Double Image (37 page)

“Ouch,” Tash said. “I’m going to need a couple of aerobics classes to get my back into shape after this.” She rose, massaged her spine, and got out of the car. But it was obvious that she wasn’t that creaky. An upward stretch of her arms accentuated her trim body. She had changed from her loose-fitting sweatsuit to a pair of blue slacks, a gray turtleneck sweater, and a jacket whose color resembled the raspberry tint of what she had previously been wearing — obviously a favorite color; it added a depth to her dark eyes and hair. When she stretched, she turned modestly away, so as not to emphasize her breasts in front of him, Coltrane assumed. No matter, that upward stretch and a slight twist this way and then that were a pleasure to behold, her body assuming the dancer’s grace she had exhibited when he first saw her, although Coltrane continued to have the uncanny feeling that he had first seen her long before that.

Watching in wonder, he suddenly found himself in darkness.

“What happened?” Tash asked in surprise.

“The garage opener’s overhead light is supposed to stay on for a minute after the door goes down, but it’s been cutting out much sooner. I’ll go over and turn on the switch.”

Footsteps scraping on concrete, he inched through the darkness and approached where he estimated the door to the house was. Reaching blindly, he touched the door and groped toward the switch on the right, all at once flinching from a shock, seeing a spark as a hand brushed past his and reached for the same switch.

“Oh my God,” Tash said, “I’m sorry.”

“Whoa. You really do give off static electricity.”

“I thought you were having trouble finding the switch. I was looking in that direction when the lights went off, so I figured it would be easier for me to . . . I really am sorry.”

When Coltrane turned on the light, he discovered he was startlingly close to her. Again, her beauty amazed him. Her subtle perfume filled his nostrils. Trying not to look flustered, he unlocked the door to the house and opened it, guiding her in. “Can I get you something?” He hoped that she wouldn’t notice that his voice was slightly unsteady. “More wine? Coffee? Something to eat? It’s close to dinnertime. I could make some—”

“The photographs.” Tash ignored the house and its unique furnishings, fixing her gaze on him.

“Of course. They’re the reason you’re here, after all.” He led the way downstairs, unlocked the vault, and pushed open its metal door. Cool air cascaded over them.

Tash hugged herself.

“That’s the way
I
felt at first,” Coltrane said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Will I?” Tash looked around at the austere shelves and blinked from the overhead glare.

Crossing the vault with her, he had never felt so aware of being alone with a woman.

En route, he had explained how he had happened to find the chamber. But she still wasn’t prepared when he freed the catches and pulled out the section of shelves, and she certainly wasn’t prepared when she entered the chamber and came face-to-face with her look-alike. It might have been the garish overhead lights that caused what happened next, but more likely, Coltrane thought, it was blood draining from Tash’s face that made her look abruptly pale.

She wavered. Afraid that she was going to collapse, Coltrane reached to catch her, then stopped the impulse when she regained her composure, standing rigidly still. He could only imagine the turmoil she must be suffering. For his part, as he looked from Tash toward the wall before her and the life-sized features of Rebecca Chance, he suffered a sanity-threatening unbalance. The photograph was Tash. Tash was the photograph. But it
wasn’t
, and
she
wasn’t. The face in the photograph was almost two-thirds of a century old.

“I . . .” Tash swallowed as if something blocked her throat. Her voice thickened. “How on earth is this possible?”

“That’s what I was hoping
you’d
tell
me
.”

With palpable effort, she turned from the photograph. “And you say there are
other
photographs?”

“Thousands of them. I was so absorbed by them that I never took the time to count them.”

“Show me.”

The distress in her eyes frightened him. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? This is more unsettling for you than I expected. Perhaps you should—”

“
I want to see them
.”

“Yes.” Coltrane felt powerless. “Whatever you want.”

He picked up the top box, suddenly remembered what was in it, set it aside, and picked up the next one, carrying it out to one of the shelves. Tash followed, stepping so close that he felt her shoulder against him as he opened the lid.

Rebecca Chance stepped out of waves onto a beach, just as Tash had stepped out of waves a few hours earlier.

Coltrane felt the air that Tash’s forced breathing displaced. In her need to look at them, she would probably have pushed him aside if he hadn’t stepped out of the way. Then the echo of his sideways movement dwindled, and the only sound in the vault was the smooth slide of photographs being hurriedly turned, one after the other after the other.

Totally preoccupied by
them
, Tash was equally oblivious to
him
. It gave him a chance to indulge his need to admire her.

“What’s in the first box?”

“Excuse me?”

Tash had reached the last photograph in the box so quickly and pivoted toward him so unexpectedly that he had been caught staring at her.

“You set a box aside before you picked up
this
one.”

“Did I? I don’t remember. I—”

“Why didn’t you want me to look inside it?”

“No special reason. The photographs in this one are more interesting is all. I—”

Tash reentered the vault. Before he could take a step to prevent her, she came determinedly back into view, carrying another box, and Coltrane had no doubt which box it was. The previous evening, after he had shown Jennifer the nudes of Rebecca Chance, he had put the box on top of the others rather than at the bottom, where he had found it.

Tash narrowed her eyes, as if she suspected he had tried to betray her. Then she opened the lid and straightened at the sight of Rebecca Chance’s naked body, the glistening chromium beads draped over her. Tash didn’t seem able to move. Slowly, with a manifest effort of will, she turned to the next photograph and the next. Because there weren’t any clothes, the thirties style of which would have identified the period during which the photographs had been taken, these images could as easily have been taken now, and could as easily have been of Tash — if that was how Tash looked naked.

Again she seemed paralyzed. But this time, when she finally moved, it was to look at Coltrane. “You were trying to protect my modesty?”

“Something like that. I wasn’t sure how comfortable you’d feel with me in the room while you looked at photographs of a naked woman, especially when that woman looks just like you.”

Tash studied him.

“I thought it would be sort of like looking at . . .”

“Myself?” she asked.

“It’s an awfully personal situation.”

“Thank you for respecting my feelings.”

Coltrane nodded, self-conscious.

She touched his hand. “Show me what’s in the other boxes.”

“YOU KEEP EMPHASIZING THIS ROCK FORMATION. Why do you think it’s important?” Tash asked.

“Because it reminds me of a cat arching its back,” Coltrane said.

“So?”

“The estate Packard gave you in his will is located near a town south of Acapulco called—”

“Espalda del Gato. I know. The name was in the documents Packard’s attorney sent me.”

“How’s your Spanish?”

“I see what you mean. ‘Spine of the cat.’ But that doesn’t prove the rock formation we’re looking at has anything to do with the village. It’s more likely a coincidence and this cliff along the ocean isn’t anywhere near the estate I inherited. For all we know, this cliff is in Southern California.”

“But it isn’t,” Coltrane said. “The other night I saw a movie Rebecca Chance was in. It’s called
Jamaica Wind
, and some parts of it were filmed on what is recognizably the Santa Monica beach, with the cliff behind it. But then all of a sudden, the location switches to a lush semitropical cliff-rimmed area along an ocean.”

“That description fits Acapulco,” Tash said.

“The movie has several cliff scenes that show the same rock formation: a cat arching its back.”

“You’re not exaggerating?”

“I swear they’re the same. A friend of mine who has access to
Jamaica Wind
is arranging to have a videotape made for me. When you see that tape, you’ll understand why I’m so sure. Other photographs in this box show Rebecca Chance in semitropical gardens similar to the ones in the movie.”

“Let me understand this. You’re saying that these photographs were taken in the same area where the movie was shot and possibly at the same time.”

“More than that. I’m saying I think the movie was shot at Espalda del Gato, on the estate Packard gave to you.”

“But why would . . . In the early thirties, it wasn’t common for movies to be shot on remote locations, was it?”

“Not at all,” Coltrane said. “The production companies liked to stay close to Los Angeles. Taking a movie crew to Acapulco would have been prohibitively expensive.”

“Then why . . .”

“Packard was an immensely wealthy man from a fortune he inherited at sixteen, when his parents died. These photographs make it obvious how fixated he was on Rebecca Chance. His total devotion to her can’t be mistaken. Suppose he became impatient with the limited ambitions of a movie she was being featured in.”

“
Jamaica Wind
.”

“Yes. Suppose he decided to become a secret financier for it. What if he hoped that an expensively mounted picture would attract more attention and boost her chances of becoming a star? Let’s assume he paid to transport a film crew to his Mexican estate.”

“And while he and Rebecca Chance were there, Packard took some of these photographs? I don’t know. That’s a lot of ‘what ifs.’”

“But it’s the only explanation that makes sense to me,” Coltrane said.

“It’s a tempting theory, I’ll give you that. Plus, it has the appeal of being romantic.” Tash rubbed the back of her neck, exhausted. “But it still doesn’t give me the answers I want. Why do Rebecca Chance and I . . .”

“There’s another name I haven’t mentioned. He’s connected to this in a way I haven’t been able to figure out. He produced Rebecca Chance’s final two movies. Then he disappeared not long after she did. Have you ever heard of anyone named Winston Case?”

Tash’s mouth opened in shock.

“You know the name?” Coltrane asked.

The dark of her eyes widened. “Winston Case?”

“Yes.”

“He was my grandfather!”

COLTRANE WAS SO STUNNED THAT HE WAS SURE HE HADN’T heard correctly. “
Your grandfather
?”

“That’s the name my mother told me. I never met him, so I have to take her word for it.”

“The name?”

“When I was a child, I noticed that a lot of my friends had grandparents, but I didn’t know what that meant. I asked my mother if I had grandparents, and she said, yes, everybody had grandparents but that mine weren’t with us any longer. Naturally, I wondered what she meant, and she finally found a way to explain to me, without disturbing me, that they were dead.”

“Winston Case.”

Tash nodded. “I memorized the name so I could tell it to my friends. To prove to them
I
once had grandparents, too.”

“But maybe you misremembered.”

“No, as I got older, I asked my mother what he was like. The name she referred to was always the same: Winston Case.”

“And who was your grandmother?”

“Esmeralda Gutiérrez.”

“Did your mother ever describe Winston Case as having been a film producer?”

“According to her, he was a carpenter. She remembered the family moving around a lot as he went from job to job, although I guess the word
family
makes it sound bigger than it was. There were only the three of them.”

“Where did this happen?” Coltrane asked.

“In Mexico.”

“An American working as an itinerant carpenter in Mexico?”

“Why not?”

“Well, for starters, as an American citizen, he could have brought his wife and daughter into the United States without any immigration problems. Given the difference in the standard of living, he could have taken better care of them here.”

“In the Depression?”

“You’ve got a point,” Coltrane said. “But surely if Winston Case had the money to produce films, he could have managed to hang on to enough resources to be comfortable during the Depression. He wouldn’t have had to go to Mexico and become a manual laborer.”

“Then maybe we’re not talking about the same Winston Case.”

“The coincidence is too much for me to accept. There’s got to be a connection between . . . Does your mother live in Los Angeles? I need to ask her about—”

“My mother’s dead.”

“. . . Oh.”

“She died from lung cancer three years ago.”

Coltrane didn’t speak for a moment. “I’m very sorry.” He felt as if a door in his mind had been shut. He struggled to open another one. “Yes.” Abruptly he reached for the box of nude photographs.

“
What are you doing
?” Tash asked.

He hurriedly opened the box and sorted through the naked images until he came to the first waist-up shot. Rebecca Chance’s breasts were prominent.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” Tash said.

“Does she look pregnant to you? I have a friend who’s convinced that . . .” He glanced at Tash and saw embarrassment and confusion in her eyes. “I know this is awkward. We’ve just barely met, and . . . I promise I’m doing this for a reason. Please, trust me. My friend pointed out that Rebecca Chance’s breasts aren’t the same in every photograph. They get fuller. The nipples get larger. That made my friend think that Rebecca Chance was pregnant when some of these pictures were taken. She was in great shape to begin with and she watched her weight, and she was far enough along for the hormones to be kicking in, but not far enough along for her to be demonstrably pregnant in other ways. Maybe that’s true. Hell, my friend’s a woman, but she isn’t a doctor. What do
I
know about this sort of thing? But suppose it’s true. What if . . . Could the reason you look so much like Rebecca Chance be . . .”