The Missing Ones

by Edwin Hill

  “As long as I can see them,” Hester said.

  Barb signaled to one of the troopers, who then led Kate and Oliver to a play area in one corner. Barb waved Hester over to a folding table, where she sat with her foot up. “We went out to the scene,” she said. “It was pretty bad. I’m sure it was upsetting.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Hester said, which, Rory observed, knocked the smile right off Barb’s face. A first.

  “Walk us through what happened,” Barb said. “Why were you out at the lighthouse?”

  “Don’t most flatlanders gravitate toward lighthouses?” Hester said. When Barb didn’t respond, she added, “I’m pretty sure Rory’s already told you why I’m here.”

  “You’re looking for Annie.”

  “And Annie lives out by the lighthouse. Someone at the house said she might have gone to the point.”

  “And exactly who is Annie?”

  “She’s my boyfriend’s twin sister. And Kate’s mother. And as I’m talking, I’m realizing that none of this sounds that great.”

  “Annie is that little girl’s mother,” Barb said.

  Hester nodded.

  “Can you show me the texts she sent?”

  Hester handed her phone to Barb.

  “They came in right after midnight,” Barb said to Rory, showing him the two texts. “You didn’t delete anything, did you? Because we’ll find out.”

  “I’m a librarian,” Hester said. “I know you can’t delete anything permanently.”

  “Who is this Morgan?” Barb asked, scrolling through more of Hester’s messages. “He seems pretty pissed off at you.”

  “Daphne’s brother. Kate’s uncle. My boyfriend. Probably in that order. He’s mad because I left in the middle of the night and didn’t tell him where I was going.”

  “Do you live together?”

  “Mostly.”

  “I’d be mad too. And to keep this straight, Daphne and Annie are the same person.”

  Hester sighed. “Yes,” she said.

  Barb turned to Rory. “Didn’t you say Annie moved here right before the first kidnapping?” When he nodded, she shoved a pad of paper toward Hester. “Write her name down. And her date of birth and Social Security number, if you have them.”

  “I know them by heart,” Hester said, scribbling down the information. “It won’t help. I’ve tried.”

  “We have a few more resources than you do,” Barb said. “Do you have a photo?”

  “Give me my phone back and I’ll text you one, though everyone says she looks different now.”

  “This is helpful,” Barb said, and Rory noted that her voice softened into good cop. “Is there anything else you need to tell me? Anything you’re holding back on?”

  “If I think of anything, I’ll let you know,” Hester said. “It’s not like I’m leaving before morning.”

  “Don’t leave at all,” Rory said. “Not without telling us first.”

  Off in the distance, he heard the steady hum of a helicopter.

  “That’s the medical examiner,” Barb said. “In a helicopter. They’re pulling out all the stops on this one. We need to deal with him. Afterwards, we’ll have more questions.”

  “I won’t be hard to find,” Hester said.

  “Let’s hope,” Barb said. “Disappearing seems to be a trend around here.”

  After Hester left, Barb radioed to shore to put out a bulletin on Daphne Maguire. She opened a laptop. “Do you know anything about this Hester Thursby?” she asked. “She’s all over the Internet. There was an Amber Alert out on that kid, Daphne’s kid, over the winter.”

  Rory leaned in and read through some of the results. “What are you thinking?”

  “This isn’t rocket science,” Barb said. “A woman using a fake name moves to town right before a kidnapping and then goes missing the same night that a state police officer is stabbed a few hundred yards from her house. As long as she isn’t dead, we have our prime suspect. Now we have to find out where the hell she went.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Hester hadn’t expected quite such an interrogation from the police; still, she supposed with Daphne came guilt by association. At the inn, with Kate and Oliver in tow, she found at least two dozen notes addressed to Lydia at the door, and inside, casserole dishes had begun to pile up on a table. Hester called Lydia’s name, but no one answered. Upstairs, she found a note from Lydia tacked to her door asking if she could please watch Oliver for a little while longer.

  I know that we don’t know each other, but I am feeling overwhelmed and I need to speak to the police. I should be back later this evening. Have dinner at Cappy’s. It’s on me.

  Hester crumpled up the note in her fist. Whatever happened, she hoped she didn’t wind up with two kids instead of one.

  “Help me out,” she said, ruffling Oliver’s hair.

  The three of them moved the casserole dishes into the refrigerator in the bakery and piled the notes up by the door. Then they sat on the floor in the bedroom, and Hester watched as the kids played and drew pictures. When she thought things were calm enough, she stepped onto the landing and called Angela White, level-headed Angela, who picked up on the first ring. Angela was a detective with the Boston Police Department and seemed like the best bet as a consultant right about now. “Have you gone off the deep end?” Angela said. “That husband of yours was on the phone with me all day long.”

  “Non-husband,” Hester said.

  “You’re impossible,” Angela said.

  “We’re all impossible in our own way,” Hester said. “And don’t think I’ve forgiven you for the intervention, but I need your help anyway.”

  “Fine. Hit me.”

  Hester walked Angela through what she’d told the cops. When she finished, Angela said, “You handled the interview well. You’re being honest and straightforward, which is exactly as I’d have advised you, but none of this sounds too good for Daphne. She’d definitely be one of my prime suspects. Don’t let her open her mouth without a lawyer.”

  “First, I have to find her. Second, I doubt there are any lawyers on this island. Not at this time of year.”

  “There’s always a lawyer around, and even a bad one is better than nothing. I have the next two days off though. Why don’t I come up there and give you a hand?”

  Hester nearly said yes. It would have been a relief to have a friend to rely on, but she also knew she had to confront Daphne when she found her, and for that she needed to be on her own.

  “I may show up anyway,” Angela said when Hester declined the offer.

  “That’s what I’d do,” Hester said. “But please don’t. Not this time. I’m asking for what I need, and if that changes, you’ll be the first one I call.”

  “Make me second,” Angela said. “I should always be second after that husband.”

  “Non-husband.”

  “Call him what you want, but we all know the deal,” Angela said, hanging up before Hester could respond.

  Hester looked at the blank phone and thought about calling Morgan but held off, not because she wanted to avoid another confrontation—though that was part of it—but because she knew a call would only worry him more when she filled him in on his missing sister and the details Hester had uncovered about Daphne’s life. It worried her, too, and she hoped that she could find some good news to share before they talked again. “Let’s grab dinner,” she said to the kids.

  At Cappy’s they found a warm bar filled with people and a menu with basic pub fare. “We’re packed,” said a hostess as she led them to a table in the back. Soon enough they’d ordered—fish and chips for Hester and chicken fingers for both Kate and Oliver. They talked through the important things that you talk about with four-year-olds: grasshoppers, Halloween costumes, Kate’s imminent return to school. Hester wondered what Kate had surmised from her conversation with the cops. She wondered how many questions it might bring up. But tonight, the girl seemed content to focus on other things.

  “Sti
ll around?”

  The man Hester had seen on the beach, the one with the black lab, loomed over her. Vaughn Roberts. He’d cleaned up since their last encounter. He’d also clearly had a few already.

  “What’s another night?” Hester said.

  “You’ve been talking to the police.” Vaughn nodded toward the crowd, with their gleaming eyes and excited chatter. “From what I hear, at least.”

  “That’s why everyone’s out tonight,” Hester said. Vaughn leaned toward her and nearly fell over. “For the gossip,” he said.

  Hester pulled up a chair. “Gossip with me.”

  Vaughn motioned to the waitress and ordered a beer. He cocked an eyebrow at Hester in a way that seemed practiced. In a way that set her on edge.

  “Ginger ale and rye,” she said.

  “How much can you drink?”

  “I come from a long line of drunks. I can hold my own.”

  Vaughn walked a hand across the table and touched Hester’s fingertips. She pulled her hand away. “Head back to the bar,” she said.

  That seemed to sober Vaughn up, but when the waitress brought him his beer, he told her to keep them coming.

  “You need to slow down, buddy, before you become gossip yourself,” Hester said.

  Vaughn shrugged. “It’s just one of those nights. I mean, I have a girl. Or, I had one. Been divorced six months now. Never thought I’d spend another night on this rock, but here I am, right? Stuck on a woman. Stuck on an island.”

  “And I’m stuck eating with a maudlin drunk. Find me when you’ve sobered up.”

  “Don’t you want to find out about your friend? Your friend whose real name is Daphne.”

  Hester saw Kate perk up at the mention of her mother’s name.

  “News travels fast here,” Hester said. “And I know her better than anyone else in the world. Daphne Maguire will be found when she wants to be, and not a moment sooner.”

  Hester sipped the sweet cocktail. She didn’t want to say much more, not with Kate sitting right there, absorbing every word. “What are people saying about . . .” She glanced at Oliver. “About what I found.”

  “You found it. They’re saying that.”

  “True enough.”

  “You come to the island to find a woman using a fake name, and a man winds up dead, with a knife in his back.” Vaughn leaned forward. “As far as I’m concerned, it was well deserved.”

  “You were on the beach earlier,” Hester said. “Didn’t you see anything?”

  “Not a thing,” Vaughn said. “I didn’t go out as far as you did.”

  But he had, hadn’t he? Hester tried to remember where the dog had appeared, and which direction Vaughn had come from.

  “You told Rory you saw me,” Vaughn said. “He’s been looking for an excuse to get me for years, but now more than ever.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason,” Vaughn said. “I’ll tell you this though. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone on this island who’s upset to see Trey gone. He didn’t have too many friends.”

  “Well, his wife’s upset.”

  “Leave her out of it,” Vaughn said, smashing his glass to the table. All around, conversation stopped as people stared. Vaughn stood slowly and faced the room, his feet unsteady.

  “Get him some coffee,” a man shouted from the back, followed by a smattering of applause.

  “Sit down,” Hester said.

  Vaughn felt behind him for his chair, and collapsed.

  “You should go home,” Hester said. “Whatever’s going on . . . it can wait till morning.”

  “What do you think is going on?” Vaughn asked.

  “I don’t know and, right now, I don’t care.”

  Vaughn leaned forward and whispered, “I’ve been sleeping with the Widow Pelletier. Have been for months now. Is that what you wanted to hear? There, do what you want with it!”

  While all this had been going on, Kate had finished her chicken fingers and had tried to entice Oliver into eating her carrot sticks for her. Now, the boy cocked his head at the name “Pelletier,” while Kate stared at the drunk man in front of her, more fascinated than fearful. Hester tapped her finger on the side of the plate. “You’re four years old,” she said. “So, how many carrot sticks do you have to eat?”

  “Four,” Kate said, biting into one of them glumly.

  Hester had spent enough time with drunk people to know that this conversation would go nowhere fast. Besides, the last thing she needed was for Oliver to understand even a jot of what Vaughn had confessed. “I’ve been on Finisterre for less than twelve hours,” she said. “And it took me all of five minutes to figure out what was going on between you and you-know-who. I can’t imagine anyone on this island doesn’t already know. And the police too.” She finished her drink in one gulp. “By the way, I can drink you and just about anyone under the table,” she added, dropping two twenties on the table. “And about L-Y-D-I-A? Watch yourself. I’m just saying.”

  “That spells Lydia,” Oliver said. “That’s my mother’s name.”

  “Excellent job,” Hester said.

  She held out her hands and waited till each of the kids had taken one. Then she marched out of the restaurant and tried to ignore the feeling of Vaughn staring at her as she retreated.

  Back at the inn, Lydia still hadn’t come home. Hester told Oliver to go find himself a pair of pajamas and helped both children get ready for bed. She read them a story, and when they’d fallen asleep, she slipped the bottle of Johnnie Walker she’d picked up at the General Store into her coat pocket and searched the first floor for any signs of where Lydia might have gone. The last thing they needed was another missing person, but the only clue she uncovered was a handwritten sign hung on the bakery door that said it was closed until further notice due to “personal reasons.”

  In was only when Hester had wandered onto the porch and watched as her breath froze in the autumn air that she realized she’d left Kate upstairs. These ten minutes were the longest they’d been apart in weeks, and instead of panic, Hester felt relief. Maybe she could move toward something normal again. Maybe she could heal. She twisted the cap off the bottle and drank down a slug of whisky, feeling the warmth spread through her. She sat on one of the rocking chairs and typed I’m sorry into her phone but deleted it before she accidentally sent it to Morgan.

  She closed her eyes and had dozed off, when suddenly she sat up, fully alert. “Who’s there?” she said, staring into the darkness.

  She listened. The island was asleep. She heard the steady rhythms of the sea and the wind. But she’d heard something else. A footstep, the breaking of a twig. She turned on her phone’s flashlight and shined it across the garden and into the shadows. Did something move? The weak beam of light didn’t reach far enough for her to see. She thought about Vaughn, drunk and angry. Could he have followed her here?

  “Coward,” she said.

  Inside, the small bed-and-breakfast suddenly felt very big and empty, with plenty of places where an intruder could hide. She dug in her pocket for Rory’s card, and even considered calling the deputy, but shook it off. Whatever she’d heard could have been anything—an animal, someone walking on the path toward home, a homicidal maniac—or nothing. Upstairs, Kate and Oliver lay sleeping with Sebastian nestled between them. She tucked them in and evaluated the safety of the room. The door to the bedroom didn’t have a lock, so she shoved a chair in front of it and slid into bed. She’d had enough nights where paranoia took over, but most nights she wasn’t trying to fall asleep on an island far from home where children disappeared and fathers wound up dead. Most nights, Hester didn’t have a clue where Daphne was, and the things she worried about were the things doing battle in her own head.

  * * *

  Hester woke instantly from a deep sleep, every sense heightened. She lay still and listened. Again, she could hear waves pounding on the shore and wind. Endless wind. And the creaks and groans of a two-hundred-year-old house.

  She
told herself to go back to sleep, to stop imagining, but then the latch on the guestroom door clicked, and the door hit the chair. Gently at first, then with more force. Someone was trying to get into the room. Hester felt beneath the blankets till she found Kate and Oliver sleeping soundly beside her. She imagined the room as it had been before she’d turned out the lights: the television, the braided rug, the bedside table. The lamp.

  The floorboards groaned. The chair fell over.

  Hester leapt from the bed, hand on the base of the lamp, tearing the cord from the wall. She charged toward the shadow, a cry rising in her throat.

  “Stop, stop, stop!”

  A cell phone display lit up a familiar chin.

  Hester dropped the lamp midswing. It clattered to the floor, the bulb smashing. Behind her, she heard Kate and Oliver sit up in bed.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” Hester said.

  She crossed to her side of the bed and flipped on the other bedside lamp. Morgan stood—cowered—by the door, arms raised to protect himself from her onslaught. He wore a blue fleece and jeans and a wool cap pulled down over his red hair. He opened the door to the room wide and let Waffles lumber in.

  “Careful,” Hester said. “There’s broken glass.”

  But the basset mix jumped right onto the bed, sniffed Oliver and lapped Kate on the cheek, who squealed with delight. They’d never go back to sleep now, but somehow Hester hardly cared. All the fear and anger had vanished, and she hoped Morgan’s anger—at everything—had too. “Come,” she said. “We can squeeze onto the bed. All five of us.”

  Morgan threw an overnight bag onto a chair. He tickled Kate, patted Oliver’s cheek, kissed Hester on the lips, lay on the bed, and let Waffles walk all over him. “Who’s the little guy?” he mouthed, nodding toward Oliver.

  “I’ll explain in the morning. How on earth did you get here?”

  “Found a fisherman to take me from Rockland,” Morgan said. “Cost me a fortune.”

  “Did you hurl?”

  “The whole way.”

  “Money well spent,” Hester said. “Can we fight tomorrow?”