The Girl with the Phony Name

by Charles Mathes

  “This is very … homey,” Lucy said brightly.

  “We like it,” said Mrs. Iatoni, primly straightening her dress.

  “Well,” said Lucy. “So here we are.”

  “So here we are,” repeated the little woman, and she smiled for the first time.

  “Thanks for seeing me, Mrs. Iatoni.”

  “Well, like I told you on the phone, Lucy … may I call you Lucy?”

  “Please.”

  “Well, I really don’t know anything. Look, I’m sorry about what happened, but it was such a long time ago.”

  Lucy nodded. “If you could just help me understand what your brother was doing with … with my mother … .”

  Mrs. Iatoni crossed her arms in front of her defensively. “There was nothing between them, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Maybe I will have some coffee,” said Lucy, hoping to head off any confrontation.

  “Certainly,” said Mrs. Iatoni, her features frozen into a mask, and left for the kitchen.

  Lucy stood and tried to admire the black velvet painting of a matador that hung over the fireplace. The woman obviously still felt guilty after all this time. How could Lucy get through to her? After a moment Theresa Iatoni returned with a coffeepot and two plastic cups on a tray. She sat on the sofa and placed the tray on a low table.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Iatoni,” said Lucy, easing down onto the sofa next to her. “You didn’t have to see me, I know. It must have been hard for you—your brother dead, a strange woman, a baby. I want you to know that I’m not mad or anything. I just want to find out who I am.”

  The hard face softened.

  “Look, honey,” said Mrs. Iatoni, pouring them each a cup of coffee. “The police called from Massachusetts and said that Alex was dead. This was such a long time ago.”

  Lucy didn’t say anything. Finally the woman continued.

  “My brother and I had had a falling out long before that. I hadn’t seen him for months. The police wanted to know who he might have been with, but how should I know?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “My husband and I went up there to identify the body,” said Mrs. Iatoni, making a face. “It was horrible. Stephen didn’t want me to go in, but I had to see. My brother was all burned up, like a piece of meat. Cream?”

  “I take it black.”

  “I recognized him by his teeth, really. We had been brought up in the depression, so we couldn’t afford orthodontists like the kids today. Alex’s teeth always looked like a train wreck. Really awful. We were amazed he could chew.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, that was a long time ago. All my grandchildren wear braces, you know,” said Mrs. Iatoni, brightening.

  “I take it he wasn’t married,” said Lucy, bringing the cup to her lips. The coffee was still too hot to drink.

  “That was the point, Lucy. And it wasn’t because of his teeth, if you understand my meaning.”

  Lucy didn’t. Mrs. Iatoni saw it on her face. She smiled and spoke softly.

  “My brother was a homosexual, dear. It wasn’t fashionable to be a homosexual back then, especially in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. But that’s what he was. That’s why I knew he couldn’t have been involved with that wo … your mother … like they suggested. I couldn’t say so at the time, but there you are.”

  Lucy sat back, stunned.

  “Oh, look, honey. I wish I could help you. At the time I was pretty ashamed of my brother. And not just for … you know. Alex had also been arrested a few times for taking tourists for rides.”

  “He hired out his car, right?”

  “When I say he took tourists for rides, I mean he took them for rides. He could somehow persuade foreigners that America had no dependable trains or buses. He would drive them to Cleveland or Nashville or wherever. They’d pay his expenses plus who knows how much? The only reason I know is because he kept hitting me for bail when he got caught. That’s why we had the falling out, in fact.”

  “The police in Pittsfield never mentioned any of this,” said Lucy.

  Mrs. Iatoni shrugged. “The charges were always dropped. When he was caught Alex would plead ‘simple misunderstanding’ and return the money. No tourist was going to wait around months for a jury trial when they could just take their money and run.”

  “So you’re saying that my mother could have been a tourist. Your brother could have picked us up at the airport and been taking us practically anywhere.”

  “That’s right. My guess would be that they were heading for Boston—the scenic route—but who knows?”

  Lucy’s heart sank. Boston, of course, was the first place she had looked for Trelaines, paging through the phone books at the orphanage when she was seven years old. If there was one thing in the world she was sure of, it was that there weren’t any Trelaines in Boston.

  Theresa Iatoni smiled sweetly, her conscience cleared at last. Lucy tried to smile back. She had come a long way to find such a dead end.

  “You got some mail, Lucy,” said Tina as Lucy dragged herself through the front door feeling like a sack of overcooked pasta.

  “I did?” said Lucy absently, taking the large manila envelope with a New Hampshire postmark.

  “You have fun crusin’ in the Neal-mobile?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure. Anybody asking for me?”

  “Nope. Mr. Wing’s in the basement, inventing. Neal is out with Hewby.”

  “Thanks, Tina,” said Lucy and headed for the back stairs, trying to fight the depression that had veiled her since her conversation with Theresa Iatoni. If her mother was just a tourist passing through, then searching for birth records in New York City was pointless. She could have been born anywhere.

  “At least I won’t pass along the tacky furniture gene,” Lucy advised the door to the rear of the house as she opened it. Aunt Sally was in the kitchen.

  “I made you a sammich, Lucy,” said Aunt Sally in her frightened child’s voice. Lucy wasn’t really hungry but couldn’t bear to hurt the woman’s feelings.

  “Thank you, Aunt Sally. I’ll take it upstairs with me.”

  “Would you like a glass of milk?”

  “No, just the sandwich will be fine.”

  Aunt Sally padded over to the refrigerator and handed Lucy a plate draped in wax paper.

  “Thanks very much,” said Lucy, bounding up the stairs, feeling guilty. Not only was she not helping Mr. Wing raise money, she was eating him out of house and home as well.

  Flopping listlessly on the bed, Lucy unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. Tuna fish. Her least favorite. Chewing unhappily she tore open the manila envelope. It was her mail that Billy Rosenberg had forwarded, of course. Lucy had finally called to touch base with him last week.

  The envelope included the usual bank and credit-card statements, some junk mail, a tax form. One letter, however, caught her eye. The return address was from a Robert MacAlpin in New York City. Lucy liked to hear from MacAlpins, but couldn’t place the name at first. Then she remembered. The insurance man. This really was her lucky day.

  She sighed and opened the letter. It contained a single sheet of Home Trust stationery and was dated three weeks ago.

  Dear Miss Trelaine,

  I’ve been doing some thinking since our conversation and realize now that I do know something about you. In fact I think I can clear up the whole mystery.

  I tried to reach you at the TownLodge, but you had already checked out. With your experience in hotels I would have thought you might have left a forwarding address, but I’m writing to the address in New Hampshire you gave me in the hopes that you will receive it before too long.

  Please call me at the telephone number above as soon as you receive this. I am very eager to meet with you and explain everything.

  Yours truly,

  Robert MacAlpin

  Lucy had dropped the sandwich and was sitting straight up on the bed, her depression not even a memory. She read the letter again with growing excitement.

/>   After losing her computer she had tried to forget about MacAlpins altogether. Wouldn’t it be something if a MacAlpin solved the puzzle now, after all these years?

  “Can I ask for another day off this week or is that too much?” she asked the remains of the sandwich.

  The sandwich didn’t answer. Lucy took another bite.

  “All right,” she said with her mouth full. “But there’s no reason I can’t meet with Robert MacAlpin on Saturday, is there?”

  What could the sandwich say?

  Still, there was something about this that bothered Lucy, something that seemed out of place, out of joint, though what it was she could not say.

  TWELVE

  Lucy walked into Trump Tower stifling the impulse to giggle at the doorman. He was decked out in red military splendor like one of the guards at Buckingham Palace, his awesome height and jet-black face topped off by what looked like a gigantic black rabbit’s foot on his head.

  Inside, the lobby was done in veined red marble—floors, walls, and ceiling—giving Lucy the distinct feeling of being in a huge and ostentatious bathroom. In the center of the concourse a man in a tuxedo was playing Cole Porter on a grand piano. Behind him the space opened to a ten-story atrium with a waterfall cascading down one marble wall. Weekend shoppers nibbled cream puffs in the café, a floor below ground level. Gawking tourists admired their reflections in the polished brass. Crudely accented conversation swirled all around.

  “Ain’t it the most beauty–ful thing you ever seen?”

  “Can you imagine what they paid for all this?”

  A goggle-eyed fellow in a baseball cap and T-shirt strained what he used for a neck. “Now this is the kind of place I should live in,” he said to the creature in a lavender pantsuit by his side.

  Lucy made her way up the escalator. She couldn’t resist taking a spin around the second floor, a subway tunnel of red marble. She passed several tiny stores featuring merchandise like $600 belts and $1,500 purses before coming out where she started. Each of the next six floors had similar shopping tunnels, but Lucy wasn’t interested in shopping. At least not at these prices.

  She rode the escalator to the top level of the atrium and walked down the marble hall. This floor followed the same plan as those beneath, but at the back instead of another store there was a miniature restaurant with tables set with white linen and gleaming crystal. A man at one of the tables—there were only eight and all were against windows—stood and waved her in.

  “Mr. MacAlpin?” asked Lucy nervously.

  “I am. An’ you moost be Lucy Trelaine. Pleased to make your acquaintance at last.”

  MacAlpin held out the chair as she sat down. He was a wiry man of average height with soft gray eyes. There were still some flecks of brown in his graying hair. He was wearing an elegant charcoal gray suit with a faint pinstripe. His shoes shone like mirrors.

  “This is quite a place,” said Lucy, bursting with excitement, exhilarated by the view down Fifth Avenue.

  “Indeed it is,” he grinned. “We hae castles in Scotland, but naught the likes of this.”

  A white–jacketed waiter swooped over Lucy’s shoulder and handed her a menu.

  “The fish is very good here,” said MacAlpin, studying her with a kind face. “An’ I’ve ordered a wee bottle, if tha’s all right with you.”

  “Sure,” said Lucy.

  As if on cue, another waiter brought over an ice bucket and unobtrusively opened a bottle of Pouilly–Fuissé, then passed MacAlpin the cork. MacAlpin absently rolled it between his fingers and nodded. The waiter filled Lucy’s glass, then MacAlpin’s, and departed. Lucy took a sip of her wine.

  “It’s delicious,” she exclaimed.

  “Ye should try the trout,” said MacAlpin with a smile. “I’m sairtain ye willna be disappointed.”

  “Can I have a shrimp cocktail, too?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Lucy grinned. She had to admit that this Robert MacAlpin had a lot of style—for an insurance agent.

  “Two trout, please,” said MacAlpin when the first young waiter returned. “And a shrimp cocktail for the lady to start.”

  “You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble … .” Lucy began as the waiter departed, but the little Scot held up his hand.

  “Wha’ man in his right mind would consider it trouble to have lunch wi’ a bonnie yoong lass, I ask ye?”

  “Well, I’m flattered,” said Lucy, flattered.

  MacAlpin pushed himself back from the table and studied her for a moment, grinning.

  “Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine,” he said finally.

  “Mr. MacAlpin,” Lucy replied, grinning right back. “So. Can you really tell me who I am?”

  “I hope so. You’ve brought your brooch like I asked?”

  Lucy nodded eagerly.

  “May I see it?”

  Lucy took the monstrosity out of the pocket of her jacket—she hated to carry a purse—and put it on the table between them. MacAlpin picked it up as gently as one might pick up a robin’s egg and stared at it. When he turned it over and studied the inscriptions on the back, Lucy saw that his hands were trembling.

  Finally, as a silent man in a white coat delivered four of the most gigantic shrimp Lucy had ever seen, MacAlpin placed the brooch carefully back on the table between them.

  “Well?” said Lucy, practically jumping out of her skin.

  “I dinna want to say anything until I’m sure. Please now, go ahead and eat.”

  Lucy speared a shrimp and impatiently took a bite.

  “Very good,” she said, chewing. “When will you be sure? Sure about what?”

  “Well, I’ve asked someone to join us here if ye dinna mind. I think he’ll be able to tell us if your brooch is genuine.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. His name’s Fraser. He’s sairt of a low-life character, wha’ they call a ‘fence’ on the telly, actually, but an expert on this type of jewelry.”

  “You have some peculiar friends,” said Lucy, putting down her fork, suddenly very uncomfortable.

  “In the insurance business ye meet all kinds.” MacAlpin grinned. “He knows me by the name of ‘Scott’ by the way, so I’d like you to play along.”

  “Why?” She didn’t like the sound of this at all.

  “I dinna want to get too involved with the man, if ye catch my meanin’. Nor should you.”

  “Look, Mr. MacAlpin,” said Lucy, feeling like a first-class chump, “I’m here because you said you could tell me something about my family. All of a sudden you want some … criminal … to look at my brooch. You want me to accept some phony name. Maybe I should just finish my appetizer and say adiós.”

  “I do ha’ a good reason for askin’ this man here, Lucy,” said MacAlpin sincerely.

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “Like if the man says that the brooch is genuine, then I think I’m your faether.”

  Lucy sipped her coffee and tried to think. The trout had looked wonderful, but Lucy couldn’t even remember what it tasted like.

  MacAlpin’s story had been simplicity itself. Thirty years ago back in Glasgow, he had been engaged to marry a girl named Bethoc Trelaine. Bethoc Trelaine worked at Glasgow’s Celtic Museum of Antiquities. One day Bethoc disappeared. So did a valuable brooch from the Celtic museum. MacAlpin never suspected that Bethoc might be pregnant, but when he thought about what Lucy had told him, suddenly it had all made sense.

  “Dinna ye see, lass?” he was saying now in a soothing voice. “She couldna face the shame. She needed money to get away, so she stole the brooch.”

  Lucy felt dizzy. This man was her father. Her mother was a thief. Lucy tried to take a breath, but her lungs wouldn’t work. Everything was happening too fast. She couldn’t get her bearings. Her perspective, her distance from the action, was gone. She had been plucked out of the audience and dumped onto the stage.

  “Why does the brooch have this writing on the back?” Lucy finally stammered, picking up th
e silver ring and turning it over in her hand.

  “Bethoc must have had it engraved,” said MacAlpin softly.

  “But why would she do that if she only stole it to sell it?”

  MacAlpin shrugged.

  “Who can say wha’ went through the poor lassie’s mind? Maybe the brooch reminded her too much of the past to pairt with.”

  “I read you the inscription when we first talked,” said Lucy. “Why didn’t you know right away?”

  “Your pronunciation left somethin’ to be desired, lass.” MacAlpin smiled and patted her hand. “And remember, this was thairty years ago and a world away. I dinna put two and two together until afterwards.”

  “Is that the piece?” said a voice from behind Lucy’s shoulder. A tall, red-haired man with horn-rimmed glasses and a square jaw pulled out the chair next to her and sat down.

  “Fraser,” MacAlpin said evenly, releasing Lucy’s hand and rising. “I’d like ye to meet my daughter, Lucy … Scott.”

  “Michael Fraser,” said the man, cracking a smile.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Lucy said coldly.

  Fraser’s knees accidentally touched hers under the tiny table as he sat. His grin widened. Lucy pulled away, feeling a blush race across her face. Fraser was pretty good-looking. For a crook. But why did she care? This was certainly no time to think about her sex life. It hadn’t been the time to think about her sex life for years.

  “You can call me—” Fraser began, but MacAlpin interrupted with a noticeable touch of impatience.

  “We chust need to know if this brooch is genuine.”

  “All right. May I?” said Fraser, plucking the heavy silver ring out of Lucy’s hand and taking off his glasses to study it close up.

  “What do you think, Fraser?” said MacAlpin finally.

  “I’d have to study it further to be sure,” the redhead answered, putting his glasses and his grin back on, “but it looks Pictish to me.”

  “Pictish?” asked Lucy.

  “The Picts were the Celtic inhabitants of the area we now call Scotland,” said Fraser breezily. “They vanished in the ninth century. The brooch might even be as old as that. If it is, certain things have been added on the back.”