It was like she’d longed to be important somehow, as though her whole worth was tied up in what other people thought of her. In the end, none of that mattered, and the only thing that seemed to be left was memories of an old woman who’d had a great need to hold the interest and attention of those around her. In fact, there’d been little about her that would command much notice from anyone.
So it was totally unexpected that standing there, looking at her lying all still and silent in that coffin, a huge flood of belated affection came rushing over me. It made me feel just awful, thinking of how I’d disliked going to her place for visits and how I’d secretly made fun of her, even if it was just to myself.
I’d never stopped, not once, to wonder about her life — what it was like and whether or not she might be lonely or sad. Strangely, as soon as her life was over, that seemed to be the only thing I could think for the next few days. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Do you think your Great-Aunt Isabel was happy?” I asked Mom when we were on our way home from the last wake session. I don’t know what I expected her to say. I think I was really looking for something to soothe my feelings of guilt. Like, if Isabel had been happy all her life, it didn’t matter if my attitude toward her had been less than loving.
“Happy?” Mom pondered before answering. When she did, she spoke slowly and thoughtfully, like she was telling the answer to herself at the same time. “Why, I suppose she had happy and sad moments, like the rest of us.”
Her reply didn’t exactly satisfy me, but I couldn’t seem to find the words to ask anything else that would tell me what I wanted to know. Or maybe, right then, I realized I didn’t actually want to know how Isabel had lived and what her life had been like. It might be best to put such thoughts out of my head altogether.
The funeral was the next morning, and once that was over with and she’d disappeared into the ground, it seemed as though Isabel’s whole existence had been pointless. She and her husband, who’d died years and years earlier, hadn’t had any children, so there was no one to carry on in her place, if that’s even what kids do when their parents are gone.
Greg and his dad, Dr. Taylor, were parked in front of our house when we got home from the graveyard. They’d been at both the funeral and the short burial ceremony, but had left before we did.
Greg took my hand and squeezed it. We walked silently into the house, behind my folks and his dad, who were talking quietly.
They’d brought lunch, a big container of homemade soup, along with rolls and raspberry pie. I set the table while the soup warmed on the stove, the smell of it making my stomach growl, though I hadn’t known I was hungry. Dr. Taylor is a psychologist, but he’s also a fantastic cook.
He and Greg moved here to Little River last summer after Mrs. Taylor died in a fire. Since then, Dr. Taylor has been working on a book, which my mom says is helping him heal from his grief. As I put the last few things on the table I wondered if this whole funeral thing today had brought back a lot of sad memories for him and Greg.
I didn’t like to ask Greg that, but as we ate, it struck me that the conversation around the table seemed perfectly normal. In fact, you’d never have guessed that we were all gathered after someone’s death, or that anyone there was grieving.
Afterward, Greg and I cleaned up while our folks visited in the living room. I was wiping off the counter when he asked a question that stopped me in mid-swipe.
“How’d your friend Nadine make out with the rest of her painting? Did she get the bathroom done?”
I whirled around, startling him.
“Greg! I’d forgotten all about her,” I exclaimed. “Just before all this happened, Nadine quit her job at The Steak Place.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“It’s very strange, though. We worked together on Saturday night, you know, the same day we painted her place, and then all of a sudden the very next day she quit.”
“Maybe she found a better job.”
“That’s what Ben said, but I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Besides, don’t you think she’d have mentioned it if she was looking for work somewhere else? She and I have talked quite a lot since I started working at The Steak Place. Why, she told me about her family and growing up without a dad and her mom’s new husband and all kinds of things. I feel sure if she was looking for another job she’d have said something about it. But she didn’t. Not a word. I have a bad feeling about the whole thing.”
“You sure you’re not dreaming this up — inventing something that needs detecting?” Greg leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “I think you’re getting addicted to chasing clues.”
“C’mon, Greg. I’m serious about this. I’m kind of worried.”
“Well, why don’t you just give her a call and see what’s up?” Greg didn’t seem any more concerned than Ben or Lisa had been, and it made me wonder if I was overreacting. I’ve been known to do that.
“I can’t call her,” I said. “She has no phone.”
“So then, drop by.” He slid an arm around me. That Greg can sure be distracting sometimes! “If it’s bothering you, and it seems that it is, then you should check it out and put your mind at rest.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.” Just deciding on a course of action made me feel a bit better. No doubt I’d get to her place and she’d laugh at me for being a big worrier for nothing.
I was scheduled to work at noon the next day, so first thing in the morning I took Greg’s advice and walked over to Nadine’s apartment. When I got to her door, a strange shiver ran up my back and I had to talk to myself about not being so dramatic and paranoid.
Except, maybe I wasn’t. Maybe what I’d felt was some sort of premonition. Because when I knocked, the door swung open on its own, the slow creak of the tired old hinge almost making me scream.
I called out Nadine’s name a few times, but the only reply was an ominous silence.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I hesitated in the doorway for a few seconds and then stepped into Nadine’s apartment. It probably wasn’t right, just walking in like that, but it was obvious something was amiss. She’d once told me how careful she was about keeping her place bolted, and here it was with the door not even properly closed, never mind locked.
“Nadine?” I called again, moving slowly through the kitchen. I knew, deep inside, that she wasn’t going to answer. My instincts had been right — something was dreadfully wrong. I looked around carefully, as though there might be some evidence that would explain why Nadine had gone off and left her place open.
On the kitchen counter sat a bowl with a half-eaten orange resting on top of peelings. Beside it were an empty coffee mug and a plate with toast crumbs. It seemed to be the remains of breakfast, but there was no way of knowing when it had been left there.
I stood for a moment, just looking around the room, as if it might offer some clue to Nadine’s whereabouts. It was really quiet in there, which kind of creeped me out. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but the silence of the place was unnerving.
When I reached the living room the first thing that caught my eye was a dark, wet-looking blotch on the floor. At the sight of it, the urge to turn around and run back out the door almost overcame me. I grabbed the doorway to steady myself.
“Please tell me that isn’t blood,” I found myself whispering to the empty room.
Not surprisingly, the room had no comment. If I was going to find out what it was, I’d have to examine it, like you see detectives do in the movies. Of course most of that stuff is figured out by forensics these days, but I didn’t happen to have a lab at home.
My legs seemed to have turned wooden and it was all I could do to make them move forward. They were shaking so hard by the time I reached the spot that sinking to my knees was no problem at all.
I leaned forward to get a closer look, which told me nothing. Reluctantly, I stuck my finger out and touched it. It was still sticky. Slowly, I raised my finger to my nose and sn
iffed, not even sure if I’d recognize the smell of drying blood — if in fact that’s what it was. The scent was sweet and familiar, but even so it took me a few seconds to identify it.
“Pop! It’s just pop.” I found myself laughing nervously. “Great detecting, Shelby. You’ve solved the mystery of the missing cola.”
Rising again, I found myself even less composed than I had been a moment before.
No doubt I was weak with relief after the scare of thinking I’d discovered a pool of blood. I made my way shakily through the rest of the apartment, being as careful as possible not to disturb anything — just in case the police ever got involved and had to check the place out. I wondered uneasily if being in there could get me charged with compromising an investigation or something.
It occurred to me then that when I’d touched the spilled pop, I’d also left my fingerprint. I was tempted to wash it up, but in the end I left it as it was. After all, it would be better to explain how my print got there than to justify deliberately tampering with anything in the apartment, even if it was something that likely wasn’t one bit important. Changing anything would look a lot more suspicious.
I finished a cursory examination of the place, satisfying myself that Nadine was nowhere inside. I even opened the closets and looked under the bed, though I can’t quite describe the terror I felt at the thought that I might actually find something. I was careful, as I checked through the place, not to touch anything else with my bare hands. Instead, I took a facecloth that was hanging in the bathroom and used it over doorknobs and anything else I touched.
A light coating of dust lay completely undisturbed on the furniture, and the sink and bathtub in the bathroom were dry as a bone. Those things alone suggested no one had been there for a few days, but the fact that the paint trays we’d washed out and left to dry were still all lying on the bathroom floor clinched it for me. No one would have left them there since Saturday. It was too awkward stepping around them. Nadine would surely have moved them before now, if she’d been there.
“She hasn’t been here since Saturday?” I found myself asking aloud. That didn’t quite fit either. What about the evidence of breakfast on the kitchen counter? That hadn’t been there when we’d left on Saturday.
My head started to swim from the effort of putting it all together.
One thing I was certain of by the time I’d finished looking around was that whatever had happened to Nadine, wherever she’d gone, it hadn’t been willingly. There were no empty hangers in the bedroom closet, and her luggage set sat undisturbed in a hall closet. On top of that, her makeup bag was lying on the counter beside the sink in the bathroom.
There was no way she’d gone off for days and not taken fresh clothes and makeup. What girl would do that?
The only thing I couldn’t find was her purse. That was a big disappointment, because I had it in the back of my mind that if that was in her apartment, it would be strong evidence that she hadn’t gone off somewhere of her own free will. Its absence didn’t necessarily mean she’d gone somewhere voluntarily, but it weakened the chance that the police would take this seriously if I went to them with my concerns.
I was positive that wherever she’d disappeared to, someone else was responsible. The big question that remained was whether or not she was still alive, and I was trying not to think too much about that.
When I slipped out of the apartment, I pulled the door shut just as I’d found it, so that it looked closed without actually latching. That was partly in case the police did eventually get involved, so they’d find it just the way it had been left, and partly for myself. You never know when a clue will strike you — when you’ll realize that some small thing that seemed insignificant at first will take on new meaning or importance. I didn’t think there was anything in Nadine’s apartment that would need double-checking, but if I changed my mind on that, I wanted to be able to get back in.
I was almost to the front entrance when a door swung open. It was the crazy landlady, and she startled me so badly that I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Did you have a good time up there?”
“I was looking for Nadine,” I stammered, “but she’s not home.”
“Not home,” she echoed with her weird little cackle. “No better than she should be, that one. Well, you know what they say.”
“What do they say?” I must have been almost as crazy as she was to ask.
“When the cat’s away and all that.” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You were up there a long time. A long, long time. And what do you know? Which way the wind blows?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. In fact, it was hard to tell if she even remembered what she was talking about. It seemed as though her brain switched topics randomly, so she might have already moved past the subject of how long I’d been upstairs. If not, though, it was likely that she’d heard me walking around up there, even though I’d tried to be quiet. I couldn’t very well act as though I’d been waiting for Nadine to answer the door all that time.
“They’re all sorry when it’s too late,” she muttered suddenly. Her grey curls shook back and forth. “Ask Millie. She’ll tell you what happens when you say goodbye to good goody girl.” Then she stepped back and slammed the door shut.
I shrugged. Whoever Millie was — if she even existed — I sure didn’t know her. Anyway, there was certainly more to worry about than a nutty landlady.
It was a relief to step out of the building into the fresh air and sunshine. Glancing at my watch I saw that I’d better hurry if I was going to be on time for work.
Reaching The Steak Place, I caught the familiar citrus scent near the employee door. It reminded me of the partly eaten orange on Nadine’s counter.
For some reason, the thought of that orange plagued me for my entire shift. It must have been the last thing on my mind when I went to bed too, because I had a strangely disturbing dream about Ben and Leo feeding me oranges in the kitchen at work.
Only, in my dream, they kept calling me Millie.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Greg wasn’t what you’d call impressed when I told him about what I’d discovered in Nadine’s apartment, and how I was now certain that something had happened to her.
“Are you nuts?” he exploded, anger clouding his face. “What if someone had been in there? Did you stop to think of that? Did you even so much as stop to think of your own safety?”
“No one was there,” I said, shaken by his reaction. Greg is always so mild-mannered that it really threw me off to see him so upset. “Anyway, by my estimate, Nadine’s been missing for days. It would be kind of strange for someone to kidnap her and then go hang out in her apartment, just waiting to be caught. Be a bit risky, don’t you think?”
“What I think is risky is my girlfriend putting herself in a situation where she could get hurt. Or worse. Let’s assume you’re right, and someone did take Nadine. Suppose this person had to go back to the apartment for some reason. You walk in and discover the kidnapper and what do you think would happen next?”
“Greg, calm down,” I begged. “Nothing happened. Maybe it wasn’t the safest thing to do, but at least I know now that she didn’t just go somewhere on her own.”
“You’re not planning to go back there, are you?” he asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so.” He sounded disgusted. “Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“Well, how about if I need to go back — which I doubt — I’ll call you to go with me?”
“Uh-huh? And if you can’t reach me and you just feel you have to go right that minute, then what?”
“I’ll wait.” I knew I didn’t sound convincing. In fact, I didn’t quite believe it myself.
“Shelby, this is no joke. If someone took Nadine against her will, you’re putting yourself in the middle of a very dangerous situation. It’s not petty theft or something. It’s the kind of crime committed by
someone who’s desperate and treacherous.”
Listening to him talk I was struck by how serious this whole thing really was. Not so much that it could be dangerous to me, but what was happening to Nadine. I kept trying to convince myself that whatever had taken place, she was still alive. At the same time, I knew full well the opposite could easily be true.
“On the other hand, there could still be a perfectly innocent explanation for her disappearance,” he said, but his eyes had shifted so that he wasn’t looking directly at me anymore. If you want to convince someone that you really don’t mean a word you’re saying, avoid looking at them.
“That would be great,” I answered, “but I don’t believe it. There’s been some sort of foul play involved here, and all we can hope is that it’s not the worst-case scenario.”
“Okay, I can see that you’re determined to keep looking into this.” Greg sighed — one of those sighs that seems like a question. It wasn’t hard to figure out what kind of question he had in mind. No doubt he was wondering how he managed to get stuck with a girlfriend who seems determined to follow trouble around.
“So, what do you have so far?” He sighed again. It was the sound of resignation this time, which was good to hear. The sooner he stopped trying to talk me out of looking into Nadine’s disappearance, the better.
“What do you mean, what do I have?”
“I know you. You probably have lists of suspects and clues tucked away somewhere by now. Fess up!”
“Okay, from what I know, here’s what I think happened. Someone or something made Nadine leave her apartment suddenly, sometime after we worked together on Saturday. By the look of the place, I’m guessing Sunday morning. But wherever they took her, she was still alive later in the day, because she phoned work and quit her job on Sunday afternoon. Only, I think whoever took her forced her to make that call, so no one would be looking for her.”
Chasing Shadows Page 5