The Bloodwater Mysteries: Doppelganger (11 page)

“Perfect. Anyway, ten years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Kay offered a reward for finding their daughter and grandson, but all they got was a bunch of false leads. The reward is still good, though, even though they’ve pretty much given up hope.”

“It seems weird that you didn’t hear about this reward before,” Brian said. “You’d think they’d have it posted on the Internet.”

“I asked her about that. I guess there was a lot of publicity the first couple of years after Vera and Bryce disappeared, but now it’s just on that missing-kids site, and they don’t post rewards there. Anyway, I said, ‘I interviewed Bryce’s father a few days ago. I wonder why he didn’t mention the reward.’

“Mrs. Kay got really upset then. She couldn’t believe I’d talked to Lance Doblemun. ‘That man is evil,’ she told me. She doesn’t believe her daughter abducted Bryce. She and her husband think something awful happened to both of them, and that Lance Doblemun had something to do with it.”

Brian said, “I could believe it. He looked capable of anything.”

Roni sat down at the table and propped her chin on her hands. “Your turn. What did you find out about Bryce Doblemun?”

“I went to my Korean Culture class this morning,” Brian said. “I know how to say
squid
in Korean now…”

“Please don’t,” Roni said.

“…and I met a girl who says she knows a kid who looks exactly like me.”

louella

Brian grinned as he set the casserole on the table.

“Ta-da,” he said. “Pizza hotdish.”

“I’m not eating a bite until you tell me more about this doppelganger,” Roni said.

“All in good time, Holmes.” Brian scooped servings of hotdish onto their plates. It was a little loose. “Maybe we should have used bowls,” he said.

“It does look a bit like, um, pizza soup. What are those soggy white squares on top?”

“That’s the crust.”

“Hmm.”

They sat down, but neither of them made a move to eat.

“I’m waiting,” Roni said.

“It might be nothing,” Brian said. “But a girl in my Korean class thought she knew me. She said I was a dead ringer for this kid she met at the Korean Cultural Center in St. Paul.”

“A kid named Bryce?”

“A kid named Dak-Ho. His English name is Billy. Only she didn’t
know exactly where he lived. But I bet if we went to the Korean Cultural Center we could—”

He was interrupted by the doorbell.

“I wonder who that is,” he said.

Roni went to the window and peeked out past the blinds.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

“What? Who is it?” Brian ran to the window.

“Don’t let her see you!” Roni said. The woman standing on the front steps was nearly six feet tall, a good three hundred pounds, about sixty years old, with an imperious nose, a slash of red lipstick, jeweled eyeglasses, and an oversize brocade purse. But her most prominent feature was a cloud of curly, unnaturally bright orange hair.

“She’s the woman I saw at the library,” Roni said. The woman rang the doorbell again, this time holding it down for several seconds.

“What do you think we should do?” Brian asked.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Roni said. “Stay out of sight.”

The woman was pressing the doorbell for the third time. Roni ran to the front door, took a deep breath, and opened it. She and the woman stared at each other for about six heartbeats. Then the woman said, “I’m looking for a young man named Brian Bain.”

“Brian?” Roni put on her puzzled face.

“Young lady, I know the boy lives here. I have it on good authority.”

“Really? From who?”

“If you must know, I spoke with several persons, including your next-door neighbor. Are you his sister?”

“Cousin,” Roni said. “Why are you looking for Brian?”

The woman regarded Roni the way she might look at a stain on a carpet. For a moment, Roni thought the woman was going to shove her aside and ransack the house, but she seemed to get control of herself and said, “It is a personal matter, but I can tell you this. There is a great deal of money involved, and your cousin might well benefit.”

“Who are you?” Roni asked.

“My name is Louella Doblemun,” the woman said.

“Doblemun? Are you by any chance related to
Lance
Doblemun?”

Louella Doblemun’s eyes bulged and her red lips fell open. “How do you know my son?” she asked.

“Why are you looking for Brian?” Roni countered.

“Young lady—”

“Look, he’s not here. Brian and his father went to Tierra del Fuego to study penguins.”

“Oh. Well.” Mrs. Doblemun leaned forward and looked suspiciously past Roni into the house.

“Do you want to leave a message?”

The woman ignored Roni’s question. “Tell me, the boy’s mother, is she a small woman, blue eyes, with a pinched face and a whiny voice?”

Brian’s mother looked nothing like that at all. Mrs.
Doblemun must have been describing Vera Doblemun, her daughter-in-law.

“That doesn’t sound like her,” Roni said. Looking past Louella Doblemun, she noticed a big silver car with tinted windows parked on the street. She could see the shape of a man sitting in the passenger seat, but she couldn’t make him out clearly.

Mrs. Doblemun asked, “When will they be back from—where did you say?”

“Tierra del Fuego.”

“Hmph! When do you expect them to return?”

“Not for another month,” Roni said.

Once again, the woman squared her shoulders as if she were about to charge into the house. Roni braced herself. “You do know that Mrs. Bain is a policewoman, right?” she said quickly.

Louella Doblemun’s shoulders sagged. “I see. Well, then. We’ll be back.” She turned and lumbered back to her car. Roni closed the door and ran back toward the kitchen, almost crashing into Brian, who had been listening from around the corner.

“Did you see who was in the car with her?” he asked.

“I couldn’t make him out, but I bet I could guess.”

“Well, I could see him from the kitchen window. It was—”

Roni finished his sentence for him. “Lance Doblemun.”

crazy mirror

“So Lance Doblemun and his mother think you’re Bryce, and they’re both way scary, and the real Bryce is living in St. Paul, and—”

“Wait a second—I just said a kid who
looks
like me lives in St. Paul.”

“A kid who
could
be Bryce Doblemun lives in St. Paul. I think we should check it out.”

Brian got up from the table and went to the window. Louella Doblemun’s car was still parked in front of the house. “What are they
doing
out there?”

“Probably figuring out how to capture you.”

“Shut
up.
”

“I don’t think she believed me that you were in Tierra del Fuego.”

“What if they sit out there forever? We’ll never be able to leave.”

“We won’t starve. We’ve got pizza soup.”

Brian returned to the table and stared down at his plate. He had been able to eat only a few bites. Roni had stopped at one.

“The first time I made it, it was pretty good,” he said.

“Maybe if you hadn’t put so much…I don’t know…
everything
in it.”

“I guess I’m kind of like my dad,” Brian said. He went to look out the window again. “Hey, they’re leaving.”

“Good. Tell you what. It’s only seven o’clock. We could drive up to St. Paul and check out the Korean Center. Maybe somebody there will recognize you—I mean
him
—and tell us where he lives. We could be home in a couple of hours.”

“Sure, if we had a car.”

“Maybe it’s time to call in the reserves,” Roni said.

“We have reserves?”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Darwin Dipstick muttered as he pulled out onto the highway in his tow truck. Roni and Brian were riding on the seat beside him.

“How many hours did you say it would take to clean up your junkyard?” Roni asked. She had promised Darwin that she and Brian would help him clean up his junkyard if he would give them a ride up to St. Paul. She also got him to promise to fix Hillary’s axle.

“It’s not a junkyard. Those are rare and valuable auto parts.”

“Well, Brian and I will be sure to treat them like precious gems as we dig them out of the weeds and throw them into neat, highly organized piles.”

“Are there any
snakes
there?” Brian asked.

“I got this bull snake living under the fifty-four Ford
chassis,” Darwin said. “Maybe a few garter snakes back there, too.”

Roni groaned. What had she gotten herself into?

Brian said, “Got any tunes in this truck?”

Darwin pressed a button on the stereo and the cab of the truck exploded with the raucous 1970s rock ’n’ roll of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!” Brian shouted over the din. Darwin grinned. Outnumbered, Roni sank lower in the front seat and braced herself for an hour of high-volume dinosaur rock.

By the time they hit St. Paul, Roni figured she’d lost about 10 percent of her hearing.

“Where is this place?” Darwin asked, turning down the volume slightly.

Roni pretended she couldn’t hear him.
“What?”

Darwin turned the stereo off and repeated his question.

Roni, looking at the map, said, “Get off at the Snelling Avenue exit and turn right. It’s just a couple of miles.”

Darwin exited the freeway.

“More tunes!” Brian yelled.

“No more tunes!” Roni said. “My ears are toast.”

Darwin laughed.

Roni watched the street signs go by. Without the map she’d be completely lost. St. Paul was not exactly New York City, but compared with Bloodwater it was enormous.
Roni read the street signs as they drove up Snelling Avenue, checking their progress on the map.

“Wait! Stop! Pull over!” she said.

Darwin pulled over to the curb. “What? Are we there?”

“We just passed Blair Avenue!”

“So? I thought you said this place was on Snelling.”

Roni turned to look at Brian. “The woman in the green car lives on Blair.”

“What woman?” Darwin said.

“We have to check her out,” Roni said.

Darwin objected. “Hey, I said I’d take you to this Korean joint. You didn’t say anything about going visiting.”

“Just a drive-by,” Roni said. She pulled out her notebook. “Thirty-seven twenty Blair Avenue. That can’t be too far.”

Darwin rolled his eyes and said something under his breath, then put the tow truck in gear and made a U-turn. Moments later, they were driving down Blair Avenue, searching for number 3720. It was starting to get dark, and the addresses were hard to see.

“There, that white house,” said Roni, pointing at a small two-story house on the left side of the street.

“You can read the address from here?” Darwin said.

“I recognize the car out front. Slow down.”

The house itself was perfectly ordinary looking, with white siding, a little flower garden, and a neatly trimmed lawn.
A long-haired kid sat on the front steps under the porch light adjusting the wheels of a skateboard.

The kid looked up and Brian saw his face.

There are moments when the world twists upside down, when you can’t believe what you’re seeing, when you feel like you’re in free fall without a parachute and everything you think you know makes no sense at all. Brian was having one of those moments.

The kid sitting on the steps had long black hair and was wearing a baseball cap backward. He had a round face, dusky-gold skin, dark eyes, and an earring in his left ear. Nothing unusual in all that—except that his face was Brian’s face. Exactly. Identical.

Feeling as if he were in a dream, Brian climbed out of the tow truck and crossed the street. The kid with the skateboard watched him approach. When he was about five feet away, Brian halted and stared.

It was like looking at himself in a crazy mirror, one that gave him long hair and an earring. He liked the long hair. He loved the earring.

The kid gave a slight laugh and said, “Hey, bro. What’s up?”

dak-ho

Roni had never thought about it before, but give Brian an earring and get him to grow his hair long, and he had cute potential. The kid with the skateboard looked like a hipper, more sophisticated version of Brian. She followed Brian up the walk and heard him say, “Dak-Ho?”

The long-haired version of Brian laughed and said, “Dude, that’s my Korean name.”

“I’m Brian,” said Brian.

“I know who you are, bro.”

“You do?”

“Sure.”

Darwin, standing just behind Roni, asked, “Who’s the clone?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” She stepped up beside Brian. Might as well cut to the chase. “Are you Bryce Doblemun?” she asked.

The kid gave Roni a long, suspicious look.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Roni Delicata.”

“She’s my friend,” Brian said.

“What about him?” the kid said, looking at Darwin.

“That’s Darwin. He gave us a ride up here. He’s okay.”

The kid thought for a moment, then shrugged. “My name is Billy Kim,” he said. “I’m your twin bro, bro.”

Brian stood and stared, speechless.

“You aren’t Bryce Doblemun?” Roni said.

“Never heard of him,” said Billy Kim.

“How do you know you two are brothers?” Roni asked.

“My mom told me. Besides—just look at us!”

“Isn’t your mom Vera Doblemun?”

“I told you, I don’t know any Doblemuns.”

“Then who is your mom?” Roni asked.

Billy looked at Brian. “Is she always so pushy?”

“Yep,” Brian said. “And she never stops asking questions until she gets the answers.”

“My mom is my mom,” Billy said to Roni. “Her name is Kyung-Soon.”

“Kyung-Soon is your adoptive mom?” Roni asked.

“No, she’s my real mom.” He looked at Brian. “I mean,
our
real mom.”

This situation was getting weirder by the moment. “You mean your real-biological-from-Korea mom?”

Billy nodded.

Roni looked over at Brian. He looked pale, as if he were about to topple over.

“My first mom?” Brian finally whispered.

“
Our
mom,” Billy reminded him.