Double Image (29 page)

“Oh?”

“This was
his
last picture, too. He disappeared after producing it.”

COLTRANE RETURNED TO PACKARD’S HOUSE AT TWO IN THE morning. His circles of confusion not only had come back but were more severe than ever. His mind was filled with a welter of overlapping blurs. Surely the police would have known that Rebecca Chance wasn’t the only person associated with
The Trailblazer
to disappear. Why hadn’t Winston Case’s disappearance
also
been noted in the newspaper? The two incidents would have reinforced each other and made a good story. Had the studio covered it up? Or had Winston Case’s “disappearance” been merely a retreat from the movie business, which would have been the same as vanishing from the face of the earth, as far as Hollywood was concerned.

In his kitchen, the red light on his answering machine was blinking.

Uneasy, he pressed the play button.

“Mitch, are you . . . I’m beginning to worry.” Jennifer sounded as if she’d just walked swiftly from somewhere or was having trouble restraining her emotions. “Have we got a problem? Duncan Reynolds phoned me at the magazine to ask when he could expect the issue that features your collaboration with Packard. He happened to mention that you’d talked to him from New Haven the day before and that you’d be back in Los Angeles last night. That was certainly news to me. Without him, I wouldn’t even have known that you have a telephone and an answering machine over there and what your number is. If you don’t want to see me, fine. I have no intention of crowding you. But whatever’s going on, we still have to work together. I need those photographs. You don’t have to bring them over. Just FedEx them. But for heaven’s sake, do
something
.”

“I APOLOGIZE,” Coltrane said the next morning.

Jennifer motioned him toward a chair in front of her desk, then closed the door to her office.

“Things have been a little hectic,” he continued. “I had to meet with Nolan. Then I went to see McCoy in the hospital.”

Jennifer’s stern blue eyes assessed him. “How is he?”

“In pain, but feisty as ever. If he keeps improving, his doctor’s going to release him in a couple of days.”

“Good,” she said flatly.

“And it looks as if the district attorney isn’t going to make trouble for me.”

“Excellent,” Jennifer said without inflection. “And sometime during the rest of the day, couldn’t you have found a chance to let me know about all these good things that were happening?”

“Well . . .”

“Maybe I’m not looking at this properly. Maybe I was foolish to think that it wasn’t just you but the two of us who ran from Ilkovic, that I had a right to hear what you just told me. As it happens, I already know about McCoy — because I went to see him. And I know about the district attorney — because I phoned Nolan.”

Coltrane raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I could have done this better. In New Haven, I got so involved in my memories about my grandparents that I felt too low to talk to anybody. When I got back . . . I’ve been trying to sort some things out and . . . Here are the photographs.” He set the portfolio on the desk.

“Thank you.”

“I feel as if somebody else took them.”

“But the fact is,
you
did, and they’re wonderful. A lot of terrible things have happened, Mitch, but that doesn’t mean you have to turn your back on the
good
things.”

Coltrane sighed. “Look, I know I was wrong not to keep in touch. I don’t want any tension between us. What do you say we go to dinner tonight? We’ll have that talk we said we were going to have. And maybe I’ll show you a surprise.”

AS COLTRANE HEADED UP A SHADOWY, tree-lined, curving street in Sherman Oaks, Jennifer looked at him, baffled. “Where are we going?”

“To the movies.”

“Up here?”

“It’s an out-of-the-way theater.”

“Well, you did say this was going to be a surprise. I might as well lie back and enjoy the ride.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Dinner had been at a place called the Natural Food Café — low-fat foods, no pesticides, no preservatives — a welcome change from Coltrane’s recent fast-food dietary assaults on his body. The grilled salmon, wild rice, and steamed vegetables had tasted wholesome and soothing.

His conversation with Jennifer had also been soothing, a lot of issues having been settled: his confusion about himself,
her
confusion about
him
.

“When I saw you that night — covered with mud and ashes and what looked like blood — when I saw what you had done to Ilkovic, I couldn’t . . . I felt as if I didn’t know you anymore.”

“I didn’t know myself.”

“And then I couldn’t get over that you’d misled me, that you hadn’t told me what you were planning to do.”

“I’m not sure I realized what I was planning until I was actually doing it. There’s a lot to be confused about.” He touched her hand. “The best thing I can suggest is that we share our confusion and try to move on together.”

Jennifer studied him for the longest time. “Yes.”

He stopped in front of the Tudor house on the street above the glinting valley. As Jennifer got out of the car, tightening her shawl against a chill evening breeze, she shook her head. “What are we doing here?”

Vincent Toler, wearing a blue cashmere pullover, emerged from the house, his cane clicking on the concrete walkway.

Jennifer looked increasingly bewildered.

“Good evening, Mitch.” The elderly man sounded cheerful.

“Good evening, Vincent.”

“And this is Jennifer?” Vincent offered his wizened hand. “Welcome.”

Jennifer shook his hand, not sure what was going on. “Thank you. Vincent . . .”

“Toler. I understand you’re a movie fan.”

Jennifer turned toward Coltrane, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “You mean we really
are
going to see a movie? You’re coming with us, Vincent?”

“No, the two of you are coming with
me
.”

Jennifer immediately looked baffled again as Vincent guided them toward the house.

“I collect old movies,” Vincent explained. “Last night, Mitchell watched
The Trailblazer
with me.”

“I’m beginning to understand. Over dinner, I heard about . . .” Jennifer looked at Coltrane. “So this is where you saw it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to be predictable and boring.”

“You’re definitely not that.”

They entered Vincent’s living room, which he explained had been converted into a screening area for a once-famous director who had owned the house in the fifties.

“What was his name?” Jennifer asked. When Vincent told her, she shook her head. “I don’t think I ever heard of him.”

“His specialty was comedies. His sense of humor fell out of fashion.
Sic transit gloria
.” Vincent’s tone was filled with melancholy. “At least George B. Seitz died before
he
fell out of fashion.”

“Mitch told me how much he enjoyed
The Trailblazer
. He made me wish I’d seen it with him. Now that I know the movie we’re going to watch, I can’t wait.”

“Oh,” Vincent said. His Vandyke beard emphasized the drop of his chin. “I hope I’m not going to disappoint you.”

“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
.”

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.”

“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.