Chasing Shadows by Valerie Sherrard Page B

thesmell 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.
    â€œPop! 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 thatI 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.
    â€œShe 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