Remember Me by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

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.
    â€œThis actually is fun,” Debbie admitted. “But what have you suddenly got against the deck chairs?”
    â€œJust 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.
    â€œHey, take it easy,” Debbie protested. “I don’t want to get a buzz on.”
    â€œWhy 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.
    â€œGreat 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?”
    â€œThinking.” He looked down at her as she stretched. “Want to go for a quick swim, honey?”
    Debbie lay back and closed her eyes.
    â€œForget it,” she murmured. “I’m too sleepy.”

26
    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