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.”
12
“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.”