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Jennifer, wearing a blue business suit, her short blond hair glinting from the light above the garage, stopped in front of him.

He felt awkward, embarrassed — didn’t know what to say.

She broke the silence. “I promised I wasn’t going to bother you again.”

“Actually, I’m glad to see you.”

She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “I’ve got a speech prepared. I don’t want to forget any of it.”

“Then you’d better not stop.”

“I vowed I wouldn’t phone you. Not show up at your home. Not happen to cross paths with you the way I did the last time we broke up. But here I am. The fact is, I’ve been leaving messages on your machine for the last two days. When you didn’t get back to me, I figured you were determined to avoid me.”

“I didn’t know about the messages. I’ve been away.”

“So I had to break my word and show up here and wait for you.”

“You might have had a long wait,” Coltrane said.

“It already
has
been. As soon as I got off work, I drove over here. Three hours ago.”

“Somehow, I get the feeling it’s not because of my irresistible charm.”

Jennifer nodded. “You pretty much wiped out your charm the last time we talked.”

“Then . . .”

“Just because I’m furious at you, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t feel terrible if something happened to you. Her real name isn’t Natasha Adler.”

“What?”

“And men have a habit of dying around her.”

THEY SAT IN THE TUBULAR CHAIRS IN COLTRANE’S LIVING ROOM, two cans of diet Pepsi open, glasses filled, neither of them drinking.

“After you told me to get lost,” Jennifer said.

“I hope I wasn’t that blunt.”

“Everything’s a matter of perspective. From
my
perspective . . .” She took a long breath. “Anyway, let’s just say I felt hurt. I felt used. I . . .”

Coltrane looked down at his hands.

“I’m not trying to throw this back at you,” Jennifer said. “The only reason I’m going into this is to make you understand why I did what came next.”

“After what I’ve been through the past couple of days, believe me, I understand what you felt. Throw it back at me. I deserve it.”

“I felt angry. And confused. And deeply deeply troubled. Not just about our breakup, but about Tash Adler. Maybe
you
thought it was normal to fall in love with her on the spot. But given your usual reluctance to make an emotional commitment, I thought your sudden commitment to her was disturbing as hell.”

Coltrane felt stung.

“Those photographs of Rebecca Chance,” Jennifer said. “Tash Adler’s uncanny resemblance to her. The whole business didn’t only baffle me; it struck me as being unnatural. So I decided to try to make sense of it. Not because I thought I might find some dirt that would help get us back together. I had no hope of that. I still don’t. It’s not why I’m here. For all I know, you’re going to tell me I’m making all this up so I can cause trouble between you and Tash. But I have to try. Because if something happened to you, I’d never forgive myself for not having warned you.”

“Don’t worry. You can’t cause any more trouble between Tash and me than there already is,” Coltrane said. Coming into the house, Jennifer had asked about the gashes on his mouth. He had told her what happened in Mexico and Big Bear.

“If I’m right, there could be a
lot
more trouble,” Jennifer said. “I think you’re in real danger.”

“Keep talking.”

“I wanted to find out just who this woman is that she could set your mind spinning the way she did.”

“And? You said her real name isn’t—”

“She was born Melinda Chance.”

“How do you know?”

“I hired the same private detective
you
did when you wanted to find out where Natasha Adler lived. He didn’t have much to go on, just what you’d told me about the stores she owns and her connection with Rebecca Chance. But that was enough. The stores aren’t owned in her name. They’re controlled by a corporation she runs, called Opportunity Inc. The private detective followed the trail of that corporation and worked backward, but I’m going to explain from the beginning and work forward.” Jennifer opened a briefcase that she had brought with her. “Here’s a copy of a birth certificate. Melinda Chance. Born April twenty-ninth, 1972, Fresno, California. Father unknown. Mother — Stephanie Chance.”

“All that proves is that some woman had the same last name.”

“Here’s a copy of a page from a Fresno high school yearbook.”

His stomach fluttering, Coltrane peered down at the copy she set before him. It was a good-quality photographic reproduction. He scanned the rows of students’ faces and fixed almost at once on the features of a young woman gazing back at him. Her dark hair was a little shorter, and her features were more girlish than womanly, but she had the same smoldering coals in her eyes. Tash. Except that the name under the photograph was Melinda Chance.

“When was this yearbook issued?”

“When she was seventeen. Just before she left Fresno.”

“What’s this caption under her name? ‘Destined to launch a thousand ships’?”

“A compliment about her looks. At first, it puzzled me, too, but it reminded me of a quotation from something, so I asked a reference librarian to track it down for me. ‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships . . . ?’ It’s from a Renaissance play by Christopher Marlowe. The face that’s referred to is Helen of Troy’s. I thought the allusion was a little fancy for a high school yearbook, but then I noticed that below the caption it says ‘Favorite activity: the Drama Club.’ Here’s a photocopy of another page from the yearbook. These are the members of the Drama Club. Melinda Chance is easily the eye-catcher. As the caption indicates, among other things, the club practiced by reading scenes from classic plays. Must have been a tough teacher. Portions from Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
and Marlowe’s
Doctor Faustus
. That’s the play with the ‘thousand ships’ quote. You can see the title on the cover of the book she’s holding in this photograph. It’s about a man who sells his soul to the Devil.”

Coltrane felt a chill. “What are you getting at?”

“She never finished high school in Fresno. She and her mother left town. The reason they left is that Melinda Chance also enjoyed being on the football team’s cheerleading squad. She gave two of the players quite a bit of extra encouragement. The quarterback killed a fullback because of her.”

Coltrane’s chill worsened.

“Stabbed him in a parking lot after the spring prom.”

“My God.”

“The killer was eighteen, old enough to be tried as an adult,” Jennifer said. “His family didn’t have any social position. But the boy who got stabbed was
sixteen
, and
his
father was a bank president. The jury found the older boy guilty. The sentence was ten years.”

“And Melinda Chance moved on.”

“To Sacramento. She finished high school there and went to college. But by then, her name was Vivian Breuer. B-r-e-u-e-r. It’s a distinctive spelling. I’ll get to why that’s important. In college, she majored in drama, but the drama she was involved in didn’t happen only on a stage. A young man she was dating fell from the ten-story-high balcony of her apartment. The police questioned another boyfriend of hers who was in her apartment at the time of the fall. That second young man was eventually arrested for harassing her. Meanwhile, the chairman of the Drama Department, a forty-six-year-old man with a wife and two children, shot himself to death after the final performance of the Drama Club’s spring production. The play was Tennessee Williams’s
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. You’ll never guess who played Maggie, the character Elizabeth Taylor played in the movie, and you’ll also never guess who was suspected of having had an affair with the professor.”

“You can prove all this?”

“Here are photocopies of articles from the Sacramento newspaper. I’ve underlined Vivian Breuer’s name. By now, she was smart enough not to allow herself to be photographed for the yearbook, but the private detective I hired tracked down cast members from that production of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, and they identified Vivian Breuer from Melinda Chance’s photos in the Fresno high school yearbook. They’re also the ones who suspected she was having an affair with the professor who killed himself. These are the private detective’s notes of the conversations he had with the cast members, and these are the tape recordings of the same conversations.”

Coltrane looked with horror at the accumulating materials.

“She transferred to Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, still majoring in drama, but now she changed her name to Linda Erikson. That last name’s important, too. I’ll explain why in a little while. In Arcata, the lead actor in William Inge’s
Picnic
beat his male costar to death in an argument after the production’s dress rehearsal. Do you remember the movie of that play?”

“William Holden was the star.”

“Right, and Cliff Robertson was the male costar, and the plot had to do with how Holden, playing a drifter, showed up in a small town in Kansas and stole Robertson’s girlfriend. Kim Novak played the girl.”

“And Tash had the Kim Novak role? You’re suggesting that what happened in the play also happened in life?”

“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.”