Remember Me

  “Yes, we did.”

  “One more thing. You have a call in to your mother. When she phones, don’t ask her to interrupt her vacation. Dr. Kaufman believes you’re doing fine and I agree. Have a baby-sitter or not. That’s up to you.”

  He was gone. Menley waited until she heard the sound of the keeping room door closing behind him before she said, “Hannah, sometimes you just have to stand up to people. We’re going to be fine.”

  * * *

  At six-thirty, just as she came out of the shower, her mother phoned from Wexford.

  “Menley, they said it was urgent that I call you. What’s wrong?”

  Menley made a determined effort to sound cheery. “Nothing’s wrong, Mom. I just wanted to see how you were. Hannah’s telling herself jokes. She’s lying on my bed, giggling . . . No, I didn’t have a special reason for calling . . . Jack and Phyllis okay?”

  She was still on the phone when Adam came into the bedroom. She waved him over. “Mom, let me brief Adam. He’ll love it.” Quickly she explained, “Phyl is now tracing my father’s family. She’s back five generations to 1860. She discovered Adrian McCarthy, a scholar from Trinity College. The McCarthys have gone up in her estimation. The hunt continues.”

  She handed him the phone. “Say a quick hello to your mother-in-law.”

  She studied Adam as he chatted with her mother, realizing how tired he looked. This has not been much of a vacation for him, she thought.

  When he hung up, she said, “We don’t have to eat out. The fish market isn’t closed yet. Why don’t you run down and get something.”

  “Actually, I would like that. Thanks, Men.”

  He returned with bay scallops, freshly picked ears of small-kernel corn, beef tomatoes and French bread.

  Hannah watched the sunset with them. After they settled her in her crib, they prepared dinner together. By unspoken agreement, they did not discuss the conversation with Dr. Kaufman.

  Instead, Adam told her about the meetings he had had that day. “Those waitresses will be good witnesses,” he said, “and so will Tina’s boyfriend. But Men, I have to tell you, Scott Covey is coming through more and more as an opportunist.”

  “But surely not a murderer.”

  “No, not that.”

  After dinner they both read for a while. They were still sensitive from the things that had been said earlier, so they talked very little.

  They went to bed at ten-thirty, both sensing that they still needed space from each other. Menley felt uncommonly tired and fell asleep almost immediately.

  “Mommy, Mommy.” It was the afternoon at East Hampton two weeks before Bobby died. They were spending the weekend with Louis Miller, one of Adam’s law partners. Lou was taking videos. Adam had Bobby in the pool. He’d put him on the deck. “Go to Mommy,” he’d instructed.

  Bobby ran to her, his arms outstretched, his smile joyous. “Mommy, Mommy.”

  She swung him up and turned to the camera. “Tell us your name,” she instructed.

  “Wobert Adam Nikko, “he’d said proudly.

  “And what do people call you?”

  “Bobby.”

  “And do you go to school?”

  “Nertry schoow.”

  “Nertry schoow,” she’d repeated and the sound of laughter closed the tape.

  “Bobby. Bobby.”

  She was crying. Adam was leaning over her. “It’s all right, Men.”

  She opened her eyes. “It was just a dream this time.”

  As Adam put his arms around her, they heard Hannah begin to fuss. Menley pulled herself up.

  “I’ll go in to her,” Adam said, quickly getting out of bed.

  He brought her back to their room. “Here she is, Mama.”

  Menley closed her arms around the baby. A sense of peace and healing came over her as Hannah snuggled close.

  “Go to sleep, honey,” Adam said quietly. “I’ll put her nibs back in a couple of minutes.”

  She drifted off, remembering Bobby’s happy, sunny voice. “Mommy, Mommy.” By next summer Hannah would be able to call to her too.

  After a while she felt Hannah being taken from her arms. A few minutes later Adam drew her to him and whispered, “Sweetheart, the one thing you mustn’t do is deny you’re having flashbacks.”

  August 13th

  76

  Late Saturday morning, Nat Coogan dutifully accompanied his wife into town. Their anniversary was coming up, and Debbie had seen a painting at one of the galleries that she thought would be perfect over their fireplace.

  “It’s a panoramic view of the ocean and shore,” she told him. “I think if I were looking at it every day, I’d feel I was living on the water.”

  “If you like it, buy it, Babe.”

  “No, you have to see it first.”

  Nat was no judge of art, but when he saw the water-color, he thought it was a pretty amateurish job, certainly not worth the two hundred dollar price tag.

  “You don’t like it. I can tell,” Debbie said.

  “It’s okay.”

  The dealer intervened. “The artist is only twenty-one years old and has a lot of promise. This painting may be worth money someday.”

  I wouldn’t hold my breath, Nat thought.

  “We’ll think about it,” Debbie said. When they were outside, she sighed. “It didn’t look that good today. Oh, well.”

  The art shop was on a path off Main Street. “Buy you lunch?” Nat asked when they reached the sidewalk.

  “You probably want to get out on the boat.”

  “No, that’s all right. We’ll go to the Wayside. Tina’s working today and I like her to see me hanging around. One of our few good chances to nail Covey is to get her rattled when she’s testifying.”

  They passed the Atkins Real Estate Agency. Debbie stopped and looked in the window. “I always check to see what waterfront estate they’re showing this week,” she told Nat. “After all, we might win the lottery someday. I was so sorry when they took out that aerial photograph of Remember House. That was my favorite. I think it inspired me to get interested in the watercolor.”

  “Looks as though Marge is about to put the one of Remember House back,” Nat observed.

  Inside the office, Marge was opening the showcase window, and as they watched, she put the handsomely framed photograph in an empty space in the display area. Noticing them, Marge waved and came outside to speak to them. “Hello Detective Coogan,” she said. “Anything I can help you with? We’ve got some very attractive listings.”

  “Unofficial business,” Nat told her. “My wife is enamored of that picture.” He pointed to the aerial photo of Remember House. “Unfortunately, that listing is a little out of our price range.”

  “That picture has brought in more traffic,” Marge commented. “Actually this is a copy of the one you saw. Elaine made it for Adam Nichols and I’m just putting it in the window until he comes for it. She gave the original to Scott Covey.”

  “Scott Covey!” Nat exclaimed. “What would he want with it?”

  “Elaine says he’s expressed interest in Remember House.”

  “I’d have thought he couldn’t wait to get away from the Cape,” Nat said. “Provided he’s free to go.”

  Marge was suddenly uncomfortably aware that she might be wandering into dangerous territory. She had heard that Nat Coogan was investigating Scott Covey. On the other hand, that was his job, and he and his wife were nice people and in the future could become clients. His wife was still admiring the picture of Remember House. Marge remembered that Elaine had said she had the negative and could always make copies.

  “Would you want to have a print of this photograph?” she asked.

  Debbie said, “I certainly would. I have just the spot for it.”

  “I know Elaine would make one up for you,” Marge volunteered.

  “Then that’s settled,” Nat decreed.

  * * *

  At the Wayside Inn, they found that Tina had phoned in sick. “I a
m getting her rattled,” Nat said. “That’s good.”

  It was when they were finishing their lobster rolls that Debbie suddenly observed, “That isn’t the same picture, Nat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was something different about the picture of Remember House we saw this morning, and I just figured it out. The one that had been in the window earlier had a boat in it. The one Marge just showed us didn’t. Isn’t that odd?”

  77

  On Saturday morning, Adam reminded Menley to tell Amy they wouldn’t be needing her that day. He had a meeting with a marine expert the harbormaster at Chatham had recommended. “I want someone to balance the people from Woods Hole who are going to raise a question about where the body washed in, but it shouldn’t take long. I’ll be home by twelve or one.”

  Half a loaf, Menley thought. He may not have believed that I didn’t have a flashback when I dreamed of Bobby, but at least he’s willing to leave me alone with the baby.

  “I want to work this morning,” she said. “I’ll have Amy baby-sit till lunchtime.”

  “Your decision, dear.”

  Amy arrived just as he was leaving. She was dismayed to hear Menley ask, “Adam, where is that tape of Bobby at East Hampton? I’m ready to see it now.”

  “It’s in the apartment.”

  “The next time you go down will you bring it up?”

  “Of course. We’ll watch it together.”

  Should I tell them I have it? Amy wondered. They might not like the idea that I was looking at it. No, it would be better to return it to Elaine’s house as fast as she could. Mr. Nichols might remember that he’d left it at the Cape and ask Elaine for it.

  * * *

  When Menley went into the library and closed the door, she realized instantly that something was different about the atmosphere. It was so chilly. That must be it. This room didn’t get the morning sun. Even so, she decided not to move the data back into the keeping room. She was wasting too much time going through the stacks of files. She would spread them out on the floor, the way she worked in her office at home, and fasten on each one a sheet of paper on which she’d written the contents in large, bold print. That way she could find what she was looking for easily, and when she was finished, she could just close the door on the mess instead of straightening it out.

  She spent the first hour spreading the data around to her satisfaction, then opened the new file from Phoebe Sprague and began to analyze the contents.

  The sketches were on top. Again she studied the one of the Captain and Mehitabel on the ship, then taped it to the wall by her desk. Alongside it she hung her own sketches of them and the drawing Jan had brought from the Brewster Library. Almost interchangeable, she thought. I must have come across something like this in the files.

  She had already planned the way she would work. She began by combing through the new material for any and every reference to Tobias Knight.

  The first time she saw his name was in connection with the carrying out of Mehitabel’s punishment. “At ye town meeting in Monomoit on the third Wednesday of August in ye year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and five, Mehitabel, the wife of Captain Andrew Freeman was presented and the judgment of ye court carried out in the presence of her husband, her accusers, her penitent partner in adultery and ye town people who ventured forth from their homes and duties to witness and be warned of the punishment of unchastity.”

  The third Wednesday in August, Menley thought. That would be around this time. And Andrew watched her tortured. How could he?

  There was a note that Phoebe had made: “Captain Freeman sailed that night, bringing with him the six-week-old infant and an Indian slave as nursemaid.”

  He left her in that condition and took her baby from her. Menley looked up at her sketch of Andrew Freeman. You didn’t look strong and sure that day, I hope, she thought. She ripped the sketch from the wall, reached for a charcoal pencil, and with quick, sure strokes altered the confident expression.

  She had intended to depict cruelty, but try as she would, when she was finished, the face of Andrew Freeman was that of a man ravaged by grief.

  Maybe you had the grace to regret what you did to her, she thought.

  * * *

  Amy had brought Hannah in for a bottle of juice. Holding the baby, she stood uncertainly in the keeping room. From the front of the house she thought she could hear the sound of soft sobbing. That’s what Carrie heard yesterday, she thought. Maybe Mrs. Nichols came back earlier than we realized.

  Mrs. Nichols kept up such a good front when people were around, but she really was depressed, Amy thought, wondering briefly if it was her responsibility to talk to Mr. Nichols about it.

  Then she listened again. No, that wasn’t Mrs. Nichols crying. The breeze had started up the way it did yesterday and was making the sobbing sound that echoed in the chimney. Wrong again, Carrie, Amy thought.

  August 14th

  78

  On Sunday morning Adam insisted on going out for brunch after church. “We both ended up working last night, which wasn’t the plan, and I have to spend at least an hour with Scott Covey this afternoon.”

  Menley could not refuse even though she wanted to stay at her desk. From town records in Phoebe Sprague’s last file, she’d learned the circumstances of Mehitabel’s death.

  Captain Andrew Freeman had been gone for two years after he sailed, taking his infant daughter with him. Mehitabel had kept watch for him from the widow’s walk of Nickquenum, as the house was known at that time.

  When she spotted his sails, she had gone to the harbor to wait for him. “A piteous sight,” according to a letter written by selectman Jonathan Weekes.

  Clearly souferin, she homble knelt before him and begged for her babe. He told her his daughter-babe would never set eyes on an unchaste mother. He ordered Mehitabel begone from his home. But her sickliness and fatague was observed by all and she was caried there to be gathered that night to her heavenly account. It is said that Captain Freeman witnessed her death and that her last words were “Andrew, here I await my child and here cruelly wronged, I die sinless.”

  Menley discussed what she had learned with Adam as they had eggs Benedict at the Red Pheasant in Dennis.

  “My father used to love this place,” Adam said, looking around. “It’s too bad he’s not still here. He’d be a great help to you. He knew Cape history backward and forward.”

  “And God knows Phoebe Sprague knew it,” Menley said. “Adam, do you think it would be all right to call the Spragues and see if Hannah and I could visit them while you’re with Scott?”

  Adam hesitated. “Phoebe says crazy things sometimes.”

  “Not always.”

  He made the call and came back to the table, smiling. “Phoebe’s having a pretty good day. Henry said to come right over.”

  * * *

  Eighteen days more, Henry thought as he watched Phoebe playing patty-cake with Hannah, who was sitting on Menley’s lap. He dreaded the morning he would awaken without Phoebe beside him.

  Today she was walking better. There was less of the uncertain shuffling that was her usual gait. He knew it wouldn’t last. There were fewer and fewer moments of lucidity, but at least, thank heaven, there were no more nightmares. She’d slept fairly well the last couple of nights.

  “My granddaughter loves patty-cake too,” Phoebe told Hannah. “She’s just about your age.”

  Laura was fifteen now. It was as the doctor said. Long-term memory was the last to go. Henry was grateful for the look of understanding Adam’s wife exchanged with him. What a pretty girl Menley is, he thought. In these couple of weeks her hair had become sunstreaked and her skin lightly tanned. The coloration brought out the deep blue of her eyes. She had a lovely smile, but today he noticed a difference in her, an indefinable air of sadness that hadn’t been there before.

  Then, when he heard her talking to Phoebe, he wondered if she was letting the research on Remember House get to her. It
certainly was a tragic story.

  “I came across the account of Mehitabel’s death,” she was telling Phoebe. “I guess when she knew Andrew wouldn’t bring her the baby, she just gave up.”

  There was something Phoebe wanted to say. It had to do with Mehitabel and what was going to happen to Adam’s wife. She would be dragged into that murky place where Andrew Freeman had left Tobias Knight to rot and then she would be drowned. If only Phoebe could explain that. If only the faces and voices of the people who were going to kill Adam’s wife weren’t hazy shadows. How could she warn her?

  “Go away!” she cried, as she pushed at Menley and the baby. “Go away!”

  * * *

  “Vivian’s mother and father are going to make strong, emotional witnesses,” Adam warned Scott. “They’re going to paint you as a fortune hunter who had a flashy girlfriend visiting him the week before the marriage, and who, after murdering their daughter, ripped a ring from her finger as a final act of greed.”

  Scott Covey was showing the strain of the impending inquest. They were sitting opposite each other at the dining room table, Adam’s notes spread between them.

  “I can only tell the truth,” he said quietly.

  “The way you tell it is what matters. You’ve got to convince that judge that you’re as much a victim of that squall as Vivian was. I do have a good corroborating witness, a guy who almost lost his grandson when their boat was swamped. He would have lost him if he hadn’t grabbed the kid by the foot as he was going over the rail.”

  “Would they have accused him of murdering the child if he hadn’t been able to grab him?” Covey asked bitterly.

  “That’s exactly the thought we want to plant in the judge’s mind.”

  When he left an hour later, Adam said, “No one can predict the outcome of these hearings. But we’ve got a good shot. Just remember, don’t lose your temper, and don’t criticize Vivian’s parents. Get across that, yes, they’re grieving parents and you are a grieving husband. Keep ‘husband’ in mind when they try to paint you as a murdering opportunist.”