“Except that in the play, one of the male costars doesn’t beat the other one to death. Here are copies of the Arcata newspaper articles about the murder. Note that Linda Erikson managed to avoid getting her photograph taken. The student actor admitted that he killed the other actor because he was jealous about Linda. For her part, Linda professed to be as shocked as everyone else. She said that she was too disturbed about what had happened to continue her studies, and she moved on as soon as she finished testifying at the trial. The student actor got eight years. Here are transcripts and tape recordings of conversations that my private investigator had with members of the Picnic cast whom he tracked down. He showed them Melinda Chance’s high school yearbook photographs. They identified her as Linda Erikson.”

Coltrane’s feet and hands turned numb.

“Meanwhile, the young man who was arrested for harassing her in Sacramento set out to find her as soon as he got out of jail. His search took him to – guess where – Arcata, where his body washed up on the beach one morning. The medical examiner’s report suggested that he had drank too much, gone swimming at night, passed out, and drowned. Here’s a copy of it. You ready for more?”

“No, but I think I’d better hear it.”

“The next place she showed up was San Francisco, but she wasn’t interested in college any longer. She suddenly had the money to start half a dozen clothing boutiques, and now her name was Evelyn Young.”

“I assume that last name’s important, too,” Coltrane said.

“Yes, but this time she’s making a joke.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You will.”

“The money for the stores. Where did she-”

“From the Acapulco Venture Group.”

The name had uncomfortable overtones and filled Coltrane with misgiving.

“A subsidiary of Orange Coast Investments,” Jennifer said, “which is a division of Seaview Enterprises” – she paused – “which was owned by Randolph Packard.”

Coltrane looked down at the table and saw double for a moment. “So she lied to me when she said she didn’t know about Packard.”

“One of the things my private investigator couldn’t find out is why Packard would have given her money.”

“Because Packard thought he was her grandfather.” Coltrane explained what he had learned in Mexico.

“Maybe Packard was her grandfather,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane shook his head and regretted it, aggravating a splitting pain. “No. Rebecca Chance told her servant that Winston Case was.”

“Assuming Rebecca Chance told the truth.”

Coltrane’s blurred vision cleared as a terrible thought occurred to him. “She made each man think he was the father? She was trying to set Randolph Packard and Winston Case against each other? She wanted them to fight over her?”

“Like grandmother, like granddaughter.”

“And a lifetime later, Packard finally found his daughter and a granddaughter he didn’t know about, and he gave them money.”

“Or maybe earlier. The fact that in Fresno her mother and she used the last name Chance suggests that maybe they wanted to be found. Maybe they were found in Fresno. From what the private detective was able to learn, they had a lot of money.”

“What happened when she showed up in San Francisco?”

Jennifer shrugged fatalistically. “She changed her technique and joined a sailing club. Two prominent male members competed for her. All three went out on a boat for a weekend up the coast. Only she and one of the men came back. The inquest didn’t dispute their story – that the other man went on deck during the night, lost his balance, and fell overboard. The body was never recovered.”

“Something she did on the boat made the two men fight over her.”

“Of course. Two months later, the man who’d survived was arrested for harassing her.”

“Just like the student in Sacramento,” Coltrane said.

“And just like that student, he drowned shortly after he was released from jail. In this case, he took a boat out by himself, and it capsized.”

“Or maybe she arranged for him to have an accident so there’d be one less person who knew how she got her kicks,” Coltrane said. “The survivors of love affairs with her don’t have much luck.”

“You’re a survivor. Think about that while I tell you about San Diego,” Jennifer said. “She changed her name to Donna Miller.”

“Is that a significant last name, too?”

“You bet. You’ll understand why in a minute. She opened more clothing boutiques, ran them for a while, then turned them over to a manager and left on a yearlong around-the-world vacation. That was six months ago.”

“Six months?” The number nudged at something in Coltrane’s memory. “A neighbor of hers told me that’s when Tash showed up in Malibu.”

“As much as the investigator could determine, nothing happened in San Diego. He thinks she’s planning to keep it uncontaminated. A home base. But Malibu was another matter. Melinda Chance or Tash Adler or whatever you want to call her was up to her old tricks – with a new variation that added more excitement. She pretended to be stalked so she could have policemen around her, big men with big guns, whom she would manipulate to fight over her.”

“Pretended to?” Coltrane said. “No, you don’t understand. Duncan Reynolds was in fact stalking her. He-” Instantly, another piece of the puzzle slid horrifyingly into place. “Jesus, he wasn’t stalking her. He was her accomplice. He was doing what Tash asked him to do so the police would believe she was being threatened and she could manipulate her bodyguards until they turned on one another. That explains how Duncan knew about the photographs I took of him. Tash is the only one who could have told him. She must have ordered him to take the evidence and cover her tracks. And then-”

“What’s the matter?”

“What else was stolen?” Coltrane sprang to his feet.

21

AS COLTRANE SCRAMBLED DOWN THE STAIRS, he heard Jennifer running after him. Frantic, he reached the vault, unlocked it, and charged inside. He flicked at the light switch without stopping, raced past the shelves, reached the false wall in the far left corner, and shivered from more than the vault’s chill when he stooped to free the catches and pull out the wall.

Behind him, Jennifer’s heels sounded urgently on the concrete floor, but his attention was totally directed toward the hidden chamber, the vault’s glaring overhead lights making him squint toward the shadows in there.

“She’s gone.” His voice broke.

Rebecca Chance’s face no longer peered out at him. The life-sized photograph of her haunting features no longer hung on the back wall of the chamber. He took a half step back, as if he’d been pushed, then moaned and lurched into the chamber, knowing what he wouldn’t find but needing to search anyhow. The effort was worthless. The chamber was empty. Every box of photographs had been removed.

Coltrane spun toward Jennifer. “Duncan didn’t know about this chamber. Tash must have told him. Jesus.” Feeling off balance, he groped for a shelf. “When I confronted her in Big Bear, she denied knowing anything about the negatives or Duncan. It didn’t make sense. Why would she lie? So I drove to Duncan’s house in Newport Beach to confront him. Too late. Several days ago, he shot himself.”

“Duncan?” Jennifer turned pale. “Why would he…”

“Maybe Tash helped him along, the way we assume she helped two of her old boyfriends along. One less piece of evidence, one less person who knew the truth.”

The implications reduced them to stunned silence.

“What about the last names she used? Tell me why they’re significant,” Coltrane said.

“Breuer. Erikson. Young. Miller. Adler. In college, before I got into graphic arts, I thought about a career in psychology. I took a lot of classes in it. The names Erikson and Adler had a lot of associations when I saw them together. That made me think about the other names. They all fit. Every one of them is a famous psychotherapist. Breuer and Adler were colleagues of Freud. Adler was one of his disciples.”