Surfboards and Suspects Read online

  But of course something slipped out. Wells was antagonizing me—he always did that. Trying to make out that Dan Millen was some innocent angel who had never done anything wrong in his life. Well, I had only lived with him for just under two hours and believe me, I could tell you he was no angel. And not innocent either. “He stole from me!” I cried out, as though justice could still be done, as though Dan could still be held accountable for his actions. But my surfboard was laying at the bottom of the ocean. Another one, lost to the sea. “Am I ever going to get my property back or do the police just conveniently not care about that?”

  But Wells had one big question for me as he settled across from me. “Why would a pro surfer want to steal a surfboard?” It seemed like a real question too, like he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.

  I shrugged. There were plenty of reasons that people stole things that had nothing to do with money, and Wells should have known that. Maybe he was losing it a bit, forgetting things, forgetting how human nature operated. Too much time on the force was turning his brain to mush.

  “Maybe to teach me a lesson,” I grumbled. Which was the real reason I thought Dan did it.

  Wells’s ears pricked up this. Even though everything we said was being recorded, he was still scrawling little notes in a notebook. But he stopped his pen and looked up at me. “Why would he want to do that, Miss Foulkes?”

  “Because he thought I didn’t trust him. I wouldn’t leave him alone with my stuff, with my boards in the house. It’s like he was just mocking me.” I frowned and thought about it. The way that he had looked at my boards in such a strange way. Something just wasn’t right there.

  There was just the slightest hint of a smile forming at the edges of Wells’s lips. “So that must have made you pretty angry,” he said. “It’s very irritating when people purposely try to annoy you.”

  I glared at him and pointedly said, “Oh yes. It’s VERY irritating when people try to purposefully antagonize you.” Because I knew exactly what he was doing. This wasn’t my first rodeo. It certainly wasn’t my first time in this police station either. And Wells and I had a long and storied history. I wondered if this was going to be the final chapter. I made up my mind that as soon as I was allowed to leave, I would never be back in that place ever again. And I would never have to deal with Wells ever again.

  But the look on Wells’s face was only growing smugger and smugger. He wasn’t letting me go anywhere.

  “Seems to me, Miss Foulkes, as though you are the only one with both the motive and the opportunity to have killed Mr. Millen.”

  “You would love it if I did this, wouldn’t you?” I asked him, staring back up at him defiantly. “All this time, you’ve wanted to put me away, and this would just be neat and tidy for you.” I raised an eyebrow and leaned back. “But if you ask me, all this is doing is showing a complete lack of imagination. You’re just pinning it on the easiest target so that you can get an early night and get home to your rose garden.”

  “All I am interested in doing is arresting the guilty party,” he said, his face turning red as he tried to back up and compose himself. Take back control of the situation. But some of the fight had gone out of him. He looked deflated. Even his chest looked flatter. It was very strange. I wasn’t sure it was just me that had rattled him, though. Something else had gotten to him.

  He coughed to clear his throat, which also gave him in a second to get some control back. He picked his pen back up and glanced through his notes. “I suppose you are right, Miss Foulkes. After all, there is someone else who had opportunity, and possibly even motive, tonight.”

  I was confused. “Who?” I asked, already hating that I was engaging with this conversation. My tactic had been to remain quiet and now all I was doing was talking like a regular little Chatty Cathy.

  “Claire Elizabeth Richardson,” he said flatly. “She was on the boat with you, wasn’t she? And she is a close friend of yours. She might have been almost as angry as you were that your property was being stolen from you.”

  I shook my head. There was no way that Claire could have done it. The idea was actually pretty laughable. She wasn’t strong enough, for one thing. That was probably the main thing, actually. But secondly, she was too cool calm and collected. Even if she didn’t have skinny little spaghetti arms, she didn’t have the temperament to kill. At least not in the heat of the moment like that. She didn’t get angry. She got cold. If Dan had turned up poisoned two weeks later, then MAYBE I would have suspected Claire. But even then, no. There was no way my best friend was capable of anything like that.

  But it was strange… My recollection of what had happened on that ship was foggy. Wells asked me again what I had seen. I just shrugged and said nothing. I didn’t want to tell him anything anyway. I’d heard footsteps, that was it. Then I’d seen Dan go over the side of the ship.

  But there had been that gas leak.

  And I really couldn’t fully remember.

  All I knew for certain was that I hadn’t been the one to hit Dan on the head and push him overboard.

  Right?

  I didn’t even want to think about that, so I quickly straightened up and asked Wells if he was actually going to charge me with anything or whether I was free to go. “I mean, you don’t have any actual proof that I might be guilty, do you?”

  He didn’t reply right away, and that was what tipped me off. That was what made me realize that he WAS losing it in his middle age. Not as sharp a young cop as he had once been. Because he was trying a new tactic—only he blew his own bluff by not delivering it confidently enough. “You know that friend of yours is telling us some very interesting things.” He nodded to the room next door. “In fact, before I came in to have this chat with you, she told me that you were angry with Dan. And that she saw you running after him.”

  I leaned back again and took this all in. I was slightly concerned, but more than that, I was highly skeptical, so I just held Well’s gaze. That couldn’t possibly be true. I was ninety-percent sure that I was the first of us to be interviewed, for one thing. Secondly, Claire had no idea that Dan and I hadn’t gotten along back at my apartment. I’d been too busy to tell her and even if I’d had time, I wouldn’t have bothered because she already knew that I wasn’t happy about the adopt-a-stranger program. No point to complain about it anymore than I already had.

  So she would have no reason to tell Wells that I had killed Dan. And she didn’t see me on the ship, either. Neither of us saw each other once we were actually on board. It was a good effort on Wells’s part, but he hadn’t played it cleverly enough. I was outsmarting this guy, and it was kind of disappointing.

  “Claire is still sitting in that room on her own, waiting for me,” I said coolly, in a tone that Claire herself would have been proud of. “And she has said nothing to you.”

  Wells just held my glare for a long while. “Don’t be so sure of yourself,” he said.

  “You were once a lion, and now you are more like a kitty cat,” I said with a little shrug. Not a very tough adversary for me. I picked up my bag because I knew that I was free to leave. I wasn’t going to wait for him to dismiss me either. I chose when I left.

  But Wells had one final thing to say to me before I waltzed out. “Don’t have any contact with Claire Elizabeth Richardson. And don’t leave town.”

  9

  I’d always hated being told what to do, but not leaving town was an easy demand to make of me. I’d never leave Eden Bay again if I didn’t have to. And for the most part, I wouldn’t have to. After the wedding, Troy and I would live in the Bay and start our joined lives together. It was quite funny in a way, maybe even ironic: All along, I had been so opposed to Troy’s mall being built in the Bay and yet now, it was not only the reason I had met my soon-to-be-husband but it was the reason he was more than willing to stick around and make a life in the place I loved. He had me, and he had his mall. And I was pretty much tied to the Bay just as heavily as that steel building was.
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  It's funny the way some things we thought would be disasters could turn out to be our biggest blessings.

  But I would be starting university in the autumn, and that would require two days a week out of town. Two days too many if you asked me. But the campus, which was located in a small mountain town called Ferguson, was pretty enough that I could bear to spend two days a week away from the beach. But that was still months away. Surely they would have caught Dan Millen’s killer by then. We couldn’t ALL stay in town for that long. For one thing, Eden Bay couldn’t hold all these ship passengers without collapsing under the weight.

  Troy was waiting for me in the parking lot of the station, leaning against the passenger side door of his car, which he started to open for me. It was muggy and I could feel my hair frizzing and my clothes getting soggy just during the short walk to the car. “How did you go?” he asked, looking concerned

  “If you’re asking if I was arrested for murder, then no, nothing like that.”

  “Alyson, this is serious.” He climbed into the driver’s seat but didn’t start the car right away. “We need to do something. I’ll call my lawyer in the morning, get her to meet with you…” He was rambling on and on about strategy.

  I sighed. I loved Troy, but this was something I was going to have to figure out on my own. And it wasn’t something that he could just make disappear with money.

  I was thinking about the other demand that Wells had made of me. That one was going to be a little more difficult to follow.

  “What is it?” Troy asked when he realized I hadn’t been listening to his rant about the lawyers.

  “I’m not allowed to talk to Claire while the investigation is underway.”

  He stared at me in disbelief. “How are you not going to have any contact with your maid of honor when your wedding is only a few weeks away?”

  Oh. Right. I hadn’t even thought about it from that angle. I was more concerned with how I was going to solve the mystery of Dan Millen’s death all on my own, without Princess’s input.

  But to Troy, the most pressing issue was the wedding.

  I glanced over at him as he finally started the engine and the air conditioning hit my face. “Maybe we should just elope.” I was only half kidding. It was going to be a super low-key wedding anyway, down on the beach. But if the cruise ship was still there, then we were going to have to make other plans. I didn’t want that monstrosity in my wedding photos. I wasn’t a typical bride—not by a longshot—but I had fallen into the cliché of being a little obsessed with what the photos were going to look like.

  Troy wasn’t impressed with my idea. “You’re not allowed to leave town, Alyson. And I really think you should be taking this more seriously.”

  We got back to Troy’s apartment and he asked me what I wanted for dinner, but in that heat, all I wanted was a piece of fruit. He was still asking me if I wanted him to contact his lawyer for me while he pulled open the salad drawer to try and put together a dinner of his own. I bit into my apple and shook my head. “Wells doesn’t have anything on me. Trust me.”

  But I didn’t know just how things were about to blow up. I bit into my apple again, right into the core, without realizing that I was about to be at the center of a town-wide controversy. Again.

  Even people with all the money in the world can’t do much when an entire town’s power supply is cut off. The strain on the town had reached peak levels and there was a blackout due to every house in town using their air conditioners at top speed on the hottest night of the year.

  It was 3am when the unit went silent and the whole apartment filled with an unbearable heat. Troy stayed in bed—he claimed he didn’t mind—and went back to sleep, but I couldn’t stand the suffocating heat. I had to get outside.

  I felt like I was almost gasping for air by the time I got outside. It’s not like I had really been sleeping inside anyway. I had been restless, tossing and turning and having half-dreams about being inside the police station and a cage being put around me and the bars closing in and in, squashing me.

  Or maybe it hadn’t been a dream. At all. Or maybe I was still sleeping. Because I suddenly felt two arms around me, there in the middle of the night, in the middle of the dark.

  I screamed and kicked, thinking that I was being abducted. The arms around me loosened and apologized and told me to be quiet.

  The voice was way too familiar. Deep and gravelly.

  My eyes started to adjust to the moonlight and suddenly I saw who the strong arms belonged to.

  Wells.

  “What the… I didn’t think that police officers were supposed to sneak up on people on their own properties!”

  Wells glanced up at the fancy, million-dollar apartment block. “Didn’t think this was your property,” he said flatly.

  I was still rubbing my arms where he’d grabbed me. Seriously, what was up with that? Talk about a pyscho. “Troy and I are about to be married and then I will be moving in here,” I said. “So it’s as good as.” I stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

  He nodded towards the police car behind him. “Keeping an eye on our top suspect.”

  “Troy?” I asked in complete surprise.

  “No,” he said flatly, like I was an idiot. “You.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Sorry for grabbing you,” Wells said, and he sounded like he meant it. Like he was genuinely ashamed of it. “I shouldn’t have even left the car. It’s just that when I saw you exit the building, I thought you were leaving and wanted to stop you.”

  I shook my head. “Just getting some fresh air. Not going anywhere.”

  He seemed extra stressed that night. Even worse than he had been at the station. Like he was really losing control. “So why did you get out of the car then?” I asked, taking a step back. It was clear to him that I wasn’t going anywhere and yet he was still hanging around.

  “Do you know what is being said?” he asked quietly, and I had to wonder again if I was still dreaming. Maybe it was the hot, muggy atmosphere, but the whole thing felt weird and dreamy and like I was in the middle of an old detective noir, with steam coming out of the sidewalk pipes.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  There was a grave look in his eyes that I only caught because the moonlight hit them just right. He told me that we needed to talk. That he could explain everything.

  What, he didn’t mean right then, did he? It became clear that he did mean that. He wanted me to follow him. “Well, I don’t want to skulk around in the dark.”

  Wells sighed. “Well, when can we do it?” he asked me in a frustrated whisper.

  I straightened up. “Tomorrow morning. When the sun is actually out and this isn’t so creepy.”

  “It will look like we are out on a date.”

  I rolled my eyes. He wished. Everyone knew that I was engaged to Troy Emerald and no one would think that I was having an affair with the ancient, haggard Sergeant Wells. He was flattering himself a little too much there if you asked me.

  “Meet me at Captain Eightballs’ at ten a.m. tomorrow,” I said firmly, before I turned around and marched back through the doors of the ground level of Troy’s apartment block.

  I had the power now.

  I didn’t even recognize him when I walked in. Well, I wasn’t expecting a man in a disguise, was I?

  “Halloween was a month ago,” I said, taking a seat across from him.

  “Ha-ha,” he said, and I saw that his cappuccino was already half gone. He must have been there quite some time before me, even though I wasn’t late as far as I knew. Well, only five minutes late. That told me he was anxious.

  It was a terrible wig, though. Blonde, and it looked scratchy. It was in danger of falling off into his coffee if he made any sudden movements, so he was staying very still. He didn’t want to draw any attention to us, I could tell that. But if that had been his intention then he should have gone with a hat rather than a wig.

  I could see the corner of the Eden B
ay Journal tucked under his arm, still folded. I wondered why he hadn’t been reading it with his coffee rather than just sitting there, but I was soon to find out.

  He pushed the paper across the table to me. My stomach did a little flip as I saw my photo there on the cover, alongside a few other faces, including Claire’s. And Wells’s. I did feel a few eyes on me—my bare shoulders seemed to be extra sensitive to these weird stares—but I tried to ignore them and concentrated on what the article said.

  The article started on page one and continued to the next two pages. It must have gone to press early in the morning. It was the biggest story that the Eden Bay Journal had printed in years. A controversy. A conspiracy. Or at least, that was what Rachael thought she had uncovered.

  “This is crazy,” I said, more to myself than to Wells. I read right to the end and then let the newspaper fall out of my hands onto the table. The latte I had ordered when I’d walked in was growing cold and the froth on top stale. “We definitely got the right guy,” I said in a squeaky voice. I wanted to sound more confident, but I’ll admit I was shaken. This was the last thing I had expected to wake up to. They were saying that Claire and I had gotten the wrong guy a year earlier in the original “Surfboard Killer Case” and that the real culprit was still on the loose.

  Wells was red-faced.

  He didn’t say anything.

  Then suddenly I got it. Why he had really been stalking me that morning and why he’d wanted to meet me. And why he was wearing that ridiculous disguise. “This looks way worse for you than it does for me,” I said. And I realized that I had all the power. The paper may have been focusing on Claire and I—that made a really good story—but in reality, in the real world, it would be Wells’s butt on the line if he had put the wrong person in jail and the real killer was still out there.

  He was still silent, but he was lacing his fingers together and staring down at his hands.