David Morrell - Double Image

Coltrane registered none of this. “Is that what you want – a future with me?”

Tash smiled warmly. “I feel more comfortable with you than with any man I’ve ever met. As if I’ve known you a long time. But of course I haven’t, so I get to have all the fun of finding out about you.”

Emotion made it impossible for Coltrane to speak.

“Carl and I spent time together,” Tash said. “So did Lyle and I, Walt and I, the others. They’re my bodyguards, after all. One or another is usually with me – in cars, at the house. We share meals. We talk.”

Coltrane waited uneasily.

“When the package with the bull’s heart was delivered to my house, there was so much blood… It freaked me out. A lab crew came and took it. Then Carl showed up to see if there was anything he could do. Walt and Lyle were already there, but they couldn’t stay – they had a break-in to investigate. But Carl told them not to worry, that he’d hang around for a while, so they left.”

Coltrane leaned forward.

“I was so upset that I started sobbing,” Tash said. “I reached out and held him. I can’t tell you how tired I was of feeling frightened. When he started kissing me, I didn’t resist. It was human contact. It was… But then his kisses became more forceful, and he was touching me and-”

“Stop. You don’t need to put yourself through this,” Coltrane said.

“No, if Carl ever tells you I led him on, I want to make sure you understand everything. I want to explain this now so I don’t ever have to do it again.”

On the other side of the crowded plaza, a mariachi band started playing.

Coltrane didn’t hear it.

“I pushed Carl away,” Tash said. “I told him that he had the wrong idea, that sex wasn’t what I wanted, that all I needed was a little comfort. I told him my life was out of control as it was, without complicating things. He said he’d fallen in love with me. He wanted to know what was wrong with him that I didn’t want him, and I told him that under the present circumstances I couldn’t think about wanting anybody .”

Fidgeting, Tash glanced toward the harbor, where excursion yachts and fishing boats were docking, but the faraway look in her eyes made clear that what she was seeing had happened weeks earlier.

“The truth is, I knew I could never have a relationship with him. But this is what went through my mind. I’m not proud of it. Even so, here it is. I was thinking that some nut was out there, probably planning to kill me, and I needed all the help I could get. So I wasn’t firm in rejecting him. When Carl asked, ‘Maybe not now, but what about later, after we find this creep and you don’t have to worry anymore?’ I didn’t have the courage to be honest. Instead of telling him no, what I said was that I couldn’t think about anything like that while I was jumping at shadows. Now I realize that the false hope he took from that conversation is all he’s been thinking about. When you showed up at my house on New Year’s Day, I could see his resentment when I asked you to stay and talk about the estate I’d inherited. I could feel his jealousy.”

“So he decided to pay me a visit at the Beverly Center and make sure I understood that I wasn’t welcome, that he had dibs on you,” Coltrane said.

“I’m afraid that’s how he sees it – that he has dibs on me.”

Coltrane’s cheek muscles hardened. “Well, when we get back to L.A., after we arrange for Duncan Reynolds to be arrested, I’ll make sure Carl gets his mind straight.”

“No, let the police handle it. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“This time, he wouldn’t be catching me by surprise.”

“Please,” Tash said. “It was my mistake. There’s been enough trouble. Let’s not start more.”

Coltrane couldn’t resist her plaintive tone. “All right.” He worked to calm himself. “I’ll let the police handle it.”

“Thank you.”

When he touched her hand, he was pleased that this time there wasn’t any static electricity. “The main thing is, it’s almost over.”

“Almost over.” Tash sounded wistful. “Something worth drinking to.”

They picked up their margaritas, clicking glasses.

“In fact, if we hadn’t decided to fly down here, it would be over,” Coltrane said. “Do you want to go home tomorrow, settle everything, and come back for a real vacation?”

“A day longer isn’t going to make a difference. I need to know why Randolph Packard put me in his will. If we can find the estate I inherited, it might give me some answers.”

“Yes. From the moment I found Packard’s photographs of Rebecca Chance, I’ve had the sense that the past and the present are connected.” Coltrane set down his glass and picked up his camera. “Hold that pose.”

Now that he was paying attention to the plaza, he realized that this wasn’t the first time he had seen the Moorish-looking church behind Tash. Its onion-shaped top had been in one of the photographs in the vault. Rebecca Chance had been in this plaza. So had Randolph Packard.

Coltrane pressed the shutter button.

“WHERE IT’S JUST THE TWO OF US. Where we can talk and swim and lie on the beach,” Tash had said, describing some of the reasons she wanted to go to Acapulco. It was too late for the swim, but just the right time to take a stroll, hand in hand, up a shop-lined hill to the cliff above the harbor, and watch the crimson of the sunset tint the blue of the ocean. As Tash leaned her head against his shoulder, Coltrane put his arm around her. They peered out toward the sun sinking below the horizon, only a faint orange sliver visible.

“Watch for a green flash.”

She turned to him, puzzled.

“No, don’t look at me,” Coltrane said. “Keep your eyes on the horizon. In a second, there’s going to be a green flash.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Packard wrote a book about photography. He called it Sightings , and in it, he claimed that during the instant the sun vanishes below the horizon, there’s a green flash. He claimed to have seen it many times, something to do with a change in the spectrum of light, and he said it had been one of his career-long goals to capture a photograph of that flash, although he was never able to, because by the time he saw it and pressed the shutter button, the flash was over. He tried to anticipate it and press the shutter button just before he thought the flash was going to happen, but he never managed that, either. I’ve spent many evenings staring at sunsets, trying to see that flash, but I’ve never been able to.”

“Was Packard telling the truth? Do you think the flash really happens?”

“Other photographers claim to have seen it. Ansel Adams used to take guests onto his porch and try to show it to them.”

“But it’s always eluded you.”

“Yep.”

“Then what makes you expect you’ll see it tonight?”

“Because you’re with me.”

Tash didn’t say anything for a moment. “That’s the tenderest thing anybody ever told me.”

“Will you please stop looking in my direction?”

Tash giggled.

“Keep your eyes on the horizon.”

“Yes, sir.” Tash giggled again.

She peered away from him, watching the last speck of the sun’s faint orange vanish below the horizon, and inhaled sharply, for as black invaded the sky, a green flash shot amazingly up, like a monocolored single beam from the aurora borealis. With equal abruptness, it vanished.

“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“I saw it, too.” Coltrane felt pounding behind his ears.

“Holy God.”

“Yes.”

“I feel as if we’re the only people in the world who saw it,” Tash said.