Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  J did seem to perk up. She sat up on the bed on her knees, legs tucked into her and nodded. “I am so excited!”

  Then there was another clap of thunder, and she hid under the covers.

  Eventually, we drifted off and I woke up to clear blue skies and heaved a giant sigh of relief. As a celebration, I made J’s favorite white chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and settled in for a lazy Monday. I didn’t have to work, J had no school as it was a public holiday, and we were free to do whatever we wanted. As a treat, I even added a scoop of vanilla ice cream to both our plates, even though I was supposed to be in training and I’d had more than one ‘cheat meal’ that week. Oh well, just this once wouldn’t hurt. Or rather, just these five times wouldn’t hurt.

  It wasn’t until after ten that I checked my phone properly and saw that I had seven missed calls from Troy. At first, I put my phone down and ignored it. But then I picked it up again. What could he possibly be ringing me that many times for?

  “Have you seen the beach this morning?” he asked gravely.

  “No? Why?” I asked quietly.

  He took a moment or two to answer. “Something has happened, Alyson. I think you better come down here and take a look. And you’d better brace yourself.”

  I gulped and looked over at J, who was about to pass out into a pancake coma. “Is it safe for me to bring J down there?”

  Troy’s voice was heavy. “It’s not J I’m concerned about, Alyson. It’s you.”

  There had been a crazy high tide the night before during the storm. Everything I owned on the beach—my business, my boards—had been swept out to sea.

  “But I don’t understand,” I said, looking around. At that stage, I was still in shock. Like, the denial stage, as though it hadn’t really happened. “The water never comes up this high. This is a safe place to keep things.”

  He placed a hand on my shoulder. “But it did come up this far, Alyson. All your boards are gone.”

  I shook my head and still tried to flat out deny this was really happening. “They’re not gone for good. They are out there somewhere in the ocean.” I pointed to the water frantically. “They are probably bobbing around out there. All I have to do is go out…fish them out… Bring them back.” I actually started to run toward the sea like I could just dive right in and rescue them.

  But Troy caught my arm and pulled me back. “You can’t go out there now while there are rips in the water.” There were flags all over the beach and lifeguards patrolling the place, warning the tourists not to go into the water until they had given it the all-clear. Lives were in danger. I didn’t care about that. My boards were in danger. That was six months’ worth of work. That was everything I owned that meant anything.

  I was starting to feel dizzy and so I sat down on the sand.

  Troy gave J some coins to go and buy an ice cream cone. I didn’t even bother to point out that she had just eaten ice cream. I couldn’t think about anything right then.

  Troy just sat by me silently for a while until I calmed down a little. He waited for the right moment to speak.

  “If you really want to, I can get the boat out and we can go looking…”

  I looked over at him. “You have a boat?” I don’t know why I was surprised. Of course he had a boat. He was a millionaire. Well, maybe not an actual millionaire, not in liquid funds anyway, but he definitely had enough money to own a boat.

  I hung my head and looked at the sand. “It’s no good,” I said softly. My denial had slowly faded as I’d sat there and pondered the reality of the situation. “They are lost.” They would probably wash up on another beach someplace far away. Some island. Maybe another country. Maybe someone in New Zealand was going to get very lucky. They were going to get a $500 surfboard for free.

  I stared up at the sky. Blue. Ha. And I’d been so sure I had it all figured out. That I was saving money. Doing the right thing. That everyone who had their items for sale in an actual shop was a dunce, that they were being taken for fools. Yeah, well, who was the fool now?

  “We’ll get through this, Alyson. I promise you that.”

  I didn’t know how I was going to get through it when I literally didn’t have enough money to pay for rent. I never cried, but tears started to well in my eyes and Troy’s kind words only made it worse.

  I started to sob in front of him, which was so embarrassing. It wasn’t just the money. It was the fact that my art was washed out to sea…all those wasted hours…and how stupid I felt about the whole thing.

  “I should have taken you up on your offer six months ago to put my shop inside the mall,” I said, wiping my tears away. There was no way any flood or high tide was going to take out a shop in the second floor of a brand-new million-dollar shopping mall.

  “I said I would make this okay, Alyson. And I will,” Troy promised me.

  14

  Claire

  I glanced up at the ceiling, still cracked, unsure of whether it was safe to be sitting there or not. But I had to risk it. What was the chance of there being yet ANOTHER freak storm?

  “The winds have been terrible,” Byron said, staring into her crystal ball. “There have been some terrible troubles in Eden Bay lately.”

  Yeah. She wasn’t kidding there. The past week had been a nightmare, and it wasn’t just the weather that was to blame. Alyson had just lost her entire business.

  Byron was concentrating and for the first time since I had known her, she seemed to be uncomfortable…almost in pain. She pinched the top of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and concentrated again.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Just a little headache, dear. I will be fine.”

  I nodded and sat back.

  I didn’t want to push, but she had been silent for so long and for all I knew, another freak storm was about to blow in and disrupt us again.

  “Why did you send me that text, Byron? About how I was making a terrible mistake if I married Matt?”

  She looked up at me and blinked a few times. “I only said it was a mistake. Nothing more specific than that.” She paused for a moment, then slowly looked up at the ceiling. “I had a terrible premonition that something tragic would happen to the next couple who got married in that shop.” She paused and squinted as though she was actually looking at something physical up there. I actually looked up myself in case there was something there. Like, more plaster about to come down and crush us.

  “Something tragic sure did happen to the next couple who got married there,” I said softly.

  Byron nodded. “But that wasn’t you, Claire. You may have been the next couple to get married there, but those other two slipped in before you.”

  I frowned, still slightly confused, so I asked her for clarification.

  She blinked at me. “Sometimes my lines of communication get a little tangled. I’m not as young as I once was, dear. These things tend to happen more and more at my age.”

  I nodded and heaved a huge sigh of relief. Although, there was another weird feeling there as well. I was relieved…but also…disappointed? No, that couldn’t be it. Could it?

  I asked her one last thing before it was time for me to stand up and leave. “So I’m not making a mistake marrying Matt?”

  “Only if you think you are, Claire.”

  15

  Claire

  I was up early, at 6:30, when I slipped the CD into the stereo and made a brew of extra strong coffee. I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

  Some lyrics about blonde hair came blasting out at me when track two started to spin. “She’s got that cool blonde hair, she’s in the long blonde hair club, the kind they all want to join,” came blaring over the speakers as I looked at my own hair in the mirror. The song was called Long Blonde Hair Club. “All the girls want to look like her.” Well, I supposed it was true. Though my hair was not as long as the lady he was singing about on this track. But maybe he didn’t even write it himself—most of those manufactured pop
acts didn’t, right?

  The Joey Hedge album was incredibly cheesy, but it was catchy. I leaned back and wondered what it would be like to record my own album one day. I mean, I did have an incredible voice. You should see the crowds at karaoke whenever I got up. Of course, then I would I get the crazy fans hovering about. Stalking me. I mean, I already had crazy fans if Lilly was any example. I still thought that having an in-store book signing was a good idea, but at the same time, I might start attracting real life stalkers.

  Oh well, the shop was still a total mess anyway. Leaving it in the hands of Bianca had done nothing to help that matter. She’d been in charge of the shop most days while I was busy, and you’d think that she would take some of that time to tidy up just a little. But, no. She was always worried that one of her nails was going to chip at the corner if she so much as read a book, let alone lift one. That was why she was always playing audiobooks over the speakers. She claimed that it actually helped sales because customers asked what she was listening to and then she pointed them to the physical book. If we actually stocked it, that was. And half the time, they went home and actually bought the audio version because Bianca had been advertising it for free. So, zero profits for us.

  Plus, she was still living with me while she was ‘getting back on her feet.’ She had lost her apartment in Sydney and was in Eden Bay full-time for a while. Her bedroom was right next to mine, and I knew that she liked to sleep in. She enjoyed her beauty sleep. But that didn’t make me turn my music down. In fact, I turned up the final track on the Joey Hedge album even louder and danced around to it while I got dressed. I could hear a creaking of the floorboards in the room next door that told me she had been woken up. Oh well. It wasn’t like she was paying rent or anything, so she didn’t get a say in how I ran my household. It was weird, though. I barely saw her even though she was technically my housemate. She stayed out nights and then stumbled into the shop the following morning with strong coffee and bags under her eyes.

  Sometimes I got the feeling she didn’t actually like living with me.

  The Joey Hedge album came to an end, and I was left with silence in my room. I’d listened to the whole thing and still got no further clues as to why he might be obsessed with Lorraine—or even why she would be obsessed with him, for that matter. I was stumped. I suppose it made sense, going forward, to follow Lorraine again, to figure out where she fit into all of this. After all, she had a motive. If the wedding had gone ahead, then she never would have been able to go to that in store album signing.

  Alyson was convinced the bridesmaids had something to do with it. But what if it wasn’t the bridesmaids at all?

  Alyson had been wrong plenty of times before. She just conveniently forgot all of them. But I conveniently remembered all of them.

  I had met Charlie Lewis. He could have had people in every section of his life who wanted him dead—not just the people in the wedding party.

  The silence gave me space to come up with a new path.

  There were many paths besides the one we had been on, so I thought it was time to think about this whole problem a little more laterally. Just because the crime had taken place in Eden Bay didn’t mean the culprit was here, or even the key clue. So, without overthinking it, I grabbed a small suitcase out of my closet and began to pack it with my most expensive clothes as a plan formed in my head.

  The shower was running in the bathroom down the hallway. I left Bianca a note on the table.

  Just as I was about to head out the door, my phone rang. I really hoped that it wasn’t Alyson. I was planning on doing the whole ‘ask for forgiveness, not permission’ thing with her and only tell her where I was when I got to my location. Because she would not let me go. At least not without her. I was wondering whether I should even answer it and what lie I should tell when I did.

  But I didn’t have to worry about that. I had to worry about something else.

  It was Chris. My ex-boyfriend. Back in Sydney after he’d visited me a month earlier to tell me that he was still in love with me and we should get back together.

  I took a deep breath. Maybe I still shouldn’t answer it. But it was early in the morning for him to be ringing. It wasn’t even 8am. Maybe something serious had happened.

  “Claire. Is it true?”

  He had seen the wedding announcement in one of the Sydney papers. I groaned. I hadn’t wanted to put it in there—just the local Eden Bay Journal—but my mum had insisted on putting an announcement in one of the statewide papers as well. She thought it was important that people from all parts of my life—aka my past—saw it as well.

  And seen it they had.

  “You never told me.”

  “We weren’t engaged when you were here.”

  “You are making a mistake.”

  I hung up the phone. I didn’t need to hear that then. Not that word. Not again. I would make my own decisions about who I was and wasn’t going to marry. Whether other people thought it was a ‘mistake’ or not didn’t matter to me.

  It had been a while since I’d been anywhere near Newcastle, which was about an hour and a half north of Sydney. There were beaches there, but it didn’t have the same small-town quaintness of Eden Bay and the surf was nowhere near as good. Also, it had more of a weird ‘suburban’ vibe that wasn’t really my thing. Somewhere between a small town and a city. It was split into two distinctive parts as far as retail districts went and whereas you would think that the CBD would be the center of the activity, it was actually quite dead there, so I kept driving through until I got closer to the beach where there was a strip of shops and galleries and restaurants.

  I had an address that I had gotten online. Lilly and Charlie had lived near Newcastle, about twenty minutes out of town, and it was here that Charlie and his artwork had been most well known and most widely shown.

  I was already pulling into the parking strip before I told Alyson where I was. A call from her came in over the bluetooth speakers and I figured I’d better just bite the bullet. Bianca was minding the shop and for all I knew, Alyson would drop in there to try and find me. I wanted Alyson to hear it from me before Bianca told her. So as soon as I stopped the car, I answered the call.

  “I’m here to investigate other suspects. He had a whole long life before he came to Eden Bay, you know.” Sometimes I thought that Alyson didn’t think that anything existed outside of Eden Bay.

  Of course, she had to object to my plan. I think it was a reflex as much as anything. I wasn’t sure I’d ever told Alyson Foulkes anything in my life that she hadn’t immediately argued with.

  “But Charlie was killed here!”

  Of course she was going to say that. She always thought Eden Bay was the center of the universe. “But he is from Newcastle. In fact, he has probably been many other places in his life besides Eden Bay.”

  “The clues are here, though. If you start looking elsewhere, you may as well go to every single place on the planet that Charlie has ever been to.”

  She had a good point. Yes. Okay. But I still thought we were keeping our search too narrow. Quite literally. We still didn’t know where Lilly had been during the days she’d been gone and if she HAD left Eden Bay and not just hidden out there, that I wanted to find out. And I just had a feeling that Newcastle was the place to get these answers.

  “Charlie was an artist,” I said, stepping out of the car as I looked at the sign in front of me. Newcastle Arts Gallery. “So I am going to speak to some people from his world. I will fill you in later, okay? You can survive without me for a couple of days.”

  I still heard Alyson huffing and puffing on the other end of the line.

  “What is it?” I asked. She was probably sorry that she had missed out on the road trip and all the fun. But it wouldn’t be any use for both of us to be away from Eden Bay—we still needed eyes there as well.

  “I just don’t really want to hear about art at the moment.”

  Oh. Right. “How is that all going?” I asked, then c
ringed a little. I mean, how could it be going, really? She’d lost everything she’d worked for over the last six months. I knew she thought I just wanted to gloat, to tell her I told you so, that she should have had a real shop front all this time.

  But I didn’t want to say any of that. What had happened to her was horrible, and I would never ever wish that on her. The fact that I was right was beside the point. But there was really nothing I could say to make it any better, either.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said, then muffled a good-bye before she hung up the phone.

  Okay, cool. Good-bye then.

  I had to shake it off and focus on why I was there before I entered the gallery. My story was going to be that I was a rich film producer from Sydney and I was there to potentially purchase some art. My fake backstory was a little inspired by my life before Eden Bay, so it would be easy to pull it off.

  I had brought along my most expensive sunglasses, and they weren’t something that I typically wore around Eden Bay. In fact, none of my outfit was. These were all my designer threads from my movie producer days. Head to toe in black and white. Freshly pressed. A look I hadn’t worn a lot the past year. But I wanted to give the impression of someone who quietly had a lot of money, but wasn’t flash about it.

  The gallery was as silent as a library when I walked into it. Huh. Strange. The art world had never been my world. I had just assumed that there would be security guards and attendants around to stop you from stealing the art right off the walls. Wasn’t that how it worked? Weren’t people always planning heists and stuff to steal famous art?

  Then I saw the price tags on some of the stuff. Oh. $60. $80. Maybe this wasn’t the exclusive, high-end art joint that I thought it was. Or was all art this cheap? I felt entirely out of my element as I glanced around like a fish out of water, trying to figure out how to breathe. I suddenly felt very overdressed.