FORGET ME NOT (Mark Kane Mysteries Book One)

John Hemmings is a practicing attorney and
author with over thirty years’ experience as a trial lawyer. Each
of his books features Boston private investigator Mark Kane and his
long-time companion Lucy. The first four books in the series are
already available and further titles will be published soon. If you
would like an update on available titles please write to the author
at
[email protected]
.
Many of the stories are inspired by actual events and people the
author has met and worked with during his career, but names and
locations have been changed to protect the innocent – and sometimes
the guilty.

Copyright © 2015 by John Hemmings

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic
form without permission.

*

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales
is entirely coincidental.

‘I only learn things when I ask questions’ –
Lou Holtz

For Johnny & Mark

TABLE
OF CONTENTS

Chapter One
: Gloria

Chapter Two
: Greg

Chapter Three
: Doubts and
Suspicions

Chapter Four
: Gloria’s Hair

Chapter Five
: Spot On

Chapter Six
: Susan

Chapter Seven
: The Plane Crash

Chapter Eight
: Orchids

Chapter Nine
: If You Knew Suzie

Chapter Ten
: The Witnesses

Chapter Eleven
: A Nightmare

Chapter Twelve
: The Suspects

Chapter Thirteen
: To Tell or Not to
Tell

Chapter Fourteen
: A Wiz with
Computers

Chapter Fifteen
: A Technological
Midget

Chapter Sixteen
: Simon

Chapter Seventeen
: The Long and
the Short of it

Chapter Eighteen
: The Emails

Chapter Nineteen
: Gwen

Chapter Twenty
: DNA

Chapter Twenty One
: The
Lovers

Chapter Twenty Two
: Paul

Chapter Twenty Three
:
Calypso

Chapter Twenty Four
:
Gearhardy

Chapter Twenty Five
: Mowbray

Chapter Twenty Six
: Blood

Chapter Twenty Seven
:
Josette

Chapter Twenty Eight
:
Complicity

Chapter Twenty Nine
: The
Printout

Chapter Thirty
: The Affidavit

Chapter Thirty One
: Grey
Areas

Chapter Thirty Two
: Fair’s
Fair

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

MARK KANE MYSTERIES SERIES

“There was a band playing outside my window
last night; I hardly got any sleep.”

“I’ll make sure they don’t do that again,
Gloria, it’s most inconsiderate I know.”

“And when will that dreadful man, Colonel
Brown leave me alone? I don’t have time for his romantic
nonsense.”

“Sally’s coming this afternoon; she’s
bringing the boys.”

“Who?”

“Sally, your… I’ll leave you to get some
rest. Are you sure you don’t want anything for lunch?”

“My husband will see to that, thank you.”

A black-capped chickadee appeared magically
on the sill outside the bedroom window and Gregory looked at it
wistfully. The diminutive bird cocked its tiny head on one side and
looked back at him quizzically. Gloria had known the names of all
the birds that shared their beautiful grounds, but now she didn’t
even know her own. He sat for a while longer, looking at his wife’s
face, still beautiful to him now though slightly lined and framed
with graying hair. Her face was not in repose; her eyes were open,
her lips moving occasionally, perhaps framing silent words about
her strange inner world. He was holding her hand and as he rose she
let it slip away. He stood at the doorway, his face set as if it
were a grim mask. Gloria sat semi-upright in the bed with her head
propped up on the pillows and stared straight ahead. Whatever
awareness she had of his presence in the room that too had slipped
away as soon as their hands parted. He knew she was no longer
Gloria, no longer the vibrant, witty and vivacious girl he had
married, nor the wise and loving housewife and mother she became as
their family grew. She was simply a vessel now. A living vessel of
flesh and bones, tissue and organs; but the thing that had made her
Gloria had been cruelly taken away.

She was just sixty four years old and her
physical health had been good; more than good, she had been robust,
with tremendous energy, enthusiasm and
joie de vivre
until
this awful disease had gradually started to erode her spirit, her
personality, her very self. It had started so unexpectedly, almost
innocuously. Gregory remembered the day it began and how he laughed
because he had assumed she was making a joke. Gloria had fallen at
home and broken her thighbone. It was a nasty injury and one that
needed surgery so she had checked into the local hospital for an
operation to insert a steel rod into the leg. The surgery had gone
without a hitch and she was up and walking with a frame the
following day. The surgeon had recommended that she remain in the
hospital for a few days so that they could arrange physiotherapy
for her. Gregory had remained with her throughout the day in the
private room that their insurance had provided. This was no
magnanimous gesture on his part; the truth was that he didn’t know
how to cope without her. Their longtime neighbors, the Sandersons,
had called in to see her the day following the operation and they
were all gathered around the bed having a perfectly normal
conversation when Gloria had suddenly turned to Jeff Sanderson and
said, “Do you live in this neighborhood too?” They had all laughed,
and then became embarrassed when they realized that it was not a
joke at all. Gloria had no idea who Jeff and his wife were.

Gregory put this lapse down to the effects of
the general anesthetic that had been administered to Gloria the
previous day and thought no more about it; but after Gloria
returned home he noticed that she was becoming increasingly
forgetful – not only about names of people, but names of things
too. They made an appointment for her to see a neurologist who
conducted a number of tests. It was the onset of dementia, of
Alzheimer’s disease, he said. Neither Greg nor Gloria could believe
it. How could she have dementia? She was fit, healthy and
relatively young. In fact neither he nor Gloria accepted the
diagnosis, quietly hoping that it was a mistake and that she would
get better.

In those relatively early days the
progression of her illness was slow and sporadic. Some days she
would seem to be her old self and they would both be reassured. But
gradually the deterioration of her mind started to accelerate,
until there were no more good days. In a way this was the worst
part of the illness because Gloria knew what was happening to her,
and she was informed and intelligent enough to know that she was
only going to get worse. In the fall, the following year, they had
taken their last vacation together, driving through Maine and
Vermont, revisiting places that had been special to them during
their courtship and marriage. They had no planned route or
timetable. He remembered how they had walked hand in hand through
the fall landscape and Gloria had told him that she felt like the
trees themselves. As they shed their leaves so she was gradually
losing her mental faculties, and like them she would face a bleak
winter, but for her there would be no spring, no regeneration. She
said this without self-pity, but with the same matter-of-factness
that had been the hallmark of her approach to life. They were
passing through a patch of densely shaded hemlock forest, hoping to
catch a glimpse of squirrels, deer or maybe even a red fox, when
she had suddenly grasped his hand tightly and said, “Greg, I’m
frightened.” He wanted so desperately to reply, but the word’s
wouldn’t come so instead he squeezed her hand to reassure her as
they made their way through the trees and back into the
sunlight.

As fall became winter, and winter became
spring, she slipped away from him, and everything that she had
known and loved, into an abyss of nothingness. Dementia is a cruel
disease, he thought, it robs you of your mind but leaves the body
intact. Gloria’s condition was not the culmination of old age. With
the right care she should live for years yet. She no longer
recognized Gregory or the children. She barely recognized herself
anymore. She could not carry out the simplest everyday tasks.
Gregory had discussed it with the children and they had all agreed
that they would not put her into a private care home. Instead
Gregory arranged for home nursing staff, day and night. Fortunately
they could afford it, with the help of a comprehensive medical
insurance they had wisely taken out some years before, and Gregory
paid for whatever was not covered by the insurance. He was
comfortable financially and Gloria had a good deal of her own
money, indeed the family home was hers, passed down by her own
parents who had both lived into their eighties, but had moved many
years before to a condominium in Florida.

The visits of the children to the family home
had become no less frequent in recent weeks, but the duration of
each stay had dwindled. There was nothing anyone could do; no
meaningful conversation, let alone reminiscences. And as the weeks
went by Gloria’s disease took her in its grasp more fervently and
made any kind of communication pointless. In a curious way Gloria
was not suffering anymore, but the inevitable disruption in the
children’s lives and the lives of Gregory’s grandchildren had
become problematical. If it had been a terminal disease like
cancer, he thought, then the family would have some kind of
timeline to work to, however callous that might seem. But the
family couldn’t be expected to put their lives on hold for years to
come. He spoke about this to their children, now grown up. He told
them that he accepted the responsibility as his own and was
determined that she should be afforded every assistance that money
could buy to preserve what little was left of her dignity and he
would dedicate what was left of his own life to care for her as he
knew she would have cared for him. He was a religious man who
remembered his vows and took them seriously. ‘For better or worse’
was a recurring mantra in his mind as he went about his
increasingly lonely daily life. His children were wonderfully
supportive and refused to abandon him or her and for this he
counted his blessings, but it sorely tested his faith. He would
become, by turns, angry or incredulous at the apparent unfairness
of it all. He knew that God couldn’t be expected to prevent wars,
violence, greed or dishonesty because God had given Man free will.
But God had allowed Gloria’s free will to be taken away from her,
and this apparent incongruity troubled him deeply.