by Dete Meserve
PRAISE FOR GOOD SAM
“Meserve’s narrative has a . . . dry wit and well-conceived dialogue throughout. Kate’s relatable qualities of self-reliance tinged with vulnerability drive this gratifying mystery-romance about finding the good guys—and knowing when to recognize them.”
—Publishers Weekly
“In her debut novel, Meserve writes a . . . solid feel-good romance sparked with mystery.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“If you are a Nicholas Sparks or Richard Paul Evans fan, I’m betting you will like author Meserve’s book Good Sam. Uplifting, heart wrenching, and a two-hankie read, this story is a winner.”
—Cheryl Stout, Amazon Top Reviewer and Vine Voice
“This story had everything from suspense to drama. And the heartfelt ending had us smiling for days.”
—First for Women magazine
PRAISE FOR PERFECTLY GOOD CRIME
“A first rate and undaunted protagonist easily carries this brisk tale. Kate is intuitive and professional, but it’s her steadfast compassion that makes her truly remarkable.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Dete Meserve delivers a novel that is simultaneously mysterious, fascinating, and inspiring.”
—BuzzFeed.com
“A feel-good mystery . . . an enjoyable escape.”
—BookLife Prize for Fiction
“Books that are changing the world.”
—2016 Living Books Award, Gold Medal in Inspirational Fiction
“Saturated with unexpected twists and shocking motives, Kate Bradley follows clues—and her heart—to discover that some crimes have powerfully good intentions.”
—Sunset
ALSO BY DETE MESERVE
Good Sam
Perfectly Good Crime
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 Dete Meserve
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503901407
ISBN-10: 1503901408
Cover design by Rachel Adam Rogers
CONTENTS
START READING
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Silently one by one,
In the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars,
The forget-me-nots of the angels
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Ben sat on the leather couch, his blue eyes planet-sized. Serious.
I closed the cabin door behind me, shutting out the cold wind that whipped the trees outside, and dumped an armful of firewood on the hearth.
“Everything okay?” I asked again. The wind and the hike up the hill deep in the Anza-Borrego Desert had stolen my breath.
I warmed my tingling hands by the roaring fire and turned to face him, foggy with fatigue. I’d been hoping our return to what we dubbed the Summer Triangle Haven would recharge my batteries after completing my master’s thesis. But on the drive up and ever since we’d arrived, Ben seemed lost in thought. After two years together, was he having second thoughts about us?
“Sarah, there’s something I want to talk about—” His voice was thick and low.
“Are you breaking up with me?” A shiver ran up my spine, but I wasn’t sure if it was caused by the draft from the window or because I was afraid of what he was going to say.
He stood and crossed the room. “Actually . . . I’m asking you to marry me.”
He pulled a ring box from his pocket.
“No,” I whispered.
His warm smile pulled me to him. “No, as in . . . that’s your answer?”
I covered my mouth with my hands. “No. As in, I can’t believe you’re asking me. You seemed so serious, I thought—”
“Of course I’m serious. This is the most important decision I’ve ever made.”
It didn’t sink in. “You’re not breaking up with me?”
“I hope this is the beginning of our life together.” He opened the box, displaying a ring with two diamonds encased in a golden infinity symbol. “Sarah Elisabeth, will you marry me?”
My breath hitched. I gazed at the ring and then at him. Then back at the ring.
“This is the part where you say yes,” he whispered.
“I can’t.”
He blinked as though he wasn’t sure he heard me. “You can’t say yes?”
“How can I? I’m about to start my PhD at Caltech in a few months. Are you asking now because you don’t want me to move to LA?”
He took my hands in his. “I’m asking because I can’t imagine living my life without you.”
“I’d be a terrible wife. I can’t cook, I can’t—”
“I don’t want a cook. I want you.”
“I would never be home, I’d be—”
“I don’t care if you have to spend every waking moment peering through a telescope or writing important papers about the comparative albedo of asteroids—”
I smiled through my tears. “Albedo . . . you’re actually throwing out astronomy terms like albedo at a time like this?”
“When I’m your husband, I have a feeling I’ll be talking a lot about albedo and infrared and quasars and—”
I looked into his deep-blue eyes, framed by wavy brown hair—and the words rushed out. “Would you ask me again?”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he cupped my face in his hands and gently pressed his lips to mine. “Will you . . . marry me?”
“Yes,” I answered, then he slipped the ring on my finger.
A day later, the ring disappeared. Somewhere in the m
iles of mountains and wilderness we’d traversed in the desert, it slipped from my finger and tumbled to the ground. We scoured every inch of where we’d been, scaling ridges and climbing boulders, squeezing through stands of prickly cholla, and searching in wide stretches of pale-yellow desert dandelion, wondering at first if the ring’s disappearance was a sign we shouldn’t get married. But as twilight fell and we stood beneath a vault of glittering stars deep in the desert, our worries fell away and we started our lives together.
CHAPTER ONE
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
“Infinity is not a term we astronomers generally use,” I say to a room full of scientists and administrators at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. “That’s because infinity is not directly observable, and we have no evidence of its existence. But today I use the term because the major discovery we are about to unveil will give us seemingly infinite new insights into the birth of our planet.”
My presentation, held in a sun-drenched conference room to a standing-room-only crowd of high-level NASA decision makers, is mostly a celebration. Rich blue hydrangea centerpieces cover the tables, and a sumptuous menu is planned for the lunch right after.
I tuck a strand of light-brown hair behind my ear. “And, since I’ve been on this quest for over a decade, it seems like I’ve spent an infinite amount of time seeking out this discovery,” I say, which elicits scattered laughter from the scientists, who know how long it takes to make breakthroughs like this.
“I’ve scanned the entire sky in four infrared wavelengths, snapping pictures of three-quarters of a billion galaxies and stars throughout our universe, but, for me, finding an asteroid in Earth’s orbit—a scrap of our primordial solar system—would be the greatest discovery of them all.”
As I look out at their faces filled with anticipation, I feel my chest swell with shining pride. My voice catches. “And today I’m privileged to announce . . . we have found Earth’s Trojan asteroid.”
I glance up at the jumbo screen above my head and click the slide to a brilliant image of a sunlit planet Earth.
“Unseen by us, this Trojan asteroid has been leading us in Earth’s orbit around the sun for over ten thousand years. Our sun shines so bright that it has been invisible to every living thing on Earth since before recorded time. But, on a hot summer night last August, our team at the Carnegie Institute of Technology used an infrared space telescope to spot our rocky escort, hidden in blinding sunlight.”
Though I work to sound calm, I cannot contain the unstoppable joy in my voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you, Earth’s Trojan asteroid, 2010 TK7.”
I switch the slide to an artist’s rendering of the spiraling path of 2010 TK7, and the entire room erupts in applause. Several administrators leap to their feet, which prompts a room-wide standing ovation.
As I glance up at our discovery—the genesis rock that dates back to the birth of our solar system—tears gather in my eyes.
In this simplest of moments, I’m flooded with such an extravagant sense of joy and meaning that the only way to describe the feeling is to call it . . . infinite.
On the flight home from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles, I’m still buzzing from the NASA presentation. I have several reports to review for a new space telescope proposal that will allow us to search for planets orbiting nearby stars, but I’m so distracted by our Trojan asteroid discovery that I find myself reading the same paragraphs over and over.
That joy—that lightness—stays with me as I ride home. It’s only fifteen miles from the airport, but even at one in the morning, it still takes nearly forty minutes to reach Brentwood, a neighborhood of midcentury homes and manicured lawns on the west side of LA. It’s an area my husband, Ben, fell in love with last year, but I’m still getting used to its driveways lined with Land Rovers and Maseratis and the stream of pool guys, housekeepers, and nannies who make their daily pilgrimages up our tree-lined streets.
I step through my front door, drop my purse on the entryway table, and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror above it. My cheeks are glowing pink as if I’d just come off the ski slopes or had been sailing. Or fallen in love.
“Ben?” I call out. No answer.
I head to the family room to find my son, Zack, on the couch, his face lit by the blue-white glow of his laptop.
“I’m going to bed in a minute,” he grumbles.
“How was your class trip to Lake Hughes?”
He replies with all the sullenness of his fourteen years. “It rained almost the entire weekend.”
“Is Dad home?”
“No.”
“Did he say he was going to be late?”
“No,” he says. “Why do you have to know where he is every second?”
I start to reply, then stop. Zack has been grounded for nearly two weeks. Right now, he thinks I overreact about everything.
I try to remember if Ben told me he was going work late. But we hadn’t talked or even exchanged texts for three days while I was on my trip to and from NASA Headquarters.
I glance in the garage to see if his car is there. Empty.
I call his cell. It rings then goes to voice mail.
When are you coming home? I text.
Ben owns and runs Aurora, a top LA restaurant, so his workdays sometimes run late into the night. But it’s not like him to be at work past eleven on a weekday.
?? I text.
I kick off my heels and head to the living room, where the Christmas tree lights twinkle in the dark. I breathe in the scent of fresh pine, surprised that Ben bought a tree this year. When Zack was little, we’d spend hours choosing the right one from a lot near our house, then trim it together over several nights. But it’d been a long time since we’d had a real tree, opting instead for a prelit Fraser fir look-alike. And it had been a while since Zack had shown any interest in decorating it.
I tap one of the vintage lights on the tree to induce the heat from the bulb to produce a stream of bubbles in the glass tube. The tree is a living archive of our life as a family. Baby’s first ornament. Handprints in plaster. Tinfoil ornaments made by chubby five-year-old hands. Santa ornaments that Ben had collected: Biker Santa. Snorkeling Santa. Santa on the Toilet.
I’m puzzled to see a present, wrapped in silver paper, waiting beneath the tree. Addressed to me from “Santa.” Ben always waits until Christmas Eve to buy and wrap presents and yet a gift is here, two weeks early. We’d had a painful discussion before I left. Was this his response?
I head back into the family room. “Dad didn’t say anything about being late?” I ask Zack.
“What? No.”
I dial his office at Aurora, but I’m not surprised when the call goes straight to voice mail. They rarely answer the phone after eleven.
I grab a small glass bottle of mineral water from the fridge and gulp it down. The water helps me think.
Maybe his phone died. Or maybe he didn’t have cell phone coverage. In West Los Angeles, there are plenty of dead spots.
“Finish up and get to bed soon,” I say, ruffling Zack’s hair, then head upstairs to the bedroom.
The sound of a gunshot jolts me awake. Was it outside or in my dreams?
My heart pounds as I reach for my glasses on the nightstand and glance at the clock: 4:07 in the morning. The bed beside me is empty. Where is Ben?
Outside my window, I hear laughter and voices—men and women—talking loudly. I push the curtains aside and scan the front lawn and the street below. In the orange-sodium glow of the streetlights, I can make out a group of four twentysomethings stumbling down the sidewalk, holding each other up.
A boy with a mop of brown hair is kicking over the trash bins that have been set out against the curb. When they hit the asphalt, they sound like a gunshot blast, eliciting roars of laughter from the group.
I close the curtains and try calling Ben again. Voice mail. Where is he?
I drink more water to quell my rising fear, but it doesn’t help. I wonder if he’
s deliberately staying out late. Is this his reaction to our discussion? Or is the present under the tree a truer sign of his feelings?
I pace the floor and consider what to do. Too soon to file a missing person’s report. Call the hospitals? Where would I even start with that? I call Ben’s assistant, Will. Voice mail.
I’m about to put my phone down when I notice the red voice-mail notification on my phone. How had I missed it before? The notification indicates that the call came in at 9:08 last night, but there’s no caller ID.
I press the play button. The recording is eighteen seconds long and mostly intermittent white noise. I think I can hear a human voice breaking up in the background, but when I play it again, I have no idea what they’re saying. Could this be from Ben?
I draw deep breaths like I remember from a yoga class taken a year ago and try to imagine Ben walking in the door as though nothing had happened, frustrated by his cell phone’s lousy coverage or drained battery.
I need a distraction until Ben comes home, so I reach for a book I’d been reading about the early history of spaceflight. I know I won’t be able to focus, but I hope the act of holding the book and following the words on the page will have a calming effect.
I pull on the nightstand handle, and in the dim light I can see the drawer is cluttered with a dozen or so of my books and magazines, as it always is. Except for one new item. A gun.
I switch on the light above the bed and peer into the drawer, blinking a few times in the futile hope that I imagined it.
In the corner is a black pistol. New. I shine the light from my cell phone into the drawer. Etched into the side of the gun is a large letter G and the word “lock” inside it. Glock. Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck. We’d never owned a gun. I’d never even held one.
I lift the gun out of the drawer. It feels cold, and heavy in my hands. I turn it over and flush with anger. It’s loaded. What was Ben thinking leaving a loaded gun in the house with Zack at home? He knew the problems we’d been having with him.
Ben isn’t careless like that. The gun’s presence could only mean that he—or we—were in danger.
As I place it back into the drawer, I hear a loud thump outside, as though someone or something has fallen against the house in the narrow strip that runs alongside it from the front lawn to the backyard. For a brief flash, I think it’s a sign that Ben is home. Maybe he’s running the neighbor’s annoying dog out of our yard again. Or maybe it’s one of the intoxicated twentysomethings, bumbling onto our property.