Little Comfort

Book 1: Hester Thursby Mystery

by Edwin Hill

Genres: Private Investigators; Female Sleuths; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Harvard librarian Hester Thursby knows that even in the digital age, people still need help finding things. Using her research skills, Hester runs a side business tracking down the lost. Her new case is finding the handsome and charismatic Sam Blaine.

Sam has no desire to be found. As a teenager, he fled his small New Hampshire town with his friend, Gabe, after a haunting incident. For a dozen years, Sam and Gabe have traveled the country, reinventing themselves as they move from one mark to another. Sam has learned how trusting wealthy people can be—especially the lonely ones—as he expertly manipulates his way into their lives and homes. In Wendy Richards, the beautiful, fabulously rich daughter of one of Boston's most influential families, he's found the perfect way to infiltrate the milieu in which he knows he belongs—a world of Brooks Brothers suits, Nantucket summers, and effortless glamour.

As Hester's investigation closes in on their brutal truth, the bond between Sam and Gabe is tested and Hester unknowingly jeopardizes her own safety. While Gabe has pinned all his desperate hopes of a normal life on Hester, Sam wants her out of the way for good. And Gabe has always done what Sam asks . . .

Release date: August 28, 2018

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 353

Sample

All Hester Thursby wanted was a single day to herself, and today was going to be that day—even if it killed her. She left the baby monitor on the nightstand next to her snoring non-husband, Morgan, and slipped out of the house with Waffles on the leash. Okay, maybe she glanced into Kate’s bedroom to be sure her three-year-old niece was still alive; maybe she crept up to the queen-size bed where the tiny girl slept within a protective barricade of stuffed animals. And maybe Hester felt a wave of relief when Kate rubbed her nose with a fist and rolled over. Kate had been staying with them since September, and no matter how much Hester wanted to keep the kid from cramping her style, she still hadn’t adjusted to worrying about another human being all day and every day. “We’re making this up as we go along, kid,” she whispered, kissing Kate’s forehead.

Outside was quiet and dark in the way only a frigid morning in December could be. Today was Morgan’s day to watch Kate—the first free time Hester had had in nearly three months. She took the dog straight to Bloc 11 in Somerville’s Union Square, where she ordered the biggest cup of coffee available and a scone to split with the basset hound. She added cream and seven sugars to the coffee. At the park, she let Waffles off the leash to have at it with the other dogs and then planned her day. Maybe she’d hit the Brattle Theater for that George Romero series, or wander the streets of Cambridge, or drink till she was drunk. Maybe she’d do all three.

“You’re off somewhere.”

Hester glanced up at Prachi—O’Keefe the greyhound’s “mom”—who loomed over her (though even some ten-year-olds loomed over Hester). As always, Prachi, who was a partner in a corporate law firm, looked relaxed, with her cocoa-colored skin and the well-rested eyes of the child free.

“Just daydreaming,” Hester said.

“We missed you last night,” Prachi said.

Prachi and her partner, Jane, threw an early-winter party each year, one where guests spilled into every room and the air smelled of curry instead of cloves. It was an event Hester looked forward to, but the party hadn’t started till eight, which had meant nine, well after Kate’s bedtime.

“Finding a babysitter on a Friday in December is next to impossible,” Hester said. “Who knew?”

“Darling, you can still hit the town,” Prachi said. “It’s not like you died. We all love Kate.”

“I’m learning how to do this as I go along. Turns out there’s no manual on raising someone else’s kid.”

“Any word from Daphne?”

“Nada,” Hester said.

Daphne was Kate’s mother and Morgan’s twin sister. She was also Hester’s best friend. Hester had known her since college, long before Daphne had introduced her to Morgan. Three months earlier, in September, Daphne had skipped town while Hester and Morgan had been out to dinner with Prachi and Jane. The four of them had come home, drunk and ready for a nightcap, only to find Kate asleep with a note beside her. On it, Daphne had written in block letters: Back in an hour. Tops.

They hadn’t heard from her since.

Hester wasn’t surprised—Daphne had a history of disappearing for long stretches and then showing up unannounced as though she’d gone to the gym for an hour—but Hester still worried about her friend, and the kid thing upped the stakes, to say the least. She didn’t have kids of her own, and that was by choice.

She called to Waffles. As usual, the basset had found something far too fragrant to bother coming. “I should see what she got into,” she said to Prachi. “I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

At the house, Hester heard Kate say, “No,” her not-so-new favorite word, and she opened the door in time to see a plastic bowl of Cheerios skid across the kitchen floor. Morgan was on the phone, his red morning hair still sticking straight up. He was handsome in a kind way, with freckles that merged into each other and green eyes that matched his sister’s. He went to the gym, but without conviction. He mouthed “please” as he handed over a piping-hot bowl of oatmeal. Ever since Kate had moved into the house, Morgan had proven himself to be hapless at childcare. He gave Kate orange soda for breakfast and let her run wild in the park while he yammered on his cell phone. And whenever Hester tried to bring up Daphne, to talk about what was happening to them, he acted like leaving a three-year-old alone in an apartment while you skip town was normal behavior for a parent. But then Morgan and Daphne always watched out for each other, no matter what the behavior. They were twins in every way.

Hester let the leash drop so that Waffles could do the majority of the cereal cleanup, and then lifted Kate from her high chair while the kid shouted, “Kate hate Cheerios!” even though some days she ate only Cheerios. Hester chased her through the living room, around the dining table, into Morgan’s office, up the stairs, through each of their bedrooms, and down the stairs, till she finally caught Kate, lifted her up, tickled her, strapped her into the chair, and poured another bowl of cereal, which Kate ate like she hadn’t been fed in a week.

“Never,” Hester said, as she mussed Kate’s curly hair. “I will never understand the logic of being three years old. Not in one million years.”

“Not in one million years,” Kate aped.

Morgan hung up the phone. “That was the emergency animal hospital in Porter Square.”

Though Morgan had his own veterinary practice, once Kate had moved in with them—and her preschool bills had begun showing up—he’d started taking spare shifts whenever he could.

“They need someone last-minute.”

Hester smiled at Kate and then waved Morgan to the other side of the apartment. “Are you shitting me?” she whispered.

Morgan smiled in a way that usually got him what he wanted, but all Hester could see was a spot of fury that had taken the place of the day on her own.

“Sorry, Mrs.,” he said

A part of her understood, the part that knew they needed the money. But most of her wanted to scream. Plus, she hated it when he called her “Mrs.” “You owe me,” she said. “Big time.”

Morgan kissed her cheek, put his coat on, and whistled for Waffles to come with him. Soon Hester heard him back his truck out of the driveway. “You’re stuck with me today, kid,” she said, though now Kate was only interested in her stuffed monkey, Monkey, dancing the toy across her lap and saying, “Monkey One Hundred Forty Silly Pants eating bananas,” which sounded like “Mokah anhendrd farty sesty pints tang banants.” Hester couldn’t believe she understood anything the kid said. It was a secret language that only she, Kate, and Monkey spoke. In truth, Hester couldn’t believe any of this was happening. But it was.

She sat at the counter and tapped a finger on the granite. The long, unstructured day stretched in front of her. One of the mothers at day care had asked to schedule a playdate only yesterday, and Hester had answered evasively, still unable to commit, still wondering whether Daphne would stroll through the door at any moment expecting things to go back to normal. What was normal, anyway? She pulled up the Brattle Theater schedule on her phone and wondered momentarily if Kate could sit through Night of the Living Dead without getting too scared.

She really was a shit parent.

Her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number with a New Hampshire area code but picked up anyway.

“I heard that you find people,” a woman said. “That you’re discreet.”

Hester ran a little side business finding random strangers, a business she’d begun more than fifteen years earlier when she’d been working toward a master’s in library science. At the time, the library provided access to information unavailable to the average person, and Hester had managed to reunite all different types, from long-lost prom dates to birth parents with their children. Eventually the Web gave most people the tools they needed to find their own missing connections, and she’d assumed the business would go the way of the corner video store. It turned out, though, that there were always people who chose to live quiet lives off the grid, to keep to themselves, and to stay away from technology.

She dumped her uneaten oatmeal into the garbage disposal. “I can be discreet,” she said. Whenever she got one of these queries, she listened to the tenor of the voice on the other end of the phone. It was surprising how many people could give off crazy in a few disembodied sentences.

“I’m in the city today,” the woman said. “Can we meet?”

“What’s your name?”

“Lila Blaine.”

“Who are you looking for?”

“My brother Sam. He’s been missing for twelve years.”

“Pink poodle!” Kate said.

She and Hester were on the bus headed from Union Square toward Cambridge talking about what Santa might bring for the holiday. They’d already gone skating in the morning, and to the Boston Aquarium that afternoon, where Hester had made the rookie parenting mistake of telling Kate that sharks ate people. Kate had pressed her hand to the glass as a shark swam by and then pulled it away with a shriek. “Shark eat people!” she’d said.

“Don’t tell your uncle Morgan,” Hester had said. “You’ll get me in trouble.”

Now they were on their way to Harvard Square to meet Lila Blaine.

“Do you mean a poodle with pink clothes or a poodle with pink fur?” Hester asked. Kate kicked the seat in front of her and said, “PINK FUR” in two piercingly short notes.

“Inside voice,” Hester said.

Had those words really come from her own mouth? The things she said these days in the name of friendship! She’d met Daphne nearly two decades earlier at Wellesley, where Daphne had taught self-defense for Women’s Safety Week. On the first day of the course, right in front of a dozen other women, Daphne pinned Hester to the ground with her knee, shouting, “Size doesn’t matter. Fight!”

Daphne was a solid field hockey player, much bigger and stronger than Hester, but Hester kicked anyway. She squirmed. She twisted. Or at least she tried to. She heard one of the women in the course giggle while most of them cheered her on.

“Survive!” Daphne shouted. “Use your strengths. Be smart. The only thing you think about is how to stay alive.”

And Hester relaxed. She grew even smaller than she already was. She pulled into herself. She felt the pressure from Daphne’s knee release the slightest bit. She twisted away. Her elbow shot from her side. She felt a crack and a crunch and then a thick warmth, and Daphne stumbled back with her hands covering her face as blood streamed from her broken nose.

“I’m so sorry,” Hester said.

“Sorry?” Daphne said. “Fuck sorry. That’s how you stay alive.”

Daphne was used to fighting. For anything and everything. She and Morgan came from a family of ten children. They’d grown up in South Boston, where, by all accounts, nearly everything but other bodies had been scarce. They’d watched out for each other, though, in ways that Hester, who’d spent a lifetime watching out for herself, couldn’t comprehend, and they’d both succeeded by their own wits, Daphne getting into Wellesley on a field hockey scholarship and Morgan going to UMass. By the time Hester met her in college, Daphne had morphed into a leather chick who quoted Adrienne Rich and called NPR too conservative. On most Saturday nights, she roped Hester into riding the Fuck Truck to MIT frat parties and then disappeared into the upstairs bedrooms.

After graduation, Daphne and Hester rented an apartment in Alston. That’s when Hester met Morgan. Like Hester, Morgan loved his sister more than anyone, and ignored that she moved rapidly from one job to the next, always leaving on explosively bad terms. They both made excuses for Daphne’s dangerous boyfriends, and when her experiments with drugs veered away from dabbling. But then Kate came along, and everything changed. And things kept changing—the dynamic in their relationships, their priorities, Hester’s own outlook—and she suspected that those changes, and all the tensions that came with them, had only just begun.

The bus pulled into Harvard Square. Hester worked as a librarian at Harvard’s Widener Library, though she’d taken a leave of absence in September when Kate had come to live with them. She’d be back at work come spring semester, and a part of her couldn’t wait for that routine, but for now she took Kate’s hand as they hurried through the cold, across Winthrop Square to Grendel’s Den, a bohemian pub located a few blocks from the bus stop. She grabbed a table with a clear view of the doorway, pulling out a coloring book, a My Little Pony, and a box of crayons.

“Aunt Hester is meeting a friend in a few minutes,” she said to Kate. “Do you think you can be quiet while we talk?”

“Kate quiet!” Kate said in a voice that was anything but.

A very young and very tattooed waitress stopped by. “Sam Adams,” Hester said as she unzipped Kate’s coat.

“ID?” the waitress asked.

Hester slid her license across the table.

“Is this for real? You look about twelve.”

At four feet, nine and three-quarters inches tall, Hester was a quarter inch into little person territory. She weighed eighty-nine pounds and had black hair, alabaster skin, and the voice of a two-pack-a-day smoker. More than one obnoxious stranger had told her she looked like a china doll, but Hester had learned long ago to make up for her height with confidence, even when she had to fake it. As Morgan often told her, there was nothing sexier than a woman who took charge.

“How old is Aunt Hester?” she asked Kate.

“Thirty-six.”

“Good enough?”

The waitress nodded. “What does she want?”

“Orange soda,” Kate said.

The waitress cocked her head for confirmation.

“How about apple juice instead?” Hester said, prepping herself for a tantrum, but Kate, miraculously, settled in with the coloring book and pink crayon. Hester took advantage of the momentary silence to open her tablet and read through what she’d learned about Lila Blaine. A quick search of Lila’s Facebook page had shown that she valued her privacy settings. She didn’t have a LinkedIn account, but Hester had managed to determine she was thirty-five years old and lived in Holderness, New Hampshire, an enclave of New England’s WASPy elite. The only mention of her online was when she petitioned the town to change the terms of a trust on some lakefront property. Hester had spent the day imagining a woman clad in head-to-toe Patagonia, someone who skied, hiked, and entertained friends on a lovingly maintained Chris Craft, and at five o’clock on the dot, the door to the pub opened and a woman entered who nearly fit that description, minus the wealth. She wore a navy parka, had a no-nonsense auburn-colored braid that tumbled down her back, and had the healthy build and complexion of someone used to working outside. She also didn’t look like someone who’d put up with much.

“Lila?” Hester said.

“You’re Hester Thursby?”

“In the flesh.”

Lila put her hands on a chair and surveyed the scene in front of her—a tiny woman and a three-year-old dressed in head-to-toe pink—and Hester could only imagine what was going through her head. “It must have been a long drive,” she said. “Grab something to drink.”

Kate put a pink rubber boot on the table. “Aunt Hester like my boots?” she asked.

“I love them,” Hester said.

“You didn’t mention there’d be a kid,” Lila said.

“I’m new to the kid thing,” Hester said. “I still forget that she goes where I go. Sometimes there’s a dog too. But like I said on the phone today, there’s no obligation. If you decide you’d rather hire someone else, then I’ll be on my way.”

Lila shrugged and then flagged down the waitress to order tea. She struggled out of the coat, and they made conversation till the waitress set the teapot on the table. Lila’s hand shook as she poured and added sugar. Finally, she said, “I expected someone a bit . . .”

“Taller?” Hester said.

“And . . .”

“Tougher?”

“Yeah, that too.”

Hester was used to easing clients through their reservations, and would have been wary of anyone who wasn’t at least a little reluctant to hire her. “I don’t carry a gun or know how to fight very well, but I do have a pretty good track record in finding people. And if it helps, I’ve worked with plenty of people who’ve lost someone. Once, a couple hired me because they’d lost one of their grown daughters. She was number seven of thirteen, and they’d simply forgotten about her for a while. Turned out she moved to the next town over. Really, I can help you find your brother. If that’s what you want.”

Lila scratched at her index finger like she had eczema. “What do you need to know?”

Hester opened the folder. “Let’s start with the basics. What’s your brother’s name?”

“I haven’t a clue what he goes by now.”

Okay, this could be interesting. “Was he adopted? I’ve worked plenty of adoptions. Those can sometimes be pretty easy.”

“He wasn’t adopted.”

“Were you?”

“No, that’s not it at all.” Lila sat back in her chair. “His name is Sam Blaine, like I said on the phone. I’ve looked before and haven’t found a trace of him. He’s eight years younger than I am, and we haven’t seen each other since he was a teenager. We had a falling-out. A fight, really, and we haven’t spoken since. It’s time to make amends.”

“What did you fight about?”

“For that, I’ll need to know you a lot better.” An edge slipped into Lila’s voice, and Hester made a mental note to return to the subject later.

“Most people are pretty easy to track down nowadays,” she said. “Why haven’t you been able to find him yourself?”

“That’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Lila swung her braid from one shoulder to the other. “I may need something stronger than tea.”

“I hate to drink alone.”

Lila ordered a beer, and they sat in silence till Lila poured the beer into a pint glass and drank half of it in gulps.

“So?” Hester said.

“I’m not sure he wants to be found,” Lila said.

“Why not?”

Lila scratched again, and this time it looked as though she might draw blood. “Because I’m pretty certain he changed his name. I think he may have changed it every time he’s moved. And he’s moved a lot.”

Lila dug a photo from her handbag and showed it to Hester. It was of two boys standing on a wooded lakeshore. One of them looked cocky. He glared reluctantly at the camera, his hair falling in his eyes. He had the lean body of an athlete and the fine bone structure of someone who would always seem young.

“Handsome kid,” Hester said.

“That’s Sam,” Lila said.

“So you’ve looked for him yourself,” Hester said. “Sorry to cut to the chase here, but are you sure he’s not dead?”

“He’s alive. I know that much, at least.”

Lila opened her bag again and took out stacks of postcards held together with rubber bands. She tossed them onto the table.

“He sends me these. Usually one every couple of months or so. He makes them himself from photos. See, here’s one from when he lived in San Francisco.”

She turned over a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was taken from the Marin Headlands. The bridge, and San Francisco behind it, was shrouded in fog. On the back, printed in the handwriting of someone who’d gone to finishing school, was written, If you were in my position, you’d do the same.

“Before you ask,” Lila said. “I have no idea what it means. You’ll see, none of them make sense.” She thumbed through a stack and pulled out a photo from a farmer’s market. Sam had written, The science department should be able to help us.

“That sounds like it’s from Star Trek,” Hester said. She read it through again. On the other side of the table, Kate, who’d been remarkably quiet through the conversation, looked up from her coloring book. “Potty,” she said.

“Time to move!” Hester said, taking a stack of the postcards with her in one hand and Kate’s hand in the other and rushing to the bathroom before disaster struck. In the stall, she examined the cards while Kate perched on the toilet and yammered about peeing. The postcards were from cities all over the United States. In some, Sam had taken photos of famous landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Empire State Building, while on others, he’d used more obscure locations, like doorways or street signs. Most likely, he’d chosen postcards because they were harder to trace than e-mails or phone calls, but there was plenty of information on the cards that Hester could use to find him, or at least trace where he’d been. The postmarks would make it easy enough to pull together a timeline of where he’d lived, and there had to be some pattern to the messages he wrote. She had to admit the whole scenario had her intrigued.

“Do you know Sam’s Social Security number?” she asked when they returned to the table and she’d managed to get Kate settled with her coloring book.

“He hasn’t used it in twelve years,” Lila said. “I already went down that road.”

“Leave it with me anyway. How about his date of birth? I can’t do much without that.”

“April third, 1992.”

“And his full name? Samuel?”

“Just Sam Blaine. My parents liked to keep it simple.”

“And what about your parents? Where do they fit into all of this?”

“They don’t,” Lila said. “They’re dead. Both of them. They died when I was nineteen. Sam and I lived together after that, till he left, at least.”

“So you haven’t seen him in twelve years. That would have made him, what, fourteen, maybe fifteen when he left. That’s not moving out or leaving, that’s running away. Didn’t the police look for him?”

“Of course they did, and so did I. Everyone looked for him.”

“Did he have friends? Was there someone else he might have been in touch with over the years?”

Lila picked up the photo of the boys by the lake. “Him,” she said, pointing at the other boy, whom Hester had barely noticed. He smiled right into the camera, and yet still faded behind Sam’s vitality.

“That’s Gabe DiPursio,” Lila said. “He was a foster kid who stayed with us that summer. They ran away together.” It seemed to take some effort for Lila to look away from the photo. “Gabe was, I don’t know . . . he was quiet. A cipher, almost. Sam brought him home from school one day that spring like a stray puppy, said they were having a sleepover, and Gabe basically never left. He’d been living with a woman across town who kept five, sometimes six foster kids at a time. I don’t think she even knew he’d moved to our house till the social worker pointed it out.”

Hester went through her notes. “And how old would that have made you? Twenty-three?” She jerked a thumb at Kate. “I can barely handle this one, and I’m a full-fledged adult. You had two teenage boys living with you?”

“Gabe stayed with us. It was pretty unofficial. To be honest, I couldn’t have gotten rid of him fast enough, but I have a bit of a conscience. I mean, who would take in a fourteen-year-old foster kid, especially one like Gabe? He’d been through the system since he was a toddler. His mother was a junkie, and his father was a drunk. The kid barely had a chance from the start.”

“Are his parents still around?”

“They may be, but I’m not sure. They brought a suit against the state when Gabe left and then they moved to Reno afterwards.”

“Okay, I’m trying to fit these pieces together. What’s the woman’s name? The foster mother. The one Gabe had been staying with before. Does she still live in town?”

“Cheryl Jenkins,” Lila said. “She’ll never leave. She’s New Hampshire through and through. But the cops talked to her. She didn’t know anything either.”

“And what about family services? Didn’t they want to know what happened to Gabe?”

“Not so much,” Lila said. “I got the impression that his social worker was happy to focus on other things.”

“And what was her name?”

“You mean his name. Robert Englewood. Bobby. He and I went to high school together, and he’s definitely still around. Unfortunately.”

Hester wrote the names down. “Any chance you know Gabe’s birthdate?”

“He only came around for a couple of months. I can see if Bobby has it.”

Hester looked down at her notes. All she had to go on were a few random names and dates. Even with the postcards, Sam might be too well hidden to find. Still, she could use a good puzzle to solve. “Where did the last card come from?” she asked. “At least I’ll know which city to start with.”

Lila dug a thin stack of postcards from her bag. The one on top was of a townhouse somewhere on Beacon Hill or in the Back Bay. It was taken in the fall, when the maple trees lining the streets blazed red. “He’s been in Boston since March,” Lila said.

Hester turned the top card over. Sam had written, It’s amazing how fast you get used to such a big place. The rest of the stack showed other settings from around the city, like the side of a brick building, a chain-link fence, and a café. The last one was of a street sign for Louisburg Square.

“M. . .