More Deaths Than One Read Free Page A

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