“Did she ever see a ghost?”
“No. Sarah is a widow now and quite elderly. She says she sometimes senses a benevolent presence and feels they’re two old girls enjoying their home together.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t disbelieve it,” Jan Paley said slowly.
Menley sipped coffee and then found the courage to ask a question. “Did you experience any sense of something odd about the baby’s room in Remember House, the small front room next to the master bedroom?”
“No, but we never used it. Frankly for a while after my husband died last year I really thought I’d keep Remember House. But then I sometimes felt such overwhelming sadness that I knew it would be better to let it go. I should never have let Tom do so much of the heavy restoration himself, even though he thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.”
Do we all feel guilty when we lose someone we love? Menley wondered. She glanced across the room. Adam was standing in a group with three other men. She smiled ruefully as she watched Margaret, the thin brunette from Eastham, join them and smile brilliantly up at Adam. A little leftover crush? she thought. I can’t say I blame you.
Jan Paley said, “I bought your four David books for my grandson. They’re simply wonderful. Are you working on one now?”
“I’ve decided to set the next one on the Cape in the late sixteen hundreds. I’m just starting to do some research.”
“The pity is that the one to have talked to a few years ago would have been Phoebe Sprague. She was a great historian and was preparing notes for a book on Remember House. Perhaps Henry would let you see some of her material.”
* * *
The party broke up at ten-thirty. On the way home Menley told Adam about Jan Paley’s suggestion. “Do you think it would be too pushy to ask Mr. Sprague about his wife’s notes or at least ask where she found the best source material?”
“I’ve known the Spragues all my life,” Adam said. “I intended to call them anyway. Who knows? Henry might enjoy sharing Phoebe’s research with you.”
Amy was watching television in the parlor when they arrived. “Hannah never woke up,” she said. “I checked her every half hour.”
As Menley walked the girl to the door, Amy said shyly, “I feel so dumb about what I said earlier, that there was something funny about Hannah’s room. I guess it’s because of that story Carrie Bell was telling people, about the cradle rocking by itself and the spread mussed the way it would be if someone was sitting on the bed.”
Menley felt her throat go dry. “I didn’t know about that, but it’s ridiculous,” she said.
“I guess so. Good night, Mrs. Nichols.”
Menley went directly to the baby’s room. Adam was already there. Hannah was blissfully asleep in her favorite position, her arms over her head. “We can’t call her ‘her crabbiness’ anymore,” Adam murmured.
“How many names do we have for this poor kid?” Menley asked as she slipped into bed a few minutes later.
“I can’t count that high. Good night, honey.” Adam held her tightly. “I hope you had a good time.”
“I did.” Later she murmured, “I’m not sleepy. Will it bother you if I read for a while?”
“You know I can sleep through a festival of lights.” He scrunched his pillow. “Listen, when Hannah wakes up, shake me alive. I’ll take care of her. You’ve been getting up with her all week.”
“Great.” Menley reached for her reading glasses and began to read one of the books about early Cape history that she had found in the library. It was heavy, and the watersoaked cover was curling. Inside, the pages were flaking and dusty. Even so it made fascinating reading.
She was intrigued to learn that boys went to sea when they were only ten years old and that some of them became captains of their own ships when they were still in their early twenties. She decided that in the new David book it would be interesting to have a seventeenth-century boy who had made seafaring his career.
She came to a chapter that gave brief biographies of some of the most prominent seafarers. One name caught her eye. Captain Andrew Freeman, born in 1663 in Brewster, went to sea as a child and became master of his own ship, the Godspeed, at twenty-three. Pilot and skipper, he had the reputation of being absolutely fearless, and even pirates learned to give a wide berth to the Godspeed. He drowned in 1707, when against all reason he set sail knowing a nor’easter was coming. The masts broke, and the ship foundered and sank with its entire crew. The wreckage was strewn for miles along the Monomoy sandbar.
I’ve got to find out more about him, Menley thought. When she finally laid the book on the night table and turned out the light at two o’clock she felt the exhilaration that always came when a story line was firmly rooted in her mind.
* * *
Hannah started fussing at quarter of seven. As she had promised, Menley shook Adam awake and settled back with her eyes closed. In a few minutes he returned, the baby leaning against his shoulder, still half asleep. “Menley, why did you switch Hannah to the cradle last night?”
Menley sat up with a start and stared at him.
Confused and slightly alarmed, she thought, I don’t remember going in to her. But if I say that, Adam will think I’m crazy. Instead she yawned and murmured, “When Hannah woke up, she wouldn’t settle down, so I rocked her for a while.”
“That’s what I thought,” Adam agreed.
Hannah lifted her head from his shoulder and turned. The shades were down, and the light that peeked around their edges was muted. Hannah yawned elaborately and fluttered her eyelids, then smiled and stretched.
In the shadowy room, the contours of her face were so like Bobby’s, Menley thought. That was the way Bobby had awakened, too, yawning and smiling and stretching.
Menley looked up at Adam. She did not want him to see that she was on the verge of panicking. She rubbed her eyes. “I read so late. I’m still sleepy.”
“Sleep as long as you want. Here, give the morning star a kiss and I’ll take her downstairs. I’ll take good care of her.”
He handed her the baby. “I know you will,” Menley said. She held Hannah so that the little face was only inches from her own. “Hi, angel,” she whispered as she thought, Your daddy can take good care of you and I promise you this: if the day ever comes when I think I can’t, I’ll be history.
August 7th
24
Henry and Phoebe Sprague sat at a table outside the Wayside Inn. For the first time this season Henry had brought Phoebe out for Sunday brunch, and a pleased smile was playing on her lips. She had always been a people watcher, and the main street of Chatham was lively today. Tourists and residents were window-shopping, drifting in and out of the specialty shops or heading for one of the many restaurants.
Henry glanced down at the menu the hostess had given him. We’ll order eggs Benedict, he thought. Phoebe always enjoys them here.
“Good morning. Are you ready to order, sir?”
Henry looked up and then stared at the boldly pretty waitress. It was Tina, the young woman whom he’d seen in the pub across the street from the hairdresser in early July, the one whom Scott Covey had explained was an actress appearing at the Cape Playhouse.
There was no hint of recognition on her face, but then she’d barely glanced at him before she rushed out of the pub that day. “Yes, we can order,” he said.
Throughout breakfast, Henry Sprague kept up a running commentary on the passersby. “Look, Phoebe, there are Jim Snow’s grandchildren. Remember how we used to go to the theater with the Snows?”
“Stop asking me if I remember,” Phoebe snapped. “Of course I do.” She went back to sipping coffee. A moment later she hunched forward and looked around, her eyes darting from table to table. “So many people,” she murmured. “I don’t want to be here.”
Henry sighed. He’d hoped that the outburst had been a good sign. For some people, tacrine was a remarkably helpful drug, temporarily stopping, even reversing, deterioration in
Alzheimer’s patients. Since it had been prescribed for Phoebe, he thought he had seen occasional flashes of clarity. Or was he grasping at straws?
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.
25
Nat 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.”
26
Scott 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.
27
Nat 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.”