More Deaths Than One by Pat Bertram Read Free Book Online

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.”
    “Maybe he didn’t see the obituary.”
    “We’ve got him now,” Baritone said with great
satisfaction. “All we have to do is wait for him to show.”
    “You think so?” Deep Voice sounded dubious.
He paced the room, but paused briefly to glance out the French
doors, giving Bob a good look at his face. “If you want to know
what I think—”
    “I don’t,” Baritone interrupted.
    Bob stood in the shadows of the hedge for
another five minutes. He heard nothing more than the small,
restless sounds of men bored with waiting, but he did catch
fleeting glimpses of them as they moved about the room.
    Very slowly, he inched backward. When he
finally left the yard, he sauntered down the alley and around the
block to where he’d parked his car. He’d almost reached the vehicle
when it occurred to him that the VW could be under surveillance.
Not wanting to remain in the area long enough to find out, he kept
walking toward Colfax.
    His brain churned. How had they traced him?
Through the car? His traveler’s checks? The taxicab company? What
did it matter; in this age of computers, there is no privacy. As
the man had said, they could find anyone, anywhere, anytime.
    Striding along Colfax, Bob passed a