David Morrell - Double Image

“Maybe this will fit you after all.”

Turning, he saw her hand projecting through the gap he had left in the doorway. She was offering a white terry-cloth bathrobe.

“Thanks, but I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Coltrane said.

Instead of replying, Tash leaned in far enough to drape the bathrobe over the side of the tub, her head turned away from him. The next thing, her arm was gone, and her footsteps receded along the hallway.

Coltrane looked at the robe a long time before picking it up and putting it on. Tash was right. Although a little snug, it did fit him. The fragrance on it was possibly from perfume and not laundry soap.

EVEN WITH THE DOOR AJAR, Coltrane couldn’t hear what Tash and the men were talking about in the living room. Their voices blended. An echo distorted them. Frustrated, he waited, tensing as heavy footsteps came along the corridor. What’ll it look like if one of those guys comes in and sees me crammed into this robe? he wondered.

“Do you want a beer instead of the coffee?” Nolan’s voice asked.

“Yeah, with a straw.”

Nolan chuckled. By the time he returned, handing a Budweiser into the bathroom, Coltrane had gotten out of the robe and hung it on a hook. Nolan had indeed put a straw into the open can of beer. Coltrane shook his head in amusement, took out the straw, tilted the can to his lips, and drank half of it.

The indistinguishable voices in the living room filled him with increasing frustration. The hands on his watch didn’t seem to move. To distract himself, he looked for a magazine, didn’t find any, and examined the pump containers of hand soap and lotion that were on the counter. Curious, he reached to open the medicine cabinet.

“All done.” Tash startled him.

Turning in embarrassment, he saw her hand offering him dried clothes through the gap in the door.

“Thanks.”

When Coltrane took them, their hands happened to brush. He felt another crackle of electricity.

“Sorry,” she said from the other side of the door. “The air must be dry in here or something. I didn’t mean to shock you.”

“I barely noticed.”

“ I did. I’ve been doing it a lot lately. I even took off my socks so I wouldn’t generate static. No difference. It makes me self-conscious.”

“There’s no need to be.”

“It’s in my nature.”

“To give off static electricity?”

“To be self-conscious. See you in a few minutes.”

“Right.” Coltrane looked at the side of his hand where the crackling sensation lingered.

As quickly as possible, he slipped into his pants, shirt, and socks, enjoying their warmth, grateful to be dressed again. He tried to look natural when he entered the living room, the men looking up at him from the sofa and various chairs.

Walt and Lyle, the two officers officially on duty, were drinking coffee. The others each had a beer. Tash leaned against a wall, holding a glass of white wine. The crimson of the soon-to-set sun filled the white room, the combination of colors so intriguing that Coltrane wished he still had his camera.

An object on the coffee table caught his attention.

“ My Nikon ? I thought I’d lost it in the water.”

“No, you dropped it on the rocks,” Walt said. “In all the commotion, I didn’t have a chance to go back and get it until a few minutes ago.”

“I owe you. This camera and I have been through a lot.” Coltrane examined it, unhappy to see that the lens was shattered and the body more scratched than it had previously been, but it didn’t appear that the case had been cracked – the negative of the images he had taken of Tash might not have been exposed to light. Even so, with its lens cracked, the camera was temporarily useless to him.

“We told you ours. Now you tell us yours,” Nolan said.

“Excuse me?”

“Your story. You didn’t just happen to show up here. Why did you come?”

So you’re still not sure about me, Coltrane thought. “My timing wasn’t the greatest. I hope this doesn’t sound presumptuous.” He looked at Tash. “I’m curious about… You inherited some property recently from a man named Randolph Packard.”

Tash straightened against the wall. “That’s right.”

Except for Nolan, the men looked puzzled by the reference. Coltrane told them who Packard was.

“I met him toward the end of November,” Coltrane said to Tash. “In fact, I collaborated on a project with him, although he died before I could get much input from him. Not that it mattered – from the beginning of my career, he had tremendous influence on me. And especially lately, I guess you could say he changed my life. Anyway, I decided to buy a house he owned. When I heard about another property he owned, one in Mexico, I was tempted to buy it also, but then I discovered that the property had been given to you, so I…” Coltrane’s sentence hung in the air.

“You came here to ask me if I’d be interested in selling it?” Sounding almost relieved, Tash leaned away from the wall.

“Something like that,” Coltrane said.

“ That’s what this is all about?” Walt sounded annoyed. “You came here to buy real estate?”

“Basically,” Coltrane lied.

“Well, for God sake,” one of the state policemen said. “I waited around to hear that ? I was sure there had to be a fancy explanation for the coincidence.”

“Sorry.”

Shaking their heads, several men stood. “I’ve got to be going,” one of the state troopers said.

“Me, too,” Lyle said. “My wife’s got a pot roast in the oven. There’s no point in all of us hanging around anymore. The man we were trying to catch was probably studying the house. When we tipped our hand too soon because of…” He gestured toward Coltrane.

“Yeah.” Walt sounded disgusted. “The creep’s long gone by now. We started our surveillance in the middle of the night, presumably before he started his own surveillance.” Weariness strained his face. “But now that he knows we were waiting for him, we’ll have a hard time setting another trap. The good news is, tonight will probably be quiet. You guys go ahead. Enjoy what’s left of your New Year’s. I’ll hold down the fort.”

“No, that’s all right,” Tash said. “You go ahead, too.”

“But…”

“As you said, tonight will probably be quiet. Cross fingers that whoever it is left the area for now. The sheriff’s department has more people to protect than just me.”

“But not all of them need protecting,” Walt said. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Tash said. “I won’t be alone, though.”

Walt looked puzzled.

“Mr. Coltrane is going to stay for a while. We’re going to discuss real estate.”

Coltrane must have looked surprised.

“If that’s convenient,” Tash said to him. “Perhaps you have somewhere else you need to be. I just thought that since you came all this way to talk to me…”

“No,” Coltrane said. “No, there’s nowhere else I have to be.”

THE TIME WAS JUST AFTER FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON, the air turning from crimson to gray, the breeze increasing, becoming cooler as the men stepped outside the front door and put on their sneakers. Tash opened the twin garage doors, revealing two large four-wheel-drive vehicles, an Explorer and a Mountaineer. As some of the men got into them, Tash eased into her Porsche and backed it out of the driveway, allowing the Mountaineer that she had been blocking to get out of the garage. The moment the stall was free, she pulled into it.

Coltrane couldn’t help noticing that for the brief time she was away, the men who hadn’t yet gotten into the vehicles stopped talking and watched her.