So many plans! So many dreams! Scott hadn’t been scuba diving since that last day with Vivian. Today he fished for a while, checked his lobster pots and was rewarded with four two-pounders, then put on his scuba gear and went down for a while.
He docked the boat at the marina and reached home at five-thirty, then immediately went next door to the Sprague house with two of the lobsters. Henry Sprague answered the door.
“Mr. Sprague, I know at our reception your wife seemed to enjoy the lobster. I caught some today and hoped you might like to have a couple of them.”
“That’s very kind,” Henry said sincerely. “Won’t you come in?”
“No, that’s fine. Just enjoy them. How is Mrs. Sprague?”
“About the same. Would you like to say hello? Wait, here she is.”
He turned as his wife came down the hall. “Phoebe, dear, Scott has brought lobster for you. Isn’t that nice of him?”
Phoebe Sprague looked at Scott Covey, her eyes widening. “Why was she crying so hard?” she asked. “Is she all right now?”
“Nobody was crying, dear,” Henry Sprague said soothingly. He put an arm across her shoulders.
Phoebe Sprague pulled away from him. “Listen to me,” she shrieked. “I keep telling you there’s a woman living in my house and you won’t believe me. Here, you.” She grabbed Scott’s arm and pointed to the mirror over the foyer table. The three of them were reflected in it. “See that woman.” She reached over and touched her own image. “She’s living in my house and he won’t believe me.”
Somewhat troubled by Phoebe Sprague’s ramblings, Scott went home, deep in thought. He had planned to steam one of the remaining lobsters for himself, but he found he had no taste for food. He made a drink and checked the answering machine. There were two messages: Elaine Atkins had phoned. Did he want to leave the house on the market? She had a prospective buyer. The other was from Vivian’s father. He and his wife had an urgent matter to discuss. They would stop by around six-thirty. It would take only a few minutes.
What’s that about? Scott wondered. He checked his watch; it was ten after six already. He set down the drink and hurried in for a quick shower. He dressed in a dark blue knit shirt, chinos and Docksiders. He was just combing his hair when the bell rang.
It was the first time Anne Carpenter had been in her daughter’s home since the body was found. Not knowing what she was looking for, she searched the living room with her eyes. In the three years Vivian had owned the house, Anne had only been in it a few times, and it looked about the same as she remembered. Vivian had replaced the bedroom furniture but left this room pretty much as she had found it. On her first visit Anne had suggested that her daughter get rid of the loveseat and some of the cheap prints, but Vivian had flared up at her, despite the fact that she had asked for suggestions.
Scott insisted they have a drink. “I just made one. Please join me. I haven’t wanted people around, but it’s awfully good to see you.”
Reluctantly, Anne admitted to herself that his demeanor seemed genuinely sad. He was so strikingly good looking with his blond hair and tanned skin and hazel eyes, it was easy to see how Vivian had fallen in love with him. But what did he see in her except her money? Anne asked herself, then recoiled at her own question. What a horrible thought for a mother, she scolded herself.
“What are your plans, Scott?” Graham Carpenter asked.
“I don’t have any. I still have the feeling that this is all a bad dream. I don’t think I’ve come to grips with reality yet. You know Viv and I had been looking for a bigger house. The upstairs bedrooms are really small, and when we had a baby we’d have wanted a place where live-in help wouldn’t be under our feet all the time. We even had names picked out. Graham for a boy, Anne for a girl. She told me that she always felt she was a big disappointment to the two of you and she wanted to make it up to you. She felt it was her fault, not yours.”
Anne felt a lump in her throat. She watched the convulsive tightening of her husband’s mouth. “We always seemed to be at cross-purposes,” she said quietly. “Sometimes it happens like that, and as a parent you hope it will change. I’m glad if Vivy truly wanted it to change. We certainly did.”
The phone rang. Scott jumped up. “Whoever it is, I’ll call back.” He hurried into the kitchen.
A moment later Anne watched with curiosity as her husband picked up his drink and walked down the hall to the bathroom. He returned just as Scott came back.
“I just wanted to put a dash more water in the scotch,” Graham explained.
“You should have gotten some ice water from the kitchen. There was nothing private about the phone conversation. That was the real estate agent wanting to know if it was all right to bring a prospective buyer around tomorrow,” Scott said. “I told her to take the house off the market.”
“Scott, there is something we need to ask.” Graham Carpenter clearly was trying to keep his emotions under control. “The emerald ring Vivian always wore. It’s been in her mother’s family for generations. Do you have it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You identified the body. She never took it off her finger. She wasn’t wearing it when she was found?”
Scott looked away. “Mr. Carpenter, I’m grateful you and Mrs. Carpenter didn’t see the body. It had been so badly attacked by marine life that there was very little left to identify. But if I had that ring I would have given it to you immediately. I knew it was a family treasure. Is there anything else of Vivian’s that you want? Would her clothes fit her sisters?”
Anne winced. “No . . . no.”
The Carpenters got up together. “We’ll call you for dinner soon, Scott,” Anne said.
“Please do. I only wish we’d gotten to know each other better.”
“Unless you can’t part with them, perhaps you’ll assemble some pictures of Vivian for us,” Graham Carpenter said.
“Of course.”
When they reached the car and started to drive away, Anne turned to her husband. “Graham, you never put water in your scotch. What were you doing?”
“I wanted to get a look at the bedroom. Anne, didn’t you notice that there wasn’t a single picture of Vivian in the living room? Well, I have news. There isn’t a picture of her in the bedroom either. I’ll bet you there isn’t a trace of our daughter anywhere in that house. I don’t like Covey and I don’t trust him. He’s a phony. He knows more than he’s telling, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
15
They had set up a computer, printer and fax machine on the desk in the library. The computer and printer took up most of the surface, but it would suffice, especially since Menley didn’t intend to devote all that much time to working. Adam had his portable typewriter, which Menley was always trying to get him to discard but which could be set up anywhere.
Adam had so far successfully resisted Menley’s efforts to get him to learn how to use a computer. But then Menley had been equally stubborn about learning to play golf.
“You’re well coordinated. You’d be good at it,” Adam insisted.
The memory made Menley smile as she worked at the long refectory table in the kitchen. No, not the kitchen, the keeping room, she reminded herself. Let’s get the jargon right, especially if I’m going to set a book here. Alone in the house with just the baby, it seemed cozier to work in this wonderfully shabby room, with its huge fireplace and side oven, and the smell of the garlic bread lingering in the air. And she was only going to make notes tonight. She always did them in a loose-leaf notebook. “Here we go again,” she murmured aloud as she wrote David’s Adventures in the Narrow Land. It’s so crazy how all this had worked out, she thought.
After college she had managed to get the job at Travel Times. She knew that she wanted to be a writer but what kind of a writer she wasn’t sure. Her mother had always hoped she would concentrate on art, but she knew that wasn’t right for her.
Her break at the magazine came when the editor in chief as
ked her to cover the opening of a new hotel in Hong Kong. The article had been accepted almost without editing. Then hesitantly she had shown the watercolor paintings she’d made of the hotel and its surrounding area. The magazine had illustrated the article with the paintings, and at twenty-two Menley became a senior travel editor.
The idea for doing a series of children’s books using a “yesterday and today” theme, in which David, a contemporary child, goes back into the past and follows the life of a child from another century, evolved gradually. But now she had completed four of them, doing both the text and artwork. One was set in New York, one in London, one in Paris and one in San Francisco. They had become popular immediately.
Listening to all Adam’s stories about the Cape had made her interested in setting the next book here. It would be about a boy in Pilgrim times growing up on the Cape, the Narrow Land as the Indians had called it.
Like all the other ideas that had eventually ended up as a book, once hatched, it would not go away. The other day they had gone to the library in Chatham and she had borrowed books on the early history of the Cape. Then she’d found some dusty old books in a cabinet in the library at Remember House. So tonight she sat down to read; soon she was happily lost in her research.
* * *
At eight o’clock the phone rang. “Mrs. Nichols?”
She did not recognize the voice. “Yes,” she said cautiously.
“Mrs. Nichols, I’m Scott Covey. Elaine Atkins gave me your number. Is Mr. Nichols there?”
Scott Covey! Menley recognized the name. “I’m afraid my husband isn’t here,” she said. “He’ll be back tomorrow. You can reach him by late afternoon.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“No bother. And I’m so sorry about your wife.”
“It’s been pretty awful. I’m only praying that your husband can help me. It’s bad enough to have lost Viv, but now the police are acting as though they think it wasn’t an accident.”
* * *
Adam called a few minutes later, sounding weary. “Kurt Potter’s family is determined to see that Susan goes back to prison. They know she killed him in self-defense, but to admit it also means admitting that they’d ignored the warning signs.”
Menley could tell he was exhausted. After only three days of vacation he was already back in the office. She did not have the heart to bring up Scott Covey’s request now. When he got back tomorrow, she’d ask him to meet with Covey. Of all people, she understood what it was like to have the police question a tragic accident.
She assured Adam that she and Hannah were fine, that they both missed him and that she was keeping busy doing research for the new book.
The talk with Scott Covey and then with Adam had broken her concentration, however, and at nine o’clock she turned out the lights and went upstairs.
She checked the peacefully sleeping Hannah, then sniffed the air. There was a musty smell in the room. Where was it coming from? she wondered. She opened the window a few inches more. A strong, salty sea breeze quickly swept through the room. That’s better, she thought.
Sleep did not come easily. The railroad crossing today had brought back vivid memories of the terrible accident. This time she thought about the signal light that day. She was sure she had glanced at it—it was something she did automatically—but the sun was so strong that she hadn’t realized it was flashing. The first indication of what was happening was the vibrations caused by the train rushing toward them. Then she heard the frantic, shrill scream of its whistle.
Her throat went dry, her lips felt bloodless. But at least this time she did not begin to perspire or tremble. At last she fell into an uneasy sleep.
At two o’clock she sat bolt upright. The baby was screaming, and the sound of an oncoming train was echoing through the house.
August 5th
16
Adam Nichols could not overcome the sense that something was wrong. He slept fitfully, and each time he awoke it was with the knowledge that he’d just had a vague, troublesome dream and could not remember what it was.
At six o’clock, as dawn broke over the East River, he threw back the sheet and got up. He made coffee and brought it out on the terrace, wishing that it were seven-thirty and he could call Menley. He would wait till then, since the baby was usually sleeping past seven now.
A smile flickered on his lips as he thought of Menley and Hannah. His family. The miracle of Hannah’s birth three months ago. The grief of losing Bobby finally beginning to ease for both of them. A year ago at this time he’d been at the Cape alone and wouldn’t have bet a nickel that their marriage would survive. He’d spoken to a counselor about it and had been told that the death of a child frequently caused the end of the marriage. The counselor had said there was so much pain the parents sometimes couldn’t exist under the same roof.
Adam had begun to think that maybe it would be better for both of them to start over separately. Then Menley had phoned and Adam knew he desperately wanted their marriage to work.
Menley’s pregnancy had been uneventful. He had been with her in the labor room. She’d been in a lot of pain but doing great. Then from down the hall they could hear a woman screaming. The change in Menley had been dramatic. Her face went ashen. Those enormous blue eyes grew even larger, then she had covered them with her hands. “No . . . no . . . help me, please,” she had cried, as she trembled and sobbed. The tension in her body dramatically increased the strength of the contractions, the difficulty of the birth.
And when Hannah was finally born, and the doctor had laid her in Menley’s arms in the delivery room, incredibly she had pushed her away. “I want Bobby,” she had sobbed. “I want Bobby.”
Adam had taken the baby and held her against his neck, whispering, “It’s all right, Hannah. We love you, Hannah,” as though he was afraid she could understand Menley’s words.
Later Menley had told him, “At the moment they gave her to me, I was reliving holding Bobby after the accident. It was the first time I really knew what I’d felt at that moment.”
That was the beginning of what the doctors called the post-traumatic stress disorder. The first month had been very difficult. Hannah had started out as a colicky infant who screamed for hours. They’d had a live-in nurse, but one afternoon when the nurse was on an errand, the baby had started shrieking. Adam came home to find Menley sitting on the floor by the crib, pale and trembling, her fingers in her ears. But miraculously a formula change turned Hannah into a sunny baby, and Menley’s anxiety attacks for the most part passed.
I still shouldn’t have left her alone so soon, Adam thought. I should have insisted that at least the baby-sitter stay over.
At seven o’clock he couldn’t wait any longer. He phoned the Cape.
The sound of Menley’s voice brought a rush of relief. “Her nibs get you up early, honey?”
“Just a bit. We like the morning.”
There was something in Menley’s voice. Adam bit back the question that came too easily to his lips. You okay? Menley resented his hovering over her.
“I’ll be up on the four o’clock flight. Want to get Amy to mind Hannah and we’ll go out to dinner?”
Hesitation. What was wrong? But then Menley said, “That sounds great. Adam . . .”
“What is it, honey?”
“Nothing. Just that we miss you.”
When he hung up, Adam called the airline. “Is there any earlier flight I can get on?” he asked. He would be out of court by noon. There was a one-thirty flight he might be able to make.
Something was wrong, and the worst part of it was that Menley wasn’t going to tell him what it was.
17
Elaine Atkins’ real estate office was on Main Street in Chatham. Location, location, location, she thought as a passerby stopped to look at the pictures that she had taken of available homes. Since she’d moved to Main Street, the drop-in traffic had improved dramatically, and more and more she’d been able to conver
t these expressions of preliminary interest into an excellent percentage of sales.
This summer she’d tried a new gimmick. She’d had aerial photographs taken of houses with particularly good locations. One of them was Remember House. When she’d arrived at work this morning at ten, Marge Salem, her assistant, told her there had already been two inquiries about it.
“That aerial photo really does the trick. Do you think it was wise to rent it to the Nicholses without asking for the right to show it?” Marge asked.
“It was necessary,” Elaine said briskly. “Adam Nichols isn’t the type who’s going to want people trooping through a house he’s renting, and he did pay top dollar for it. But we’re not losing a sale. My hunch is that the Nicholses will decide to buy that place.”
“I would have thought that he’d look in Harwich Port. That’s where his family came from and always summered.”
“Yes, but Adam always liked Chatham. And he knows a good buy when he sees it. He also likes to own, not rent. I think he regrets not buying the family home when his mother sold it. If his wife is happy here, we’ve got a customer. Watch and see.” She smiled at Marge. “And if by chance he doesn’t, well, Scott Covey loves that place. When things settle down for him he’ll be in the market again. He won’t want to keep Vivian’s house.”
Marge’s pleasant face became serious. The fifty-year-old housewife had started working for Elaine at the beginning of the summer and found that she thoroughly enjoyed the real estate business. She also loved gossip and, as Elaine joked, could pick it out of the air. “There are a lot of rumors floating around about Scott Covey.”
Elaine made a quick gesture with her hand, always a sign of impatience. “Why don’t they leave that poor guy alone? If Vivian hadn’t come into that trust fund, everyone would be keening with him. That’s the trouble with people in these parts. On principle, they don’t like to see family money go to an outsider.”