Double Image (42 page)

JENNIFER LOOKED SMALL IN THE DARKNESS. In place of last night’s Armani dress, she was wearing faded jeans, an orange
Southern California Magazine
sweatshirt, and a matching baseball cap — the same outfit she had worn the day she set out with Coltrane to find Rudolph Valentino’s Falcoln Lair. The memory made him ache.

“Hi.”

“. . . Hi.”

“You’re sure it’s safe to come in?” Jennifer’s eyes looked red, as if she’d been crying.

“The coast is clear.”

She entered uneasily. The way she peered around made it seem that everything was strange to her, the house unfamiliar.

“Can I get you something?”

“Yeah, a little arsenic sounds good.”

Coltrane didn’t know what to say to that and used the motion of closing and locking the door to mask his awkwardness.

“I’ll settle for scotch.”

Coltrane couldn’t help remembering that scotch was what Tash had wanted the previous night. Reaching the kitchen seemed to take forever. But at least it was motion; at least it, too, masked his awkwardness, as did preparing her drink.

“You’re not going to have one with me?” Jennifer asked.

“No. I’ve got a lot of work to do in the darkroom, and I don’t want to get sleepy.”

“This is tough enough as it is. I’m not sure I can get through this if you make me drink alone.”

Coltrane’s heart went out to her. “Of course. Why not? Let’s have a drink together.” He got out another glass, poured the scotch, added ice, and put in some water, more motions for which he was grateful.

He raised his glass and clicked it against hers. “Cheers.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Maybe ‘Here’s mud in your eye.’ But definitely not ‘Cheers.’” Jennifer took a long swallow, made a face, as if the drink was too strong, and looked at him. She was standing exactly where Tash had stood the previous night. “Talk.”

“I’m not sure how to begin.”

“As long as it’s the truth, however you tell it will be fine. I’ll make it easy for you. The way you looked at her last night — are you in love with her?”

Coltrane glanced at his hands.

Jennifer nodded in discouragement. “You fell in love with Rebecca Chance’s photographs. Then you fell in love with Rebecca Chance’s look-alike.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Of course. You’re a complicated man. Is she really Rebecca Chance’s granddaughter? Is that why she looks so uncannily like her?”

“That’s my suspicion,” Coltrane said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Jennifer took another long swallow and shuddered. “Well, as I told you on New Year’s Eve, I can’t compete with a woman who’s that beautiful. Not with a ghost. Really, you should have called me today. You should have put me out of my misery.”

“I never meant to . . . I had a good reason for not calling you.”

“Make me believe you weren’t planning to dump me without bothering to let me know.”

“I . . . Can I show you some photographs?”

“I don’t think I could bear to look at more pictures of her.”

“It’s not what you think,” Coltrane said. “These are different. Trust me. You’ll understand what I mean when you look at them.”

“Trust you,” Jennifer said hollowly.

COLTRANE ENTERED THE DARKROOM AHEAD OF JENNIFER. Before she could see the print of Tash in the diver’s suit, he used tongs to turn the print upside down in the washing tray. He hoped that she hadn’t noticed what he was doing, that her attention was directed toward where he pointed, toward prints that were attached by clamps to a nylon cord, drying.

He turned on the overhead lights.

“Crowd scenes?” Jennifer sounded puzzled.

“Those were taken at the Beverly Center.”

“But . . .” Jennifer turned to him, more confused. “Why would you take them? So
many
. The compositions are clumsy. Chaotic.”

“I wasn’t trying for an aesthetic arrangement. I just shot what I saw.”

“Is this some new direction you’re taking? I hope not. These can’t compare with the photographs you took after you met Packard, before all the trouble started.”

“It’s a different kind of project.”

“Different?” Jennifer looked back at the enlargements, walking along, paying closer attention. “Oh.” She had finally seen Tash among the chaos. “Even in a crowd, she stands out.” Jennifer sounded puzzled. “But she doesn’t seem aware she’s being photographed. It’s almost as if . . .” Frowning, she faced him again. “You were following her?”

“Actually, I’ve been ahead of her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s going to take awhile to explain.”

When he finished, Jennifer shook her head in dismay. “Ilkovic wasn’t enough for you? You have to get yourself involved in a similar situation?”

“It’s not the same. This time, I’m not the one being stalked.”

“Unless you count Nolan. The way you describe him, he’s been dealing with stalkers so long that he became one.”

“Nolan will calm down once Tash makes him understand there’s nothing between them.”

“But why did he think there was something between them in the first place?”

“I don’t know yet,” Coltrane said. “Tash told me she’s going to explain.”

Jennifer took one more look at the photographs, then another look at him. “I give up. I won’t waste any more of your time.”

“We’ve been through a lot together. I want to make sure everything’s right between us.”

“That isn’t going to happen, Mitch. Just because I want some closure on this, that doesn’t mean everything’s going to be right between us. And don’t you dare say ‘I hope we can still be friends.’”

Coltrane nodded.

“She owns more stores in San Francisco and San Diego?” Jennifer said. “And that doesn’t count the other investments she didn’t specify. She’s not only rich — she’s drop-dead gorgeous? You certainly got lucky.”

Coltrane shrugged, awkward.

“How did she get the money?”

“I don’t know. Her mother died a couple of years ago. Maybe it was an inheritance.”

“How did her mother get so much money?”

“I have no idea,” Coltrane said. “I didn’t feel it was any of my business.”

“Well, the two of you are certainly going to have a lot to talk about. I won’t say I hope it works out for you, because that’s not the way I feel.” Jennifer hesitated, mustering the strength to continue. “But I will say this — I hope you don’t get hurt.” She blinked, unsettled.

“Jennifer . . .”

“I’d better go home.” A tear trickled down her cheek.

They walked upstairs to the front door.

“Good-bye.”

“I’m sorry,” Coltrane said.

“Not as much as I am.” Jennifer wiped away another tear and stepped outside. It took her two tries to tell him, “As soon as the special edition of the magazine is ready, you’ll get the first copy. They really are great photographs, Mitch.” Her voice broke. “Regardless of everything that’s happened, I’m proud that I was in your life when you took them.”

Coltrane’s throat felt squeezed.

Lingering in the open doorway, he watched her walk to the curb and get into her car. As on the previous night, she didn’t look back when she drove away. Only after her headlights started to climb the hill away from his house did he move to step back into the house.

But he stopped himself, noticing her headlights pass a car parked near the murky crest.

IT WAS HARD TO TELL IN THE NIGHT AND AT A DISTANCE, but the vehicle might have been an Explorer, the kind of car Nolan drove. Someone was behind the steering wheel, looking in Coltrane’s direction. Jennifer’s headlights disappeared over the hill. The car became barely visible.

Nolan? Coltrane’s stomach muscles were still sore from where he had been punched. Angry, he wanted to storm up the hill and find out if that
was
Nolan watching the house. But his fury was displaced by a despondency about Jennifer that made him too weary for a confrontation. He wished that there had been another way. He had never wanted to hurt her. I bet that’s something else Jennifer would have been annoyed to hear me tell her, he thought. He stepped back into the house and locked the door. If it
was
Nolan out there, he was going to have a long, wasted night.

Mouth dry, Coltrane glanced at his watch, realizing that the time was almost midnight. Tash should have been home by now. She should have called by now.

Unless she was waiting to contact Nolan first and Nolan wasn’t home.

Unless that was in fact Nolan in the car out there.

Get back to work, he told himself. It’ll help distract you.

Descending to the darkroom, he shut off the overhead lights, switched on the dim amber safelight, and began making more prints from the negatives he had prepared. Then he remembered the print that he had turned upside down in the washing tray, took it out of the water, and was stunned anew by the beauty of Tash in her diving suit as she emerged from the ocean. Her eyes seemed to look directly into his.

What’s happening to me? he thought. How could someone I’ve known since only yesterday make me feel this way?

He had never believed that love at first sight was possible. But then it
hadn’t
been at first sight, had it? he reminded himself. He had seen Tash’s face long before he had met her.

He remembered having read about the theory of soul mates — that souls who had been devoted to each other in a former life could never be fulfilled unless they found each other in a later life. Perhaps that explained the irresistible attraction that had overcome him. It was as if he had recognized Rebecca Chance the first time he had seen her photograph. It was as if he had been in love with her in another time and now had the chance to be in love with her again — with Tash.

Whatever you’re feeling, it doesn’t need an explanation, he told himself. You’ll ruin it.

So far he had made prints only for the shots he had taken at the stores in the Beverly Center, Santa Monica, and Westwood. He still had to deal with the images of the crowd near the store in the South Coast Plaza. Uneasy that Tash hadn’t called, beginning to worry that something had happened to her, he forced himself to go to the enlarger and put one of the processed negatives into the negative holder. After determining the correct focus, he put a sheet of eight-by-ten-inch printing paper into the easel, set the timer, and turned on the enlarger lamp, which was positioned above the negative and cast a beam through it, projecting the negative’s image down through a magnifying lens and onto the paper.

If he had been preparing prints that were intended to be displayed, he would have done tests to determine the ideal length of time to expose the light-sensitive paper to the negative’s enlarged image, using trial and error to achieve the perfect density of detail and contrast of lights and darks. But these prints were important only for their information, not their aesthetic appeal. He needed to get them done as soon as possible, so he didn’t care about perfection, only whether the faces in the crowd were clear enough for Tash to be able to recognize any of them.

His experience with developing the previous prints had taught him that twenty seconds was an effective length of time to let the negative’s projected image touch the paper. The instant the timer clicked, the enlarger lamp turned off automatically. He removed the paper and set it where the only illumination that could reach it would be from the dim amber safelight. When he had exposed half a dozen sheets of paper, he took them to the developing tray, set them in the solution, and gently agitated the tray, rotating the sheets, developing them evenly.

The magic happened. Feeling a surge of anticipation, Coltrane studied them, as he had the earlier prints. During his fifteen years as a professional photographer, he had trained himself to have a keen visual memory, so he could easily recall details from earlier prints. But now his surge of anticipation changed to a sinking feeling of disappointment, for he still had not seen any faces that recurred in various locations. His pride made him hope that he wouldn’t have to admit to Tash that his plan had been a failure.

To make matters worse, the six prints in the developing tray had something wrong with them: The faces in the bottom-right corner of each print were overexposed, too dark to be distinguished. The faces in the rest of the area were perfectly acceptable, however. That contrast told him that although twenty seconds of exposure to the enlarger’s light was sufficient for most of the area in these prints, their bottom-right corners needed only
fifteen
seconds.

The prints weren’t usable. Muttering an expletive, he shoved them into a waste can and returned to the enlarger. He prepared to reexpose sheets of paper to the six negatives. For each one, he again set the timer for twenty seconds. But for this set of prints, when the timer reached fifteen seconds, he slowly waved his right hand between the paper and the negative, preventing the enlarger lamp from projecting onto the bottom-right corner of each print for the final five seconds. The movement of his hand reminded him of a magician’s gesture, an apt comparison because he was, after all, performing darkroom magic. By lessening the exposure time on the lower-right corners, he was able to enhance that area and bring out details.

When the sheets were finally exposed, he set them into the developing tray. But this time when the images came to life, he opened his mouth in shock. The previously indistinct lower-right corners were now vivid. As at the Beverly Center, he had taken these shots from an upper level, aiming down at the crowd. On the first print in the sequence, he found himself staring at a man with a 35-mm camera raised to his face, aiming in the direction of where Tash and her bodyguards approached her store. The camera was a mask, preventing Coltrane from noting the man’s features. The salt-and-pepper hair was an indication of middle age. That and the man’s somewhat-hefty build were the only identifiers.

Feeling as if something sharp was caught in his throat, Coltrane turned to the next print in the sequence and saw that the man had pivoted slightly to the right. His camera remaining at eye level, his finger pressing the shutter button, he was taking a photograph of Tash as she walked along. The new angle of his mostly hidden face revealed a thick neck and the suggestion of a puffy cheek. Coltrane turned to the third print in the series, where the man had pivoted more to the right, continuing to take photographs of Tash. From this angle, Coltrane saw a hint of a jowl. He told himself that he had to be wrong, that his imagination was deceiving him. Hurrying, he flipped through the final three prints in the sequence and saw in stop action the man lower his camera to his chin, to his neck, to his chest, never removing his intense gaze from where Tash was walking. The man’s profiled face was now fully in the open, and Coltrane felt nauseated as he was forced to admit that he hadn’t been wrong, that his imagination hadn’t deceived him. The man was Duncan Reynolds.