Remember Me (28 page)

*   *   *

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.

O
n 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.”

*   *   *

Adam was surprised to find Menley and Hannah waiting for him in the car. “I'm afraid I upset Phoebe,” Menley told him. “I should never have mentioned Mehitabel to her. For some reason she got terribly agitated.”

“There's no explaining what brings on those spells,” Adam said.

“I don't know about that. Mine are triggered by stimulus, aren't they?”

“It's not the same.” Adam put the key in the ignition.

Mommy
,
Mommy
. Such a joyous sound. The night she thought she'd heard Bobby calling her. Had she been dreaming of the way he'd sounded that day in East Hampton? Had she attached a happy memory to a flashback? “When do you have to go to New York again?” she asked.

“We should hear the judge's decision either late tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll go down overnight Tuesday
and stay until Thursday morning. But I swear that will be it on working this month, Men.”

“I want you to bring up the tape of Bobby at East Hampton.”

“I told you I would, honey.” As Adam steered the car away from the curb, he wondered, what is that all about?

F
red Hendin took Tina out for dinner on Sunday evening. She had said she had a headache when he called her in the morning, but agreed that fish and chips and a couple of drinks at Clancey's that evening would pick up her spirits.

They had a gin and tonic at the bar and Fred was surprised at how vivacious and animated Tina was. She knew the bartender and some of the patrons and kidded with them.

Fred thought she looked terrific in her red miniskirt and red-and-white top, and he could see that a number of other guys at the bar were giving her the eye. There was no doubt about it. Tina attracted men. She was the kind of woman a man could lose his head over.

Last year when they had been dating, she kept telling him that he was a real gentleman. Sometimes he wondered if that was a compliment. Then she dropped
him like a hot potato when Covey came into the picture. Last winter when he tried to get back with her, she hadn't given him the time of day. Then suddenly in April she had called him. “Fred, why don't you drop around?” she had said as though nothing had happened.

Was she ready to settle for me only when she couldn't get Covey? he wondered, as Tina burst out laughing at a joke the bartender told.

He hadn't heard her laugh like that for a while. She seemed really happy tonight.

That's what it was, he realized suddenly. Even though she was nervous about testifying at the inquest, she seemed happy.

Over dinner, she asked him about the ring. “Fred, I would like to wear the engagement ring when I testify. Did you bring it?”

“Now you're trying to spoil what's left of the surprise. I'll give it to you when we get to your place.”

*   *   *

Tina lived in a furnished apartment over a garage in Yarmouth. She wasn't much of a housekeeper and hadn't done much to personalize the place, but the minute they walked in, Fred noticed there was something different about the small sitting room. Some things were missing. She had a pretty good collection of rock music, but almost all the cassettes and CDs were gone. And so was the picture of her skiing with her brother's family in Colorado.

Was she planning a trip and not telling him about it? Fred wondered. And if so, was she going alone?

M
enley awakened at dawn to the faint sound of sobbing. She pulled herself up on one elbow and strained to listen. No, it must be a seagull, she thought. The curtains were moving restlessly, and the good scent of the ocean was in the room.

She settled back on the pillow. Adam was in a deep sleep, snoring lightly. Menley remembered something her mother had said years ago. She'd been reading an advice column, probably Ann Landers or Dear Abby, and a woman had written in to complain that her husband's snoring kept her awake. The response was that to some women a husband's snoring would be the most welcome sound in the world. Ask any widow.

Her mother had commented, “Isn't that the truth?”

Mom raised us alone, Menley thought. I never experienced firsthand the interaction between happily married people. I never knew what it was like to see married people face problems and get through them.

Why think about that now? she wondered. Is it because I'm beginning to see a vulnerability in Adam that I didn't know existed? In a way I've always handled him with kid gloves. He's the attractive, successful, sought-after man who could have had anyone, but it was me he asked to marry him.

She realized there was no use trying to go back to sleep. She slipped out of bed, picked up her robe and slippers and tiptoed out of the room.

Hannah showed no signs of awakening, so Menley went down the stairs noiselessly and entered the library. With luck she might have two quiet hours before Adam and Hannah got up. She opened the new file.

Halfway through it, she found a group of papers clipped together that dealt with shipwrecks. Some of them she had already read about, such as the 1717 wreck of the pirate ship
Whidaw
. The mooncussers had picked its cargo clean.

And then she saw a reference to Tobias Knight: “The biggest house-to-house search for booty before the
Whidaw
was when the
Thankful
was lost in 1704 off Monomoy.” Phoebe noted, “Tobias Knight was brought to Boston for questioning. He was developing an unsavory reputation and was suspected of being a mooncusser.”