Chasing Shadows (5 page)

“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.”

“That explains her thinking I was Mary Poppins,” I said, feeling rather sorry for the poor old thing. “Still,
when I mentioned you, she directed me to this apartment right away. She must be a little lucid.”

“A very little,” Nadine laughed. “Anyway, I didn't mean to keep you this long. Lisa will be having a fit.”

I said goodbye then and hurried back to The Steak Place, told Lisa that Nadine would be able to come in as she'd asked, and returned to the kitchen.

Ben was stirring a pot of sauce, which a quick peek told me was for pasta. Remembering that I'd smelled oranges earlier, I started to ask him what he was making with them in it. My words were drowned out by the sudden clanging and moaning in the water pipes.

It still startled me every time that happened. Distracted, I forgot my question and got back to work. The dishes I'd done before I went out were still stacked and waiting to be taken to the dining room. I carried trays of them out there and put them in place. Sue, the waitress who was on that afternoon, was in the middle of her lunch, but she still jumped up and offered to help me put them away.

“Don't be silly,” I said. “Eat while you have a chance. The place won't stay empty for long.”

As if my words had drawn him, the fellow who'd been staring at Nadine the other day came wandering in. He ordered pie and coffee, but this time he ate with his head down, completely uninterested in watching the waitress.

“Hey, do you guys want to do a good deed?” “Good deeds are the very reason I rise in the morning,” Greg said, getting up from his seat so he could make a silly little bow. “I would but there were more opportunities to perform acts of kindness for my fellow man.”

“I'll put you down as a ‘yes' then,” I giggled. It delights me when Greg talks all formal and serious that way, which is a habit of his that I didn't always find so endearing.

“When?” Derek asked.

“What is it?” Betts wanted to know.

The four of us were at The Scream Machine on a Thursday evening, and I'd been waiting for just the right moment to ask. Betts and Derek seemed to be getting along okay today, but from recent experience I
knew that could change at any moment. Laughter could turn into bickering at the most unexpected times, and it seemed that Greg and I had to become peacekeepers all too often. Their problems made me appreciate my relationship with Greg even more.

Anyway, everything was calm and peaceful right then, so I plunged in.

“There's a girl I work with, Nadine Gardiner,” I began. “She's just a few years older than us, but she's on her own. She could use some help this weekend. Even a few hours would be great.”

“Doing what?” Betts asked.

“Count me in,” Greg said, “if it can be on Saturday. I work Friday evening and all day Sunday.”

“She just moved into a new apartment and she's going to paint it.” I answered Betts's question first. “Saturday would be perfect. She and I both work, but not until four o'clock, so if we got an early start, we could get a lot done by mid-afternoon.”

“I don't know how to paint,” Betts said.

“Me neither, never did it before,” Derek agreed.

“How hard can it be?” I asked. “You just push a roller up and down the wall.”

“So, what if it's all streaky and stuff?”

“I imagine you could just go over it again with more paint. C'mon, guys. She's got no one to give her a hand with it. Her boyfriend won't even help because
he says it's too unhealthy to breathe in paint fumes and besides he has a noon appointment with his trainer.”

“Sounds like a nice guy,” Greg commented, shaking his head.

“Oh, he's a real catch. Jealous, bossy, and all wrapped up in himself. Actually, Nadine's planning to dump him. I don't really know him, though I've seen him in the restaurant a few times, but from what she's told me, he's a total jerk.”

“Typical guy, then,” Betts observed unfairly.

I took a deep breath, thinking her remark would quickly turn into a fight between her and Derek. It would be hard to stay neutral if it did, seeing as how she seemed to be deliberately
looking
for an argument. It didn't happen, though. Derek ignored what she'd said and agreed to come and help at Nadine's place.

Then Betts said she'd come as well, and it was all settled. We'd meet at my house and all go over together.

By the time Saturday morning came, Greg and I had gathered up some trays and rollers and brushes from our dads. We figured we had enough stuff for everyone to be doing something productive at the same time.

“We're ready,” I called out to Dad. He'd promised to drive us over and pick us up at three so I'd still have time to shower and change for work.

“I have a couple of things to do around town later,” he told us as he dropped us off about ten minutes later.
“Which apartment is it? I'll bring a party pizza by around noon.”

I told him how to find her apartment and hugged him good and hard because he deserved it. Then the four of us trooped up the stairs and knocked on Nadine's door.

“Shelby!” she said, surprised to see me there with a group of friends. “Oh, goodness. I'm sorry, but I can't invite you in today. I'm painting my place and everything's in a big mess. I think I mentioned that I was going to be doing that, but I guess you forgot.”

“I didn't forget,” I said. “We're all here to help you paint. This is Betts and her boyfriend, Derek, and this is my boyfriend, Greg. Everyone, this is Nadine.”

She looked stunned and delighted all at once, inviting us in and murmuring that she couldn't believe it and thanking us over and over.

“I'm just here because I figure it will look good on my resumé,” Greg said, smiling. “Which room do you want to start in?”

“I'd like to get the kitchen done first, since it's the first room people see when they come in. Then, if we have time, the living room next.”

“Okay, Derek, let's you and I move the table and chairs and stuff into the other room so we can get started.”

He and Derek each grabbed an end of the table and disappeared around the corner with it.

“Where's your bathroom?” Betts asked. “My mom made me bring some old things to wear while I'm painting, but I'll have to change into them here. There was no way I was wearing them on the street.”

Nadine showed her where the bathroom was and then came back. “This is so awesome of you guys,” she said.

“None of us were busy today, and I knew you weren't getting any help from Leo,” I said, setting down the trays I'd been holding.

“That's all over,” she said, giving me a nod as though I'd asked something else at the same time and she was answering it. “I'm through with him.”

“Seriously? You broke up with Leo?”

“Yup. The other day. I just couldn't take any more of his self-centredness, or his telling me what to do all the time. So I told him I didn't want to see him anymore.”

“How'd he take it?”

She rolled her eyes. “I think he was in shock, actually. Like, totally unable to believe that anyone would dump a prize like him. He kind of stormed off in a state of disbelief, but he hasn't called me since so I guess he's accepted it.

“Anyway, I couldn't afford to buy mirrors for every room in my apartment, and Leo could never be truly happy without them,” she added with a giggle.

“So, you're sure he's not going to freak out or anything?”

“I can't see it. Leo is too proud to make a scene.”

I hoped she was right.

Betts returned then, looking cute as could be in a big blue shirt that must have belonged to her dad at one point in time. The flaps hung down almost to her knees, and she had to roll the sleeves up a couple of turns in order for her hands to be visible at all.

“I feel ridiculous,” she said.

“But you
look
adorable,” Derek assured her. I was glad to see that they were getting along so well at the moment. It wouldn't be much fun working together if they were at each other's throats.

Nadine looked at the cans of paint and checked them against the colour code cards she'd brought from the paint store. She pulled out the one for the kitchen, and before long we were all working away. We decided that the girls would do the edges where the paint had to be applied with brushes, and the guys would roll the rest of the walls.

It only took a little over an hour to have the whole kitchen done, and we'd finished the living room too by the time Dad got there with pizza, juice, and bottles of water.

“This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me in my life,” Nadine said after Dad had dropped off our lunch.

“Hey, it's fun,” Betts remarked, and I could see that she meant it. It was true too. While we'd worked steadily, there'd been a lot of joking and laughter the whole time. Betts isn't what you'd call used to doing much in the line of work, coming from a fairly well-off family that employs a cleaning lady. She doesn't even have to keep her own room tidy.

Not that she's spoiled — or, at least, she doesn't
act
spoiled. When she's at my place and it's my turn for dishes or whatever, she always helps out. So, it's not like she's got some kind of “I'm a princess” attitude. It's just that she normally doesn't have to do anything.

I thought we'd get all the rooms done that day, but it turned out that after we'd eaten lunch we got kind of lazy and worked sluggishly the rest of the time we were there. Still, all that was left when we cleaned up for the day was the bathroom, and it was too small for all of us to work in at once anyway.

Nadine thanked us again and promised that she was going to invite us all over for a party one night the next weekend.

Of course, she didn't know what was coming.

When I got to work that evening I saw that Ben wasn't in the kitchen. Instead, it was the second cook, a crabby middle-aged woman who'd haughtily introduced herself to me the first time I'd worked under her as Mrs. Something-or-other — a long name that my brain hadn't taken in.

I'd heard Lisa call her Carlotta, but her attitude toward me didn't invite familiarity so I just called her “ma'am” to her face, which seemed okay with her.

She took her role as my supervisor very seriously and liked to make sure that I was busy at all times. I'd already learned not to rush when I was doing anything on her shifts, since she'd just pile on more and more work. Not that I didn't expect to work hard, but this woman was a slave-driver! I hardly had time to breathe between the orders she barked out, some-times
accompanied by insults. Even Lisa looked positively easygoing next to her.

Unfortunately, that Saturday wasn't a busy evening in the restaurant. That meant there was spare time — or, I should say, there
would
have been spare time. Not with Carlotta in charge of me. She got the brainwave that I should lug up the supplies that had been delivered the day before. The place had been in the middle of a lunch rush when the delivery guy came in with the order, and Lisa had impatiently told him to put the piles of boxes downstairs for the time being. There was no way anyone could stop what they were doing to put stuff away right then.