Making the Rent the Hard Way - 4

 

My first order of business was to get the money Farnham had paid me into the bank—which I did. From there, I went to the mom-and-pop store to set up the security cameras and show my client how the system worked. He was happy enough that he paid me on the spot, meaning a few more pennies in my pocket

Back at my office, I wrote out a check to the landlord, sent it off, then settled down to figure out how to find Luca Montana.

My first two steps were obvious—visit Luca's last known address, then the company that he'd, presumably, been doing some sort of design work for.  

The high-rise where Luca had lived was a sprawling complex taking up half a city block. His apartment, from the address Farnham had given me, was in the center building. Luca's name was still on the list of tenants in the entryway. Unsurprising, I figured, since he'd only been missing for three weeks, according to Farnham. I pushed the buzzer, not expecting to get an answer—which I didn't. So I used the time-honored ploy of pushing other buttons until some idiot buzzed to let me in without asking who I was.

The first thing I did when I was in the lobby was check the mailboxes. Luca's was crammed full—with a note from the postal worker on the front saying he could pick up the rest of his mail at the local post office.

I took one of the elevators up to the tenth, and top, floor where his apartment was located. He lived at the end of the right-hand hallway in 1012. I knocked, waited, then knocked again. No one came to the door, and no one popped their head out of the adjoining apartments to see who I was or to tell me Luca wasn't home. Not too surprising since it was early afternoon and most of the tenants were undoubtedly at work.

It took a couple of minutes—and my trusty lock picks—for me to get into the apartment with no one being the wiser. It was nice, a hell of a lot better than my two-room place. The living room windows were large, with a view of the lake and downtown Westerden. The furniture was contemporary—steel, leather, and glass—and dusty. There were two bedrooms, one obviously Luca's with a king-size bed, dresser, and nightstands in basic black. The second one held a smaller bed and dresser and was obviously meant for overnight guests.

I checked his bedroom closet. If he'd taken off willingly, it looked as if he hadn't packed much in the way of clothes, since there were no empty spaces—the same with what was in the dresser. Sure, he might have packed light, but who doesn't take their personal items, like a razor, toothbrush, and combs, which were still sitting in the bathroom?

Going into the kitchen, I opened the fridge. While nothing there was a science experiment…yet…it was obvious he hadn't been eating meals here recently. One sniff of the milk in an opened carton told me it was well past its sell-by date.

Having established that Luca hadn't been in the apartment for a while, I began searching to see if I could find anything to tell me why he was missing. I figured there was a good chance Farnham had already been through the place. He was a shifter, after all, and if he'd been here even once, it would have been no problem for him to get in again any time he wished—without coming through the door since shifters can teleport into a room if they'd seen it previously or had an image of it.

I started with Luca's desk. It was large, with a state-of-the-art computer and peripherals. I quickly discovered there was no way I could get past the password protections he had on it. A hacker, I'm not. Going through the desk drawers netted me nothing—mainly because, other than the usual pens, pencils, and other normal office supplies, there was nothing else except some empty file folders in one drawer. It appeared that someone had beaten me to it as far as searching the desk. Even the folder marked "Bills Paid" was empty.

"Farnham?" I muttered, "or someone else? Did Luca take whatever was in them when he vanished?" Not questions I could answer at the moment.

A search of the rest of the place netted me zilch. There wasn't even a safe—and I looked in every conceivable place where he could have hidden one. I might not be a rich and famous private investigator, but I do know my business when it comes to doing a search. 

With nothing gained, and since it was getting late, I left the apartment complex, heading to the business where Luca had been hired to do…whatever.