“Disappoint me?”’
“You won’t be seeing The Trailblazer.”
Coltrane frowned. “We won’t? But I thought-”
“I know many collectors of vintage films. I made some phone calls this morning and managed to track down the other movie you’re interested in.”
“You’re kidding.” Coltrane sat forward. “You’re telling me you actually found a copy of-”
“Jamaica Wind.”
19
THE PROJECTOR WHIRRED, the screen glinted with a black-and-white drawing of palm trees, and South Seas music started playing. Beneath the title, the director’s name appeared.
“Never heard of this man, either,” Jennifer said.
“For good reason, I’m told.” In the darkness, Vincent came back from the projection booth. “The collector friend who loaned me these reels says that this director didn’t have a quarter of the skills that Seitz had.”
“Apparently not,” Jennifer said. “Hawaiian music in Jamaica? God help us.”
Coltrane gripped his chair when Rebecca Chance’s name appeared.
Cameraman.
Screenwriters.
Produced by…
“Winston Case?” Jennifer sounded surprised. “Wasn’t he the first owner of…”
“Packard’s house.” Coltrane kept his gaze fixed on the screen. “Rebecca bought it from him. And Packard bought it from her.”
“And took thousands of pictures of her,” Jennifer said. “What on earth was going on?”
“I’m hoping this movie will help us find out.”
When Coltrane had developed his prints updating Packard’s series about L.A. houses, he had gone over each of them with a magnifying glass, searching for the slightest imperfection in the darkroom process: a bubble in the emulsion, a water spot. His concentration had been intense. But it didn’t equal the intensity with which he now stared at the images before him. Vincent was right: The direction of Jamaica Wind was clumsy compared with Seitz’s work on The Trailblazer. Coltrane didn’t care. The movie’s faults didn’t matter. Rebecca Chance was in this movie. That was what mattered.
The plot was about English pirates fighting to unseat a corrupt British governor-general. The lean, dashing, mustached hero alternated sword fighting with kissing the heroine, the daughter of the governor-general’s aide.
“This is terrible,” Jennifer said.
Coltrane concentrated harder on the screen.
“Look at that beach,” Jennifer said. “It obviously isn’t in Jamaica. It looks more like Santa Monica. I think I see the curve of Malibu in the background.”
The camera kept whirring, images glinting.
“But wait a minute,” Jennifer said. “Now it’s a different beach. That tropical foliage isn’t just a bunch of ferns and palm trees they stuck in the ground. They’re real. Where do you suppose… I bet they went down to Mexico.”
“There she is.” Coltrane sat up.
Rebecca Chance emerged from a cluster of vines and totally dominated the screen. She turned a piece of junk into a work of art. She made the director’s clumsiness become insignificant.
Coltrane felt as if a hand pressed upon his chest, but the sensation wasn’t threatening – it was stimulating. Rebecca Chance wore a flower-patterned sarong that exposed about the same amount of cleavage as the heroine’s, but the heroine looked like a boy compared to her. Rebecca’s lush dark hair hung down to her bare shoulders. Her left leg was exposed to her exquisite knee. Her feet were splendidly bare. It turned out that she, too, was in love with the hero and was spying for him. A chase through a tropical forest reached a climax when Rebecca found herself trapped on a cliff above the sea and escaped by making a spectacular dive into the ocean. Later, when she waded from the ocean, Coltrane inwardly gasped at the parallel between this scene and the scene in The Trailblazer where she was thrown from a cliff and waded from a river. Both scenes were similar to some of the photographs that Packard had taken of her rising from the ocean, the same erotic association with water and waves. In the end, she was killed when she showed the hero and his men an underwater passage into the fortress. The hero and his men displayed appropriate grief and anger, pressed on with their assault, defeated the governor-general, and freed his prisoners, one of whom was the heroine. Hugs and kisses. Sad words about Rebecca’s passing. Homilies about freedom. Music up. Fade out.
“What junk,” Jennifer said.
“What a beautiful woman,” Coltrane whispered.
“I’m sorry, Mitch. I didn’t hear you.”
“I said, she has incredible screen presence.”
“No question. She could have been a star.”
As Coltrane continued to stare at the blank screen, Vincent turned on the lights, then excused himself. “I’ll go make some coffee.”
The moment he was out of earshot, Jennifer told Coltrane, “But we didn’t learn anything to help us understand why Packard took so many pictures of her, then hid them.”
“We didn’t learn that, but we did learn something. Did you recognize the cliff she dove from?”
“Should I have?”
“It’s the same cliff she stood on when Packard photographed her,” Coltrane said.
“One cliff’s pretty much the same as-”
“No, this one has a distinct rock formation farther along its edge. It reminds me of a cat arching its back.”
“I didn’t notice any rock formation in any of the photographs of her on the cliff.”
“I guess I’ve had more time to study them.”
Jennifer frowned. “You saw a similar rock formation on the cliff in this movie? You watched it that closely?”
“To make sure, I’ll ask Vincent to replay the scene.”
“Yes,” Jennifer said without enthusiasm, “by all means, ask him to replay it.”
20
“I HAD A GOOD TIME,” Coltrane said. To go to dinner, he had picked Jennifer up at the Southern California offices on Melrose. Now he stopped next to Jennifer’s BMW in the almost-deserted parking area behind the building. “I’m glad we finally had a chance to talk.”
“We need to talk more,” she said.
“I know what you mean. What Ilkovic put us through, I don’t think we’ll ever get over.”
“The person I had in mind was Rebecca Chance. We need to talk more about your interest in her.”
“How about tomorrow night?” Coltrane asked. “New Year’s Eve.”
“I was wondering if you were going to suggest doing anything.”
“An appropriate night. The end of the past. The start of the future.”
“But what about the present?”
They studied each other.
Coltrane leaned close, kissing her gently on the lips, feeling the brush of his skin against hers. When he eased back, he gazed into her eyes, assessing her reaction, wondering if he’d done the right thing.
“That’s something else we haven’t done in a long time,” Jennifer said.
When he kissed her a second time, her mouth opened. Her tongue found his. With her body against him, he felt a tingle flood through him.
“Anything special you’d like to do tomorrow night?” he asked.
“More of what we’re doing now.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Maybe I’ll even distract you from Rebecca Chance.”
“Jealous of her?”
“You talked an awful lot about her tonight,” Jennifer said.
“The photographs of her don’t make you curious?”
“The only person I’m curious about is you.”
They kissed again, hungrily.
Jennifer broke away, breathless. “What time tomorrow?”
“I’m suddenly thinking about right now.”
“Can’t.” Jennifer inhaled. “The end of the year or not, I have an eight o’clock breakfast with my most important advertiser. I have to look alert.”