Surfboards and Suspects Read online

  Surfboards and Suspects

  Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery, Book 12

  Stacey Alabaster

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Part I

  Claire

  1

  104 degrees. The sun was glaring down on me. Oh no, not my delicate skin. I could feel the burn as I ducked into the ice cream shop and immediately got an elbow in the ribcage. “Hey!” I cried out.

  I could still feel the heat coming through my shoes even though I was indoors. Summer had hit the Bay, and that meant the town was in full-on “Tourist Season” mode. But I was having trouble feeling particularly hospitable as I made my way to the front of the line for my strawberry gelato.

  “Sorry, miss, all sold out,” the owner said as I backed away, being shoved by angry faces who were still hoping their favorite flavor was available. What had gotten into the people of this town? And why were we suddenly overrun by what appeared to be vacuous zombies? I never remembered tourist season being so vicious in the past.

  It wasn’t any better when I got to my bookshop, Fabled Books, and tried to get in through the door. Usually a full shop would have delighted me, but on this day, it only irritated me as I couldn’t even get to my front counter and everyone was manhandling the latest hardcovers with their greasy mitts.

  Surely there are other shops in town, I thought as I tried to squeeze past them. “Sorry. No food or drink in the shop,” I said, taking an autobiography out of the hands of a man who had a spinach and feta Danish in the other. He glowered at me.

  There was a particular grouping of people right near the counter, under one very specific—and popular—vent that was blowing out cold air.

  Right. Not all the shops in town had air conditioning, and those that did announced it on signs out front in neon colors. A huge selling point on a 104-degree day

  Bianca, my cousin and co-owner, waltzed in from the backroom, wearing a bikini top and actually carrying a new box of books. I noticed how bare the shelves were. We’d been almost cleaned out of reading material. Wow. I couldn’t believe I was witnessing her doing some real life, actual work. Maybe the heat had really gone to her head.

  Suddenly, there was a whirring sound, then a fizzle, then a gasp as we all realized what had happened—the air conditioner had cut out. One woman actually shrieked. Another looked at me with amusement and asked if I had paid the electric bill. “Well, the lights still work, don’t they?”

  “Fix it!”

  All I could think was, maybe if there weren’t so many of you crammed in here stealing all the air, this never would have happened.

  Bianca climbed up on a chair to take a look, but it was no use. The motor had blown. It would need the parts replaced.

  “What is going on in this town in this day!” I cried out in frustration as people hurried to leave the shop when the heat started to creep back in. They were all headed for cooler pastures. Captain Eightball’s had air conditioning year-round. “Everywhere I go, it is wall-to-wall people! And angry ones at that!”

  “Don’t you know?” Bianca asked, still standing on the chair, as she looked over her shoulder at me. “Really?”

  I shook my head. “Put me out of my suspense then, please.”

  “There is a cruise ship docked down on the beach,” she said, nodding out the window where I could see a glimmer of the ocean water but no docked ship.

  Apparently, there had been some sort of emergency. “A gas leak,” Bianca said. “Everyone had to immediately get off.” So they had pulled into Eden Bay for the evening and all 3000 guests evacuated. No wonder the town was so packed. Eden Bay was already at full capacity in the middle of tourist season. We couldn’t fit another 3000 people.

  “Well, where are they all going to stay?” I asked Bianca, seeing as she seemed to have all the answers on this topic. “All the motels and hotels have been booked out for weeks!”

  She shrugged and climbed down off the chair. “Maybe they will just camp out at the beach. Or maybe they will still sleep on the cruise ship. Who cares? It really isn’t my problem.”

  Maybe not. But it was her—our—problem that we were almost sold out of books and had no air conditioning in the shop. I looked out the window and saw my best friend skating her way down the street towards me.

  “Whoa, it’s even hotter in here than it is outdoors,” Alyson said with her skateboard tucked under her arm.

  She was right. Because the shop was small and brick, it held the heat like an oven. Made it a great place to be during the short cooler months, but not in the dead of summer.

  I sighed. “Time to close up. Time to hit the beach.”

  At least the surf was gentle and welcoming that afternoon and just being next to the ocean made me feel ten degrees cooler. We managed to squeeze past the throng of people so we were close enough to get a little of the sea spray. I closed my eyes and felt it wet and cold against my skin for just a moment before the sun’s rays evaporated it and opened my eyes again. So much had happened out on that ocean since I’d been back in Eden Bay. And so much had happened out of the ocean.

  It had been a long year. An incredible year, don’t get me wrong, just…a long one. Murder mysteries. An engagement. A breakup. And then another engagement. The first one was mine, to Alyson’s brother Matt. The second one was Alyson’s herself, to property developer Troy Emerald. She was wearing the giant diamond he had given her on her left hand, though she always took it off to surf.

  “That thing is so ugly,” Alyson said as she scowled at the cruise ship.

  To be fair, it was taking up a lot of room. It obscured the view of the ocean and was painted in loud, almost tacky shades of blue and red on the side. “So Bianca was right. This thing is actually stranded here.”

  Bianca had been wrong about anyone sleeping on the ship, though. Or on the beach for that matter, which was apparently illegal. Until the gas leak had been taken care of, no one was allowed on board the boat. There were signs up warning people to stay off deck and a number to call the captain if any of the stranded passengers had any urgent queries.

  We both watched as people pushed each other out of the way for a sunbathing spot, a place to put their beach towels. There was barely any room on the sand or in the water. “These are the times when you need to take a vacation AWAY from the place that everyone else comes to for vacation,” I commented wryly.

  But Alyson just grinned and shook her head. “Nah. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” She glanced over at me. “And neither would you.”

  She was right.

  Since the tourist side of the beach was so full, Alyson had had to move her surfboard painting business to what we called “The Dark Side of the Beach”—at least temporarily. This was the unguarded, rocky area where technically no one was supposed to swim or surf, although of course people broke the rules all the time.

  “Look at these beauties,” she said, speaking about her surfboards as though they were her babies. And maybe they were. She was certainly taking care of them like they were. A few months earlier, all her boards had been washed out to seas and she’d had to start her business again from scratch. I wondered if she was thinking about having any human babies any time soon. After all, her wedding was only two weeks away and things were chang
ing. For the both of us.

  We locked up her boards and headed home.

  There was something about an empty cruise ship at night that was eerie. It gave me the shivers and I wanted to get away from it. There was not a single light on. Like a skeleton with no body and soul to guide it.

  “Good night, Alyson,” I said.

  “Good night, Princess.”

  Usually Eden Bay was the sweetest place on earth. Well, kinda. At least, the locals were usually as sweet as pie to each other anyway. But the town wasn’t meant for this many people and after the third day of the ship being stranded, people were starting to turn on each other. And on the newcomers.

  “This is basically post-apocalyptic,” I whispered to Bianca as I hurried down the street, holding my bags tight as people bared their teeth at me hungrily. Restaurants were out of food, there were signs up saying ‘closed for personal reasons,’ and you couldn’t take a step down the sidewalk without getting elbowed by someone who just wanted food and a place to sleep.

  “I don’t know what they are all waiting around for,” Bianca, who was non-sympathetic and more pragmatic, said. “They should just go back to Sydney and chill out there. Or back to their homes. Forget about this stupid cruise.”

  That was a little rich coming from Bianca—someone who had no home of her own to go to. But more to the point, it was an expensive cruise and it was going a lot further than Sydney. It was going all the way to the South Pacific including several mystery islands, and tickets were over two thousand dollars. No one wanted to lose their money nor their chance to visit the tropical islands north of Austria. Tickets had been hard to get and the people who were docked didn’t want to give them up, even though a few had had offers from locals to buy the tickets off them for cheap. I thought they were brave souls willing to risk the gas leak. I mean, even if they told everyone it had been fixed, I would never really trust it, you know?

  But there was a massive strain on the town and so an emergency town meeting had been called.

  Alyson was antsy as we walked into the town hall that afternoon. She had taken an even harsher stand than Bianca and was more than happy to take to the front mic with her controversial opinion. I told her to just sit down and listen before she jumped to any conclusions—and before she mouthed off. “We should hear what the mayor has to say first.”

  Alyson rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t know what he is talking about. I should have been mayor.”

  “Just listen.”

  “I think we should just send them all back,” she said with a huff when she heard what she didn’t want to hear from the mayor’s speech. He wanted us to all be more welcoming to the newcomers.

  “Alyson!” I said, a little shocked. “What do you mean? Back onto the contaminated boat?”

  She had her arms crossed over her chest and a grumpy look on her face that made her seem four decades older than she was. “Well, how do we know they are not contaminating the rest of us by being out here…”

  “Alyson, it was a gas leak, not radiation poisoning,” I said. I mean, really. It was probably a good thing that Alyson was leaving to start at the university in the autumn, because it really seemed like she could do with some basic education.

  Her solution was to just shove them all back on the boat, start the engine, and let them all set sail to their untimely deaths.

  “Okay, okay,” she grumbled. “That was a little extreme. But they can’t stay here.”

  A tall, surfer guy with long hair wearing a black shirt with The VRI logo walked in tried to find a spare seat. Alyson glanced at me. “Should I wave him over?”

  I did feel a little sad to see Matt, like I had lost something.

  Matt smiled sheepishly and came and sat bedside us, next to Alyson. As the manager of The VRI, he was one of the people under the most stress with all the new people in town. He was being eaten and drunk right out of house and home. But unlike Alyson, he did not want to lock them all onto a ship and kill them. He stood up and gave his opinion—that we should all volunteer to open our homes, that those who had spare beds and sofas should offer them up, if that felt like the right thing for each individual to do.

  I nodded. It felt right to me. I already had Bianca sleeping on my sofa, but I had room for one more on the pullout bed.

  “Oh no way, I am not putting my name down,” Alyson said as I started to walk over to the sign-up sheet. “I don’t even know these people. Who knows what any one of them is capable of. One of them could have started the gas leak on purpose.”

  “Come on, Alyson. It’s not like you to be so distrustful,” I said. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d let a stranger from an ill-fated boat trip stay in her living room. Not that that incident had ended particularly well. But we’d caught the killer in the end.

  She finally sighed and put her name down. And I was proud of her.

  After the meeting was finished, we all came face to face with our little houseguests. Mine was an old man called Roger who walked with cane and wore a beret, and who didn’t seem very impressed to be staying with me. He didn’t reach out to shake my hand, and he asked me if he would have to climb any stairs to get to my third-floor apartment.

  “No, no, there’s an elevator,” I reassure him.

  “Bah, I hate elevators!”

  “Looks like you two will have a great time,” Alyson said with a little giggle. She was more than happy with her own pick. Dan Millen was a young, friendly guy who just happened to be a surfer so they already had loads to talk about as we exited the town hall, and somehow I ended up carrying the luggage for both Dan and Roger as we headed out into the muggy, late afternoon heat.

  Roger grumbled before finally climbing into the elevator, and he was still complaining when we entered the apartment and saw the pullout bed. I was willing to give him my bed and take the cot myself, but I didn’t want him to know that quite yet and so I kept quiet and made him think that the cot was for him while he scowled at Bianca and asked her to get him a drink of water like she was the help.

  “I will leave you two to get to know each other better,” I said to Bianca before hurrying out the door a little later. Alyson wanted me back down on the beach for some reason, and I was more than happy to be out of the apartment right then.

  It was late in the afternoon, and Alyson wanted to show me her new solution to her previous problem—the problem that her surfboards could be lost or stolen at any time.

  A large cage to lock them all in. She had a permit, apparently. It had just come through.

  “I am surprised you would go in this direction,” I commented. “You are usually so opposed to…well, ‘ugly’ things on the beach.” There was no nicer way to put it, really. The bars and the cage were ugly. She didn’t even take offense to my description, nor argue with it. She just sighed a little sadly.

  “I know. But there is really no other option. I can’t afford to lose everything again.”

  I nodded. That was fair enough. Losing all her stock had been heartbreaking. So now all the surfboards had to be locked up and secured every night before Alyson left. But she even seemed a little bit hesitant about leaving them out in the open even when she was right there to guard them while she finished up her painting for the night. And I had never seen her this paranoid.

  “There are a lot of strange people around here at the moment,” she said cautiously as she glanced around. She’d have to move back to the light side of the beach with her boards because she wasn’t getting any sales on the dark side. Eventually. For now, we were still near the rocks, with the cruise ship on the other side, looming over us and the rest of the town.

  I nodded a little, as though I agreed with her, but I didn’t want to see my best friend completely lose faith in humanity. That wasn’t who she was. It would be sad if she did. I knew she had seen a lot—we both had—but that didn’t mean our hearts had to turn completely cynical, right? She was about to lock up the one she wasn’t working on, which I thought was a little extr
eme.

  “Just leave them while you work,” I said casually, with a little shrug. “They will be fine.”

  “Okay, but you keep an eye on them while I paint then.”

  Huh. I wasn’t sure that was entirely my job—full-time surfboard sitter for Alyson Foulkes. Then again, it wasn’t like there was anything to do at my shop. We were still waiting for the new supplies to be shipped in and until we had coffee and books, we had nothing to sell.

  So I sat on the sand and watched while she got to work. We still had a couple of hours before the sun set and the sand was still warm on my legs.

  “Ooh, some people are risking breaking the rules,” I commented as a few people with boards gave up on vying for position on the light beach and trotted on over to the dark side. Amongst them was Alyson’s houseguest Dan, Matt, some other guys from the surf club, and a tall guy with a shaved head who I didn’t recognize

  “Dan is a really good surfer,” I commented after I had watched him for a while. The surf was much rougher on this part of the beach and yet he was taking every wave like it was an extension of his body. Like he was in total control.

  Alyson was deep in concentration with her paintbrush, but she nodded a little bit. “Uh huh. He was telling me he had competed in surf comps in Bali and Hawaii, that’s where he is headed again actually. He is going to change cruise ships when they get to the Pacific and head out on tour. He is getting paid a lot to compete. He ranks number eighteenth in the world.”

  Wow. I was impressed. He was an actual pro surfer, and you could tell that the other surfers in the waves were a little put out by this new guy showing up and making them all look like amateurs. I just knew that Matt would be hating it.