded almost accusing, as though this was my fault. For luring her into a town where terrible things like this happened. I didn’t know what she was getting so riled up for. There were sharks in Sydney as well. There were sharks everywhere in Australia.
I shook my head. “There has never been a shark attack here in the entire time I’ve lived and grown up in Eden Bay.” I sounded defensive. “The waters here are relatively safe.”
Relatively.
Bianca crossed her arms. “Well, I am telling you right now, I am never going into the ocean here. Mark my words. Mark this day on the calendar, in fact.”
I didn’t think anyone would be going into the ocean any time soon. They wouldn’t be allowed to, for one thing. Last time, the beach had been closed for a day and that had only been a FAKE shark sighting. What was going to happen now that there had been an actual shark attack? Eden Bay’s economy only survived because of the beach and the tourists who flocked here in the warmer months to swim and surf.
“I wonder what will happen now,” I murmured, still scrolling through the news reports. I was wondering, of course, how it was going to affect business at the bookstore. Of course we had some local customers, but we relied on the tourist trade as much as any other Eden Bay business.
“They are going to hunt and kill the shark,” Bianca said. “There are going to be nets set up. A cull.”
I nodded firmly. Sounded like a good plan to me. “Well, I agree that’s what needs to happen,” I said briskly and put my phone away. We were both on the same page there. I hated sharks. I certainly didn’t want them in the water I swam and occasionally surfed in, and I didn’t want any of the people I cared about to be in danger. Alyson spent hours of her day in the surf.
“Well, I have a bit of happy news,” I said, pulling one of my books out of the box again. I showed Bianca the cover, trying not to look too proud of myself. Too smug. She might be a bit intimidated to know that she was in the presence of a published author. And I didn’t want her to think I was anyone special, or anything better than she was.
“Oh. You wrote a book. How clever,” she said and blinked a few times. “Did you get that one printed yourself?” She tilted her head to the side and furrowed her brow as she studied the cover.
I felt suddenly self-conscious of the self-designed cover and the fact that I had done it all myself. And hurried to explain to her what had happened, that I had received an offer from a publishing house but had decided to go my own way and that it made better business sense this way. She just smiled at me a little patronizingly and nodded. “Oh yes, of course, of course. I get it.”
And how many books have you written? I thought.
I unpacked the rest of my books in silence and started to find a place on the shelf for them while Bianca perched herself up on the stool behind the counter and drank her latte.
“Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?” she asked, putting her disposable cup down on the counter.
I just blinked at her. “Er, I am selling books,” I said. “I’m not sure what you thought you’d signed up for when you agreed to co-run a bookstore, but that is kind of what we do around here.” I was speaking in jest, but I noticed that she truly looked horrified by what I was doing.
She walked over to where I was. “Displaying these in the front of the shop so that people know they are for sale?” Did she not know how a retail shop worked? Actually, come to think of it, to look at her perfectly manicured nails and general appearance, it was definitely possible she’d never done any real work in her life.
She clicked her tongue. “Um, don’t you think it’s a little bit tacky to sell your own book in your own bookshop?” She was grimacing as she looked down on me. “A little bit desperate.”
I felt my face go hot. That was the last thing I had expected her to say. I thought she would congratulate me, tell me that I had done an amazing job, be super proud that her cousin had written a novel…and hurry to help me display it in the window. Instead, I was getting the opposite of any of those reactions.
Well, I was not going to be told what to do. “Bianca, I can sell whatever books I want in here.” I was pretty much done being polite with her at that point.
She crossed her arms. “I thought this was a partnership.”
“Yeah, and what kind of partner would not want what is best for me?”
She cringed a little and gave a dismissive glance toward the books. “Believe me, Claire, this is what’s best for you. You just can’t see that yet. I am preventing you from experiencing humiliation.”
Oh, I begged to differ. I had never been more humiliated than I was in that moment.
I was hurt. Outraged.
The door opened, and I shoved the book I was holding back into the box.
In a way, Alyson turning up at that exact moment was a good thing. It broke the tension and after she announced her news, both Bianca and I completely, temporarily, forgot what we were arguing about.
She didn’t even say hello to Bianca, just made a beeline for me, telling me that an absolute travesty of justice was taking place on the beach and that the future of our town and wildlife was at stake. Nothing too dramatic, then.
“I guess you heard about the shark attack then?” I asked her.
She threw her head back and actually laughed.
“It wasn’t a shark attack, Claire. It was a murder. And I can prove it.”
Oh, boy.
Here we go again.
3
Alyson
Right. So Claire and Bianca hadn’t exactly been ‘on board’ with my theory that Meg Brian had died at the hands of a human, not an animal. Claire had just gently pushed me out of the shop and praised my ‘wild imagination,’ and Bianca had told me that I was simple-minded and delusional. But that was okay. I was used to starting on the back foot. As the underdog. I had time to convince them. Just needed to build my case. Seemed kind of tense in the shop anyway. Dunno what all that was about.
The town ‘CBD’ was packed but only because the beach was entirely blocked off and no one was allowed to go down there, even on the sand, until the authorities told us otherwise. At least it was good business for the cafes and restaurants. Well, temporarily at least, until everyone decided to leave town because they could no longer swim or surf.
I wandered along the street trying to catch the local vibe. Everyone was talking. “Can you believe it? That thing should be hunted and killed immediately. All of them should, in fact.” And this was coming from a local. The tourists were even more brutal. They wanted to see the dead bodies of the animals and wanted proof that the ocean was clear of all predators before they would even dip their toes in again. Already, people were panicking and jumping to conclusions. And no amount of common sense could pursue them otherwise. Can you believe it was me, Alyson Foulkes, who was using common sense, while everyone else in the town was acting crazy? Me neither.
But I didn’t even know how they were going to isolate poor innocent Sharkey. That was what I had started to call him. It was going to take a strong compassionate campaign to swing opinion and get enough support to get the cull called off. We needed to make people realize that this shark was not our enemy. He was a beautiful creature that we needed to learn to cohabitate with. In fact, all of the creatures in the ocean were. Didn’t people realize that it would be impossible to target only one shark with the nets without killing other animals as well?
Do you know who I was starting to remind myself of a little? The Crocodile Hunter. Steve Irwin. I told this to Matt proudly as I sat up on a stool at Captain Eightball’s and ordered a caramel milkshake. “You know he was killed by a dangerous marine animal, right?”
I huffed a little. That stingray had only been protecting himself. And Steve would never have held a grudge. The point was, even the ‘scary’ animals needed protecting. They needed someone to be on their side. Someone needed to
keep the legacy of the Crocodile Hunter alive. Maybe I could be called The Shark Hunter. No, hang on, that sounded terrible. The Shark Saver. Instead of khaki, I would wear tie-dyed cutoff tops and denim shorts.
“Do you know anything about this Meg Brian?” I asked Matt as he handed me my milkshake and I swirled the straw around in it. Not the healthiest snack. But well, with no surfing competitions coming up and the beach closed for who knew how long, I had no reason to stick to a strict diet.
He shrugged. “I think she was on the local news or something. Like a reporter. But no one under the age of fifty watches that now.”
Huh. She hadn’t looked familiar to me, but I never watched the local news. And I was under thirty, let alone fifty. So maybe Matt had a point there. I got my phone out and searched for her. I had to narrow the search down to “Meg Brian Eden Bay news reporter” to find her. “Hmm, she’s not a reporter, exactly. She read the local weather.”
Matt shrugged. “Maybe she was out there doing a weather report and got a little too close to the weather, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, if she was standing on the shore doing a weather report, a shark hardly grew legs and crawled out onto land to attack her, did it?” There was definitely something suspicious about this whole thing. Where had Meg been when she actually died? She’d been washed up all alone. Weather reporters don’t go out to sea on their own to file weather reports. They have entire crews with them.
Matt was not so convinced that there was any massive conspiracy going on. “I think you are going to have to give this one up, Alyson.”
I shook my head. No way.
4
Claire
I was still ninety-five percent sure that a shark had killed Meg. But I had started out at one hundred percent, so even a drop of five percent was something.
Sure. Alyson sounded a little bonkers. Her theory was that someone had killed Meg Brian and set it up to look like a shark attack. And even more controversially, she was trying to convince the people of Eden Bay that killing the sharks would actually make us less safe, not more. But I was actually secretly a little bit impressed with Alyson’s campaign. After a couple of days, she was actually starting to get some traction. My own certainty had budged. Others had as well.
I sat nervously, all alone in the booth, and twiddled my thumbs. I didn’t know why I was feeling so much pressure. Matt and I had literally hung out at Captain Eightball’s hundreds of times over the fifteen years we had known each other. But this time just felt different. It was official.
Matt was running a little late, even though this was the place he worked and he could have met me as soon as his shift had finished. But he’d told me he wanted to duck home and change before our date so that he wouldn’t smell of fries and spilled milkshakes. I didn’t think either of those things sounded so bad. And I would have rather had the extra time with him. Still, it was sweet that he was trying to make such a good impression on me. I was trying to make a good impression on him as well.
He walked in wearing really nice fitted pants and a dress shirt with buttons and everything. I was shocked. Now, it wasn’t that he didn’t look good. He did. He looked amazing. It was just… Well, it was like he had come up with an idea of how I would ‘want’ him to look and he had gone with that, instead of just dressing like himself. But I supposed I had also altered my look for him. Rather than my usual tailored clothes, I was wearing a sundress and I’d even put a wave in my hair instead of keeping it poker-straight like I usually did.
“You look great,” he said, and I returned the compliment. We were both a little stiff with each other, which was weird, but once we had ordered and had a couple of sips of our beers, we both started to relax a little. “Kinda strange being waited on hand and foot here,” Matt said, and I just laughed and told him to enjoy while he could.
I had assumed that during our date, we would avoid the topic of Alyson seeing as she was not exactly thrilled about the two of us dating. But everyone was talking about the darn shark and Alyson had put herself front and center of the debate.
“So, what do you think?” I asked Matt. It had been a subject of strong controversy, probably the most controversial topic there’d ever been in Eden Bay. More controversial than the new mall. Everyone had an opinion on the shark cull, and everyone you spoke to in the street ranted and raved about it even if you were just asking how their day was to be polite. I wouldn’t say it was an even fifty split, though. The vast majority were in favor of the shark cull. Traction or not, Alyson was never going to convince the majority that leaving the guilty shark to live was an actual option.
Matt chewed on his burger and seemed thoughtful. “I dunno. Alyson had some good statistics on it last night. Apparently killing sharks after a shark attack does nothing to actually make beaches any safer. Even as a preemptive measure, shark culls don’t do much, but after the fact, they can’t do anything.” He told me that it could actual destroy the environmental infrastructure under the ocean if the nets picked up too much wildlife and destroyed it.
I listened, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking that he was being a little softheaded. I mean, he had been taken in by all this hippy nonsense. Did he bother to look up the statistics on the other side? Did he bother to talk to the people in the town who were horrified and terrified that this had happened?
“Well, there is one very strong statistic. A woman is dead.” And I was ninety-five percent sure that the shark had killed her.
“I just think that we should take a step back and think of the bigger environmental factors. And what about the ethical ones?”
I bit my tongue. What good could it do to argue back? It hadn’t done any good arguing back with Bianca. All it had done was create a wedge between us and in the end, she had gotten her way. I had argued that she was being selfish and that I should sell my book in the shop. But her critiques of my book had thoroughly shamed me and in the end, I started to wonder if maybe she was right and I shouldn’t embarrass myself by trying to sell it.
Matt and I were silent for a while. It felt like we were on two separate planets. How could we date if we couldn’t see eye to eye on fundamental subjects?
“Sooo…” Matt said slowly, trying to break the awkward silence. We never had awkward silences. Not until we tried to go on actual dates. I couldn’t help wondering if we were pushing something that didn’t need to be pushed? I felt uncomfortable in the sundress that I had borrowed from Alyson—without telling her what it was for—and kept pulling it down when it rode up. Alyson was a couple of inches taller than I was.
In walked a camera crew, stumbling into the restaurant, the sound guy dropping the boom mic as the four of them stepped in and the reporter shook herself off and tried to find somewhere to film.
“Ugh, what are they doing here?”
I sounded like I was annoyed by the presence of the cameras, but I was actually a little relieved. It finally gave us something to talk about at least. It was the local news crew, cheap cameras—I could spot them from my time as a movie producer—and a reporter who didn’t even look like she had been in a professional hair and makeup chair. Still, they were trying their best.
They were filming ‘person on the street’ vox pops and had figured that Captain Eightball’s was the place to be to find these regular locals with their regular opinions. Trying to get a consensus about the debate. See which side most people fell on. Matt jumped up and happily gave his opinion straight into the camera. “…and I think we need to get both sides of the argument. Someone needs to stand up for the shark in this incident. He can’t stand up for himself.” Great. He had been fully brainwashed by Alyson. And now he was going public with his views. If anything, I thought he was on the knee-jerk side, being taken in by emotions and soft facts. Someone was dead. Dead. Shouldn’t we be getting a look at the bigger picture in all this?
Matt wandered back to the table and the crew asked if I wanted to give my opinion. I just shook my head and said no thanks.
So maybe it was just easier to scapegoat the shark. That way we could all sleep a lot easier at night. Like telling fairy tales to children. As long as we didn’t go into the water, we would be safe.
5
Alyson
I had my “Save Sharkey” t-shirt on and was proudly sticking out my chest as I marched through the doors of the Eden Bay Journal. “Hello? This is the newspaper, right? Well, I have some important news for you.”
A blonde woman with slightly drab hair pulled back into a clip, over-sized glasses, and a crumpled white shirt stood up and greeted me. She said her name was Rachael and there was barely any warmth in her voice. She just peered at me through her lenses with tired eyes, almost accusing, like I had better not be wasting her time but she had already decided that I was. I tried to stay cheery. Maybe she was just in such a flat mood because she’d been spending all week reporting on unhappy things like shark attacks and angry shopkeepers who were losing money while the beach was closed. But finally, here I was with the good news…the great news, in fact.
The shark did not need to die.
I had plenty of evidence to back up my point as well. I happily pulled out the articles that I had printed off the internet to show her.
“See? These studies show that sharks are not actually aggressive toward humans. They are just curious. And actual shark attacks are rare. So this shark cull that is underway will not only damage the ecosystem of our local beach, it won’t even make anyone safer.”
Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 65