The Real Allie Newman

The Newman girl—Allie, short for Alyse, his notes had stated—got out to help the woman called Susan into the house. Joel remembered her saying she’d go back to the store to close up and decided to give her fifteen minutes. If she didn’t reappear by then, he’d have to do it here and he didn’t really want to, not with the other woman present. He checked his watch and leaned against the soft leather of the seat’s headrest.

The Cadillac was a great car and he loved driving it. The monotony of his journey all the way from Michigan had been greatly diminished by the luxury of the car and its terrific sound system. Too bad it wasn’t his, he thought, sighing at the realization that he would never own a car like this one as long as he was making child-support payments. Hey, buddy, are you saying you’d rather have a car than your kid? No? So quit complaining.

He didn’t have to wait fifteen minutes. She was out the door in less than ten, revving up the van like a Harley-Davidson and reversing down the drive with scarcely a backward glance. Maybe a tad too accustomed to lack of traffic in the area, Joel figured, making a mental note of that last fact. He had just gotten the Caddie back onto the road when she passed him. He drove another fifty feet before making a sharp U-turn and followed her dust into town.

She didn’t bother parking in the lot this time, finding a spot on the west side of Princess across from the store. Luckily he noticed a car pulling out just ahead of him, also on the west side, and was angling into the space when she jumped from the van to dash across the street.

Joel switched off the engine and waited. The sign on the door of the health-food store had posted a closing time of six, and it was about forty-five minutes to that now. If his lucky streak continued, the other woman would leave first. Then he’d have the Newman girl to himself. He got out of the car and leaned against it, ready to dodge the traffic when the moment was right.

Unexpectedly he felt a twinge of guilt about what he was about to do. Chastising himself, he was reminded that Allie Newman wasn’t the first pretty girl whose dreams he’d shattered. Or whose life he’d changed irrevocably. And likely she wouldn’t be the last. Joel couldn’t figure out why he felt so down about the whole thing all of a sudden. Perhaps he was getting too old for this business. Certainly he’d lost his taste for the thrill of the hunt.

On the dot of six the front door opened and closed again behind the woman who had come into the store when Joel was talking to Allie, waving a goodbye as she left. Joel was across the street and inside the store, flipping the Open sign over to read Closed before Allie had a chance to lock up.

She was standing behind the counter totaling what looked like the day’s receipts, and her head shot up at the sound of the door. Her big hazel eyes widened in recognition. And something else, he thought. Puzzlement? Or fear?

“Uh, we’re closed,” she said. “Sorry. Can you come back in the morning?”

Joel didn’t say anything, just turned to bolt the door behind him.

“I said we’re closed,” she repeated, her voice a bit higher now.

Definitely fear. But well-contained, Joel thought, noticing the way she kept her hand poised above the cash register while her other hand fumbled under the counter for something. Not a gun, he decided, considering this was Canada. But maybe a police-alert button or something.

“Please, don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you.” Liar, his conscience reprimanded. “I meant to ask you something before and didn’t get a chance to because that other woman came in. It’s personal. My name is Joel Kennedy and I’m a private investigator.”

That stayed the other hand. She was more relaxed, though still wary. “I wonder if I could talk to Mr. Newman—would that be your father?”

“My father’s dead.”

She announced this without a flinch. Joel sensed the part she didn’t verbalize was, So buzz off.

“Oh, I’m sorry. When, uh…?”

“Almost a year ago. Heart attack,” she said, looking down at the magazine on the counter.

“And your mother?” Joel asked, knowing the answer.

She took a deep breath before raising her head. Her eyes were darker than ever, her cheeks bright red. “Look, I think you should leave. As I’ve said, my father’s dead and Susan isn’t here to answer any questions.”

“Is Susan your mother?”

“My stepmother. Since you seem so keen to find out, my real mother left my father and ran away with another man when I was three. Now, was there something else I can help you with?”

Joel could tell from her tone that she just wanted to get rid of him. He ignored the sarcasm in her voice, keeping his eyes on hers for a long moment before saying the words he’d come all the way from Michigan to say. “Actually, it wasn’t your mother who ran away. It was your father.” He paused. “And he took you with him.”

CHAPTER TWO

FOR A MOMENT Allie was swept back into the Cataraqui River, the roaring in her ears just as it had been that day. The man’s lips were moving, but whatever he was saying was obliterated by a thunderous noise. Her mind flashed to Harry Maguire shouting at her over the boom of rushing water. But now, all she could do was stand absolutely still, frozen by the implication of what she’d just heard.

“I don’t understand,” she said, her voice foreign to her ears.

“It’s a long story,” he began. “Perhaps we could go somewhere?”

Allie thought of Susan, waiting at the farmhouse, anticipating a cozy evening together. That would be impossible now, Allie realized.

“I’ve got to call Susan and let her know I won’t be coming tonight. She’s expecting me.”

“Fair enough. I can wait.”

Allie looked from his face to the receipts now squeezed into a ball in her hand. She tossed them onto the counter. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and marched to the office at the back of the store.

Fortunately Susan wasn’t the prying type. She accepted Allie’s explanation that something had come up with her usual grace. Allie promised to call her first thing in the morning, grabbed her backpack and returned to the front of the store. She’d had a crazy hope while she was on the phone that the guy might have taken his wild story and disappeared. No such luck.

He was standing in front of the naturopathic medicines. “You take any of this stuff?” he asked.

“Not really. But you didn’t come here to learn about holistic medicine, did you?”

He stifled a grin. “Where would you like to talk?”

“There’s a coffee shop down the street,” she said, and led the way out of the store, stopping to lock it behind them.

“I was thinking of someplace more private,” he said as they started down the street.

Allie cocked her head, looking up at him. “Such as?”

“The park by the water. Or my hotel room. I’m staying at the Ramada down by the marina.”

Your hotel. Yeah, right. “The park,” Allie said. “But first I want to pick up a coffee, if that’s okay.”

He nodded. “I could use one, too.”

They reached the coffee shop and went in to order. When the coffee came, he swiftly handed the clerk a large bill to pay for both, and Allie muttered a grudging thank-you as she headed for the door. He seemed to get the message she wasn’t interested in small talk and remained silent for the rest of the walk down Princess to Confederation Park on the waterfront. Allie headed for a bench in the sun, facing the water, and sat down without a backward glance.

“Is that Lake Ontario out there?” he asked, setting his backpack on the grass at his feet as he sat down beside her.

“The St. Lawrence River. The lake starts farther down that way,” she said, swinging her arm across his line of vision to the west. “See the outline of those islands? The biggest one is Amherst and the lake officially starts there.”

“So where are the famous Thousand Islands then?”

She squinted at him. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Nope. First time in these parts, though I’ve been to Northern Ontario.”

Allie frowned. “Are you American?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“No. Usually I can pick out Americans right away because of their accent. But you don’t have one.”

“Maybe not, but you do.”

The grin took at least five years off him, Allie thought, which would put him in his midthirties. It also made him, as Beth might say, unforgettable in the looks department.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, just…uh…wondering why an American has something to tell me about my mother.”

He liked that she got straight to the point, dismissing any attempt at niceties. “Right. Let’s get to it, then.” He flipped the plastic tab on his coffee cup and took a long swallow before turning to look at her.

“As I said before, I’m a private investigator. Here,” he said, pulling a slim leather billfold from the inside pocket of his jacket. He flipped it open and withdrew a business card, which he handed to Allie.

“Not long after that article about you in People magazine came out, I was contacted by a man in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. His name was George Kostakis and he was acting on behalf of his great-uncle, Spiro Kostakis.” He paused, watching her face for any hint of recognition and, when none came, went on. “He told me that you looked just like his second cousin, Katrina Kostakis.” Joel took another sip of coffee and studied Allie’s face in profile.

She was listening attentively, frowning slightly in concentration but giving no suggestion that the names meant anything at all to her. But Joel noticed her tapping his business card against her other hand until she tucked it into the pocket of the windbreaker she was wearing. Anxiety level increasing? he wondered.

“Katrina was the only child of Spiro Kostakis, George’s great-uncle and patriarch of the Kostakis clan in Grosse Pointe. George said that there’d been a granddaughter— Elena—who’d disappeared from the family home when she was only three. Spirited away, apparently,” Joel added, wanting to give some benefit of doubt for Allie’s sake, “by her father, one Eddie Hughes—Katrina’s husband and Elena’s father.”

At that, Allie’s head turned his way, her expression almost challenging him. “So far I get no connection to me, other than the fact that I coincidentally resemble this woman—what was her name again?”

“Katrina Kostakis. Or Trina, as she was sometimes called.”

“Was?”

“She’s dead. Killed in a car crash twenty-six years ago.”

“And she is—was—supposed to be…”

“Your mother,” Joel said softly, keeping his gaze on her face.

Allie broke eye contact first, turning her gaze toward the water. But not before Joel caught the devastation in her face. He stared bleakly at the water, too, hating himself for what he’d said. What he still had to say.

“My father’s name was Rob Newman,” she said, her voice low and hoarse. “Rob Newman.”

Joel sighed. He rose from the bench, strode over to a garbage can and chucked his empty coffee cup into it. She watched him as he leaned over, picked up his pack from the grass and unzipped an outer pocket. He pulled out an envelope and paused, noticing the slight trembling of her chin. But when she tilted her head, defiantly raising her face to his, Joel flicked open the envelope and withdrew the photograph, handing it to her in a swift movement that caught her unawares. She fumbled, letting it float to the ground.

He started to bend down for it, but she beat him to it, sweeping up the picture and bringing it to the tip of her nose as if inspecting it through a magnifying glass. Then she leaped to her feet and, clutching the photo in her right hand, began to jog across the grassy park lawn to the sidewalk beyond.

“Hey!” Joel shouted, but she didn’t turn around. It seemed as if she increased her stride at the sound of his voice. She was running now, dodging the busy traffic to cross the road, and heading down a side street. Joel swore. He swung his small pack over a shoulder, grabbed the one she’d left behind and took off after her. Though judging by her pace, he doubted he’d catch up to her.

He was about half a block behind and starting to sweat with the extra load of packs, while she seemed to be just getting into a rhythm, loping ahead of him as effortlessly and gracefully as an antelope. He swore, realizing how all of those postponed sessions at the fitness center were working against him. When she turned right at Wellington, he slowed down, knowing where she was headed. Her apartment.

Allie, once inside her apartment, knew exactly where to look. Whisking the photograph from the journal in her desk drawer, she charged back down the stairs and onto the front porch. Her heart was pounding against her ribs, but she knew it wasn’t from the run. That had scarcely raised a sweat.

The private investigator hadn’t fared as well, she noted. His breath sounded ragged, as though he were barely holding himself together. Although he didn’t appear to be on the verge of total collapse, his eyes were beginning to get that wild look that unfit people sometimes get when their bodies are screaming at them to stop. She waited on the top step while he got his breathing under control.

“I guess you recognized the photo,” he finally said.

At least he had some sense of humor. “I have the same one,” she said, extending her right arm. “At least, part of it.”

He took the fragment of photo from her. “You must be—what? About two when that was taken?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“And the other half? Do you know—”

“Who snipped my mother out?” Allie shrugged. “Dad, I guess. I found that in his papers after he died. At the time, it was just another reminder that he wanted to forget my mother. Maybe he did it out of love for me—wanting to protect me from questions he couldn’t answer,” she added.

The P.I. was heading up the steps now, standing so close she could feel the heat from his run still evaporating off him. Allie instinctively backed away.

“Or maybe he just didn’t want you asking any questions, in case you stumbled on it one day. You have to admit, the resemblance is—”

“Striking,” Allie put in.

“Which is why your grandfather was certain you were Katrina’s daughter.”

Allie waited a moment, letting that register. “So now what?” she asked, striving for calm.

“There’s more,” Joel said. “My client—your grandfather—has a proposal for you, so to speak. We’ll need somewhere quiet to talk.”

The roaring in her ears came back and with it, a surge in blood pressure. Allie covered her face with her hands. She didn’t want to hear or discover anything more. Enough was enough. She breathed deeply, using her tented hands to ease the hyperventilation. That is, until they were gently lifted up and away, and folded into Joel’s as he pulled her closer.

“I know,” he murmured, his breath whispering across the top of her head. “It’s all too much to take in. You just want me to go away so you can get back to your life.”

He was so close to her any passerby would have thought they were about to kiss. For a second he seemed almost like an old friend—there to give comfort and refuge. Then she remembered why he was really there and eased her hands out of his clasp, stepping back at the same time.

“Yes,” Allie said. “I do, so why don’t you go and let me get back to my life?”

“Too late, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but you’re never going to be able to go back.”

“Of course I am. I’m a very determined person when I want to be.”

“I know,” Joel conceded. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have rescued that man and his dog.”

That made her pause. Most people gushed about her bravery when all along, Allie had known the force that drove her into the icy Cataraqui twice had been something different. Instinctively she’d known that there was no way she was going to let Harry Maguire and Jeb die.

“And that very determination,” she said, her voice rising, “will see me through this…this situation.”

“If you were the kind of person who didn’t care about others, you might pull it off. But I suspect that even if I leave without telling you the rest of the story, you’ll always wonder. That unavoidably huge question of why your father ran away from his wife and family—and abducted you—will hang over you the rest of your life. You know it and I know it.” He turned to descend the porch steps.

“Wait!”

He paused.

Allie was back in the icy Cataraqui again. Only this time, she herself was being swept downstream with no hope of rescue in sight. “You’d better come upstairs,” she murmured, turning away from him so he couldn’t see her face.

SHE WAS EITHER a minimalist or unsentimental, Joel instantly decided, surveying her second-floor apartment. Throw in neat freak, too, he mused. No knickknacks to collect dust, not that a speck of it would be allowed to linger. The clean, crisp style of the decor matched her physical self—unadorned, tidy and in spectacular condition.

Joel repressed a smile. He sounded as if he was composing ad copy. But really, he was relieved that she seemed to be a no-nonsense kind of woman. More than likely, he’d be spending quite a few hours with her in the days ahead, and he dreaded the possibility that she might be overly emotional about everything she was about to learn. It was hard enough juggling the various roles he’d assumed without having to worry about Allie Newman’s state of mind.

“More coffee?” she asked, closing the apartment door behind her.

“Uh, sure,” he said, not really wanting another coffee so soon but anxious to postpone the inevitable. She headed into the hall—toward the kitchen, he guessed—and he took the opportunity to check out the small living room that overlooked the street. A faded plump sofa in front of the bay window had a worn but comfy air. He almost felt like sinking into it, putting up his feet and having a snooze.

Joel scanned the pine bookshelves lining the wall opposite the window. If he hadn’t already known she was some kind of college professor, he’d have concluded so after one glance at the titles. Many were familiar—classics that he’d once stacked on his own shelf years ago as a college undergrad.

“You take it black, right?” she called out.

She must have noticed his preference at the coffee shop earlier. Following her voice along a dark, wood-paneled hall, he appeared in the doorway of a medium-size, old-fashioned kitchen.

“Yes, thanks,” he said.

Her head shot up from pouring coffee into two mugs. “I didn’t hear you coming down the hall.”

He took the mug she held out and shrugged. “Professional habit, I guess.”

One corner of her mouth seemed to twist under as she muttered, “Yeah,” and after splashing some milk into her own coffee, led the way back to the front of the house.

Joel glanced left and right along the hallway. There were two closed doors and an open one leading into a sunlit bathroom. “You live alone?” he asked.

“Yes.” She sank into the sofa and propped her feet on a coffee table stacked with magazines, books and what appeared to be exam papers.

Joel settled into a black leather armchair adjacent to the sofa. No roommate. That was good. No complications.

“Nice place,” he remarked. Then, nodding to the pile of papers, he asked, “Are those exam papers?”

“Yes.”

He went on, unfazed by her terseness. “You a teacher or something?”

Her sigh echoed in the room. “I’m sure you know all about me, Mr. Kennedy. Shall we get to why you’re here?”

“Joel,” he murmured, flashing what he hoped was a placating smile. “High school?” he ventured, pushing her just a tad more.

“I teach math at Queen’s—it’s a local university.”

“Ah! Professor?”

“Hardly. But someday perhaps. I haven’t done my doctoral thesis yet.” She stretched forward to set her mug on the coffee table, brought her feet back to the floor and sat up straight. “Now, about my mother…”

“Right.” Joel leaned over and set his half-empty mug on the floor. “As I said, your father’s real name was Eddie Hughes. Thirty-two years ago he married Katrina Kostakis, the only child of Spiro and Vangelia Kostakis. Apparently Katrina had always been fragile, and shortly after your birth, she spiraled into a serious postnatal depression. From what I’ve been told by the family, she kept this a secret for quite some time, but when you were just a year old or so, it was evident that Katrina had problems. She was put on antidepressants and they seemed to help for a bit. Then—” he paused, noting how Allie’s eyes seemed to disappear into her face at each new sentence “—she began to drink. You can imagine how things became much worse very quickly.”

Allie’s face paled.

Joel hesitated. “Do you want me to get you something? A glass of cold water?”

She waved a limp hand. “No, just continue. But thanks, anyway.”

He was beginning to wish he had a cold drink right then himself, though water wasn’t what he had in mind. “Adding to the equation was the fact that Eddie—your father—worked for Spiro in a fairly high managerial position.”

“Managerial? My father? He was, like, the ultimate hippie,” Allie said. She shook her head. “This is all too much. What kind of business does this Spiro operate?”

“Your grandfather has a number of enterprises. I did some checking on him after he first consulted me. He has a chain of Greek restaurants in Michigan, along with a few importing-exporting companies. Some corporate real estate.”

“So what part did my father supposedly manage?”

There was more than a hint of disbelief in the question. Joel knew enough to make his answer vague. “I’m not really sure, to be honest. Just before he took off, he was being touted as Spiro’s new right-hand man.”

Allie frowned. “Then why would he take off?”

Joel leaned forward in the chair, sensing he’d hooked her at last. She was starting to ask important questions. “I was told there was an argument between Spiro and Eddie about handling some business deal. Spiro made some comment about Eddie not being any more adept at managing his own marriage. Eddie blew up and implied that the marriage wasn’t going to last the year, anyway. Then Spiro reminded him that he had enough connections—politically and legally—to ensure that Eddie would walk away from the marriage with nothing, not even visitation rights to his daughter.”

Joel waited for a reaction, though none came. Instead, he saw that she’d been drawn completely into the story as if it was a tale about some strangers, not her own family. He went on. “Eddie replied that Katrina would never get custody of you, given her depression and alcoholism.”

“That’s true, I’m sure,” Allie put in.

“Perhaps, but Spiro made it clear that he and your grandmother would sue for custody and would have no problem getting it.”

“So he ran off with me,” she whispered.

“Apparently.”

Allie sat staring into space, imagining a tableau of how it might have been, trying to put faces on the people whose names she was hearing for the first time. Then her eyes must have focused, for she realized she was looking directly at Joel Kennedy. If only her mind would focus, as well, so she could decide which of the thousand questions clamoring inside to pose first.

“How did you get this information?” she asked. Not a great question, she knew at once, but a start. And it seemed to take him aback, because he blinked a few times before replying.

“From Spiro at our first meeting. I also interviewed a few people who worked with Eddie at the time. Also, your aunt—Ephtimea, or Effie—provided some background.”

“My aunt?”

“Well, I guess cousin, or second cousin is more like it. She was married to Spiro’s nephew, Tony. Their two sons—George and Christopher, or Christo—work for Spiro.”

“A real family enterprise,” she mused.

“A wealthy and powerful family enterprise,” Joel added.

He must have picked up the bitterness in my voice, Allie thought. All those years when the only blood relative she had was her father. “How can you be sure this Spiro’s account is true? My father isn’t here to defend himself.”