Chasing Shadows Read online

  “If they ever lose this key ring they’re sunk then,” I said, “though maybe they have a copy.”

  “Yeah. Probably. Anyway, thanks again. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” Impulsively, Nadine leaned forward and gave me a quick hug.

  “Hey, it was nothing. I like getting out of the kitchen once in a while,” I assured her.

  “You don’t like your job?” she asked.

  “It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just that, well, I feel a tiny bit uncomfortable around Ben sometimes. I feel almost silly mentioning it. It’s not like some huge problem or anything. But he’s kind of flirtatious, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” she said, nodding. “He’s the same way with me. My boyfriend, Leo, gets ticked off about it too, but I think it’s harmless enough. I don’t think Ben really means anything by it.”

  “Well, just tell your boyfriend that he acts that way with everyone,” I suggested. I couldn’t imagine Greg getting upset over something like that, when it wasn’t even my fault.

  She sighed. “To tell you the truth, Shelby, I’ve been kind of wanting to break up with Leo for a while now. I just don’t like the thought of the hassle.”

  “Really? How come?” I asked — just before I realized that it was none of my business. I was getting as bad as my gossip-loving friend Betts!

  “It’s not only that he’s a bit jealous and possessive,” she said, “he’s full of himself too. He works out almost every day, and he’s fanatical about what he eats and drinks.” She smiled ruefully. “A girl likes to think her boyfriend cares about her, but if Leo loves anyone, it’s himself.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “He even looks at himself every chance he gets, if you know what I mean.”

  “Like walking by a window where he can see his reflection, and that sort of thing?” I knew a few girls who did that too. It always amazed me that they seemed to think they were doing it on the sly, as if no one else could see what they were up to.

  “Exactly. He’s so arrogant! He acts like I should be, I dunno, thankful, I guess, that he’s going out with me. Like I won the big prize and I should appreciate him more.” She shuddered as she talked about him, which is hardly ever a good sign in a relationship.

  I was getting a fairly good picture of this Leo person. He didn’t sound exactly charming, but then not all guys can be like Greg.

  “He’s kind of controlling too,” she went on. It seemed she really wanted to talk some of this stuff out, so I just listened and nodded every so often to show I was paying attention. It seemed as though she was pretty fed up with the guy.

  “He’s on my case about something all the time. I don’t get enough exercise. I shouldn’t drink pop or eat junk food. He hates it when I have a Pepsi — and all I ever drink is the diet stuff! I can’t imagine what he’d do if it was regular pop. All Leo wants to do is work out at the gym and admire his muscles. I think he’d like it if I was a female bodybuilder or something.”

  “So he’s pretty strong then?”

  “I guess. Anyway, none of this is your problem. I’m sorry I brought it all up, because he’s not really a bad guy, and I’m making him sound horrible. I guess it’s just that he’s wrong for me, and I’ve come to the place where I realize I need to end things, but I really don’t want to hurt him.”

  I’ve never had to break up with anyone, though I’ve seen Betts do it a few times. Well, I haven’t actually seen her do it, but you know what I mean. I always felt sorry for the guys. It must be awful to be dating someone and all of a sudden they decide they don’t like you anymore, or you bug them in some way, or whatever other excuse you get handed when you get dumped.

  “Well, it’s usually best to just go ahead and get it over with,” I said, like I was offering advice from the vast wealth of my own experiences.

  “I know,” she sighed. “Anyway, I’d better get back to work. I have to change the dinner specials in the menus or Lisa will wonder what I’ve been doing the whole time she was gone.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next Saturday was one of my days off, and I was eager to do something that didn’t involve scrubbing or peeling. Mainly, I wanted to do something outside, so I was excited when Betts and Derek and Greg and I made plans for an afternoon hike.

  Greg got the loan of his dad’s car and we went to Catbird Cove, a place with really cool walking trails. There are even a couple of places where rope bridges hang suspended high over streams that pulse through deep, wide crevices in the land.

  I’ve never been afraid of that sort of thing, but Betts is a bit nervous of heights. Actually, that’s putting it pretty mildly. Terrified would be a more accurate description. She can’t even look over the balcony from the second floor without getting woozy!

  I don’t quite understand her fear, but I sure don’t make fun of it. When I was a little girl, I was scared of anyone wearing a toque with a face in it. You know the kind, where you can just see the eyes and mouth. Anyway, any time someone happened along with one of those on, I’d just totally freak — screeching and crying like you wouldn’t believe. I can remember not being able to catch my breath because I was so upset.

  It seems ridiculous looking back. I mean, it’s not like my parents didn’t explain that they were just people with hats on. Once, trying to help, my dad even put one on in a department store. He did it real slow, talking to me as he slid it down over his face, telling me that it was okay, it was just Daddy. Even so, the second his face disappeared under the mask I nearly hollered my lungs out. People around us were probably thinking he was doing something mean to me, the way I carried on!

  The thing is, even at that age, I’m pretty sure I understood that it was just a hat. Knowing that didn’t seem to matter — there was something about the sight of it that got my heart pounding like crazy. I couldn’t be talked out of it, and it wasn’t until I got older that I stopped being nervous of that kind of toque.

  I don’t know much about phobias, so I don’t know if that’s what I had, but I’m almost certain that Betts’s fear of heights is a phobia. Luckily, Derek isn’t the type to try to force her to overcome it, like some guys might do. He’s pretty patient and understanding of the whole thing.

  So, anyway, like I was saying, we were at Catbird Cove and we wanted to climb over one of the rope bridges to get to Swallow Peak, which has an awesome view of a waterfall. Or, actually, three of us wanted to. Betts wasn’t what you could call keen on the idea. Still, after taking a few moments to build up her courage, she said she thought she could do it.

  It started out okay, her holding onto Derek’s hand and looking straight ahead.

  “Don’t look down,” Derek said in a soothing voice. “You’re doing great. Just don’t look down.”

  Betts looked down. And, of course, the second she did, she shrieked and panicked. That wasn’t good, because she let go of the rope railing and grabbed Derek, which threw his balance off and made the whole thing sway like crazy. That did nothing to calm Betts, who started crying and screaming all at once.

  Greg and I were a few feet behind them, and I can tell you, it’s a horrible sight to see someone in that kind of panic. Her face was twisted in terror, and the more frightened she got, the more she thrashed around. This caused the bridge to move wildly, which just increased her fear.

  Derek looked pretty scared himself, by that point. I guess I shouldn’t blame him for what he did next, and maybe it was for the best because if Betts had kept on, she might have ended up capsizing the whole thing. Still, it seemed kind of cowardly and selfish.

  What he did was wrench himself away from her and take off to the other side. Betts immediately dropped to her knees and then flattened out against the floor of the bridge, which is made of slats of wood roped together. Her screeches turned into low sobs and moans as she clung to the edges with white-knuckled hands.

  “Betts?” I said tentatively, hoping to calm her. “It’s okay. We’re coming to get you.”

&
nbsp; “I can’t let go,” she yelled angrily, though no one had suggested she should.

  “No need to,” Greg said softly as we inched toward her, moving slowly so as not to make the bridge sway anymore. “You can hold on as tight as you need. No one will make you let go.”

  “Well, I have to get out of here,” she yelled, as though he’d been encouraging her to spend the next few years there.

  “Are you okay, Betts?” Derek called from the other side.

  I managed to keep from saying anything nasty to him, even though he’d abandoned her right in the middle of her panic attack and I was pretty ticked off about it.

  Betts didn’t answer either, though I’m not sure if she even heard him. Mostly, she was concentrating on holding on as tight as she could.

  It was Greg who answered. “She’s fine,” he said with a calm assurance that would have fooled anyone who wasn’t watching. “We’re going to get her back on solid ground. Stay where you are until then.”

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” Betts said. She was shaking and very pale.

  “Betts,” Greg said, still speaking in an even, calm voice, “close your eyes and take a deep breath through your nose. Then tell me what you smell.”

  At first she didn’t do what he was asking, but after a few moments, with him repeating it slowly and softly, she actually went ahead and did it.

  “Now, what do you smell?” he asked, before she’d even fully exhaled.

  “Trees, I guess. Why?”

  “Trees. Good. I think there are other things too, but we’ll get to that in a minute,” he said, kneeling as he spoke. “I’m almost to you now, Betts, so if you feel something touch your hand, it’s just going to be me. Is it okay if I put my hand on yours?”

  “Yeah, it’s okay.” Her voice was still tremulous, but a little less panicked than it had been a few moments before.

  “Now, getting back to the trees and stuff, I want you to concentrate really hard and see how many things you can identify only by smell. No peeking.” He’d reached her by this point, and I hung back just a little as he slid his hand over hers.

  “I smell water, and flowers, probably,” Betts said. It was clear that she knew what was going on — that he was distracting her — and she seemed determined to force herself to go along. I suppose anything that kept her from thinking about the situation she was in was more than welcome to her.

  “Good, good. Can you take my hand, Betts?”

  “I don’t think so.” She clutched harder at the edge of the walkway as though to prove that she was telling the truth.

  “Okay, that’s okay,” he said quietly. Then he talked to her for what seemed ages, not about her present predicament, but about things like movies and music and stuff like that. Just as he’d done by getting her to identify smells, distracting her seemed to relax her a little. Once she was a bit calmer, he persuaded her to slide her hand forward just a few inches, without actually letting go of anything, and then to move herself forward as well.

  With incredible patience, Greg talked her through move after move like that. Each one would only mean an inch or two gained toward getting her off the bridge, and it took hours before she finally reached the end.

  Betts’s lip began to tremble when she saw that solid ground was right ahead of her. She allowed Greg and me to each take a hand and help her as she rose, first to her knees and then upright once she’d come forward enough to stand on the ground.

  Derek crossed back over to our side then, looking sheepish. He apologized over and over, but Betts didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk about it, at least not to him. She just shrugged him off and hardly spoke to him for the rest of the afternoon.

  Once she was completely recovered from her ordeal, we stuck to footpaths through the forest and along several of the brooks that wound through the area.

  Derek was trying very hard to please Betts, who was barely responding to anything he said or did. I couldn’t help thinking it was a shame to see a nice afternoon turned into a source of trouble between them. After their recent breakup and all, it looked as though their relationship was on pretty shaky ground, and I wondered if they were going to last the summer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Shelby! I need you to do something for me.”

  I still wasn’t quite used to the way Lisa spoke to me, like some kind of drill sergeant barking orders. It was so completely different from the way she talked to customers, when her voice was all silky and pleasant to an extreme.

  “Yes?” I asked, keeping my voice polite even though I felt like asking if it would kill her to speak to me like I was a human being.

  “Go to Nadine’s apartment and tell her I just got a large reservation and I need another girl. See if she can work tonight.”

  “You can’t phone her?”

  “If I could phone her, I wouldn’t ask you to go, would I?” Lisa said shortly. “She just moved to a new place and her phone is not yet hooked up. Here is the address. Go quickly. It’s raining a little, so take this umbrella.”

  I took the umbrella and slip of paper, both of which she thrust toward me as though she were angry, and started toward the door, remembering at the last moment that I was still wearing an apron. I took it off and tossed it over the just-emptied dishwasher then hurried out the side entrance that employees used.

  It was nice to get out of the steamy kitchen for a few minutes, and I took a deep breath of fresh air as I headed toward the street. I love the smell outside when it’s raining, and a citrus scent also hung in the air, which surprised me a little. I wondered if Ben was cooking something with oranges. It seemed unlikely, since our daily special had been Duck à l’Orange just a few days before.

  The address Lisa had given me was only a few blocks away, near the old post office. It was a big old building that hadn’t been very well maintained, at least on the outside. The paint was faded and peeling and the roof looked kind of scabby, as if the shingles were curling up around the edges. It looked pretty dismal, but I closed my umbrella and hurried up the steps and into the entryway.

  The inside was no improvement, at least in the hallway and wide, open stairwell. A bare bulb hung there, offering the only source of light — which might have been just as well, considering the uncared-for look of the place. Even though it was dimly lit, I could see that little attention had been given to cleaning, and the walls were cracked and chipped in places, probably from being banged with furniture when tenants were moving in or out.

  The address Lisa had written out for me said that Nadine lived in apartment E, but I couldn’t see any letters on any of the four doors in the downstairs hall. Before I could think about how to find her, a creak to my right told me one of the doors was opening.

  “Mary? Is it you then?” a voice as creaky as the door inquired. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Oh, I’m not …” I began.

  “Where’s your bag?” She peered about the floor, then at my face. “You don’t look like Mary Poppins,” she accused. “Let’s see you work that thing.”

  She pointed at the umbrella as she made her last remark. I hardly knew how to react, I was so startled. I stammered something about not being Mary Poppins, which isn’t the sort of thing I often have to deny to anyone. She looked dreadfully displeased at the news.

  “I’m just looking for Nadine — a girl I work with,” I added, as though that explained why I’d disappointed her in not being able to open my umbrella and float up into the air.

  “Oh, that one,” the odd little creature muttered. “She’s upstairs, right above me.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” I said, though it seemed doubtful to say the least that she might know what she was talking about. Since I had no other leads, I decided to go ahead and check, just in case. Besides, knocking on doors seemed the only way I was likely to find her, and that seemed as good a starting place as any.

  I was surprised when Nadine opened the door a moment after I’d knocked.

 
“Hey, Shelby, what’s up?”

  I explained that Lisa had sent me to ask her about working that evening. She agreed right away to come in.

  “Extra hours would be great,” she said. “I need to get paint and stuff to fix this place up a bit. It’s not as bad as you’d think from the rest of the building, though. Come see.”

  She beckoned me into the apartment, and I could see right away that it really wasn’t that bad inside. She had a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom. The rooms were large, with big windows, and they seemed to have been cared for fairly well.

  “I could have gotten an apartment in a better building,” she said, “but the rooms here are so much bigger than most places. I like the space, and I think a bit of paint and some new curtains will improve this a lot.”

  “Your landlord won’t pay for paint?” I asked.

  “Land lady, and she’s crazier than the birds. No point asking her for anything.” I realized she was talking about the odd woman I’d met downstairs.

  “That was the landlady?”

  “Oh, did you meet her?” Nadine giggled. “When I came to see about the apartment, she sang me some song about being sixteen going on seventeen when she showed it to me. And she tried to do a dance at the same time, but that didn’t work out so well. She nearly tripped over her own feet.”

  “Goodness!”

  “Yeah. It’s a wonder she can keep it together enough to collect rent and stuff. I think she’s supposed to keep the place clean too, but I haven’t seen any sign that she pays much attention to that. A couple who live down the hall here told me she’s an aunt to the owner, and he kind of lets her do the job out of sympathy and on account of she has nowhere else to go.”

  “Well, that’s nice of him, I guess,” I said doubtfully, “but you’d think they’d lose a lot of potential tenants when people show up to ask about a place and she says crazy things or does some strange performance or whatever.”

  “True. The couple told me that she’s obsessed with Julie Andrews movies.”