The Bloodwater Mysteries: Doppelganger (6 page)

He waved back.

“Nice to see you again,” she said, and she left the room.

Brian stood still.
Again?
What was that about? Had she been at the Korean language camp last summer? No way—he would have remembered her.

She must have him confused with somebody else.

Halfway back to Bloodwater, Roni got sick of following the little twisty back roads and turned onto Highway 61, the main highway from the Twin Cities to Bloodwater. The four-lane highway was scary, with cars and trucks whizzing past her, but it was a lot faster. She had only about fifteen miles to go when she noticed a sluggish feeling in Hillary’s handlebars. Half a mile later a vibration set in, followed by a flapping sound. She pulled over to the shoulder and gazed bleakly at the front tire as it released its last gasp of air.

“This is not good,” she said. Soybean fields stretched out on either side of the road. She took out her cell phone and checked for a signal. Three bars. That was good. But who to call? She didn’t think Darwin Dipstick would be inclined to drive out to save her. She would have to call a garage in Hastings, which was only a few miles away, and hope that they could patch the tire again.

She was about to call directory assistance when a car pulled over to the shoulder. The passenger door opened and Brian Bain stepped out.

“Tire troubles, Holmes?”

Roni could have hugged him, but she resisted.

“Nothing a patch and a little air can’t fix, Watson. What are you doing here?”

“We’re driving home from my Korean class. I thought you were supposed to stay off the main highway.”

“I was,” Roni said.

Brian’s dad got out of the car. “Roni. I see you are in a pneumatic quandary.” He opened his trunk and pulled out a large aerosol can. “Would a shot of Flat-B-Gone help?”

Roni drove most of the way back to Bloodwater on the shoulder, keeping her speed below twenty-five. Brian and his dad followed. Mr. Bain was concerned that Roni’s tire would go flat again. The Flat-B-Gone had reinflated and sealed the tire, but it was a temporary fix, at best.

Brian wanted to ride with Roni, but Roni hadn’t brought an extra helmet, so that was out. It was driving him crazy not to be able to talk to her about her trip to Minneapolis. When they got to Darwin Dipstick’s garage, Brian jumped out of the car and told his dad he’d walk home from there.

“So what’s the story?” he asked Roni.

Roni pulled off her helmet and shook out her hair. “I thought you didn’t care about the Doblemuns,” she said.

“I don’t. But I’m curious. Did you find the house?”

“Let me talk to Darwin first, then I’ll tell you what I found.”

Roni’s new tire had arrived that afternoon. Darwin
promised to install it first thing in the morning. As Brian walked Roni home, she told him what she had learned.

“The address turned out to be a vacant lot. The house burned down nine years ago.”

“Oh.”

“But I found out where Mr. Lance Doblemun lives. Guess.”

“Tierra del Fuego?”

“According to Mrs. Irma Kelly, he lives in Pepin,” Roni said.

“Pepin, Wisconsin?” Pepin was only about thirty miles away, just on the other side of the river.

“Exactly. I’m going there to find him, first thing in the morning—as soon as Darwin puts on my new tire. And you have to come with me.”

“I do? Why?”

“I promised Irma Kelly that I wouldn’t go alone.”

go back lane

“How come you never let me drive?” Brian shouted in Roni’s ear.

“Because you’re not old enough, because you don’t have a license, and because I’m a better driver,” Roni said over her shoulder.

“How do you know?”

“I just do.” Roni had shown Brian how to ride Hillary a few weeks earlier, letting him tool around in an empty church parking lot. Now she was wishing she hadn’t. The kid wouldn’t leave her alone.

“I think I’m very talented,” Brian said. “Like Evel Knievel.”

“That does
not
make me want you in the driver’s seat. Anyway, we’re already here.” She pointed at the green sign welcoming them to Pepin, Wisconsin. According to the sign, 883 people lived there. Roni cruised slowly down the main thoroughfare. Pepin was a typical river town, with the highway serving as the main street, a mix of businesses and houses on each side, and a bunch of side streets poking out from it like legs on a centipede.

“What now?” Brian asked.

“Now we ask somebody,” Roni said as she pulled into a convenience store/gas station and parked. “There are only a few hundred people here. If we ask enough of them, we’re bound to find somebody who knows Lance Doblemun.”

They climbed off of Hillary.

“Nice butt massage,” said Brian, rubbing his hind end with both hands. Roni’s rear was a little numb, too. Forty minutes on a Vespa was a whole lot of shaking.

“I’ll just run in and ask the clerk if he knows any Doblemuns,” Roni said. “You stay here and guard Hillary.”

“Guard her from what?”

“Thieves, vandals…porcupines.”

“Why porcupines?”

“I don’t need another flat tire. Watch out for sharp, pokey objects of all kinds.”

Inside the store, three men wearing Green Bay Packers caps were gathered at the counter chatting with the clerk. Roni waited for them to finish their business so she could talk to the clerk, a hefty woman with three chins and a cap of frizzy blond hair. After about two minutes it became apparent that the men were not there to buy anything—they were just talking.

“Excuse me,” Roni said.

They all turned to look at her.

“I’m trying to find someone, and I was hoping you could help me,” she said to the clerk.

“Who are you looking for, dear?”

“A man named Lawrence Doblemun. He might use the name Lance Doblemun.”

“Doblemun. Hmm.” She stroked her chins. “He lives here in Pepin?”

“I think so.”

“Bert, you know any Doblemuns hereabouts?”

One of the men tipped his hat back and scratched under the bill. “I know a Dobbins, and a Davidson, and a Duggan. Any of them do ya?”

Roni shook her head.

One of the other men said, “We got a fella named Monk. If there was two of him, you’d have Double Monk.”

The third man said, “I used to know a guy named Lance, only his last name was Boyle. Lance Boyle.”

Realizing that they were playing with her, Roni felt her face grow red. “Thanks anyway.” She turned and went back outside, trying not to let their chuckles bother her.

Brian was not guarding Hillary. Great. She looked around and found him at the other end of the building, standing at a pay phone. He was writing something on his hand.

“Hey!” she yelled. “I’m about to steal this here motorcycle!”

Brian looked up, then trotted over to her. “Any luck?” he asked.

“No. We’ll have to ask someplace else…. What are you grinning about?”

Brian shoved his hand in her face. Something was written on his palm in blue ink.

“Ten twenty-six Goatback Lane,” Roni read. “What’s that?”

“Lawrence Doblemun’s address. It was in the Pepin phone book.”

Brian loved to one-up Roni. She would get all scowly and sarcastic for a few minutes, and then she would say something like “I was about to check the phone book myself,” which he knew was probably not true.

“I wonder where Goatback Lane is,” he said.

“I suppose I could go back inside and ask,” Roni said, but she showed no inclination to do so. Brian got the feeling that the people inside the store had not been friendly.

He said, “Since the address is written on my hand, I’ll ask.” He headed into the store, where he found three old guys and a lady clerk scratching off lottery tickets.

“Any luck?” Brian said.

“Not hardly,” said one of the men, ripping his ticket in half.

Brian held out his hand, showing the address he had written there.

“What’s that you got there, son? A tattoo?”

“An address I’m looking for. Anybody know where Goatback Lane is?”

“Just down the street from Hogbelly Hollow,” said one of the men. Everybody laughed, including Brian.

“What’s on Goatback Lane?” asked the woman behind the counter.

“I’m visiting a friend,” Brian said.

“I didn’t think
anybody
lived on Goatback,” said the man who had ripped up the lottery ticket. “Nothing up there but coulees, bluffs, and rattlesnakes.”

“It’s not here in Pepin?” Brian asked.

“Pepin
County
, maybe,” he said.

Brian took out his blue felt-tip pen and poised it over his forearm. “How do I get there?”

“Are you sure you wrote it down right?” Roni yelled over her shoulder.

“Yes,” Brian yelled back. “But I can’t guarantee they gave me the right directions. We should have seen the sign for Goatback Lane by now.”

They had taken a road called CC to a road called XX to yet another road called, simply, Z. For some reason, Wisconsin named its county roads with letters instead of names or numbers.

“They said there was a sign,” Brian said.

“I haven’t seen anything but deer trails and poison ivy,” Roni said.

“Slow down—what’s that?”

Roni throttled back as they came to a road leading off to the left. She came to a complete stop. The road was marked by a barely legible sign on a rusted metal post:

“What do you think?” Roni asked.

“I get the feeling that Lance Doblemun is not a people person.”

“One way to find out.” Roni revved the engine and they turned onto Goatback Lane, a steep, twisted dirt road that climbed slowly but relentlessly toward the top of the bluffs.

squirrel skulls

About a mile later, Roni and Brian came to a driveway marked by a sagging mailbox with several small skulls nailed to its post.
L. DOBLEMUN
was painted on the side of the box. Brian hopped off the bike for a closer look.

“Squirrel skulls,” he said.

“He must not like rodents,” Roni said.

The driveway was little more than a pair of tire tracks weaving through the woods, so narrow that if a car came from the opposite direction they would be forced into the tangled brush lining the trail. At one point they were stopped by a tree trunk about six inches in diameter that had fallen across the trail. They had to get off the Vespa and lift it over one wheel at a time to proceed.

“Tell me again what we’re doing here,” Brian said.

“We’re here to see if Lance Doblemun was your first adoptive father,” Roni said. “Maybe you’ll recognize him.”

“The guy I remember was jolly. I don’t think he’d nail squirrel skulls to his mailbox.”

The driveway ended in a clearing about two hundred feet across. Roni stopped her Vespa at the edge of the woods. At the
far side of the clearing was a dilapidated mobile home, once a cheerful shade of yellow, the paint now peeling from the bare aluminum like skin from a bad sunburn. An equally dilapidated pickup truck was parked in front, next to a smoking metal barbecue.

“Just in time for lunch, I guess,” said Roni, turning off the engine.

The mobile home door banged open and a tall, thin, bearded man came out carrying what looked like a slab of meat.

“What’s he got?” Roni whispered.

“Looks like a dead squirrel,” Brian said.

The man lifted the lid of the barbecue and laid the dead squirrel—or whatever it was—on the hot grill, then went back inside, wiping his hands on his faded coveralls.

“Does he look familiar?” Roni asked.

“I can’t tell,” Brian said. “He’s got that beard covering half his face.”

“I suppose we could ask him to shave it off.”

“Right.”

Roni put down the kickstand and hopped off the Vespa. “You stay here. I’ll go talk to him.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I’ll improvise.” She marched across the field to the mobile home. She could hear the man humming to himself inside—some sort of geriatric rock ’n’ roll, seriously off-key. Dozens of empty beer cans littered the trampled grass around the mobile home. Roni rapped on the door.
The humming instantly stopped. Roni stepped back a few paces, waiting.

The door banged open. The bearded man stood there holding a cast-iron frying pan in one hand.

“Who are YOU?” he said in a voice like a shovel full of gravel.

Roni had interviewed irascible older men before. She knew better than to show fear. But in fact, she was terrified. Up close, Lance Doblemun looked in even rougher shape than his paint-deprived home. His eyes were red, his teeth were stained brown, his left eye pointed in the wrong direction, his clothing was filthy, and his odor—it took a second for it to hit her—was like bad cheese on week-old fish.

Clearly, he was not prepared to receive guests.

“I’m Roni Delicata,” Roni said. “Are you Mr. Lawrence Doblemun?”

“What if I am? And it’s
Lance,
not
Lawrence.
”

A second wave of stink hit Roni’s nostrils, one she recognized immediately: alcohol. Lance Doblemun was thoroughly pickled.

Roni took a few steps back, keeping about six feet between them. She thought she could outrun him, but she wasn’t sure.

“If you’re the county assessor, you can just stick your fascist tax bill where the sun don’t shine, missy. I told them, next government man sets foot on my land I’m gonna put the Oshkosh b’gosh on ’em.”