Jack knocked again. Just then, the door to the apartment to the left of Dave’s swung open. A woman in a black sports bra, black spandex shorts, and hot pink shoes stood there. She nudged a small chihuahua back with her foot, came out into the hallway, and shut the door.
“Hey, y’all looking for Dave? I saw you through my peephole.” Her eyes were wide, and dark brown in color.
“We are,” Jack said.
“He moved about a week ago. Yes, exactly one week ago.”
“Oh no,” I cried.
“It’s a real shame. I liked him a whole bunch. He walked my dog in the mornings when I worked. I’m a nurse, so I have some unusual hours. Real shame that Dave’s gone.” She looked to me, then to Jack. There was something odd in her expression, possibly because she hadn’t blinked once. That made my eyes dry just thinking about it, and I blinked several times.
Jack stepped closer to her. “That’s too bad. Do you know where he went?”
She shook her head, and her dark ponytail swung over her shoulder. “It was the weirdest thing. He was such a great neighbor to me and everyone else in this building—he used to help Lynne next door with her groceries, she’s in her eighties—and then he just suddenly up and left. It was like he vanished. He basically ghosted the entire building.”
“Weird,” I said.
“The act of impulsive disappearing,” Jack murmured, almost to himself.
“He seemed to care for all of us, was so friendly, but then vanished. I nearly called the cops, to be honest. I thought something might have happened to him, but the property manager told me that he moved out and didn’t leave a forwarding address. Why are you looking for him?” She blinked once, slowly. “You don’t look like cops.”
Why did everyone keep saying that?
“We’re podcasters. We’re doing an episode on politics in Wahoo and wanted to talk with him,” I said.
“Oh, cool,” she chirped.
Jack reached into his back pocket and extracted the paper that he’d printed. “Just to make sure, are we talking about the same Mr. Smith? Was this your neighbor? It’s such a common name.”
He showed her the paper and she paused for a few seconds. “That’s him. Not a great photo of him, he was better-looking in real life.”
“Do you remember when he ran for city council?” I asked.
Her brows drew together, and she tapped her fingers on her lips a few times. “Dave ran for city council? When?”
I told her the dates of the recent election. She shook her head and her eyes grew wider. “Gosh, I didn’t know that. I thought he was a computer programmer. He worked from home.”
“Hmm. Did he have a lot of friends? Outside of the people in the building?” I asked.
“I would say so. He had people over all the time. Day and night. I even asked him when he got his computer work done, and he said he stayed up late. I’d see him at the pool with someone almost every other day. He loved the pool.”
I took my cell out of my purse and flicked to my photos folder, to a picture of Gene. “Did you ever see this guy?” I held my phone out to her.
“Oh, yeah. Definitely. He asked me on a date. I just laughed it off, because he was kind of gross.”
Bingo! Now we had a link between Gene and the sketchy council candidate. “And what about this guy?”
I tapped over to the Wahoo City Council page and a formal portrait of Tyler, wearing a blue blazer and a red-and-white-striped tie.
She squinted at it. “He definitely looks familiar. I didn’t see anyone who wore that kind of suit here, though.”
“How about...” I opened Tyler’s Facebook page to a photo of him on a boat, shirtless and grinning. “Him?”
She shrugged. “Maybe? It’s hard to tell. The other guy I recognized right away because of his hair. Big hair, like Elvis. You know.” She made a motion with her hand from her forehead to her crown. “Um, like, I need to go. I teach an online fitness class and I have to get ready.”
We thanked her for her time and she headed back inside. Feeling emboldened, I knocked on the other two doors on that floor in hopes of asking those neighbors questions about Dave, but no one was home.
Back in the car, I let out a groan as I put on my seat belt. “Obviously Gene had something to do with the election and Dave the sham candidate, but we can’t exactly connect him to Tyler either.”
