An oil mining company.
Calvin was the killer.
He came around beside me and slammed the door shut. Ripped the phone from my hands.
“I didn’t want to have to hurt you, Alyson. I thought you were okay, you know? if a little dumb…”
Oh, I was sick of being referred to as dumb, or naive. True, I hadn’t seen through Calvin’s act, but that only made me trusting. Not stupid.
He slowly reached into a drawer in the hallway and pulled out a knife. “Now you know I know how to make this look like an accident, Alyson.”
“You don’t even have the guts to do it,” I said, trying to call his bluff. I really didn’t know whether he did or not. He’d already killed two people. What did one more matter to a psychopath?
Troy was right. Profits were more important than anything else to some people. And he didn’t even know that he was playing with the big guns here. What was Emerald Industries compared to a multi-national oil company?
But I decided, in a split-second, to put all the skills I had learned to good use. The knife was drawing nearer and nearer.
“I know that this wasn’t your decision, Calvin. You’re just a cog in a machine… You’re just caught up in something bigger than you.”
I thought, for a moment, that I was getting through to him. I could see on his face, the regret, the guilt. The misery.
But money would fix it all, and money would take all the guilt and conflict away. I had lost him to the dark side before I’d ever met him.
But he still looked a bit sorry. Just a touch. Like there was something still human in there as he raised the knife.
And then there was a buzzing at the door.
I had never been so pleased to see Troy Emerald. What was that saying about better the devil you know? Not even a devil at all, really. Maybe, in spite of his flaws, he was one of the good guys.
But as the police arrived and cuffed Calvin, I knew that Calvin was not.
It was time for me to return to the beach. To revel in my triumph.
One by one, the “Kill Sharkey” group put their signs down, and there was no longer a dividing line. Just one gathering of people in the middle, staring out in the ancient waves, ready to go back in the water again.
Epilogue
Alyson
Two weeks later
I stepped out of the office of the Eden Bay Journal and took a deep breath. Had I done the right thing?
I almost went back in.
But my interview was final. I wouldn’t change my mind.
I had someone waiting for me. Somehow, he already knew.
Dylan Fox might not be my cup of tea, but politics was not for me. And it was for him. Dylan Fox listened to people. And no one was purely good or purely bad. Dylan Fox had more good in him than bad in the end.
He shook my hand and nodded at me. “We’ll be sorry to see you drop out of the race.”
Down at the beach while I was waxing my boards a little later, a coy Troy arrived, his hands shoved into his pockets. He’d also heard. “Well, it was all just a scheme to out me anyway, wasn’t it?”
I glanced up at him. “In a way. Maybe that was how it started out, but I learned my lesson.” I pointed toward my surfboards. “This is what I am meant to do with my life. I should stop getting ideas above my station.”
“Don’t ever stop dreaming, kiddo.”
His words were still ringing in my head when I got the phone call an hour later. A surf brand company had seen my designs featured in my newspaper cover story. They wanted me to come and work for them. To go mass market. No more selling surfboards on the sand. I’d have a salary, and an office.
I stared out into the ocean.
Maybe I had outgrown Eden Bay.
Maybe this was growing up.
If only I had never blown out those candles.
Milkshake Murder
Hang Ten Cozy Mystery, Book 9
1
Claire
I had time for one last sip of frosty milkshake. Chocolate, of course. Plenty of extra ice cream. Okay, maybe two sips. But then Matt appeared from the kitchen of Captain Eightball’s and I pushed aside my glass as he sheepishly took a bow and spun around to show me his new uniform. It was the one managers wore. Button-up shirt instead of a tee. Black pants, no shorts, even though it was a surfer cafe. “Dun dun dun!” I called out, grinning like the proud girlfriend I was.
It was the ceremonial badge pinning. I did a little drumroll on the counter while Matt did the honors. “Ouch!” he said with a laugh as the pin pricked his skin underneath his shirt. I quickly finished off the rest of my shake. All the chocolate had pooled in the bottom, which was my favorite bit. Yum. Amazing.
“So, does this mean as many free milkshakes as we like?” I asked him with a wink. He’d always given me and my best friend Alyson milkshakes on the house with one condition: that the manager didn’t see him do it too many times. But now that Matt was in charge, there would be no one to tell him no.
“Of course. Anything for my girl,” he said and leaned over to give me a kiss. Wow. In public. I glanced around and blushed a little, but Matt didn’t seem to care. He was still reveling in his new uniform and badge.
“Better take a snap for social media,” he said, kinda sheepishly, but I knew that he wanted all his online friends to see it. He pulled out his phone and asked if I wanted to be in it. Hmm. Posing for a social media pic was not my usual thing. Don’t get me wrong, I like attention, but those things always seemed a little tacky.
I was so proud of him, though. So, what the hey. I gave him a kiss on the cheek while we posed for the photo and then he uploaded it to his account. Well, that meant that our relationship was now officially public, I supposed. I peered over his shoulder and tried to view the privacy settings, but I couldn’t quite see.
“You really deserve this, Matt,” I said to him now that we had a quiet second.
He shrugged. “No big deal.”
But it was a big deal. Matt had been working at Captain Eightball’s since we were both teenagers. Mostly just part-time, as he’d always had a passion for surfing and valued his free time—which was completely fine and understandable—but this promotion told me that Matt was really maturing. But he still shrugged it off. Said that there was no one else to step up now that the old manager had left and he figured he’d help out. Too humble.
I was still wondering about who could—and would—view the photo. “So, was that public?” I asked with a little laugh to show that I wasn’t too bothered by it…though I was a little bit bothered.
Matt laughed and said only his friends would see it. But we had quite a few mutual friends. And Matt had a lot of friends.
Oh well. I was proud of Matt and I was proud to be with him, and I didn’t care who knew it!
Anyway, my hair looked good in the photo, and that was all that really mattered.
As soon as Matt put his phone away, he was called over to sort out a mini ‘emergency’ with a couple of new staff members. One of the new things he was in charge of was rostering the rest of the front of house staff and supervising all of them during the shift, and that meant stepping in and fixing things when they went wrong. Like when they broke a glass next to the ice box. All the ice had to be replaced, lest a customer wind up with shards of glass in their cup of soda.
“I’m so sorry!” Sarah, a young eighteen-year old girl, said, looking worried. She’d only been working there a week and she looked scared, like Matt might fire her there on the spot.
“All good. I’ll take care of it,” he said reassuringly and told her to grab a broom while he went and got fresh new ice. Meanwhile, there were customers lining up who wanted cold drinks on that ninety-degree day.
It was a mini crisis, and I felt like I was suddenly underfoot as customers banged into me and staff ran around like headless chooks. Matt told me he needed to take care of it, but that if I stuck around, he would be finished in a little bit.
“I’d bette
r get out of your way. You’re a busy man now. I’ll be back for the celebratory drinks later.”
I kissed him on the cheek. It was nice having a boyfriend. Different. Something I hadn’t had in a couple of years, and now I felt like I was fully ’settling in’ in Eden Bay. Something I never thought I would do. Like quicksand, it had a way of dragging you under.
It was a Sunday, but I was trying out opening the bookstore for a few hours between one and four to see if there was the customer base for it. I’d had a few requests to open so I was going to see if these people would actually put their money where their mouth was. I already had one unexpected customer waiting for me as I wandered up the side walk.
She was perched on a skateboard, ready to come in and get a book. Very unusual.
“Woah, what are you doing here?” I asked Alyson.
She stuck her tongue out and jumped off her skateboard. “Don’t act so surprised. I do know how to read.”
“Technically,” I said, fetching my keys. “I just never see you do it.”
She sighed heavily like it was a giant drag to be there and told me that her upcoming university entrance exam was looming. And that she needed to purchase a William Shakespeare essays collection. Yeah, definitely not light reading there. Not by Alyson’s standards. It had to be the current year’s edition as well, she told me gloomily, adding that it came in at just over one thousand pages.
“You don’t seem too certain this is still what you want,” I said to her as I pushed the door open. Alyson had always made a living just getting by, painting surfboards and occasionally making money at surfing. Mostly it was her unique colorful designs that paid the rent, though. But at the start of the year, she had decided she wanted to take things to the next level and study business at the university so she could expand her business. Maria, her tutor, had organized a mock exam for Alyson to take so she would be prepared for the real thing. English subjects were a compulsory part of the first-year curriculum and that was what Alyson had always struggled with the most.
She picked up her skateboard and made her way into the shop, almost knocking over a display of books as she went. “I’m just wondering if I need university now. There might be a better and quicker way. You know, a shortcut. Skip all the studying stuff and just cut straight to the big time.”
Sounded like another one of her crazy schemes to me.
Oh well, if she needed the book, then I would get it for her. We had it in stock for the local high school kids who were also trying to pass English class, so I found it and put it aside. She turned on the espresso machine and started making herself one while the cats curled their tails around her ankles and purred up at her, looking for attention.
“So, are you coming to Captain Eightball’s for the celebration later?” I asked her
“What celebration?” Alyson’s voice was flat.
Oh my gosh. Matt had told me but not his sister. This was going to cause grave offense. “Oh, um, check your phone,” I said, burying my head in a stack of boxes cluttering up one of the aisles. I suddenly became very interested in the content—er, fishing books, not really the sort of thing that usually grabbed my interest—while Alyson flipped through Matt’s social media accounts.
Just as I suspected, Alyson was close to livid when I poked my head back up to gingerly check on her. “Well, if he thinks he’s too good to tell his own sister about his promotion, then I’m too good to go to the party!”
“Alyson, I am sure he just forgot. He has been super busy.”
I handed her the book and she took it with a ‘humpft’ and stuck her nose up in the air as she stomped out the door, picked up her board in a hurry, and skated away far too hastily. She almost immediately fell off her skateboard sideways onto the sidewalk.
“Oh my goodness!” I called out, watching the whole scene from the window. She picked her board back up and hobbled back into the shop.
She was groaning, and her knee was bleeding. “Have you got a bandage?” she asked, her board in one hand—one wheel now lost—and her other hand hovering above her scraped knee. I told her to sit before she hurt herself even more. This was a good day. I didn’t want anyone ending up in the hospital. Or worse.
The gash was pretty deep, and I wondered if she actually needed a couple of stitches. She assured me she was just fine and that I was being dramatic. But there was a reasonable amount of blood. I only had a basic first aid kit in the shop, which I had never needed to use before.
I just stared up at her as I applied the iodine. “You’re the one who stormed out of here because you were offended over basically nothing and then immediately had an accident.”
She pouted. But then a sort of serene, philosophical look overtook her face. “You know, accidents really make you think about what is important. How little time we have on this Earth. And life is too short not to chase your dreams. What are we doing with our lives, otherwise?”
Yes, very insightful.
“Do you think you can walk?” I asked. I was less worried about the gash and more concerned about the fact that she had fallen awkwardly on her knee and may have twisted it.
She jumped up just to show me how good her knee was, but she got a little over confident and yelped. She was able to hobble a bit, so clearly nothing was broken.
“You know, I’m starting to think that opening Sundays is a bust,” I said with a sigh. “You are the only customer I’ve had, and you didn’t even pay for the book.”
Alyson stuck her tongue out. “What is the point of your best friend owning a bookstore if you can’t get free books?” Then we heard a noise—the door opening—and spun around. “Hey, look here’s someone now!”
It was someone alright.
It was Matt.
He looked red-eyed, frantic, and sweaty. Like he had run all the way over to the bookstore from Captain Eightball’s. I’d only seen him an hour earlier, but he looked like a different person than the one I’d kissed good-bye. Alyson was so concerned about how terrible he looked that she forgot to be extremely mad and offended at him. She forgot her sore knee as well and hurried over to him.
“Matt! What’s happened?”
He was struggling to breathe, let alone talk. Alyson and I just stared at each other in concern while we waited for him to gather himself. I didn’t know how much to push. What had happened to the happy guy that I’d left behind just an hour ago?
I noticed that the badge was no longer pinned to his chest.
“Matt?” I asked gently, placing a hand on his arm. “You’re worrying us. Please, tell us what’s wrong.”
He gently shrugged my hand off his arm like he didn’t deserve to have anyone touch on him.
“It’s…it’s a disaster.” He looked at me and then Alyson. “Guys, a customer just drank a milkshake in Captain Eightballs…and he dropped dead as soon as he walked outside.”
A giant bomb had been dropped. A wind blew into the shop and the door slammed shut. Alyson shivered.
I suddenly understood why he was no longer wearing the badge. In fact, when I took a closer look at his shirt, I could see a tear, like it had been ripped right out of the fabric.
“Matt,” I whispered. “Did you serve him the milkshake?”
Matt nodded.
“You made it for him?”
He grimaced and nodded again.
“So, they’re blaming you.”
He took a deep breath and looked first at Alyson and then me with the same pleading puppy dog eyes.
“I need your help.”
2
Alyson
The ocean was always the place I came to relax, but that day, it was going to take more than just staring into the waves to calm me down. I was stormy, even if the waves were placid and the skies were blue. Luckily, there weren’t too many people around—still scared off by the recent shark controversy—so I had space to pace the sand without looking too much like a madwoman. Nearby were the surfboards I designed and painted, all lined up on display. I’d up
ped the prices. Hey. I was in high demand. A surf brand company wanted to buy my designs, and they wanted to buy me. That looming decision still rang in my head.
Too much clutter. I needed to go for a surf.
When I was on the waves, nothing else mattered, like being in another dimension. For some people, surfing felt like you were on top of the world—for me, it felt like I was away from it. On my own planet. A planet where things were peaceful. There were no problems, dilemmas, and my brother hadn’t been accused of murdering someone with a milkshake.
But by the time I made it back to shore, I knew that life on planet Eden Bay was all too real. So were my problems. And it was up to me to fix it all. No one else was going to step up to the plate and fix mine and my family’s problems for me. Not even Claire. She was close to being family, but technically, she wasn’t.
Not yet.
A woman was browsing my designs. She was in her late forties, perhaps, with her hair up in a scarf and a long dress that skirted the sand. She said she’d just purchased a new blank surfboard, and someone had told her that I was the person to go to for a unique design. She was willing to pay my rates.
Flattering. But I just couldn’t, so I told her that I wasn’t taking any new clients.
For various reasons, that was true. But I also just couldn’t deal with talking to anyone right then.
Still too much clutter.
Milkshake mayhem, that was what this was.
This was by far the worst thing that had ever happened to Eden Bay. Shark sightings we could deal with, the occasional murder was another thing—you know, not the best but we sprung back—but losing Captain Eightball’s was a fate that we would never, ever recover from.
Not to mention our precious, irreplaceable milkshakes.
Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 73