Chasing Shadows

CHASING SHADOWS

A SHELBY BELGARDEN MYSTERY

Valerie Sherrard

Copyright © Valerie Sherrard, 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Editor: Barry Jowett

Copy-Editor: Andrea Pruss

Design: Jennifer Scott

Printer: AGMV Marquis

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Sherrard, Valerie
   Chasing shadows/Valerie Sherrard.

ISBN 1-55002-502-3

I. Title.

PS8587.H3867C43 2004        jC813'.6        C2003-907198-7

1      2      3      4      5         08      07      06      05      04

We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program
and
The Association for the Export of Canadian Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit
program.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard
,
President

Printed and bound in Canada.
 Printed on recycled paper. 
www.dundurn.com

Dedicated with love to
my husband, partner,
and best friend,
Brent.
A man among men.

Mom glanced up from the sheets of paper that were spread over the kitchen table. They were covered with lists — mostly of food items — and she added to them as new ideas came to her.

“What colours of balloons will we have?”

“None. I don't want any balloons.”

It's funny how Mom can manage to summon the most forlorn looks over such trivial things. She got this pathetic hangdog expression on her face, as though I'd just announced I was quitting school and joining a terrorist group.

Let her overreact
, I thought,
I'm holding my ground
. After all, it's
my
birthday. And Mom gets completely out of control with balloons. The last time I had a party she must have blown up hundreds of them. They were
everywhere
, hanging from the ceilings and doorways,
stuck to furniture. The house looked like it was decorated for a small child's party. It was totally embarrassing.

“But they're so pretty,” Mom said with her face all piled up.

“Still, I don't want any. Balloons are for kids.”
I'm not giving in on this
, I decided.
It's only three days away; I can handle her acting dejected for that long
.

She sighed heavily and picked a piece of lint off her sweater. I steeled myself, figuring she'd try harder to persuade me.

“Oh, all right then.” She shrugged in resignation. It surprised me that she was giving in so easily. “We'll just do something else. I know! I'll make up banners and hang streamers.”

“What kind of banners?” I should have been suspicious, but then a girl likes to think her own mom can be trusted.

“The usual thing, like ‘Happy Birthday.'” Her face was
way
too innocent. “And I'll make up some with a theme.”

“Don't do anything dumb like sweet sixteen!” I said.

“Of course not. I have a much better idea. I'll do a ‘Through the Years' theme. You know, with a collage of your pictures, from birth to now.”

“You
can't
be serious!”

“Well, we have to have
some
decorations.” She smiled sweetly, arching an eyebrow helplessly as if to ask
what else she was supposed to do since I didn't want the balloons. “The picture of you in your bath when you were just a few months old is adorable. I'll do a big blow-up of that one beside a current shot, for over the living room archway.”

I'd lost and I knew it.

“Okay, maybe a
few
balloons. But don't overdo it. And absolutely no pink!”

“Well, fuchsia …”

“No pink.”

“Okay, okay. What kind of cake do you want?”

“Just something plain.”

“You girls still at it?” Dad asked from the doorway. He barely had his nose in the kitchen. I guess he figured it wasn't safe to come around when Mom was in high gear planning a party. There was always the risk that he'd be roped into doing something, like the time Mom got him to make a big, sparkly sign for some ladies' meeting she was having. He'd had glitter clinging to him for days afterward, which had apparently earned him a good deal of teasing at work, as you can well imagine.

“We're almost through for now.” Mom glanced up at him and smiled. My parents are always smiling at each other all lovey-dovey like. At their age, you'd think they'd know better. “Did you want something, dear?”

“Oh, no, don't worry about me. I'll just be quietly starving to death in the other room if anyone wants me.”

“Goodness!” Mom glanced at her watch in alarm. “It's later than I realized.” She stacked the papers together and laid them on top of the microwave. “I guess we lost track of time, planning for Shelby's party and all. I'll get dinner started right away.”

“Or I could take my two gals out for dinner,” Dad suggested. “We could try out that new restaurant downtown.”

“I don't know.” Mom hesitated. “I'd feel guilty. We always eat at The Water's Edge. Anyway, the owners of the new place aren't from Little River. It seems wrong not to give our business to Terry and Joy.”

Terry and Joy Austers own The Water's Edge, which is the only restaurant around here that's kind of fancy inside. Or, at least, it was, until The Steak Place opened up a few months ago. The Austerses play canasta with my folks sometimes, so I knew Mom would feel disloyal eating somewhere else. At the same time, I could see that she was curious about the new restaurant, so I figured Dad would be able to convince her.

“Well, Darlene, I don't know. The owners of the new place came here and made a big investment to start up their business. That meant money in the town's economy. And they're employing locals. I don't think it would hurt to support them once in a while.”

Mom's curiosity won out, and it was settled. A few moments later we'd gotten ready and were on our way.
As we drove, we passed Broderick's Gas Bar, where my boyfriend, Greg Taylor, works. He was busy washing a windshield, but he noticed us and waved and smiled. My stomach gave a happy little lurch, the way it always does when I see him. I blew him a kiss, and his hand reached up in the air like he was grabbing it.

“Nice catch,” Dad grinned from the driver's seat. He doesn't miss much.

We reached The Steak Place in no time and were taken to a table by a tall, elegant-looking woman in a long black skirt and white blouse. I guessed she was one of the owners, since she wasn't familiar to me at all.

“Your waitress will be with you in just a moment,” she said. She spoke with an accent, and she smiled pleasantly as she gave us menus and filled our water glasses.

Once we were seated I had a chance to look around at the place. It was nice, but not as big inside as I'd expected. There'd been a big fabric outlet there until a few years ago, when it had gone out of business. The place had sat empty until the end of February this year, when it had been bought and converted into a restaurant. It was finished and open for business by the first week of April.

“Wasn't this place bigger before?” I asked Mom. We'd shopped at the fabric store lots of times, and it had seemed enormous.

“It does look that way,” Mom agreed looking around. “Of course, it was wide open then. The kitchen and restrooms would take up some space. Still, I'd think the dining area would be quite a bit bigger than this.”

“Good evening.” A young woman broke into our conversation. “I'm Nadine and I'll be your waitress tonight.”

“Hi, Nadine,” Dad answered. “The womenfolk here aren't ready to order yet. They're too busy looking the place over. Apparently they don't care if I collapse from hunger.”

“My husband likes to exaggerate,” Mom laughed. “Whatever you do, don't give him any sympathy.”

“We were just noticing that it seems a lot smaller in here than it used to,” I interjected.

“That's because they've sectioned off the back part for private parties, but it's not finished yet,” she explained.

“Say, you're not, by any chance, little Nadine Gardiner are you?” Dad asked, looking at her more closely.

“Yes. Do I know you?”

“Your mom was my secretary at Stoneworks, years ago,” Dad explained. “You were probably too young at the time to remember, though.”

“No, I do!” Her face lit up. “I used go there after school until she got off work. You gave me candy and told me knock-knock jokes.”

“So I did,” Dad said, clearly pleased that she remembered him. “And here you are all grown up. How's your mother these days?”

“Great. She got married again a couple of years ago and moved to Dartmouth with her new husband.”