More Deaths Than One (2 page)

Bob nodded. “I think they already have.”

Slanting a wide-eyed glance at Bob, the man
scuttled away.

At the coffee shop, Bob discovered that
Kerry’s shift didn’t begin until eleven. He ducked out the door and
crossed the street to the Golden Pagoda where he’d been taking most
of his meals. Picking at his firecracker chicken, he tried to
figure out what to tell her. He’d promised to let her know what
happened at the funeral, but how could he explain what he didn’t
understand?

***

“So?” she said, bringing him his hot
chocolate. “Did you go? What did you find out?” She plopped down in
the booth and gazed expectantly at him.

After all his careful deliberation, he heard
himself blurting it out, like ripping off a bandage.

“I went. According to the headstone, they did
bury my mother. My brother attended, and so did I.”

She brushed the hair out of her eyes with a
quick, impatient gesture. “I know. You told me you went.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I
saw another me there. Another Robert Stark. He looked like me and
he seemed to be married to my college girlfriend.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Another you? Wow, how did
it feel talking to yourself?”

“We didn’t talk.”

“You didn’t talk? Why not? I would have
charged up to him and demanded to know why he wore my face.”

Bob almost smiled. She probably would have,
too. “I didn’t have time,” he said. He knew the excuse sounded
lame, but he didn’t want to talk about the headache that had
paralyzed him. Unable to think, unable to act, he had watched
Robert herd his family away from the gravesite. Then the headache
loosened its grip, allowing him to return home and find serenity
the way he always did: by painting.

Kerry flicked the hair away from her face
again.

“Why do you do that?” Bob asked. “If you
don’t like your bangs in your eyes, why don’t you trim them?”

She lifted a hand as though to touch her
hair, then let it drop. “I’d like to, but I can’t.”

“Do what I do. Get a pair of scissors and
whack them off.”

“You don’t get it. My boss wants me to cut my
bangs or wear them pulled back with a barrette. He nags at me all
the time about it, so I can’t. Don’t you see? And anyway, we’re
supposed to be talking about you and your other self.” Her eyes
gleamed. “Maybe it’s like a story I once read where this guy kept
winding up in alternate universes and seeing different versions of
himself. Or maybe you’re twins separated at birth and adopted out
to people with the same last name.”

Bob gave her a sour look. “These are not
answers.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “If you
don’t like my explanations, what are yours? What do you think is
going on?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Then we better find out.”

He drew back. “We?”

“Sure. I get off at seven, but sometimes I
don’t finish my side-work until seven-thirty. How about if I come
get you a little before eight?”

“I thought you worked for your boyfriend
during the day.”

“Not on Saturdays. Where do you live?”

He shook his head, not wanting her help, then
decided the idea had merit. Although she wore him out, she had a
car and he didn’t. If worse came to worst, he could pretend she was
another annoying cab driver.

After giving her the address, he said, “Come
in through the gate off the alley, and knock on the French doors.
The old woman who owns the boardinghouse is nosy, and it’s best to
try to avoid her.”

Her eyes laughed at him. “No one lives in a
boardinghouse anymore.”

“Well, I do. I’m not going to be in Denver
long enough to get an apartment, and I hate hotels.”

Yawning, he stood and tossed a couple of
dollars on the table. “I’ve had a rough day. Maybe tonight I can
actually sleep for a change.”

***

Bob stepped inside the door and froze.
Someone waited for him in the darkness. He couldn’t hear a sound,
but he had the skin-crawling sensation of being watched.

Thinking Ella was poking among his things
again, he sniffed but caught no lingering odor of the cheap perfume
she doused herself with.

“Who’s there?” he called out.

Getting no response, he flipped on the light.
He didn’t see anyone, but he could still feel the eyes on him. He
looked under the bed, behind the chair, in the closet. No one.

He stood in the center of the room and
pivoted slowly.

His gaze fell on the still-drying painting
propped on a chair. He sucked in his breath and stared. Someone or
something hidden in the fetid jungle looked out at him. He shifted
position, thinking it a trick of the light, but the eyes still
followed him. Unable to bear the feeling of those eyes on him, he
thrust the painting behind the chair with all the others, and
crawled into bed.

But not to sleep.

***

At seven-fifteen in the morning, Bob heard a
knock. He hurriedly rinsed off the shaving cream he’d lathered on
his face, pulled on a shirt, and went to answer the door.

Kerry smiled at him, looking as bright-eyed
as if she’d spent the night sleeping instead of working. She’d
changed out of her pink uniform into a white oxford-style shirt
over blue jeans.

“You’re early,” Bob said.

“I know. I got my side-work done before my
shift ended, so I came to look around. I’ve never seen a
boardinghouse before. Can I come in? Of course I can.”

Bob waited a beat, then stepped aside.

Kerry prowled around his spacious room,
stopping to test the easy chair and hassock upholstered in a blue
and yellow floral fabric that matched the drapes and bedspread.

She nodded her head. “Nice. Too feminine for
my taste, but nice. I especially like the way the French doors lead
right out to that big yard.”

Bob glanced outside. The tree-shaded yard,
with its manicured lawn, pruned rosebushes, neatly trimmed hedges,
and tubs overflowing with pink and purple petunias, contrasted
sharply with the untamed exuberance of his garden in Bangkok, but
it had a sedate serenity he found appealing.

“I like it, too,” he said. “It’s the main
reason I took this place.”

Jiggling her keys, she moved toward the door.
“I’ve seen enough. Ready to go?”

“I haven’t finished getting cleaned up.”

She made shooing motions with her hands. “Go
on. Hurry.”

When Bob came out of the bathroom, face
tingling from his after-shave lotion, he found Kerry sorting
through the paintings he had stashed behind the chair.

“What are you doing?”

She glanced up with a saucy smile, apparently
not at all put off by his curt tone. “Looking at these paintings.
They’re very good. Why aren’t they hanging on the walls where you
can enjoy them?” She pulled out a two-by-three-foot canvas and
propped it on the chair where last night the jungle scene had
lurked.

Bob peeked at the canvas. The painting
depicted a pond with no ripples, surrounded by forest.

“This is lovely.” Kerry swayed as she focused
on the picture. “Very serene.”

All of a sudden, she stiffened and stepped
back. She blinked rapidly, then bent forward and peered at the
painting. A visible shudder went through her.

“Jeez,” she said. “Whoever painted this is
either an artistic genius or a very disturbed individual.” She
reached out as if to touch the painting, but jerked her hand away
before it made contact. “You can almost see the monstrous thing
that lives in the slime deep at the bottom of the pool.”

Bob studied the forest scene. Feeling
disquiet creep over him, he averted his gaze.

“Who painted it?” Kerry asked.

He hesitated. “I did.”

She whipped her head around and stared at
him. “Jeez, Bob. What the hell were you thinking?”

Stealing a look at his creation, Bob
shivered.

“I tried to paint what’s in here,” he said,
tapping his chest with a fist. He gestured to the picture. “I don’t
know how that happened.”

“Are you a famous artist or something? I
think I’ve seen a picture like this before. In a magazine,
maybe.”

Bob shrugged.

“Well, are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Putting her hands on her hips, she narrowed
her eyes at him.

“It’s the truth.” He strode to the bedside
table, retrieved a letter he had received before he left Thailand,
and read aloud. “‘Dear Mr. Stark: Mr. Ling Hsiang-li has informed
us he will no longer be acting as your agent and that we must now
deal directly with you. There is a growing regard for your work. We
are interested in enough paintings for a showing, which would
include an evening with the artist. Please contact us at your
earliest convenience.’”

Bob set aside the letter. “It’s from a New
York art gallery. Now you know as much as I do.”

“So what’s the deal?” she asked. “Who’s Ling
Hsiang-li?”

“My mentor. A man who was more than a father
to me.”

“But you didn’t know he sold your
paintings?”

“Not really. I once mentioned that I painted
one picture over another because nothing I did was any good, and he
said, ‘You’re just an artist. How would you know what’s good? Bring
them to me and let me be the judge.’ When I protested that they all
had a terrible flaw, a hidden evil, he responded, ‘That flaw, as
you call it, is what makes you an artist.’”

“He’s right,” Kerry said.

Bob hunched his shoulders. “Maybe so, but I
don’t have to like it.” He forced himself to relax. “Occasionally,
Hsiang-li would hand me a wad of cash and announce he had sold
another painting, but until I got that letter, I never knew if in
fact he’d sold a painting or if the money was his way of
encouraging me.”

Seeing more questions forming in Kerry’s eyes
and on her lips, Bob said quickly, “We should go.”

“Go? Oh, right. I can’t believe I forgot
about the other you.”

***

“It looks like a park,” Kerry said, pulling
up to the gates of Mountain View Cemetery. She got out of her blue
Toyota Corolla. “Where’s your mother buried?”

Bob led the way to the newly sodded
gravesite. The headstone read the same today as it had
yesterday.

Kerry bent and traced the grooves of the
date. “Don’t you think it’s strange that the headstone is in place?
When my grandmother died, we didn’t get the stone for months.”

“Knowing my mother, she probably picked it
out herself years ago and had all the engraving done except for the
date. She always prided herself on her foresight and preparations.
Like buying side-by-side plots for her and my father.”

Kerry stepped over to the next stone and
gazed at it. “It must be terrible losing both parents.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms
with their deaths.” Twenty-four years before, he had stood in this
very spot with his mother, his brother, and a whole phalanx of
cops, attending his father’s funeral. His mother hadn’t abandoned
her grief when she had died of cancer and been buried next to her
husband. Whether that death had occurred twenty-two years ago or
recently, she was definitely dead now.

Bob turned away and made for the car. Kerry
hurried after him.

***

They found Robert Stark’s address in the
phone book. Kerry drove to the house on Ironton Street off Eleventh
Avenue in Aurora and parked across from the faded yellow
bungalow.

“Now what?” she asked.

“You tell me,” Bob said. “This was your
idea.”

She fixed her laughing eyes on him,
apparently amused by his touch of asperity. “We go talk to
him.”

“And say what? That he stole my life?” A
shaft of pain stabbed Bob behind the eyes. He stifled a gasp.
“Maybe another time. Let’s keep watch for now. See what we can
learn.” The headache diminished. He opened his window and listened
to the sounds emanating from Robert’s house. Doors slamming. Feet
thudding. The television squawking. Children shouting, laughing,
whining, sobbing. Lorena yelling.

“My God,” Kerry said. “It is you.”

Then Bob saw him—an unimpressive man dressed
in a dingy white short-sleeved shirt, a mud-colored tie, and gray
gabardine pants, trudging down his toy-strewn driveway to the
ancient, wood-sided station wagon parked in front of the house.

The man, Robert, climbed into the vehicle and
took off. With a screech of tires, Kerry made a U-turn and hurtled
after him, braking abruptly when she caught up to the slow-moving
station wagon.

They followed the station wagon along Havana
Street to a shopping mall called Buckingham Square where Robert
entered a computer store. He went through a door at the back, came
out a minute later and half-heartedly cleaned the counter and
straightened merchandise on the shelves.

A young, expensively dressed woman, who
looked about Kerry’s age—twenty-six or twenty-seven—marched into
the store.

Bob, standing outside the door, pretending to
chat with Kerry, heard Robert ask diffidently, “May I help
you?”

The woman moved away from him. “Just
looking.”

Robert made no effort to follow her.

A young man immediately approached the woman.
He was dressed like Robert, but his shirt was snowy white, his
pants sharply creased, his tie bright. Seemingly unconcerned by the
woman’s lack of interest in his patter, the young man continued to
pursue her.

An older couple hesitantly entered the store,
and Robert went to wait on them.

Bob drifted away from the door.

Kerry trailed him. “I thought this would be
fun.”

“It never is.”

She blinked. “You’ve done this before?”

“Yes.”

A brief silence, then, “You feel no need to
explain that remark?”

“No.”

As Bob continued to watch his other self, he
could feel Kerry’s eyes on him.

“Do you know why you interest me?” she said
at last.