Читать книгу The Real Allie Newman - Janice Carter - Страница 8

ALLIE LOWERED her head, tucking her chin in until the strap of her helmet bit into her skin. The wind still carried with it the nip of winter, even though April had just arrived and summer was more than a promise away. She figured she was crazy to go cycling on such a misty morning—the streets were slick and the ground was saturated with a week’s worth of torrential rains—but she hadn’t trained once that week and the triathlon was drawing closer.

Her feet eased on the pedals as the cycle whizzed around the bend of the paved bike and footpath that bordered the east side of the Cataraqui River. Allie raised her head just enough to view the stretch of path ahead and swore. The dim outline of a man walking his dog appeared out of the swirling mist scarcely a hundred yards ahead. To make things worse, the man was on the outer edge of the path nearest the riverbank. She’d have to slow down or risk nudging him off the bank. It meant losing time and writing off her goal for the cycling part of her session that morning.

She began to apply the brakes, slowing down as gently as possible to avoid skidding on the wet asphalt, keeping her eyes on the man’s back as he plodded into the plumes of vapor wafting up from the river below. Allie rang her bell, but the sound seemed muted in the damp, heavy air.

The distance between her and the figures shortened. She was just thinking that any second she’d call out a warning and skim past the pair when a rumbling vibration beneath her caused her to brake hard. A section of the riverbank and footpath ahead suddenly broke loose. Allie stared in shocked horror as the man and his dog slid silently down the embankment and disappeared into the shroud of fog blanketing the river.

The bike skidded to a stop inches from the jagged tear of mud, tree roots and broken asphalt. Allie leaped off. She couldn’t hear any shouts for help above the roar of the brown, frothy river, but in the first panicked seconds of the disaster, she shouted for help herself before plunging down the mucky slope into the freezing water. When she surfaced, Allie fought to catch her breath. The man was thrashing in the water just feet away and she kicked hard, propelling herself toward him.

The current had pushed him into the crook of a partially submerged tree and was pummeling him. Allie shouted for him to hang on, but from the way his head kept bobbing back and forth, she doubted he’d heard. She managed to grab on to the collar of his overcoat just as the branch he was caught on broke loose and was carried downstream.

His arms shot out at her touch, clutching at her, pushing her down. Allie swallowed a mouthful of water. The Styrofoam lining of her helmet kept her head up, but the dead weight of his body threatened to send them both careening along with the current. Using all her strength, she pushed his hands up and off her shoulders, grabbing onto his coat again before he could be swept away. She pulled herself closer to him, shouting into his ear to relax, that she was going to try to get him ashore.

He understood then and stopped struggling as she pulled him slowly to the riverbank. Then Allie stretched out her free arm, digging her fingers into the muck where land met water, and pulled. And pulled again for what seemed an eternity of slipping, gouging again and again into the thick, claylike mud until at last she heaved herself and the man onto the narrow strip of shore at the base of the embankment.

He collapsed face forward, gasping for air. Allie rolled onto her back beside him, registering for the first time that he was elderly, his white hair slicked with mud and bits of leaves and other debris. He raised his head and turned filmy eyes in her direction.

The pounding in Allie’s head intensified. The man was blind.

“Jeb?” he asked, his hoarse voice pitched with fear. “Jeb?”

The dog. A Seeing Eye dog. Allie sat up. Less than fifty feet downriver she could see the animal’s small dark head.

“Where’s Jeb?” the man cried.

“It’s okay,” Allie said, “I see him.” She jogged along the shore, slipping and sliding all the way. The closer she got to the dog, the more she could hear its frantic yowling. It seemed to be caught on something, too, which had saved it from speeding down the river and out of sight. Fortunately, the dog was only a few feet from the shore and Allie was able to reach it by wading into the river up to her waist. The leather inverted U handle attached to the dog’s harness had snagged onto the forked tip of a deadhead, and the dog, struggling to keep its head above water, was treading water in a futile effort to reach shore.

It was a young chocolate-brown Lab, and Allie almost wept at its grateful whimpers as she struggled to release the handle. Her fingers were stiff and numb with cold, but after three attempts, she managed to disengage the handle from the end of the deadhead.

The dog barked twice and began paddling toward shore. Allie held on to the handle and was half-pulled along as she and the dog finally crawled up out of the river. Jeb leaped against her as if to thank her, shook himself briskly and then bounded along the strip of shore to his master.

By the time Allie reached them, she could hear the distant whoop of a fire-department rescue unit. Someone, she thought, must have spotted the commotion, probably from the condominium complex on the other side of the river. Exhausted, she fell back onto the muddy slope, half-aware of the dog’s excited yelps and licks as it leaped from master to rescuer, expressing an uninhibited gratitude that Allie sensed she’d likely never experience again.

She unclasped her helmet and let it fall to her side, sucking in deep, calming breaths as she wondered distractedly if she could count this unexpected incident as her workout for the day.

ALLIE PUSHED OPEN the screen door of Evergreen Natural Foods and paused, scanning the store for her stepmother, Susan. When she saw her bent over one of the flour bins, Allie headed straight for her.

“That fifteen-minutes-of-fame thing is highly over-rated,” Allie said, waving the rolled-up People magazine she held. “No sane person would want more than five.” Then she realized that Susan was struggling with a ten-pound sack of flour. “Want some help with that?”

The sack thudded onto the hardwood floor. Susan tried to straighten, groaning audibly. Allie dropped the magazine to help. Susan clutched at Allie’s extended forearm, pulling herself to a vertical position, and let Allie lead her to the stool behind the cash counter.

“You really should go to the doctor and talk about that back surgery again,” Allie murmured. A twinge of guilt that she hadn’t really been noticing Susan’s difficulty colored her face. She should have been more observant, instead of going on about the People magazine.

What was there about seeing yourself in print in an international magazine, anyway? she wondered. And how could she justify her own self-indulgence after bad-mouthing the phenomenon of instant celebrity ever since she’d pulled Harry Maguire and his dog Jeb from the Cataraqui River? The shameful truth was that she’d been irresistibly drawn to the magazine blurb about her rescue of the blind man and his Seeing Eye dog. Even if it had only been one paragraph in the sidebar of a larger article on heroic acts.

“Susan, why don’t you take some time off and stay at home to nurse your back?” Allie asked. “As soon as I’ve finished marking the last of my exam papers, I’ll be a free agent. Beth and I can run the store.”

Susan Matthews grimaced. “I hate to put you out, Allie. You’ve got that triathlon and all the training. And you deserve a break, too. You’ve been working hard this year, especially since your dad…”

Susan’s voice dropped off. A lump rose in Allie’s throat. She and Susan had seldom mentioned Rob Newman since his death ten months ago. It was too painful a subject for either of them, Allie supposed, though there’d been many times when she’d wanted to talk about him with the woman who’d been his constant companion for the past twenty years. Allie may have referred to Susan as her stepmother, but she was, in fact, the only mother Allie had really known.

Allie dropped to her knees in front of her. “Look, the papers will be finished by the end of the week. Beth can manage on her own with the high-school kids when I’m training. Take two weeks.”

Susan smiled. “One week will be all I need, trust me. I’d go crazy sitting around any longer than that. And yes,” she put in as Allie began to interrupt, “I promise not to do any more lifting or bending.”

Allie sighed, knowing the compromise was all she’d get from her. “Right—there’re plenty of young bodies around here to do the heavy labor for you.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Susan half laughed, half moaned. “I’m only fifty.”

“Well, I just want you to get fit so we can go dancing at AJ’s.”

That brought a real smile. “Yeah, right.”

It was an ongoing family joke. Whenever Allie had been late coming home, she offered the excuse that she and Beth had been dancing at AJ’s, a local Kingston nightspot. The line had become a catchphrase for Susan, Rob and Allie, and was always used for any lateness or absence.

“I’ll drive you home and come back here to close up. I could pick up a pizza or something and bring it over for dinner. Okay?”

Susan looked fondly at her. “That would be nice, Allie. We haven’t done that in ages.”

Another shaft of guilt struck. Allie had moved back home for a few weeks after her father’s fatal heart attack, but at Susan’s insistence, eventually returned to her own apartment. Now she wondered if she’d been wrong to assume that her stepmother was managing fine on her own. “It’s a deal, then. Why don’t you get your things while I finish this? Beth should be back from her dentist appointment any moment and she can take over.”

“All right.” Susan rose slowly from the stool, using the counter to brace herself.

Allie watched her walk gingerly toward the rear of the store. A rush of love for the woman who had meant so much to her, especially since her teen years, overwhelmed her. While Allie was just beginning to reclaim her life after the unexpected loss of her father, it was obvious that Susan was having more difficulty. And why not? Allie asked herself. She’d been his wife in every way but on paper. In fact, Allie had often wondered why the two had never made the relationship official.

“Excuse me.” A voice broke into Allie’s thoughts.

Swinging her head sharply to the right, Allie saw a man standing on the other side of the counter, holding up the People magazine.

“Is this yours?”

Allie blinked. She hadn’t even seen him come into the store, unless he’d come in earlier and had been behind the higher shelving units at the front. She flushed at the thought of someone overhearing her conversation with Susan.

“Yes,” she said, extending her hand for the magazine.

But he didn’t pass it over right away. Instead, he uncurled it, exposing the page she’d been looking at before she’d entered the store.

“Is that you?” he asked, pointing to the photo accompanying the paragraph about her rescue of Harry Maguire.

Still unaccustomed to the questions people had been asking since the local newspaper had featured her on its front page a month ago, Allie shrugged. “Uh, yeah,” she answered, making herself sound nonchalant as she again extended her hand.

He didn’t seem to get the message that he ought to give back the magazine. His dark-brown eyes continued to scan her face like a bar code. Allie mentally shook herself. She’d been putting in too many long hours at the cash register. And he’d definitely been staring too long.

“My magazine?” she prompted.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, blinking as if he’d been caught in a daydream. “I was imagining what it must have been like—diving into a river to save a blind man.”

Allie smiled and came up with the answer she’d framed weeks ago. “Cold.”

Unlike the many people who’d posed that same question in the past four weeks, he seemed satisfied with her response. For that, Allie warmed to him.

“Can I help you with anything?”

“Actually, I was just looking around.” As if to prove his point, he craned his head to look behind him. “This is a beautiful place. Reminds me of those Western movies with general stores. The wooden bins and barrels. Especially the old brick walls.”

“Well, it is an old building. That part is authentic at least.”

“Is it yours?” he asked.

“No, my…my parents’,” she replied, unwilling to get into a long explanation of relationships. Her father had left his half to Susan, along with the house they’d shared for two decades. “Shall I leave you to browse, then?”

He frowned, looking indecisive. “Uh, well…”

The door at the front of the store swung open, and Beth, Allie’s longtime friend and Susan’s assistant, breezed in. “That’s that for another six months,” she announced, bustling toward the counter. “Everything okay here?” she asked, her eyes flicking from the customer to Allie and back again.

“Thanks,” he said, nodding at Allie, and moved past Beth to the door.

As it closed behind him, Beth winked at Allie. “Never seen him in here before, and I’d remember a face like that! Is he new in town or what?” She headed behind the counter and plopped her handbag and sweater on a chair.

“No idea,” Allie mumbled.

“You two looked like you were in deep conversation when I walked in,” Beth teased.

For some reason, Allie was annoyed by the remark. She’d barely noticed how good-looking the man was. But that was Beth, always trying to matchmake.

“He saw the magazine article.”

“Oh,” was all Beth said, knowing how Allie felt about the fanfare.

Susan returned, carrying her purse and all-weather coat. “Beth, thank goodness you’re here. Allie’s driving me home, then she’ll come back to close up with you. My back,” she explained at Beth’s look of concern.

“Sue’s going to take a week off and I’ll fill in for her,” Allie said.

“Want me to call in some extra help in the morning?” Beth asked.

“That would be great. When will the full-time summer help be starting, do you recall?”

“We asked the two university students to start on Monday. The high-school kids are taking the weekends and Friday night.”

Susan nodded. “We should be okay for help, then.”

“We’ll be just fine,” Allie said quickly, afraid Susan might change her mind about taking time off. “It’s been pretty quiet, so by the time I get back, we’ll probably be ready to close.” She grasped Susan’s elbow and accompanied her to the door.

JOEL DUCKED his head as soon as he saw the two women round the corner of the health-food store and enter the tiny paved parking lot next to it. Fortunately he’d found a place for his car in the far corner, guessing that owners of the stores adjacent to the lot would use the four reserved spaces.

He watched as the Newman girl solicitously helped the older woman into the hunter-green van, its paneled sides emblazoned in bright yellow with “Evergreen Natural Foods,” and then climbed into the driver side.

Of course he’d recognized her as soon as he’d stepped into the store, although she was leaning over the other woman at the time and hadn’t noticed his arrival. He’d wondered what had been on her mind those few seconds she’d watched the other woman limp toward the back of the store. Concern and worry, he’d figured, for when she’d swung around, her forehead was furrowed.

The magazine photo hadn’t done her justice at all. It hadn’t caught the glossy sheen of her dark-brown hair or the tiny dots of amber in her hazel eyes. It hadn’t even picked up the pale, crescent-shaped scar at the corner of one eye. Allie Newman was definitely more interesting in real life, he thought, as were most things.

The van roared to life and started to back out. He waited until it was angled onto the one-way main street—what was it called again? Princess?—waiting for a break in the rush-hour traffic. At least what counted for rush hour in a city the size of Kingston, Ontario. Then, he turned the key in the ignition and followed the van out of the lot, leaving at least three car lengths between them.

Not that he expected her to notice him following her. Few people did, unless the cars were alone on a country road or something—unlike the movies, where actors were always peering into their rearview mirrors and spotting a tail. Of course, he didn’t even need to be following her, because he already knew where she lived, having passed by the house on Wellington Street on his way to the store. But he didn’t know about the other woman then—Susan, he thought she’d called her—and decided to check her out.

The van took a left at the waterfront and headed toward the army base on the outskirts of town. Joel frowned. He hadn’t expected to be leaving the city, but then, he had no one to answer to and no time commitments. Not yet, anyway. The van drove over the metal lift bridge spanning the Cataraqui. Joel looked upriver to his left, wondering where exactly Newman had jumped in after the old guy.

She had nerve, that was all he could say. The days were still brisk in early May; he couldn’t imagine how frigid the water must have been a month earlier. Cold, as she’d so curtly informed him. He’d smiled to himself at that, figuring she was fed up with answering the same questions over and over. And for some damn inexplicable reason he’d felt himself admiring her for not succumbing to the preening affectation of celebrityhood.

The van chugged up the hill past the Canadian Forces base and stopped at the traffic light that marked the intersecting road to Fort Henry. He’d been there last night, acting the tourist for once and almost enjoying it. When the light changed, the van made a sudden left. Caught unawares, Joel was glad he was far enough behind to make the turn, too. Was this an impulse turn, he wondered, or had she forgotten to signal?

The sign at the corner had indicated she was heading toward Barriefield. Joel liked the sound of that. In his mind, he imagined a different spelling—Berryfield—and pictured the fields planted with strawberries that people would come to pick in late June. Except the land was currently under development, and the fields that might have once produced crops were now harvesting partially built houses.

The van swung right onto a gravel road, jolting him from his brief philosophical interlude. Joel swore, reminding himself to stay alert. He’d found himself drifting off into these dreamlike states too often over the past year, ever since Trish had walked out on him for the last time, taking Ben with her. This time they hadn’t even gone through the pretense of a marriage counselor. Joel had signed the papers without any protest, especially when Trish had agreed to let him have six-year-old Ben for one weekend a month and three weeks in the summer.

Access to his son had been the only dispute in their divorce, and Joel knew, given the uncertainties of his job, that he couldn’t and shouldn’t ask for more. As it was, he’d had to constantly juggle his schedule. But for once, Trish was willing to be flexible, letting him shift weekends when necessary.

The van was less than a quarter of a mile ahead of him on the gravel road now, so Joel slowed down. There was no more traffic to hide behind. This section was undeveloped, and the fields were sprouting with crops that had a whole growing season ahead of them. What few houses there were, were hundreds of yards apart, well back from the road, and accompanied by small barns and sheds. No big farming operations here, Joel noted. Maybe the people who lived here were what people called gentlemen farmers.

Joel spotted the van turning into a narrow lane, and he pulled onto the shoulder next to a stand of fir trees. He had a good line of vision through the trees as he watched the van stop in front of a two-story limestone farmhouse with a couple of sheds out back. A big golden retriever bounded out the front door as soon as it was opened; good to know about the dog, Joel thought, in case he had to return here at night, which was unlikely.

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.”