"I"ll just pop in and see if he"s got the brother and if the kid"s still alive. If he has a chainsaw, you probably shouldn"t disturb him." Charley disappeared through the door.
No one responded to her knock. No sounds came from inside. "d.a.m.n. Whoever lives here is probably at work." Amanda knocked again.
Charley emerged back into the hallway. Amanda could only describe his expression as looking like he"d seen a ghost.
"He"s home all right! You are not going to freaking believe this!"
Chapter Four.
Amanda gasped and jumped backward, away from the door, as images of a torture chamber with chains, saws and several dead bodies flashed through her mind.
"What"s wrong?" Panic edged Dawson"s words "What did you hear? Is Grant in there? Are they hurting him?"
The door opened a crack.
Amanda turned to run but b.u.mped into Dawson. He shoved her aside and pushed against the door, almost knocking over a short man wearing a tinfoil hat, thick gla.s.ses and an annoyed expression. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"I"m your neighbor." Dawson"s voice was surprisingly firm. Concern for his brother had emboldened his normally reticent nature.
His courage made Amanda braver. "We need to talk to you." She glanced at Charley to see if he was going to protest, warn them away from whatever he"d seen inside.
"You gotta see this," he said.
Amanda shuddered and sent up a silent prayer that Charley wouldn"t think she needed to see a torture chamber or mutilated bodies. "Can we come in?"
The young man looked at her, shrugged, causing his shiny hat to tilt precariously, and opened the door wider to allow them entrance.
For once Charley had neither lied nor exaggerated. If Amanda had not seen it for herself, she would not have freaking believed it.
The walls and windows were covered with tinfoil. The furniture consisted of four long tables holding monitors, computer towers, laptops and other machines Amanda couldn"t readily identify. Pieces of tinfoil in various sizes and shapes lay on or beside most of the machines. Electric cords and wires draped the tables and ran along the floor like Christmas tinsel on steroids.
"Come in," the neighbor invited then darted back into the room and began shoving magazines off two wooden chairs.
Dawson strode in without hesitation.
"It"s like that in the kitchen and bedroom too!" Charley smiled proudly as if he were somehow responsible for the unique decor.
"Is Grant here?" Amanda whispered, inclining her head toward the open door to the bedroom.
Charley shook his head. "No, just more aluminum foil. Guy must have hit one heck of a sale. A thousand rolls for the price of one."
Marginally rea.s.sured that, while the man might be a kook, he wasn"t a homicidal kook, Amanda moved inside and took a seat on the chair next to Dawson.
The kook closed the door behind her then rolled an office chair away from one of the tables and settled onto it. "So you"re my neighbors." He studied Dawson and Amanda with pale, watery eyes magnified ridiculously by the thick lenses. Those gla.s.ses had to be twenty years old, a relic from before the invention of ultrathin lenses.
"He"s your neighbor." Amanda indicated Dawson. "He"s Dawson Page. I"m Amanda Caulfield."
The kook nodded. "Yes, yes, I"ve seen him leaving his apartment. I"m Brendan Matthews. What did you want to talk to me about?"
"You"re not with the police department, are you?" Dawson asked cautiously.
Matthews jerked his head around as if the spoken word might make the police materialize. "No, I am most certainly not allied with those government spies."
"Good, that"s good."
Matthews" att.i.tude didn"t sound at all good to Amanda. He sounded like a total nut job. But at least Dawson would be willing to talk to him if he wasn"t a cop. "Dawson"s little brother is missing, and we just wondered if you might have seen anything."
Matthews scowled. "Anything? I"ve seen a lot."
"Have you seen somebody hustling a little boy out of the building, a stranger lurking around the building, somebody you haven"t seen before?" Amanda didn"t expect much from this guy. He would have to have x-ray vision to see through all the foil, but he had recognized Dawson so it was possible he knew something.
"What does he look like, this little brother?"
"Grant is eleven years old. He"s four and a half feet tall, weighs seventy-two pounds. He"s a little thin because he"s always running around doing something, playing baseball, riding his bicycle-" Dawson bit off his words, licked his lips and started again. "He has brown hair and blue eyes. Have you seen him?"
Matthews shook his head and frowned. "I didn"t know you had a brother. I"ve seen you coming and going, but never a child. Has this child always been with you or did he come here recently?"
Dawson leaned forward, his posture rigid and urgent. "He"s always been with me. We"ve lived in that apartment for two years. He rides his bicycle to school every day. One day he fell on the sidewalk and skinned his knee right in front of this building. You must have seen him!" As if he suddenly realized he was becoming hysterical, Dawson sat back and drew a shaky hand over his face.
Ice wrapped around Amanda"s heart. Again the question had arisen of whether Grant was real or not. Dawson had the photograph and the little boy"s room. Grant had existed. But she had no proof he was still alive. Maybe he"d died in the car wreck that killed their parents. Maybe Dawson was suffering from an emotional trauma. Maybe- "They took him."
Amanda gasped in shock at Matthews" words, the same ones Dawson had spoken earlier.
Dawson shot to his feet and stood looming over Matthews who remained sitting. "What do you know about them?" Dawson demanded. "Where did they take Grant?"
Matthews shook his head, causing his strange hat to tremble. "You didn"t have any protection, did you?"
"Protection?" Amanda echoed. Surely he wasn"t talking about condoms. "You mean like a gun?"
Matthews snorted. "You couldn"t stop them with a regular gun."
This conversation was getting weirder and weirder. "I"m pretty sure I could stop anybody but Superman with my .38, especially since it"s loaded with jacketed hollow points."
Matthews snorted again, more vehemently this time. "You couldn"t even stop a Venusian with a .38, and the ones from Alpha Centauri have diamond based skin. Don"t waste your bullets. You need a laser gun."
Amanda"s chin dropped. Charley had even been stricken dumb. Dawson had rambled on about a mysterious they, but Brendan Matthews was more specific-Venusians and creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Dawson blinked a couple of times, stepped back and stared at the man in the tinfoil hat. "Alpha Centauri? Diamond based skin?"
"Yes, they"re the ones who"ve been skulking around lately. They"re the ones who took your brother."
"That guy is seriously nuts!" Charley moved toward the door as if fearful that proximity to Matthews would infect him with the seriously nuts virus. Too late. Charley had been seriously nuts as long as she"d known him.
"Thank you so much for talking to us, Mr. Matthews. Dawson, I think I hear the phone in your apartment ringing. We need to go."
She grabbed Dawson"s arm and dragged him toward the door before he could protest that he didn"t have a landline.
"I have some extra foil," Matthews offered. "And I can help you set up the shield program on your computer."
"Thank you, we"ll get back to you on that." Amanda opened the door with one hand and pushed Dawson through with the other.
The dreariness of the hallway was a welcome change from the shiny insanity of apartment 3C. Amanda drew in a welcome breath of the stale air.
Dawson took two steps forward then two back and shook his head. "What was that man talking about? Is he saying aliens took Grant?"
"Yeah, I think that"s what he was saying." Dawson was close to losing it, dependent on her to hold him together. She wasn"t cut out for that job. She was way more familiar with being the panicker than the soother. But she had to help her friend. "Okay, you got a kooky neighbor. It happens. Let"s go talk to your other neighbors. Who knows? One of them may actually be from Alpha Centauri. I think that"s probably where Charley was from."
That got a half-smile from Dawson. "No, he didn"t have diamond based skin."
"Not funny, Amanda." Charley floated ahead of them down the hall and disappeared into apartment 3B.
A loud scream burst from the apartment.
Amanda and Dawson exchanged a horrified look then dashed toward the door.
Charley slid back out, looking a little frazzled. "Cat. I guess he could see me. Guy"s another nut job. No sign of a kidnapped kid."
Another nut job? Was the building a refuge for tin foil freaks?
Dawson pounded on the door. "Open up!"
The door opened almost immediately to reveal a tall well-muscled man in a tight T-shirt and workout pants. He didn"t look like a nut. He looked pretty good, actually.
Dawson lunged toward him. Amanda grabbed Dawson around the waist in a futile effort to hold him back. "It was a cat, not your brother!"
The man reacted defensively, grabbing Dawson"s arm and twisting it behind his back. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What the h.e.l.l"s going on?"
A Siamese cat darted into the hall, looked up at Charley, hissed and shrieked in a voice at least ten times his size.
Dawson ceased struggling and looked at the spitting, screaming animal. "A cat?"
"A cat."
He lifted his gaze to the man who held him in his grip. "I"m sorry. I thought-"
Amanda stepped forward and offered her hand. "Hi. I"m Amanda Caulfield and this is Dawson Page. He lives in apartment 3D, and he doesn"t usually attack people. We heard your cat and thought it was a person, Dawson"s brother, to be exact."
The man studied her for a moment then released Dawson and shook her hand. "I"m Nick Farner. Yeah, Miss Kitty gets pretty loud sometimes. I have no idea what"s got her so upset this time." He stepped around Dawson and picked up the cat who continued to grumble at Charley.
"I know how you feel, Miss Kitty," Amanda said, reaching to tentatively stroke the cat"s head. "I"m sorry about the misunderstanding, Mr. Farner. Dawson"s brother is missing, and he"s very upset. We"d really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to talk to us." She gave him the sweet smile her mother had tried for years to get her to use. It didn"t come naturally, but this was a desperate time.
Nick looked from her to Dawson then finally shrugged and stepped back, holding the door open. "Come on in."
Behind him Amanda could see an apartment furnished with shabby but elegant antiques.
Amanda arched a questioning eyebrow at Charley as she and Dawson entered the apartment. She and Charley obviously had a very different idea of what const.i.tuted a nut job. He"d been right about Brendan Matthews, but Nick Farner seemed pretty normal.
Charley kept close to her side, as far away from Nick and the cat as he could get. "Yeah, I stand by what I said. Another nut job. What normal guy would live in an apartment like this? It reminds me of your grandmother"s house. Your first grandmother. Well, I guess she was actually your second grandmother. But the first one you knew about. The one with the big house in Highland Park. You have too many mothers and that makes for way too many grandmothers."
Amanda moved past him and sat on the faded damask sofa. Dawson sat tentatively beside her, tense as if he still didn"t quite trust this man.
Nick Farner closed the door, put the cat in the bedroom and took a seat in the matching arm chair. His virility did look a little out of place in the faded rose colored Victorian style chair. "So what"s going on?"
"Are you with the police?" Dawson blurted.
Farner studied him a long moment as if not quite sure how to take the strange question. "No, I"m a personal trainer. Why would think I"m with the police?"
Amanda chose to avoid the question rather than answer it. "Dawson"s little brother is missing. We just thought you might have seen something, maybe noticed a stranger hanging around."
"What does your brother look like? I don"t think I"ve ever seen him. I"ve seen you going in and out, but I never saw you with a little boy."
Another neighbor who hadn"t seen Grant. Another question as to whether Grant was still alive.
"He lives with me." Dawson"s voice was becoming edgy. Maybe this interview business wasn"t such a good idea.
"Have you seen anybody around here who looked suspicious, somebody who doesn"t belong?" Amanda asked. "Somebody you haven"t seen before?"
Nick leaned forward and studied his two visitors carefully. "If your little brother is missing, you should probably call the police."
"No, we can"t do that." Dawson clasped his hands in his lap so tightly his knuckles were turning white.
"We, uh, think maybe he went off with a friend and he"s, uh, trying to get back at Dawson for grounding him by disappearing. It would be very embarra.s.sing if we called the cops and then he came home."
"You"re getting pretty good at this lying business," Charley said approvingly, settling beside her on the sofa. Well, a couple of inches above the sofa.
Farner looked a little dubious, and Amanda suspected she was not nearly as proficient a liar as Charley. Not that she aspired to that skill, but it would be handy in the current situation.
"I wish I could help you," Farner said, "but I don"t recall seeing the boy or anybody suspicious, anybody who looked out of place."
Amanda rose with a sigh. "Thank you for talking to us. If you do see something, please let us know."
Farner stood. "I will. I hope your brother comes home soon. I ran away once when I was a kid. I had no idea what torment I was putting my parents through. Don"t be too hard on your brother when he finally shows up." He smiled and held the door open.
Back outside in the dreary hallway Amanda sighed. "Well, at least this neighbor was normal, but we still didn"t learn anything."
Dawson frowned and looked at the closed door of 3B. "Something"s not right."
"Really? We just came from the apartment of a man who sees visitors from another star system, but you think there"s something not right about this guy with big shoulders and antique furniture?"
Dawson lifted a hand to his forehead. "There"s something about him that bothers me."
"What?"