Then Amy looked at her father and added, “I certainly agree with her.” With some satisfaction she saw a flush come over his face. She was hurt and irritated at him for taking Elaine’s part so vehemently about the tape. But then, I guess that’s how it’s going to be from now on, she thought.
Conversation throughout the entire meal had been strained. Plus Elaine seemed awfully nervous. Even Amy’s father had noticed it. Finally he asked her if anything was wrong.
That was when Elaine dropped a bombshell. “John, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I believe we should delay the wedding for a while. I want it to be perfect for us, and that’s just not going to be possible while Amy is clearly so unhappy.”
You don’t give a damn whether I’m happy or unhappy, Amy thought. I bet there’s more to it than that. “Elaine, as you’ve said all summer, in another few weeks I’m going to be in college and starting my own adult life. You’re marrying my father, not me. My only concern is my father’s happiness, and that should be your concern as well.”
Elaine’s bombshell had come just as they were about to leave. Amy liked the dignified way her dad said, “I think this is something that you and I should talk about at another time, Elaine. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
When Elaine opened the front door, they saw a police car with its lights flashing pulling up in her driveway. “What can be wrong?” Elaine asked.
Amy sensed something odd about Elaine’s voice. It sounded strained, as though she were frightened.
* * *
Nat Coogan got out of the squad car and paused for a moment, looking at Elaine Atkins as she stood in the doorway. He had just gotten home when the call came from the station. Scott Covey had gone to Morris Island and tried to murder Adam Nichols’ wife. He had run away when Nichols showed up and had been caught at a roadblock on Route 6.
Now it was Nat Coogan’s extreme pleasure to be the one to arrest Elaine Atkins. Ignoring the pelting rain, he went up the walk and stepped onto the porch. “Miss Atkins,” he said. “I have a warrant for your arrest. I’ll read you your rights, and then I’ll have to ask you to please come along with me.”
Amy and her father stared at Elaine as her face drained of all color. “That’s ridiculous,” she said, her voice shocked and angry.
Nat pointed to the driveway. “Scott Covey is in that car. We’re just taking him in. He was so sure of himself, he told Menley Nichols the whole story of your interesting deal with him and all about how you wanted her out of the way so you could have Adam Nichols to yourself. You’re just lucky that Covey didn’t succeed in drowning her. This way you’ll only have to face charges of attempted murder. But you will need a good lawyer, and I don’t think you’d better count on Adam Nichols to defend you.”
John Nelson gasped. “Elaine, what’s going on? What’s he talking about? Nat, surely you’re—”
“Oh, shut up, John!” Elaine snapped. She looked at him with contempt.
There was a long silence while they stared at each other. Then Amy felt her father take her arm. “Come on, honey,” he said, “we’ve been around here long enough. Let’s go home.”
110
When Menley awoke on Thursday morning, sunbeams were bouncing off the windowsill, darting over the wide-planked floor. Her mind filled with memories of last night and quickly skipped to the moment when she knew she was safe, when they reached the house, and Adam had called the police while she ran to Hannah.
After the police finally left and they were alone, they took turns holding each other and holding Hannah. Then, both too weary to even think about eating, they brought the cradle into their room, unable to leave Hannah alone in the nursery until the storage area was cleaned out and permanently sealed.
Menley looked around. Adam and Hannah were still sleeping. Her eyes moved from one to the other, marveling at the miracle of being with them, of knowing that she was strong and whole.
I can go on with my life, she thought. Mehitabel and Andrew never had a second chance.
The police had looked into the storage area last night, saying they would be back to photograph it for evidence in the trials. They had examined the skeleton also. The silver buckles resting among the foot bones bore the initials T.K. Tobias Knight.
The side of the skull was caved in, as if by a heavy blow. My guess is that Captain Freeman had surprised Tobias here, Menley mused, and learning, or guessing, the true reason for his late-night visits to the house, struck him down for fostering the lie that had destroyed Mehitabel. Then he left the body here with the stolen cargo. He must have surmised the truth of his wife’s innocence. We know he was out of his mind with grief when he sailed into the storm.
Phoebe and I were right. Mehitabel was innocent. She died protesting that fact and longing for her baby. When I write her story I’m going to put Phoebe’s name on it too. It was the story she wanted so much to tell.
She felt Adam’s arm go around her.
He turned her toward him. “Did I mention last night that you’re a terrific swimmer?” he asked. Then the light tone disappeared from his voice. “Men, when I think that I was so obtuse about everything and that you almost died because of me, I could kill myself.”
She put her finger on his lips. “Don’t ever say that. When you told me there was no train whistle in the tape of Bobby, I began to suspect that something was going on. But you didn’t know what I had been hearing, so I can’t blame you for thinking I was crazy.”
Hannah began to stir. Menley reached down and picked her up, bringing her into the bed with them. “Quite a night, wasn’t it, Toots?” she asked.
* * *
Nat Coogan phoned as they were finishing breakfast. “I hate to bother you people, but we’re having a struggle keeping the media away. Would you consider talking to them after our people finish the investigation?”
“We’d better,” Adam replied. “Tell them we need a little more time to ourselves, then we’ll see them at two o’clock.”
Moments later, however, the phone rang again—a television station wanting to set up an interview. That call was followed by others, so many that they finally disconnected the phone, plugging it in only long enough for Menley to call Jan Paley, the Spragues and Amy.
When she hung up from her last call, she was smiling. “Amy sounds like a different person,” she said. “Her dad keeps telling her that he wished he had half her common sense. I told her I feel the same way. She knew all along that Elaine was a phony.”
“A very dangerous phony,” Adam said quietly.
“Amy wants to baby-sit for us tomorrow night—for free! Her dad’s paying for the whole car.”
“We’ll take her up on it. How is Phoebe doing?”
“Henry told her that we were safe and he was proud of her for trying to warn us. He’s sure that she might have understood a little of what he was saying.” Menley paused. “I’m so sorry for them.”
“I know.” Adam put his arm around her.
“And Jan’s coming over. She said she would bring lunch makings and offered to pick up the mail, so I took her up on it.”
* * *
When the police arrived to photograph the hidden room, Adam and Menley took chairs and Hannah’s carriage out to the bluff. The water was calm now, and inviting, with gentle waves breaking on a shore that was in surprisingly good shape, considering the severity of the storm the night before. Menley knew that from now on, if she dreamed about that night, the dream would always end with Adam’s hand closing over hers.
She looked back at the house and up at the widow’s walk. The metal on the chimney was gleaming, the sunbeams bouncing off it through the shifting shadows cast by occasional clouds. Did that really cause an optical illusion that day Amy thought she saw me? she wondered.
“What are you thinking?” Adam asked.
“I’m thinking that when I write Mehitabel’s story, I’m going to say that she was a presence in the house, awaiting her innocence to be proven and her baby’s return.”
/> “And if she were still a presence here, would you want to live in this house?” Adam said teasingly.
“I almost wish she were,” Menley said. “We are going to buy it, aren’t we? Hannah will love growing up summers on the Cape the way you did. And I love this house. It’s the first place where I’ve ever really felt a deep sense of home.”
“Of course we’re buying it.”
* * *
At noon, a few minutes after the police photographers left, Jan arrived. Her silent embrace spoke volumes. “The only mail for you was a letter from Ireland.” Menley ripped it open immediately. “It’s from Phyllis,” she said. “Oh look at this, she really has done some heavy research on the McCarthys.”
There was a sheaf of genealogical records, birth and death certificates, copies of newspaper items, a few faded photographs.
“You dropped her note,” Adam said. He picked it up and handed it to her.
It read:
Dear Menley,
I’m so excited. I wanted you to see this right away. I’ve traced your family back to the first Menley, and it’s a wonderful story. She was raised from infancy by her father’s cousins, the Longfords, in Connemara. There’s no record of where she was born, but the date was recorded as 1705. At seventeen she married Squire Adrian McCarthy of Galway, and they had four children. Part of the foundation of their mansion can still be seen. It overlooks the ocean.
She must have been quite a beauty (see enclosed snapshot of her portrait), and I see a distinct family resemblance between you and her.
But, Menley, this is the best part, and it’s something Hannah might want to keep in mind if she decides that she likes your name better than hers but doesn’t want to be known as “young Menley” or “little Menley.”
The reason for your unusual name is that when she was little, your ancestor could not pronounce her real name and called herself Menley.
The name she was given at birth was Remember . . .
Gallery Books
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I’LL WALK ALONE
Mary Higgins Clark
Please turn the page for a preview of
I’ll Walk Alone . . .
1
Father Aiden O’Brien was hearing confessions in the lower church of St. Francis of Assisi on West Thirty-first Street in Manhattan. The seventy-eight-year-old Franciscan friar approved of the alternate way of administering the sacrament, that of having the penitent sit in the Reconciliation Room with him, rather than kneeling on the hard wood of the confessional with a screen hiding his or her identity.
The one time he felt the new way did not work was when, sitting face-to-face, he sensed that the penitents might not be able to allow themselves to say what might have been confided in darkness.
This was happening now on this chilly, windswept afternoon in March.
In the first hour he had sat in the room, only two women had shown up, regular parishioners, both in their mideighties, whose sins, if any had ever existed, were long behind them. Today one of them had confessed that when she was eight years old she remembered telling a lie to her mother. She had eaten two cupcakes and blamed her brother for the missing one.
As Fr. Aiden was praying his rosary until he was scheduled to leave the room, the door opened and a slender woman who looked to be in her early thirties came in. Her expression tentative, she moved slowly toward the chair facing him and hesitantly sat down on it. Her auburn hair was loose on her shoulders. Her fur-collared suit was clearly expensive, as were her high-heeled leather boots. Her only jewelry was silver earrings.
His expression serene, Fr. Aiden waited. Then when the young woman did not speak, he asked encouragingly, “How can I help you?”
“I don’t know how to begin.” The woman’s voice was low and pleasant, with no hint of a geographical accent.
“There’s nothing you can tell me that I haven’t already heard,” Fr. Aiden said mildly.
“I . . .” The woman paused, then the words came rushing out. “I know about a murder that someone is planning to commit and I can’t stop it.”
Her expression horrified, she clasped her hand over her mouth and abruptly stood up. “I should never have come here,” she whispered. Then, her voice trembling with emotion, she said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I confess that I am an accessory to a crime that is ongoing and to a murder that is going to happen very soon. You’ll probably read about it in the headlines. I don’t want to be part of it, but it’s too late to stop.”
She turned and in five steps had her hand on the door.
“Wait,” Fr. Aiden called, trying to struggle to his feet. “Talk to me. I can help you.”
But she was gone.
Was the woman psychotic? Fr. Aiden wondered. Could she possibly have meant what she said? And if so, what could he do about it?
If she was telling the truth, I can do nothing about it, he thought, as he sank back into the chair. I don’t know who she is or where she lives. I can only pray that she is irrational and that this scenario is some kind of fantasy. But if she is not irrational, she is shrewd enough to know that I am bound by the seal of the confessional. At some point she may have been a practicing Catholic. The words she used, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” was the way a penitent used to begin to confess.
For long minutes he sat alone. When the woman exited, the green light over the Reconciliation Room door had automatically gone on, which meant that anyone waiting outside would have been free to enter. He found himself praying fervently that the young woman might return, but she did not.
He was supposed to leave the room at six o’clock. But it was twenty minutes after six when he gave up hope that she might come back. Finally, aware of the weight of his years and the spiritual burden of his role as confessor, Fr. Aiden placed both hands on the arms of his chair and got up slowly, wincing at the sharp thrust of pain in his arthritic knees. Shaking his head, he began to walk to the door but stopped for a moment in front of the chair where the young woman had been sitting.
She wasn’t crazy, he thought sadly. I can only pray that if she really has knowledge that the crime of a murder is about to be committed, she does what her conscience is telling her to do. She must prevent it.
He opened the door and saw two people lighting candles in front of the statue of St. Jude in the atrium of the church. A man was kneeling on the prie-dieu in front of the Shrine of St. Anthony, his face buried in his hands. Fr. Aiden hesitated, wondering if he should ask the visitor if he wanted to go to confession. Then he reflected that the posted hours for hearing confessions had been over for nearly half an hour. Maybe this visitor was begging for a favor or giving thanks for receiving one. The Shrine of St. Anthony was a favorite stop for many of their visitors.
Fr. Aiden walked across the atrium to the door that led to the passage to the Friary. He did not feel the intense gaze of the man who was no longer deep in prayer but had turned, pushed up his dark glasses, and was studying him intently, taking note of his rim of white hair and slow gait.
She was only in there less than a minute, the observer thought. How much did she tell that old priest? he wondered. Can I afford to take the chance that she didn’t spill her guts to him? The man could hear the outer doors of the church being opened and the sound of approaching steps. Quickly he replaced his sunglasses and pulled up the collar of his trench coat. He had already copied Fr. Aiden’s name from the door.
“What do I do about you, Fr. O’Brien?” he asked himself angrily, as he brushed past the dozen or so visitors entering the church.
For the moment he had no answer.
What he did not realize was that he, the observer, was being observed. Sixty-six-year-old Alvirah Meehan, the cleaning woman turned columnist and celebrity author who had won forty million dollars in the New York Lottery, was also there. She had been shopping in Herald Square and then, before going home to Central Park South, had walked down the few blocks to the church to light a candle in front of
St. Anthony’s Shrine and drop off an extra donation for the breadline because she had just received an unexpected royalty check for her memoir From Pots to Plots.
When she saw the man seemingly deep in prayer in front of the shrine, she had paid a visit to the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. A few minutes later, when she saw Fr. Aiden, her old friend, leave the Reconciliation Room, she had been about to run up and say a quick hello to him. Then to her astonishment, the man who had seemed so engrossed in prayer suddenly jumped up, his dark glasses raised. No mistake about it, he was watching Fr. Aiden make his way to the door of the Friary.
Alvirah dismissed any passing thought that that guy might have wanted to ask Fr. Aiden to hear his confession. He wanted to get a good look at Father, she thought, as she watched the man pull his glasses back over his eyes and turn up the collar of his coat. She had taken off her glasses so he was too far away for her to see him clearly, but from the distance she judged him to be about six feet tall. His face was in the shadows but she could see he was on the thin side. Her impression, when she had passed him at the statue, was that he had no gray in his full head of black hair. He had been covering his face with his hands.
Who knows what makes people tick, Alvirah asked herself as she watched the stranger, now moving quickly, exit by the door nearest him. But I’ll tell you this much, she thought. As soon as Fr. Aiden left the Reconciliation Room, whatever that guy had to say to St. Anthony, he wound it up fast.
2
It is March 22. If he is still alive, my Matthew is five years old today, Zan Moreland thought as she opened her eyes and lay still for long minutes, brushing back the tears that often dampened her face and pillow during the night. She glanced at the clock on the dresser. It was 7:15 A.M. She had slept almost eight hours. The reason, of course, was that when she went to bed, she had taken a sleeping pill, a luxury she almost never permitted herself. But the awareness of his birthday had left her almost sleepless for the last week.