Chasing Shadows (14 page)

I decided I was letting my imagination go a trifle overboard.

“Shelby?”

“Yeah?”

“Just out of curiosity, do you think the landlady will actually be able to clarify anything for you about that apartment? From what you've told me, she hasn't been all that coherent.”

“Oh, no, I'm not planning to talk to her,” I said. “I want to ask some of the other tenants if they've heard anything.”

The two apartments that were connected to D were Neil Elliot's, right next to it on the ground floor, and the lady upstairs who'd smelled of alcohol. Her apartment was right over top of it.

I decided to start with Neil Elliot, since he'd been pretty co-operative when I'd talked to him before. In fact, I wasn't all that keen to talk to the woman upstairs or listen to her gloom and doom lectures if I could avoid it.

Mr. Elliot answered his door on the second knock.

“Hello there,” he said. “How are you making out looking for your friend?”

“Not so good,” I admitted, making quick introductions between him and Greg. “I hate to bother you again, and this is going to sound pretty strange, but do you ever hear weird groaning noises in the apartment next to you?”

“Sure, all the time. In fact, I make 'em.”

“You make them?” I repeated, astonished.

“Well, not intentionally,” he laughed. “When I shower for work in the morning, the pipes start making a big racket. Sounds like someone's bein' killed next door. It only lasts a minute or so, though.”

“Noise from the water pipes!” I said. “I can't
believe
I didn't think of that. That happens all the time at the restaurant.”

“Hullo? Hullo?” a voice screeched from inside Mr. Elliot's apartment. “Hullo?”

He grinned. “I'm not sure if you were good luck or bad, but just a little while after you left the other day, old Echo here finally said his first word.”

“That's great,” I smiled back.

“Yup, I sure was proud of him. I gotta tell you though, after half an hour of steady ‘hullo, hullo, hullo,' a person could use a bit of quiet.”

“Hullo? Hullo?” Echo called.

“It's nice to be greeted at the end of the day, old buddy, but I think we could give it a rest now,” Mr.
Elliot called over his shoulder. “This steady squawking is enough to make a fellow jump in his pick-up and head for the hills.”

In spite of his words, he was still grinning. I don't think he really minded Echo's repetition.

“Well, I really appreciate your help,” I said. “And I'm sorry to have bothered you again.”

“No bother at all. I sure hope your friend turns up okay.”

“Thanks.” I turned to Greg again as the door closed. “I wonder if we could get the landlady to let us into that empty apartment.”

“
Why
do you want to go into an empty apartment?” Greg asked.

“I don't really know. It's probably stupid, but I'd feel better if I could just have a quick look around in there.”

“Okay,” he shrugged.

“I know it seems like a waste of time. It probably is. But this is where Nadine was last seen, and I'd like to make sure I haven't overlooked anything. What if she was being held captive in this very building? I'm sure other people know about the landlady thinking that apartment is haunted. In that case, they'd know it's never rented, which makes it a ready-made hiding place. That would also explain why no one reported anything unusual to the police, like a girl being dragged to a car or something.”

“Anything's possible,” he said. He sounded like he thought it was the least possible scenario I'd ever come up with.

“It doesn't look as though she was taken for personal reasons,” I said, “and that makes it a lot harder.”

“That's true,” he said. “If it was a random snatching … but wait! Nadine knew the person who was here the last night anyone saw her. Remember? The old guy you talked to heard her answer her door and ask, ‘What are you doing here?'”

“Oh, that's right.” I'd forgotten about that for a moment. The hard thing about figuring out something like this is keeping all the details straight in your head. Being able to recognize what's important and what the clues mean is even harder.

I knocked on the landlady's door. For a second I toyed with the thought of coming up with a story that would make it more likely she'd let us into the apartment. Something along the lines of “I dropped my contact lens and it rolled under the door.” In the end, I discarded the idea.

“You again,” she said, her eyes narrowing when she saw me standing there.

“Hello,” I said in what I hoped was a bright, perky voice. “How are you today?”

Instead of answering, she peered behind me. I realized she was looking at Greg, and I made a quick introduction.
He offered her his hand, but she stared at it as it if were covered in slime, and didn't shake it.

“We were wondering,” I said, knowing I was wasting my time asking, “about seeing the empty apartment.”

“Told you, it's haunted. I don't rent it,” she snapped.

“Yes, ma'am, I remember. We didn't actually want to rent it. We were just curious about the noises in there. We wouldn't touch anything. We thought maybe we could find something. You mentioned that the police couldn't seem to find anything to back up your suspicions.”

Her eyes narrowed as she thought about this. To my surprise, she shrugged and told us to wait. Greg and I looked at each other but were afraid to speak while she was back inside her place. A moment later she returned with a single silver key on a thin wire ring.

“Don't say I didn't warn you,” she mumbled, passing it over.

We thanked her, took the key, and promised to be right back. She looked doubtful.

I don't know what I was expecting inside the apartment, but there wasn't a thing there. Empty rooms with a slightly stale smell — that's all we found. I have to admit I felt kind of foolish standing there.

“Well, so much for that,” I said.

“I guess so.” Greg kind of patted my arm like you might do with a small child in need of comfort. “At least you know — and you won't be driven crazy
wondering if there's anything in here that might have been helpful.”

“Yeah, I suppose eliminating things is part of figuring out what happened in cases like this,” I agreed. I tried to sound positive about it, but the truth was I felt anything but.

The more I nosed around, the more the whole thing seemed hopeless. I had no suspects, no known motive, and no clues that appeared to be telling me anything. In short, I had nothing except my own belief that something horrible had happened to Nadine. Even the police thought everything was okay.

“Maybe you're right. Maybe it
is
time I stopped chasing after shadows,” I said heavily. “I've become some kind of crime junkie, inventing felonies to feed my need for excitement. I'm sneaking around spying on people and bothering strangers for something that only exists in my head.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself,” he said. But I noticed that he didn't try to persuade me that maybe there was something to the whole thing and he didn't suggest we keep on checking things out.

“Someone who Nadine
knows
comes to her door, surprising her,” I said, reviewing the facts aloud. “She quits her job the next day and takes off somewhere. A few days later she stops by her place and gets her things. There's no evidence of a scuffle, nothing broken in
there or anything like that. No wonder the police were satisfied that there hadn't been a crime. There
hadn't
! I was the only one who was determined to make something of nothing.”

Again, Greg failed to argue with me. That told me more than anything he might have said. He just put his arm around my shoulder and we walked in silence back to the landlady's apartment.

“Thanks very much,” I said, passing her back the key. “The apartment is okay. If you check with Millie I think she'll tell you that what you're hearing is just water noises in the pipes.”

She seemed to be absorbing this when we left. I slid into the passenger seat of the car and leaned my head back on the rest.

“Is it all over now, really?” Greg asked as he pulled out onto the street. “Are you honestly going to let this go?”

“Yeah, I guess I have to,” I said. I wondered how long he'd secretly been thinking I was just imagining the whole thing.

The realization that Greg had been humouring me for who knows how long was a huge disappointment to me, and by the time we got back to my place I was in no mood for his company.

“Thanks for taking me all those places,” I said the second the car had come to a full stop. I tried to smile naturally, but my face felt strange and twisted. “See you later.”

“Well, I'll walk you …” he began, but I was already out of the car and halfway to our back door.

I gave a quick wave and hurried inside before the hurt look on his face could start to bother me.

By the time I'd had a long soak in the tub, I was feeling a bit better. Maybe I'd been reading too much, or too little, into how he'd acted earlier. No doubt I'd overreacted because I was so frustrated over this whole thing.

“Well, that's behind me now,” I said, pulling my bathrobe closed and tying it. I went into the kitchen and made toast and poured a glass of milk, which I put on a tray to take to my room. As an afterthought, I went back to the fridge, looked for a peach yogourt, couldn't find one, and grabbed blueberry instead to add to my snack.

Mom and Dad were in the living room watching TV. I stuck my head in the doorway.

“I'm going to bed now,” I said.

Dad turned to me, smiling, but with his index finger over his lips. He nodded toward my mom, whose head was kind of tilted down. She's always falling asleep when they watch stuff on TV. If you try to wake her up and suggest she go to bed, she'll insist that she's watching something. Without fail, she stubbornly says she was just resting her eyes, even if you point out that she was
snoring
only seconds before.

“Shhh,” Dad said, then whispered, “your mom is watching TV.”

I muffled a giggle as I headed off toward my room. When I reached the doorway, I started to transfer the tray entirely to one hand in order to free the other to open the door. Instead, as I leaned forward, the door slipped open, almost throwing me off balance and making me spill my milk.

It reminded me of how Nadine's door had looked closed tight, but hadn't been, and how that's what had
started this whole mess. And now I was kind of fighting with Greg over it, and all for nothing.

I wished I hadn't been so short with him when he'd dropped me off. I'm sure he knew I was upset about something, but I wasn't at all certain that he knew
why
. Guys don't usually seem to be too clued in to what girls think or feel, as far as I can tell.

I remember one time Greg thought I was really mad about something when I was actually sad. It was weird how he was so far off on what I was feeling, when his emotions are pretty obvious to me most of the time. I forget what it was over, whether we'd had an argument or misunderstanding of some sort.

We don't often fight, so it's funny that I can't recall the particulars. All that's really clear in my head is that I was upset, and he totally misread my feelings. Betts tells me it's the same with Derek — that he has no idea what she's feeling when they fight, either.

“If I'm really furious, that's pretty obvious, even to him,” she confided once, “but if I'm hurt or sad about something he's said or done, he always assumes I'm ticked off. Can you
believe
guys are that dense?”

I'd believed it all right, but for some reason, I hadn't thought it really applied to Greg. Not that I think he's perfect or anything, but he's sure a lot closer than Derek. I know one thing — Greg would never leave me terrified on a rope bridge and just take off to the other side.

For some reason, the memory of our recent excursion brought back thoughts of Nadine again. That was probably because the thought of Betts's terror that day reminded me of my theory that Nadine had been abducted. If that had been true — that is, if I hadn't imagined the whole silly thing — I can't even begin to think of how scared she would have been, struggling to get away from her captor, wondering where she was being taken and what would be done with her once she got there.

I pushed those thoughts away with some effort, reminding myself once more that none of it was real, that I'd dreamt up the whole thing.

I turned on my computer and checked my email while I ate my toast, hoping there might be something from Greg. There wasn't. All that was in my inbox was a bunch of junk messages, which I deleted without reading.

Taking my yogourt with me, I crawled into bed and opened the book I was reading. It was actually one Greg had lent me, called
Shoulder the Sky,
and I'd taken it a bit reluctantly because it seemed like a guy story. Turned out that it was really awesome, though, and I'd gotten totally into it.

Tonight, however, it was almost impossible to concentrate on what I was reading, in spite of how good the story was. I kept thinking about Greg and the hurt look on his face when I'd practically jumped out of the
car — without kissing him goodnight or inviting him in for a few minutes.

So what if he hadn't been convinced that Nadine had really been kidnapped? He'd still been nice enough to help out, and he hadn't made fun of me over it or anything like that.

I really wanted to call him, but it was too late to phone his house by then. Besides, my folks have never given in and let me have a phone in my room, so I'd have had to go back to the kitchen, and that's not very private.