Remember Me (11 page)

Their waitress came with the bill. When Henry laid the money down, he glanced up at her. The young woman's expression was worried and subdued, the exuberant smile singularly absent. She's recognized me, Henry thought, and wonders if I've put her together with Scott Covey.

He enjoyed the realization and was not about to tip his hand. With an impersonal smile he got up and pulled back Phoebe's chair. “Ready, dear?”

Phoebe got up and looked at the waitress. “How are you, Tina?” she asked.

N
at Coogan and his wife, Debbie, owned a twenty-foot outboard. They'd bought it secondhand when the boys were little, but because of the care Nat had lavished on it, it was still in excellent condition. Since the boys were spending the afternoon with friends in Fenway Park at the Red Sox game, Nat had suggested to Debbie that they go for a picnic on the boat.

She raised an eyebrow. “You don't like picnics.”

“I don't like sitting in fields with ants crawling all over everything.”

“I thought you were going to check the lobster pots and then come back and watch the game.” She shrugged. “There's something else going on here that I'm not getting, but okay. I'll make some sandwiches.”

Nat looked at his wife affectionately. Can't put anything over on Deb, he thought. “No, you just relax for a few minutes. I'll take care of everything.”

He went to the delicatessen where he bought salmon, pâté, crackers and grapes. Might as well do everything they did, he thought.

“Pretty fancy,” Deb observed as she put the food in a hamper. “Were they out of liverwurst?”

“No. This is what I wanted.” From the refrigerator he plucked the chilled bottle of wine.

Debbie read the label. “Are you guilt-complexed for some reason? That's expensive stuff.”

“I know it is. Come on. The weather's going to change later.”

They dropped anchor exactly one and a half miles from Monomoy Island. Nat did not tell his wife that this was the spot where Vivian Covey had spent her last hours. It might unsettle her.

“This actually is fun,” Debbie admitted. “But what have you suddenly got against the deck chairs?”

“Just thought a change of pace would be interesting.” He spread an old beach blanket on the deck and laid out the food. He had brought cushions for them to sit on. Finally he poured wine into their glasses.

“Hey, take it easy,” Debbie protested. “I don't want to get a buzz on.”

“Why not?” Nat asked. “We can nap when we're finished.”

The sun was warm. The boat rocked gently. They sipped the wine, nibbled on the cheese and pâté, picked at the grapes. An hour later, Debbie looked drowsily at the empty bottle. “I can't believe we drank all that,” she said.

Nat wrapped up the leftover food and put it in the picnic hamper. “Want to stretch out?” he asked as he arranged the cushions side by side on the blanket. He knew she was not a daytime drinker.

“Great idea.” Debbie settled down and immediately closed her eyes.

Nat stretched out beside her and began to review some of what he had learned the past few days. Friday after he'd studied the autopsy pictures he'd dropped in on Scott Covey. Covey's explanation that his wife had probably switched the emerald ring to her other hand seemed to him a little glib and perhaps rehearsed.

He glanced at the empty wine bottle warming in the sun. The autopsy report showed that Vivian Carpenter had consumed several glasses of wine shortly before her death. But when he queried her parents about her drinking habits, they'd both told him that she was not a daytime drinker. A single glass of wine made her sleepy, especially in the sun, the same reaction Deb was having.

Would anyone who was sleepy from drinking wine, and who was just learning to scuba dive, have insisted on joining her husband when he said he was going to take a brief underwater swim?

Nat didn't think so.

At three o'clock he sensed a subtle change in the motion of the boat. Heavy rain showers had been predicted for about three-thirty.

Nat stood up. This spot was on line with the entrance to the harbor, and as he watched, from all directions small craft were heading in.

Covey claimed he and Vivian had been down about twenty minutes when the squall hit. That meant that when he got up from the nap that afternoon, he
must
have noticed small craft going in toward shore. There must have been some sense of the current getting stronger.

At that point anyone with half a brain would have turned on the radio and checked the weather report, Nat reasoned.

Deb stirred and sat up. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking.” He looked down at her as she stretched. “Want to go for a quick swim, honey?”

Debbie lay back and closed her eyes.

“Forget it,” she murmured. “I'm too sleepy.”

S
cott Covey spent Sunday in the house. Relieved that Adam Nichols had agreed to represent him, he still was uneasy about one of the specific warnings Adam had given him. “When a rich wife dies in an accident shortly after her marriage to a man no one knows well, and that man is the only one present at her death, there's bound to be talk. You've cooperated with the police, and that was all to the good. Now stop cooperating. Refuse to answer any more questions.”

That admonition was fine with Scott.

Nichols' second piece of advice was easy to follow too. “Don't change your lifestyle. Don't start throwing money around.”

He had no intention of being that much of a fool.

Finally Adam had said, “And very important—don't be seen with another woman while the police are openly suspicious.”

Tina. Should he explain to Adam that before he met Viv, he'd been involved with her? That the relationship had started last year when he was working at the playhouse? Would Adam understand that he'd had nothing to do with her after he met Viv?

He could explain that Tina hadn't realized he'd
come back to the Cape. Then of all the damn luck she quit her job in Sandwich and started working at the Wayside Inn. After she saw him and Viv having dinner there she started calling him. The one time he'd agreed to meet her in person, Henry Sprague, of all people, had to be sitting beside him in the pub! Sprague was nobody's fool. Should he explain to Adam that Tina only stopped by the house one time after Viv was missing, to offer sympathy?

At four o'clock the phone rang. Grimly, Scott went to answer it. It had better not be that detective, he thought.

It was Elaine Atkins, inviting him to a barbecue at her fiancé's place. “Some of John's friends will be here,” she said. “Important people, the kind you should be seen with. I saw Adam last night, by the way. He told me he's going to represent you.”

“I can't thank you enough for that, Elaine. And of course I'll be happy to join you.”

As he drove down the street an hour later, he noticed Nat Coogan's eight-year-old Chevy parked in front of the Sprague house.

N
at Coogan had dropped in on the Spragues without phoning in advance. It was not something he did without calculation, however. He knew there was
something Henry Sprague had not told him about Scott Covey, and he hoped that the element of surprise might encourage Sprague to answer the question he planned to ask him.

Sprague's cool greeting gave Nat the message he expected. A phone call ahead of time would have been appreciated. They were expecting guests.

“It will just take a minute.”

“In that case, please come in.”

Henry Sprague hastily led the way through the house to the deck. Once there, Nat realized the reason he was hurrying. Sprague had left his wife alone outside, and in the minute he was gone she had started to walk across the lawn to the Carpenter/Covey house.

Sprague quickly caught up with her and guided her back to the deck. “Sit down, dear. Adam and his wife are going to visit us.” He did not invite Nat to be seated.

Nat decided to lay all his cards on the table. “Mr. Sprague, I believe that Scott Covey deliberately abandoned his wife when they were scuba diving, and I'm going to do everything in my power to prove it. The other day I had the very strong sense that there was something you were debating about telling me. I know you're the kind of man who minds his own business, but this
is
your business. Picture how terrified Vivian was when she knew she was going to drown. Imagine how
you'd
feel if someone deliberately led your wife into danger and then abandoned her.”

For some time, Henry Sprague had been valiantly trying to give up smoking. Now he found himself reaching into the breast pocket of his sports shirt for the pipe he had left in his desk drawer. He promised himself that he would get it when he let this detective out. “Yes, you're right, there was one thing. Three weeks before Vivian's death I happened to be in the Cheshire Pub at the same time Scott Covey was
there,” he said reluctantly. “A young woman named Tina came in. I'm sure they were planning to meet. He made a pretense of being surprised to see her, and she took the cue and ran off. She was not someone I knew. But then I saw her again this morning. She's a waitress at the Wayside Inn.”

“Thank you,” Nat said quietly.

“There's one thing more. My wife knew her by name. I don't know when they could have met except . . .”

He looked over at Vivian Carpenter Covey's home. “Several times lately when I've turned my back, Phoebe has walked over to the Carpenter place. The house isn't air-conditioned, and the windows are usually open. She may have seen Tina there. It's the only explanation I can come up with.”

“I
think it was a good idea to get Amy to mind Hannah for a couple of hours,” Adam said as they drove past the lighthouse and through the center of Chatham. “From what I understand, Phoebe can't handle much distraction. I gather also that she probably won't be able to discuss her notes, but I'm really glad that Henry was receptive to the idea of sharing them with you.”

“I am too.” Menley tried to sound enthusiastic, but it was a struggle. It should have been a perfect day, she thought. They'd spent a couple of hours on the beach, then read the Sunday papers while Hannah napped. Around three-thirty, when the thunderstorm broke, they stood at the window and watched the rain lash at the ocean and the angry surge of the waves. An easy, comfortable day, time spent together, sharing things, the kind of day they used to know.

Except that now always in Menley's mind was the specter of a breakdown. What was happening to her? she wondered. She had not told Adam about the panic attack at the railroad crossing, even though he would have understood. But to tell him that the night he was in New York she had awakened to the sound of a train, thundering as though it were roaring through the house! What would any rational human being think about a story like that? Likewise, could she tell him that she had no memory of being in the baby's room last night? No, never!

It would have seemed like whining to let him know that at Elaine's party she felt isolated by the camaraderie she witnessed but could not share. I have plenty of friends, Menley reassured herself. It's just that here I'm an outsider. If we
do
decide to buy Remember House I'll get to know everyone really well. And I'll bring my own friends up to visit.

“You're very quiet suddenly,” Adam said.

“Just daydreaming.”

The Sunday afternoon traffic was heavy and they inched their way down Main Street. At the rotary they turned left and drove a mile to the Sprague home on Oyster Pond.

As Adam braked in front of the house, a blue Chevy pulled away. Henry Sprague was standing in the doorway. His greeting to them was cordial, but it was clear that he was preoccupied.

“I hope Phoebe's okay,” Adam murmured to Menley as they followed him to the deck.

Henry had told his wife they were coming. Mrs. Sprague pretended to recognize Adam and smiled absently at Menley.

Alzheimer's, Menley thought. How awful to lose touch with reality. At Bellevue, her mother had sometimes had patients with Alzheimer's on the floor she supervised. Menley tried to remember some of the stories her mother had told her about helping them to retrieve memory.

“You've researched a great deal about the early history of the Cape,” she said. “I'm going to write a children's story about the Cape in the sixteen hundreds.”

Mrs. Sprague nodded but did not answer.

Henry Sprague was describing Nat Coogan's visit to Adam. “I felt like a damn gossip,” he said, “but there's something about that Covey fellow that doesn't ring true. If there's any chance he let that poor girl drown . . .”

“Elaine doesn't think so, Henry. She sent Scott Covey to me last week. I agreed to represent him.”

“You! I thought you were on vacation, Adam.”

“I'm supposed to be, but it's obvious that Covey is right to be concerned. The police are on a fishing expedition. He needs representation.”

“Then I'm talking out of turn.”

“No. If it comes to an indictment, the defense has the right to know which witnesses will be called. I'll want to talk to this Tina myself.”

“Then I feel better.” Henry Sprague gave a relieved sigh and turned to Menley. “This morning I collected what I could find of Phoebe's files on the early Cape days. I always told her that her research notes were an awful hodgepodge for someone who turned out polished articles and essays.” He chuckled. “Her answer
was to tell me that she worked in orderly chaos. I'll get them for you.”

He went into the house and returned in a few minutes with an armful of thickly packed expandable manila files.

“I'll take good care of them and get them back to you before we go home,” Menley promised. She looked at the material longingly. “It will be a treat to dig into this.”