More Deaths Than One (5 page)

When he caught up to her, she said, “I need a
change.” She raised first one box to her face, then the other, and
looked at him expectantly. “Would you like me better as a redhead
or a blond?”

It seemed a strangely intimate moment, as if
they were husband and wife, or at least friends of long standing,
and he found himself unable to speak.

“Well?” she said.

“It’s never been established I like you at
all.”

“Of course you do.” She laughed. “You find me
annoying, but you still like me.”

“If you say so.” And he did like her. Somehow
she made his bizarre plight seem normal, as if having a duplicate
self were simply an interesting personality quirk.

“Ouch. I bet that hurt.”

He wondered what she meant, then realized he
was smiling.

“So which?” she asked. “Blonde or red?”

“Neither.” He reached out to touch her hair.
Remembering that she had a boyfriend, he let his hand drop. “I like
your natural color. Sometimes it’s a true black, but other times
you have red highlights, as if your banked inner fires are glowing
through.”

She stared at him for a second, then slowly
replaced the boxes.

***

“Do you mind if we go?” Kerry asked at four
o’clock. “We aren’t learning anything, and Pete and I have plans
for this evening.”

Not yet ready to leave, Bob decided to call a
cab for her but changed his mind when he remembered Scott’s
invitation to dinner. It would be rude to cancel now, especially if
the man’s wife had gone to a lot of trouble. Besides, Kerry spoke
the truth; they weren’t learning anything.

“Okay, let’s go.” As they walked to the car,
laden with Kerry’s purchases, he said, “You did a good job
today.”

She rewarded him with a pleased but tired
smile.

***

Scott Mulligan welcomed Bob warmly and
ushered him into a homey living room filled with well-worn
furniture and floor to ceiling bookshelves, where a woman, a boy,
and a girl waited. Like Scott, they were nice looking with open
faces and they dressed modestly.

Scott gestured to the woman. “This is my
beautiful wife, Rose.”

Rose blushed becomingly, and for a second she
did look beautiful. Her best feature was her shiny dark brown
hair.

Scott gestured to the girl. About eleven
years old, she looked like a younger version of her mother. “This
is my gorgeous daughter, Beth.”

Beth giggled. “Oh, Daddy.”

“And that’s Jimmy.” Scott pointed to the
sturdy, bright-eyed boy, who appeared to be about two years older
than his sister. Both father and son had square, blunt-nosed faces,
and unruly auburn cowlicks.

Rose held out a hand. “Please sit.”

Bob perched on the edge of a dark green
upholstered chair.

“We’re glad you came,” Rose said. “Scott
mentioned you’ve recently returned home. I don’t imagine there’s a
lot you remember. Denver’s changed so much in the past eighteen
years.”

Bob shifted his weight. “I’ve noticed.”

“At least we’ve been having nice weather, all
these dry, sunny days, but then maybe you prefer rain?”

“I don’t know if I prefer it so much as I’m
used to it.”

Rose nodded. “A person can get used to
anything, I suppose, but I think it would be difficult to learn to
live in an entirely different environment. Was it your experiences
in Vietnam that prevented you from coming home?”

Bob glanced from Rose’s sympathetic face to
Scott’s interested one and wondered if he had made a mistake in
coming here. They seemed pleasant, and he’d sensed an affinity with
Scott, but he didn’t enjoy talking about himself, especially not to
strangers.

He gave a mental shrug. It was a trivial
matter after all. “No, nothing like that. Someone offered me a job,
and . . . well, the years passed.”

Scott spread his arms along the back of the
green couch, which did not match the upholstered chair, and
stretched out his legs. “What’s your line of work, Bob?”

“The restaurant business.”

“Ah, the food service industry.” A
calculating look crossed Scott’s face. “Let me know if you have any
free time. My church runs a soup kitchen. We can always use the
help.”

“Don’t let him bulldoze you, Bob,” Rose said.
“He’s as sweet as can be until he gets his mind set on something,
then watch out.”

Scott laughed. “I don’t know what’s worse,
being misunderstood or being understood.”

Rose smiled at him then turned to Bob.
“Excuse us. We have to set the table.” Gathering her children, she
herded them into the dining room.

Bob leaned back in the chair and listened to
the domestic sounds of children laughing and utensils clinking.
“I’ve heard that Vietnam vets had a rough time of it when they
returned home.”

“Many did. We’d all been raised on World War
Two movies, and somehow we got it into our heads we’d get the same
reception as the soldiers in the movies did, but everyone treated
us like pariahs. Now that they’re making Vietnam movies, we’re
becoming part of the country’s mythology, so people aren’t treating
us with quite so much disdain, but we had it rough for a while. I
was lucky. I have Rose, I have my children, and I have my
work.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m an administrator of a literary
foundation that runs a private bookmobile service for shut-ins and
supplies books for nursing homes, hospitals, and hospices.”

Rose reentered the room. “And every weekend
he finds time to read to the elderly who can no longer read to
themselves.”

Scott made a dismissive gesture. “Well, so do
you and Beth and Jimmy.”

“Are you ready to eat?” Rose asked. “Dinner’s
on the table.”

After everyone gathered at the table, said
grace, and passed the food around, Rose asked about Thailand. She
listened so intently that Bob found himself talking about his
fascination with Bangkok, a city with no downtown, no
neighborhoods, just a sprawling conglomeration of buildings with
architectural marvels tucked in the most unexpected places. He told
about the gibbons, the family pet of choice, about the weekend
market at the beautiful tree-lined Phramane Grounds, and about the
Thai kickboxing matches he had attended.

“Did you find much difference between Vietnam
and Thailand?” Scott asked.

“I didn’t see many similarities except
perhaps for the weather at certain times of the year. Vietnam had a
strong French influence. Many of the places seemed like they
belonged more on the French Riviera than in a country at war.
Thailand, on the other hand, is unique. During most of its history,
the Thais were left alone to develop their own culture without
outside influences. Thai architecture, for example, has no equal.
It is stunningly beautiful—a perfect balance between simple,
harmonious lines and intricate ornamentation.”

“You speak like an artist,” Rose said.

Bob took a bite of food and chewed it
slowly.

Rose gasped. “How terrible of us. We’ve kept
you talking so much we haven’t given you a chance to eat.”

While Bob finished his delicious dinner of
roast beef, stuffed baked potatoes, mixed vegetables, and
made-from-scratch dinner rolls, Beth and Jimmy tried to top each
other with family stories that seemed to have been told and retold
so many times they sounded folkloric: how Scott had fallen into
City Park Lake, how Beth had dyed herself blue, how Jimmy had
gotten sick from eating poisonous berries.

After Beth and Jimmy cleared off the table,
Rose brought in a heaping plateful of homemade oatmeal raisin
cookies, along with tea for the adults and lemonade for the
children.

Stuffing a cookie in his mouth, Jimmy
announced, “We’re building a greenhouse in the back-yard.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Rose said,
but it seemed an automatic response. Bob heard no censure in her
voice.

“So we can have a garden all year,” Beth
explained.

Scott took a sip of his tea. “I wanted a
project the whole family could get involved with, and a greenhouse
seemed as good as anything.”

Jimmy grabbed another cookie. “Better. When
it’s done we can grow strawberries and tomatoes and corn.”

“And toads,” Beth added.

“You don’t grow toads in a garden, silly,”
Jimmy said.

“Do too.”

“And anyway, girls aren’t supposed to like
toads.”

“I do. Toads and lizards and snakes.”

When everyone finished eating, Scott
compli-mented his wife on the meal and stood. Beth and Jimmy jumped
to their feet and took off running, as if a school dismissal bell
had been rung.

“Don’t forget you still have the dishes to
do,” Rose called after them. “And homework.”

Scott led the way into the living room.

“You have nice children,” Bob commented.

Rose inclined her head. “Thank you.”

“They grow so quickly,” Scott said with a
catch in his voice. “Before we know it, they’ll have families of
their own.” He opened a photograph album and showed Bob pictures of
his family.

As Scott turned the pages, Bob could see the
young ones growing from babyhood to toddlerhood to childhood, and
Rose growing more settled and serene. He wondered what it would be
like to be part of a loving family such as theirs; then it occurred
to him that if he had returned to Denver after Vietnam, perhaps he
would have been the one to marry Lorena, and he would know.

But who would he be—Robert the computer
salesperson, Bob the artist, or an entirely different Robert Stark
altogether?

Chapter 5

The ample-bodied woman sitting behind the
admitting desk at the VA hospital scowled at Bob. “How many times
do I have to tell you? You cannot see Dr. Albion. Take a seat, and
Dr. Montgomery will be with you as soon as he is able.”

“But I need to talk to Dr. Albion,” Bob
said.

The woman pointed a stubby finger at him. “If
you don’t do as you’re told, you won’t be talking to anyone.”

Bob waited. When the woman became involved
with another hapless individual, he stepped from the crowd at the
desk to a cluster of nurses and patients passing into the hallway.
He remained with them for a minute, then veered off into another
corridor and proceeded to Dr. Albion’s office. He hoped to corner
the doctor and ask him what he’d found out; he himself had learned
nothing about his situation despite his continued observation of
Robert.

Seeing a group of nurses huddled outside the
doctor’s office, he slowed his pace, but kept on walking.

“He was such a nice man,” a sniveling older
woman said. “Always so courteous and charming, with a kind word for
everyone.”

A buxom young nurse wiped away the tears
streaming down her face. “I’ll miss him. Why did it have to
happen?”

A redheaded nurse shook her head. “I don’t
believe it.”

The older woman wiped her nose with a
lace-edged handkerchief. “We’re all having a hard time believing
he’s dead.”

“I’m not in denial. What I mean is I don’t
be-lieve he drove while intoxicated. He never drank.”

“Maybe he had problems and stopped to have a
few drinks on the way home,” a motherly looking nurse said in a
soft voice. “Even non-drinkers drink occa-sionally.”

The redhead crossed her arms beneath her
bosom. “Not Dr. Albion. He couldn’t drink—some sort of allergy to
alcohol.”

“What are you saying?” the older woman asked.
“That someone killed Dr. Albion?”

“Of course not,” the redhead answered. “We
all know he died in a car accident. It’s . . . oh, never mind. I
have to go back to work.”

The women dispersed. Bob left by way of a
side door and wound his way through the grounds to his car.

***

Bob parked down the block from the boarding
house, then spent the morning walking and thinking, trying to make
sense of his situation. He could feel the anger and fear work their
way up from deep inside him, and he missed the serenity he’d once
had.

He returned from his walk by way of the
alley. To avoid attracting his landlady’s attention, he opened the
gate wide enough to slide through, closed it soundlessly and
skirted the yard, staying in the shadow of the hedge. As he neared
the house, he caught a flicker of movement through his French
doors.

He winced. Ella must be nosing around his
room.

From inside the room came the rumbling of a
voice too deep to belong to the old woman, and the answering growl
of an even deeper voice.

Bob stopped short. Not Ella, then. Two
men.

With barely perceptible movements, Bob edged
closer to the house. Then he stopped, stilled his thoughts, stood
like stone.

He watched.

Listened.

The crickets ceased chirping. A few amber
leaves fell, sounding like raindrops in the silence. The men’s
voices seemed to grow louder.

“At least we finally found him,” the man with
the deep voice said.

“We didn’t find him, shit-for-brains,” the
baritone responded. “The computer geeks found him.” The baritone
climbed to a falsetto. “We can find anyone, anywhere, anytime.” It
dropped back to its normal register. “Assholes.”

Subdued sounds of a search floated out into
the garden.

“Fuck it,” Baritone said. “The papers aren’t
here.”

“Mr. Evans is going to be pissed. He wants
those papers and he wants Stark.”

“Well, fuck Evans, too.”

“What do we do now?”

“Wait until Stark gets back. I can hardly
wait to get my hands on him after all the trouble he’s caused
us.”

“I still can’t believe he’s been eluding us
for a month. He must be very good.”

“He’s not. Just lucky. According to Evans,
he’s a nothing.”

“Could be, but he was smart enough to have
given us the slip at the airport and again at the VA.”

“I thought for sure the funeral would have
flushed him out.”