Who to Believe

by Edwin Hill

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

In a twisty, claustrophobic suburban suspense novel for fans of Ruth Ware and Liane Moriarty, the aftermath of a murder in a quiet coastal New England town reveals a web of dark secrets among friends . . .

“An inventive and fiendishly-layered exploration of secrets dark and deep.” —LOU BERNEY, Edgar-winning author of November Road

“Hill navigates the dark corners and complicated relationships of a small, seaside town with precision and panache.”—ALEX SEGURA, bestselling author of Secret Identity

Monreith, Massachusetts, was once a small community of whalers and farmers. These days it’s a well-to-do town filled with commuters drawn to its rugged coastline and country roads. A peaceful, predictable place—until popular restaurateur Laurel Thibodeau is found brutally murdered in her own home. Suspicion naturally falls on Laurel’s husband, Simon, who had gambling debts that only her life insurance policy could fix. But there are other rumors too . . .

Among the group of six friends gathered for Alice Stone’s fortieth birthday, theories abound concerning Laurel’s death. Max Barbosa, police chief, has heard plenty of them, as has his longtime friend, Unitarian minister Georgia Fitzhugh. Local psychiatrist Farley Drake is privy to even more, gleaning snippets of gossip and information from his patients while closely guarding his own past.

But maybe everyone in Monreith has something to hide. Because before this late-summer evening has come to a close, one of these six will be dead.  And as jealousy, revenge, adultery, and greed converge, the question becomes not who among these friends might be capable of such a thing, but—who isn’t?

Release date: January 23, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

“I’M FRIGHTENED,” ALICE STONE SAYS.

She sits across from me as she has every Friday afternoon for the past eight months. Her voice is so soft I can barely make out her words. She averts her eyes in a way that tells me she has something to confess, a secret to share. I let her statement hang between us, offering her the space to fill in the rest of her story. She doesn’t speak. Instead, she runs her hand through Harper’s fur. The pit bull mix sighs and rests her brindled snout on Alice’s foot.

Usually, Alice presents as a pleaser, an eager client who’s more concerned with whether I like her than sharing a truth. She chats from the moment she arrives for her session, filling every silence as she runs through fights with her husband, Damian, or struggles with her son, Noah, providing commentary and analysis on her own meandering thoughts. Despite all the chatter, I suspect Alice Stone has spent a lifetime masking her true nature. We all have a hidden self, a shadow side we try to keep private, but my job is to help her peek out from behind that mask, and today, forty minutes into her session, is the closest we’ve ever gotten.

I rest my chin, rough with afternoon scruff, on my palm. “You’re frightened,” I say, mirroring her words, my voice soft, too.

Alice perches on the edge of her chair as though she’s ready to bolt from the room. Autumn light filters through the slats in the blinds and across her smooth skin. A curtain of dark hair cascades over her shoulders. I’d have to be blind not to notice how stunning she is, even in this moment of vulnerability. Or maybe because of that vulnerability. If I know one thing about myself—Dr. Farley Drake, MD—it’s that I have a savior complex.

“We’re all frightened,” Alice says. “We’d be fools not to be. I knew Laurel.”

Laurel Thibodeau.

Most sessions I’ve had this week have eventually come back to the brutal murder. Laurel—along with her husband, Simon—owned a local bistro, one with warm lighting and an easy menu of steak frites and pub burgers. Nearly everyone in town knew the couple, or at least they believed they did. Last Saturday—or Sunday morning, to be accurate—Simon Thibodeau returned home, supposedly from catering a wedding, to find his wife bound and gagged in their bed. She’d been suffocated by the plastic bag tied at her neck.

In the ensuing days, state detectives have descended on this tiny coastal town, digging for secrets and turning rumor into truth, especially when it comes to husband Simon. The Thibodeaus had money problems Simon tried to hide from the cops: maxed-out credit cards, a secret second mortgage. And Simon had not been catering a wedding as he’d claimed. Instead, he’d gone to the Mohegan Sun in nearby Connecticut and lost twenty grand at the blackjack tables. Lucky for him, his every move at the casino had been caught on tape, although the gossips’ latest whispers have Simon putting a hit out on his wife because of the two-million-dollar life insurance policy the couple had bought six months earlier, the one Simon had kept paying premiums on even as he let his other bills lapse into collection. Most of my clients have already tried and convicted him.

But there’s more to the story.

Laurel, the victim, had her own secrets. She volunteered at the local Unitarian church, driving older parishioners to various appointments during the week. She also had sticky fingers, especially when it came to jewelry and cash. The police discovered a stockpile of missing items in the Thibodeaus’ garage, along with an online auction site that has since been disabled. My guess is that Laurel was trying to keep the Thibodeaus afloat as Simon gambled away their earnings and put them further into debt. Supposedly, Laurel was even threatened a few weeks ago by a thug who Simon owed money to.

Each of these details has come to me in sessions throughout the week, enough that I could probably solve the murder myself. As a small-town therapist, I have a unique view of this community’s factions and alliances through my roster of interconnected clients. Pieces of this puzzle present themselves, allowing me to gather them and fit them together. Maybe someone else had a hand in the murder, like that person Simon owed money to. Maybe there’s a different killer out there who’s been setting Simon up from the start.

Maybe the killer has sat in this very room.

I focus on Alice Stone. Frightened or not, I suspect she could kill under the right circumstances. But then, most of us could. “A death like this one leaves a bruise on a community,” I say. “It will take time to heal.”

“Believe me, I know,” Alice says. “Damian hunts monsters. Now it’s like the monster has come to us.”

Alice is a financial planner who works with customers all over the country. She spends her days meeting with them online. Her husband, Damian, is a documentary filmmaker who focuses on true crime. Before moving here to Monreith in Massachusetts last winter, they’d lived in northern Maine so Damian could document a small community of French speakers, ostensibly to record part of the French diaspora. After a local priest named Jean-Marc died, though, Damian discovered dozens of victims of sexual abuse whose stories he told in the film. The result, Acadian Autumn, has been making the rounds on the festival circuit and, according to Alice, getting some buzz. “Though not what we’d hoped for,” she’d confessed to me a few weeks earlier. Now the Stones are staying at a friend’s farmhouse while Damian works on his latest project. When he finishes, they’ll take off for new horizons.

“What are people saying to you about the murder?” Alice asks me.

“You tell me,” I say, deflecting the question back to her. “What are people saying?”

“That Simon will be charged with obstruction of justice, at the very least. He’s been lying from the start.”

“Who’s saying that?”

“People.”

I can guess who these “people” might be: Max Barbosa, the chief of police, who lives next door to me. I can see his back deck from my kitchen. I watch him out there in the morning drinking coffee and going through his morning workout, his prematurely white hair still sticking up before he changes into his starched uniform, puts on his public mask, and oversees law and order in this town. I’ve also watched Alice join him once in a while in the afternoons, one foot on the rail, drinking beer from a can while they play cribbage.

I like to observe my clients in the wild, especially when they’re doing things they don’t want known. It allows me to understand another side of them, the side they conceal in this office. It’s unorthodox, maybe worse, but it works. With Alice, it’s hard to miss the way she touches her neck when she’s with Max, the way she shoves his arm while they play cards, or the way she lingers as she’s parting. But that’s the kind of data I keep to myself, at least until Alice opts to bring it into this room.

“Do you think Simon will be charged?” I ask. “It’s been a week since the murder. What are they waiting for?”

I am curious, for a number of reasons. I’m testing to see if Alice will betray any of Max’s confidences, but mostly I wonder if she’ll present new pieces of the puzzle. I have my own hidden self. Maybe I want to be an amateur sleuth more than I care to admit.

“I like Simon,” Alice says. “And I really like going to Firefly. I hope it doesn’t close. God, did that make me sound shallow?”

There’s no judgment in this room.

“I almost invited Simon to the party tonight,” Alice continues, “but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. I doubt he has many other invitations these days.”

I lean forward and tent my hands. Tonight is Alice’s birthday, and she’s having a gathering at the farmhouse. Like any small-town therapist, I run into clients socially. It can’t be avoided. Usually, I leave it to the client to decide whether to disclose our relationship, and then I maintain a professional distance. Lately, though, Alice and I have gone a step too far and become friends. Tonight, I’ll be at her party as a guest where she’ll call me Farley instead of Dr. Drake, and it’s a line I really shouldn’t have allowed us to cross. “We’ve talked about a transition to a new therapist,” I say.

Alice waves a dismissive hand. “I haven’t had the time to find one.”

“Still,” I say.

“I’ll take care of it this week,” she says. “I promise. And I’m making ratatouille. You’ll love it.”

The first time I went to the farmhouse, Alice made a tagine that tasted of nothing but carbon and salt. She’s a terrible cook.

“You mentioned being frightened,” I say. “What were you circling?”

Her gaze sharpens as she scans the room for one of the many clocks. Beside her, Harper sits up, as though sensing Alice’s need to escape.

“No one’s keeping you here,” I say. “You can take off whenever you want. But there are only five minutes until the end of our time together. Three hundred seconds. Why not get your money’s worth?”

Alice rests her bag on her lap, forming a barrier between us. “I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I knew you’d latch onto this like a . . . like a . . .” She lowers her voice. “Like a pit bull.”

I allow myself a laugh. “That’s my job. And from where I sit, Harper has a strong sense of self.”

“Then you haven’t seen her during a thunderstorm.”

“She’s aware,” I say. “That’s good. Thunder frightens her. What frightens you?”

Alice settles into her chair for the first time this afternoon. Her shoulders relax, and she crosses one shoe over the other. This is how she normally presents, and I worry we may have moved beyond the potential breakthrough.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I make things up in these sessions because I can’t think of anything to say. I mean, what do I have to complain about? I didn’t find my husband with a plastic bag over his head.”

Somehow, I doubt she’d be upset if she did, but that’s a topic for another session. “You’re hardly the first client to make something up,” I say. “But we’ll end at 3:50 whether you answer my question or not. You have 180 seconds left. And feeling frightened is normal. Let’s get to the source.”

“Do you pull everything you say out of a bag of random platitudes?”

“What would you like me to say instead?”

“How about something real? Why not ask what you want to ask? When I say I’m frightened, who would you guess I’m talking about? What do you think I mean, Dr. Drake?”

I wait to answer, and I can’t help it, but the edges of my mouth begin to twitch into a grin.

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Alice says. “Don’t you dare!”

“What do you want it to mean when you say you’re frightened?”

Alice plants her feet on the floor. She snaps the leash onto Harper’s collar, who stands and wags her thin tail.

I open my hands. “I can’t do the work for you.”

“It’s stupid. I mean, admitting it will make me sound small and self-involved. Especially when we were just talking about someone getting murdered.”

“There isn’t much I haven’t heard already.”

“Fine. I turned forty today. That’s a big deal, right? We’re having a party, and I took care of nearly every single detail. I mean, I did my own cooking! But Damian needs to remember the cake. And it better be carrot. With raisins.”

“Does he know that?”

“We’ve been married for almost twenty years. Shouldn’t he know my favorite kind of cake?”

“I meant does he know you want him to get the cake?”

“I’m supposed to remind him to get a cake for his wife’s milestone birthday? Is that something else I should be responsible for? Maybe I should get a new therapist. A woman. Someone who would understand.”

This may be the most honesty Alice Stone has ever shown. “For the record,” I say, “I love carrot cake. And you don’t sound idiotic to me.” I scratch Harper behind the ears as the clock ticks over to 3:50. “That’s time. We’ll pick up next week.”

“Not if I find a new therapist.”

She won’t. But I’ll keep pushing.

Alice doesn’t move. “Please don’t mention any of this to Damian.”

I learned to keep secrets long ago. “Everything you say in this room is confidential.”

I walk her to the rear exit, where she pauses with her hand on the knob. “If Simon Thibodeau didn’t kill Laurel,” she says, “then who did?”

That’s the one question no one has dared ask me yet this week. Maybe Alice has good reason to be frightened. Maybe we all do.

THROUGH THE BLINDS IN MY OFFICE, I OBSERVE AS ALICE EMERGES onto the brick sidewalk below. She puts on huge sunglasses and hurries across the street, waiting for a woman to pass by before enticing Harper into the back of an SUV and speeding away. She’s my last client of the day, and even though I should head to the gym before the afternoon gets away from me, I boot up my laptop and check to be sure the bouquet of dahlias and chrysanthemums I ordered has been delivered to Moulton Farm where Alice lives.

I also open her file, where I’ve questioned before how strong Alice’s marriage to Damian might be. Now I type, Patient reported being frightened. Of what? And whom?

I should go with the obvious answer: Damian. She’d challenged me to do so during her session, and tonight at the party, I’ll observe and piece together what I can, especially if Damian manages to forget that cake. I type Likely frightened by husband Damian Stone in the report right as my phone rings.

It’s Georgia Fitzhugh, the local Unitarian minister.

“Any chance you could swing by the church?” she asks when I click into the call. “I need someone to pinch hit with Chloe. She messed up. Big time.”

Georgia’s daughter, Chloe, is thirteen, with fat cheeks and freckles. Up until recently she’d been sweet and kind. Not so much lately. “She’s testing boundaries,” I say. “It’s normal. Healthy even.”

“Thanks for the tip, Farley,” Georgia says to me. “Why don’t you chat with her about healthy boundaries? You can put those fancy degrees to use. I’m stuck here, and Ritchie’s at the garage . . . it would be a big help.”

Richard, Georgia’s soon-to-be-ex, is a mechanic who dabbles in selling classic cars. I haven’t a clue what could be so important that he can’t stop tinkering with an engine to come help with his own daughter, but I keep the thought to myself. And there’s a plea in Georgia’s voice I find hard to turn down. Guilt will do that. I’ve hurt Georgia too many times. “Be there in a few,” I say.

After the call ends, I read through the notes in Alice’s file one more time and hit Save. I leave the office and step out onto Main Street in downtown Monreith, where salty air blows off the harbor. With its jagged beaches and inlets, the town sits on the south coast of Massachusetts, west of Cape Cod and east of Rhode Island. What had once been a community of shipbuilders, whalers, and farmers has given way to commuters and second homes. Here in the harbor, boats line the piers, and a stone jetty juts into the water. We’re in the last days of summer, so the street, with its gas lamps and cafes and comfortable restaurants, bustles with people taking in the final warmth of the year. I pass by the shuttered Firefly Bistro. Its wrought-iron namesake hovers over the door and a CLOSED sign hangs in the window next to last week’s menu.

Like Alice, I hope Thibodeau’s restaurant doesn’t close down.

I wear a crisp white shirt and a light navy-blue jacket I know brings out the color in my eyes. As I make my way to the other end of the downtown, I ignore the glances, the feigned indifference, and the full-on stares. I’m used to people watching me. I’m handsome. More than handsome. I’m the kind of good-looking that hurts, the kind that gets me a seat at Firefly while others wait on the sidewalk, the kind that turns adults into teenagers. I learned to wield the privilege—and the power—a long time ago.

Mostly, I learned that it gets me almost anything I want.

I still see myself as a newcomer to tiny Monreith, if living in a place for two years can be considered new. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, a childhood I like to forget. I clawed my way into college in Connecticut and graduated at the top of my class from med school. Until a few years ago, I’d been happily living in Boston’s South End and jetting around the world on weekends to chase the next big event. I certainly hadn’t imagined retreating to the country or stepping into a ready-made family, but now, after living on the ocean, after not having to fight traffic or worry about missing the latest party, I’ve grown accustomed to this quieter life. Most days, I can’t imagine returning to what was.

On the other end of town, a gaggle of girls perches outside Cups and Cones, the ice-cream shop. In the very center of the group, a redhead has what appears to be a shiner developing over her left cheekbone. These girls must be about Chloe’s age. I wish I’d see Chloe among a group like this one, laughing, probably being mean to the other kids in school. But Chloe seems determined to be a loner and to forge her own path. And I suppose that’s for the best.

A few blocks later, I come to Georgia’s church, classic white, framed by maples, with a small cemetery of ancient gravestones lining one side. I feel like an interloper when I come here, to Georgia’s territory, where she takes center stage as Reverend George and plays to her congregation. But I’ve spent a lifetime observing, looking in from the outside—it’s part of what makes me a successful therapist. I can fit in anywhere, even here.

Ahead, a man and a woman emerge from the church offices. They linger at a family plot where the man traces names engraved in the stone. Up close, I recognize him as the church’s treasurer—Everett Irving, a former client. He speaks softly, but as I come into view, his voice catches. Beside him, the woman follows his gaze right to me, her face suddenly flushed. I wonder if that’s his wife, Helen, if she’s blushing now because she knows I know her secrets.

“Beautiful day,” I say.

“Indeed!” Everett says, his voice loud.

The woman tugs at his hand. They hurry out of the churchyard, their heads bent together like those teenage girls I saw in town, whispering the entire time. Maybe Helen Irving just thought I was handsome.

Behind the church, a bike leans against the railing. As I approach, Alice’s husband, Damian Stone, emerges from the church offices, clomping down the steps in red- and blue-striped biking kit. He slips a phone into the pocket at the back of his jersey. He must be verging on fifty, with a trimmed beard just beginning to go gray. His legs are sinewy and shaved clean, not an ounce of fat on his frame. Thin enough to snap in two.

He looks upset and vulnerable, enough so that I wonder what his shadow side hides, but the moment he spots me, his presentation shifts. “Farley Drake!” he says to me, switching on his alpha male. “I was checking in with Georgia about the party. She’s doing me a solid. You’ll be there tonight, right?”

Seeing him catches me off guard. I take a split second to center myself, to compartmentalize the therapy session with his wife, to categorize anything she mentioned today as off-limits. It’s all I can do not to hint at the carrot cake she’s expecting, but that would be unethical. “Wouldn’t miss it,” I say.

Damian gets on the bike and clips his left toe to the pedal. “We should hit the road together sometime.”

“I don’t own a bike.”

“Use one of mine. I can tell you about my film. Would love your psychiatric perspective. How about Sunday?”

Damian’s under contract with one of the streaming services for this project, although he’s been cagey about the details. I worry he might be seeing me more as an investor than a consultant, and our bike ride might turn into an endless pitch. He’s the kind of guy who’s impossible to foist off on someone else at a cocktail party, one who talks with a confidence that obscures a lack of substantive success.

“Sunday morning’s booked for me,” I say.

“Later in the day, then. We’ll make it happen.”

He pedals off before I can decline, speeding through the cemetery and then onto the street. I wonder what brought him to the church. Lately, I’ve felt as though Georgia has been keeping something from me, and even though she’s close with Alice, it wouldn’t be the first affair that broke up a friendship. But that could be my own paranoia. Most of the people I talk to in a day are suffering the repercussions of an affair in one way or another.

Inside the church, the wide-planked floors creak and the air smells of percolated coffee and musty hymnals. At the end of a hallway lined with children’s drawings, Chloe slumps in a chair wearing a tie-dyed Greenpeace T-shirt, her gangling legs splayed in front of her. Pink hair falls in her eyes, a new look since last I saw her.

Maggie, the church secretary, plays solitaire on an ancient laptop. She must be close to sixty, with brown skin, hair home-dyed to hide the gray, and an endless supply of pastel-colored sweaters. I cock a hip against the doorjamb and say, “What’s the score?”

Maggie minimizes the screen, while Chloe scowls.

“Don’t tell on me,” Maggie says.

“I’m good with secrets,” I say.

She pushes away from her desk, her eyes taking me in. “I’ve heard about you and secrets, Farley Drake. And that smile of yours is dangerous. Don’t forget I’m a married woman.”

“My loss.”

“I was also supposed to be gone an hour ago,” Maggie says.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Chloe says. “And where’s Dad, anyway?”

I sweep pink hair from her eyes. Chloe bats my hand away, and I nod toward Georgia’s office door. “On a scale from one to ten, how bad is it?”

Chloe kicks at her chair. “Like a thirteen? And why don’t you tell her to just let me get a freaking phone?”

The phone.

Chloe’s phone, or lack thereof, has been the latest battle between mother and daughter. Georgia insists that Chloe wait until she turns fourteen to get one, which is four long months from now. In Chloe’s defense, she has to be one of the last kids in her grade to get her own phone. “I’m not stepping into the middle of this,” I say.

“I want to know why she won’t get me one,” Chloe says. “She won’t tell me, but maybe she’ll tell you.”

“Now you choose to be nice? When you need something from me? We’ll see. No promises, though.”

I open the door to Georgia’s office, where she sits at her laptop, earbuds in, light-brown curls framing a freckled face. She wears a navy suit, a gauzy scarf, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that make her seem older than her forty-one years. Behind her, a rainbow flag hangs beside a peace sign and windows open to views of the cemetery and harbor.

“This will pass,” she says into the mic.

For a spiritual leader, Georgia doesn’t seem all that spiritual, but she does bring other qualities to her role as a minister. She plays at being financial advisor, best friend, confidante, and counselor, all in one package. As a clinician, I also recognize that her whole life, her very existence, is wrapped up in her career and reputation. She’d be lost without this church and the influence it affords her.

She clicks off the call, adjusts her glasses, and contemplates me for a moment. “Do you have any cash?” she asks. “I need to run an errand before the party.”

I check my wallet. “Eighty bucks?”

She holds out a hand. “I’ll pay you back.”

She never does, but it doesn’t matter. I have plenty of money. I press the bills into her palm and kiss her cheek. “What was the call about?”

“Ministering to a parishioner,” she says. “And that’s all I can tell you.”

I wait for the rest. It rarely takes long.

“Fine,” she says. “I was talking to Simon Thibodeau. He’s stuck inside his house, what with the press hounding him and everything everyone is saying. I need to head over there, and before you try to talk me out of it, he’s a member of this community. He needs support from someone.” She pauses for a breath. “But if I go missing, at least you’ll know where to send the cops.”

I hold up my hands in surrender. I wouldn’t begin to tell Georgia how to do her job. “And what about Chloe?”

Georgia lets her head fall to her desk. “She gave a kid in her class a black eye. She’s suspended for three days. Grounded, too. For a month. Not one day less.”

I remember the girl sitting outside Cups and Cones on my way here. “Redhead?” I ask.

“That’s her.” Georgia lowers her voice. “Her name’s Taylor Lawson. I’m probably signing up for a week in purgatory for saying this, but I’d bet a million dollars Taylor got what she deserved. Her parents are worse than she is. And don’t you dare quote me.”

“Not a word.”

It takes a moment for me to go through my mental database and place Taylor Lawson’s name, but once I do, I realize I know more about the girl than I can reveal. Her mother, Karen, is another of my clients. She spends most of her sessions telling me how much she wishes she’d gone into the Peace Corps after college instead of having children.

Georgia tosses her phone onto the desk. “Chloe won’t say what the fight was about. Maybe you can coax it out of her.”

I turn to be sure the office door is closed. “You already know what it’s about,” I say. “It’s about the phone. The one you don’t want her to have but we all know she’ll get eventually. You could let her win once in a while.”

“And once she has one, we’ll never see her again.”

“And if she has a phone, she won’t be a kid anymore? Guess what? That’s already happened. And everything will be about the phone until you give in.”

Georgia bites her lip, and for a moment I think I might have made progress. But she shakes her head. “Chloe punched a classmate. Her punishment can’t be a new phone. That’s not good parenting. Maybe we can revisit the topic in a few weeks. For now, would you take her home? And make . . .