Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  Michael gave me a little side glance. “It must have been hard for you to put him behind bars then.”

  Why did people keep putting it like that? Like I was personally responsible? Anyway, I knew exactly what he was getting at.

  “It was hard, actually. That was why I needed to be completely sure that he was guilty. And I WAS sure.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows. “And yet you’re traveling a fair way to double-check that fact.”

  The plan had always been for Michael to drop me off at the prison and then for him to keep driving to his appointment in the city. I’d already told him that I would find my own way back and that he didn’t have to come by on his way back to get me. But as we pulled into the parking lot, I gulped as I saw the barbed wire and the security gates. Michael hesitated before starting the car again.

  “Maybe I should come in with you. Men’s prisons can be pretty tough places.”

  I didn’t like the insinuation that I couldn’t handle it. Or that a men’s prison was any worse than a women’s. Or that I was in any way fragile or in need of his protection. I didn’t need his protection. But I also kind of did want someone to come in with me.

  But still, I shook my head and said no, I would be fine.

  Michael still hadn’t started the car. “Hey, I’m kinda interested myself now… Kinda feel like I’m in a spy novel.” He shrugged. “I’d like to come in. See how this plays out.”

  I knew that he was only saying that to make it seem like this was his decision and not just him feeling bad for me. I highly doubted that he was much of a spy novel reader—or much of a reader at all. He looked like your typical surfer dude, even with the shaved head. I stopped putting up a fight. “Well, okay then. But this is my investigation. So you’ll have to sit back and observe.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  <<< INSERT SECTION BREAK ??? >>>

  “Claire. It is so good to see you.”

  Well, I was not expecting that reaction from Mr. Carbonetti. And certainly not those words.

  “Don’t you blame me?” I asked frankly as he sat across from me. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, and his stubble had gone completely gray. His once dark hair was following suit.

  Mr. Carbonetti looked at me with tired eyes and shook his head. “It was the police who did it, Claire. And the judge and jury.” Okay, finally, someone was making sense. At last. “And I know you would never mean any malice towards me, Claire. You and I always had a special relationship.”

  I shifted a little uncomfortably. I could feel Michael shooting me a look when that was said. There had never been anything untoward between me and Mr. Carbonetti. It was purely a student/teacher relationship.

  “So you’ve heard what happened?” I asked. “In Eden Bay. Another murder of a surfer.”

  He nodded. “Of course. News travels around here pretty fast.”

  I nodded. I was sure there were ways.

  “Wel,l you were here all this time,” I stated, as though that was just a fact. I’d been through the security check-in—this wasn’t a place you could just duck in and out of.

  He gulped a little and didn’t seem at all sure of the answer. “Well, um… That’s a little difficult to answer.” He cleared his throat.

  What the… Well now, this was not what I was expecting to hear.

  I leaned forward. “What? Mr. Carbonetti? Were you in the prison on the day of the killing or not?”

  Mr. Carbonetti stared down at his hands. “Last week, my mother died.”

  “Oh. I am sorry to hear that.” In spite of everything that he had done, I felt like that was the right thing to say. Losing a parent is horrible no matter what.

  “And I was allowed permission to leave. For the day. But— But I was under complete supervision the entire time.”

  I interrupted him. “What day?”

  “Thursday.”

  I stared over at Michael.

  The day Dan Millen had been killed.

  And the funeral for Mr. Carbonetti’s mom had taken place in Eden Bay.

  Michael was full of adrenaline by the time we got back in the car and on the road. I wasn’t even sure he knew which way he was was going. He was just driving. “Can you believe this?” he asked, hitting the steering wheel. “So, this means the guy did do it!”

  Well, I wasn’t entirely sure we should jump to that conclusion. “It’s just very interesting timing, that’s all,” I said, staying cool. Michael was an amateur. He didn’t know that you had to stay completely cool until you had all the facts.

  But yes. The timing was uncanny. No one could argue that it was actually an insane coincidence, and my mind was working overtime to make sense of it. All I wanted to do was to call Alyson and tell her the strange news. Did she already know?

  “You’ve gone awfully quiet,” Michael commented, and some of the excitement had dropped out of his voice by that stage as well.

  “It’s just that Mr. Carbonetti was right,” I said as we made the turn off into the city and I realized that I was going to Sydney with Michael whether I intended or wanted to. “He would have been under guard all day. There is no way that he escaped long enough to come to the beach, kill a man, and then return, without anyone even notice he was gone. What, did he say he was ducking out for a bathroom break and no one even questioned it?”

  That made Michael go quiet as well. “Hey, I suppose you’re right,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Darn. So where does that leave your investigation? Back at square one?”

  I supposed so. Or close to it, at least.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as we drove right through the city and over the harbor bridge onto the North Shore. A familiar spot to me. The place I used to live. The place I used to work. We were near the movie studios and offices I had once called my home away from home.

  I got an eerie feeling in my stomach as Michael turned up a familiar street and stopped in front of a large glass-fronted office. I had been there once before when I’d had to meet a director about a script. Not the offices of the production company that I had worked for, but a different one.

  “I thought you were a surfer…” I said, a little uncertainly as we climbed out of the car.

  Michael shrugged casually. “Surfing is just something I do in my spare time. In my main time, I make movies,” he said with a grin.

  “Er, you know I used to work in film production too?” I asked him. It was almost uncanny. I stepped out of the car and followed him in through the glass doors and inside the lobby.

  “You’re kidding,” he said, and he sounded genuinely shocked. “So what are you doing running a bookshop in a small town?”

  “Well, that is a long story—” I said as we pushed through the doors of the elevator and were quickly interrupted by someone Michael knew who was surprised to see him there. He laughed and told the woman that he’d had a change of plans.

  The doors opened on the fifth floor and we stepped out into an office that overlooked a botanical garden. The whole room was full of sunlight.

  “This is my office while I am in Sydney. I didn’t expect to be back here quite so quickly, but I suppose I’d better make the best of a bad situation.”

  Geez. I was impressed. I sat down on the other side of his desk while he fetched us some drinks.

  “So,” he said as he handed me a glass of whiskey—my favorite as well. I hadn’t even told him. It was like he read my mind. “You were going to tell me a long story.”

  I told him all about how I had left film production behind when my grandma had passed away to come back and run her old shop in Eden Bay. “It’s not like books aren’t my life. They are. I’ve even written one of my own. A murder mystery. Based on a true story.”

  “And so you are happy in Eden Bay.”

  “I really am,” I said with a contented smile. Though there was still a hint—just a hint—of nostalgia for the old life that I still felt I was missing. Maybe Michael picked up on it.

&nb
sp; “You know we do a lot of book to film adaptions,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s what we do best, actually.” He stared across the desk at me. “Let me read your book.”

  7

  A call from an unknown number came through the next morning when I woke up in my hotel room. All paid for by Michael. I didn’t want him to think that I was taking advantage of his money and hospitality. I just wasn’t sure that it was safe for me to go back to Eden Bay.

  I didn’t recognize the number and so I didn’t pick it up.

  Michael had arranged to meet me in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. It was a glorious morning, but I was mostly just grateful to be in an eatery that hadn’t completely sold out of food. There was a buffet on offer with every kind of pastry, fruit, cereal, and muffin I could devour. We took a seat outside on the terrace with plates piled high and hot espressos beside us.

  “The book was amazing,” Michael said. “Full of intrigue. An incredible ending. It would make such a great movie, Claire.”

  I took another slice of rockmelon and glanced over to my side, not giving too much away. The harbor was beautiful that morning with the soft white foam bubbling on the blue as boats glided over it. A stunning view. Though still not as nice as the views in Eden Bay, I decided.

  I didn’t want to get too excited about it. After all, I knew that books were optioned for movie and TV adaptions all the time and most of them never actually made it to screen.

  But Michael was not going to give up no matter how hard I made it for him to impress me. “Claire, you’d be perfect to work in this with me. Not only are you the author of the book, but you’ve also had experience in film production. Who better to bring your book to life than yourself?”

  You know that saying about how when things seem too good to be true, they usually are? Well, this was all just sounding too good. Far too perfect. So I just gulped down my espresso and wiped my hands without giving him an answer. It was time to get back to reality.

  “I wanted to speak to the guard that accompanied Mr. Carbonetti to his mother’s funeral that day. But apparently, she is in New Zealand. So…”

  “She?” Michael asked, sounding surprised as he interrupted me.

  “Yes,” I said wryly as I grabbed my purse and finished off the last of my breakfast mimosa. “Women can survive in men’s prisons, you know. Contrary to prior belief. So I am going to have to go back to Eden Bay and speak to the funeral director directly. See what he has to say.”

  “You really didn’t have to drive me all the way back,” I said. “I could have taken the bus.”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t put that punishment on my worst enemy.” Michael stopped the car near the pavement in the one free space we could find after circling the block several times. “Besides, I had to come back to Eden Bay eventually.”

  Yeah, but he hadn’t been planning on coming back for a few more days. I did feel a little guilty about it.

  “You want me to come in with you?” he asked me.

  “I think I need to do this one on my own,” I said before thanking him again as I shut the passenger door and walked down the block towards the funeral home. And I felt weirdly like I was walking away from a date. And I also felt weirdly sad, as though I was walking away from something I already missed. I glanced back over my shoulder, but he was already pulling away.

  I walked into the funeral parlor and introduced myself by my full name to the short man standing behind the front desk. It was so quiet in there that the silence choked me.

  Glenn was a man of fifty years of so with a mostly bald head apart from a few stray strands of hair clinging on for dear life.

  “Oh, you’ve got some kind of nerve being in here, don’t you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Well. Apparently, this lovely gentleman recognized me from the newspaper. So you could just go and thank Alyson Foulkes for that. Further, he thought I was showing up at the funeral of the man everyone now thought I’d killed—because that was what was getting ready to happen in this parlor.

  “I had nothing to do with Dan Millen’s death,” I said in a low growl. Which, to be honest, kind of did not make me sound that innocent and trustworthy. But I was just about at the end of my rope. I’d had enough of people accusing me and distrusting me. I mean, for crying out loud, I had been trying to do a good deed! I never wanted to go on to that deadly ship in the first place. But I was so worried about Alyson’s surfboard that I was actually willing to risk my health and life for her anyway. And this was how she repaid me! By going to the press and telling them that I was a murderer. I swore on my own life that when this whole thing was over, I would never do a good deed for Alyson Foulkes ever again.

  That was a promise.

  “I am not here to cause any trouble or any offense to the family,” I said. To tell you the truth, I was very surprised that the local funeral parlor was even taking care of the funeral considering that Dan was a Queenslander.

  “He had many fond memories of the Eden Bay area. It was where he won his first surfing competition. He always wanted to have his ashes scattered down at the beach here.”

  “Oh. Right.” What an untimely way to get exactly what he wanted, though. The poor guy.

  “What are you here for then?” Glenn asked bitterly and I could smell a very strange whiff of something. I wondered if it had something to do with a dead body and began to feel very nauseous.

  I cleared my throat and tried to focus. “I am here to ask about a funeral that took place last Thursday.”

  He peered up at me in surprise. “That was the day that Dan Millen was killed.”

  “Yes, I know. But this funeral took place just before that. In the afternoon.”

  He looked down. “It was for Mrs. Carbonetti. We had to keep it very hush-hush that her son was even attending. He just snuck in the back for a little while…wearing a bit of a disguise.”

  My ears pricked up a that. “A disguise?” I asked. “So, did you even recognize him? Can you be sure that it was actually even him?”

  Glenn was not the sort of man who liked to be questioned, that much was clear. He’d had his back up as soon as I’d walked into the funeral parlor and now he was offended because he thought I was accusing him of lying. I wasn’t, though. I was just trying to clarify. Things were getting stranger and stranger here.

  “It was him. He was in cuffs. What more do you want me to say?”

  “Yes, but did you actually see his face?” That was the important part.

  Glenn didn’t give me a straight answer to that one.

  I asked another one. “And the press didn’t know he was in town?”

  “How would I know? How is that any of my business?”

  There were footsteps and suddenly, we had company. I spun around. It was the sister of Dan Millen walking into the home. I recognized her from the paper.

  And she recognized me.

  I felt like I was going to be sick. “I gotta go!” I said to Glenn and ran out of there, searching for fresh air and a garbage can to be sick on.

  I was doubled over. Nothing would come up even though my stomach was churning. I didn’t know how Glenn worked in a place like that. The sister was glaring at me through the window. I felt like I was on display. I just wanted a hole to open up and swallow me. I wanted to be anywhere but Eden Bay right then.

  A car pulled up beside me just in time.

  A familiar face rolled down the widow and looked at me in sympathy. “You look a bit ill. Hop on in.”

  Michael to the rescue again.

  My stomach was still a little queasy, but I actually thought that part of the problem was that I hadn’t eaten that day since that very early breakfast, and it was by then three in the afternoon. There had been nothing in my stomach to even throw up.

  “We should fix that,” Michael said. “Er, the having something in your stomach part. Not the throwing up part.”

  The problem was that Ede
n Bay was facing a serious food shortage, so it wasn’t like we could just walk into a restaurant or cafe. “There won’t be any room at any of the inns,” I pointed out.

  But Michael convinced me that he had a way of getting into restaurants without bookings. So when we walked into The VRI, he told me to hang back and he would talk to the hostess and secure us a table. The only reason I had even agreed to go there was because I knew that Matt always had that day off.

  I wasn’t sure what he flashed them—or gave them—but they were able to find us a table. And one with an ocean view as well. Well, an ocean view that was still obscured by a docked ship. But still, impressive. I filled Michael in on some details of day to day life in Eden Bay, including Alyson’s upcoming nuptials. He asked me how I was still intending to be maid of honor when we weren’t even talking to each other.

  “It’s just so hard to know with Alyson WHAT will happen,” I said as we handed back our menus once we had ordered. “For all I know, she’ll change her mind about the wedding entirely. Or she’ll elope. Or she’ll decide she’s marrying herself and be through with the groom all together.”

  Michael laughed a bit. “She sounds like an interesting friend to have.”

  I shrugged a little and cut into my steak, pushing the prawns on the top to the side of the plate. I wasn’t much in the mood for seafood even though it had sounded appealing on the menu. Surf and Turf. Funny how reality doesn’t always match up to expectations, isn’t it?

  I didn’t dare ask if there had been any more talk about my book being turned into a film. It had been less than a day. But I knew that he had been on the phone with the people higher up. And these things tended to move fast.

  “So,” Michael said. “Do you have any more mysteries inside you, Claire Elizabeth Richardson?”

  “Oh, I have lots more stories I could tell you,” I said to him as I briefly outlined all the things that Alyson and I had witnessed over the course of that year.