Mirror Image (49 page)

In bright red paint, a bullet hole had been painted in the center of Tate's forehead. The paint trickled down his face, hideously incongruent with his smile. Written in bold red lettering across the poster were the words, "Election Day!"

Avery bolted into the bathroom and vomited.

FORTY-TWO

"It was ghastly. So ugly."

Avery sat with her head bowed over a glass of brandy that Irish had insisted would help calm her down. The first unwanted swallow had burned a crater in her empty stomach, but she kept the glass because she needed something to hold on to.

"This whole frigging thing is ugly," her irascible host declared. "I've thought so all along. Didn't I warn you? Didn't I?"

"So you warned her. Stop harping on it."

"Who asked you?" Irish angrily rounded on Van, who was sipping at a joint that Irish had been too upset to notice wasn't an ordinary cigarette.

"Avery did. She called and told me to haul ass over here, so I hauled ass."

"I meant who asked you for your opinion?"

"Will the two of you please stop?" Avery cried raggedly. "And Van, will you please put that thing out? The smell's making me sick."

She tapped her fingertips against her lips, as though contemplating whether or not she was going to throw up again. "The poster terrified me. He really means to do it. I've known so all along, but this. . ."

She set the glass of brandy on the coffee table and stood up, chafing her arms. She had on a sweater, but nothing helped her get warm.

"Who is it, Avery?"

She shook her head hard."Idon't know. Any of them. Idon't know."

"Who had access to your room?"

"Earlier this morning and beforeIcame home at noon, anybody. Mona says they should install a revolving door. Everybody's in and out constantly. As the election approaches, they come and go at all hours."

"How do you know someone didn't follow you here?"

"I kept one eye on the rearview mirror and doubled back several times. Besides, no one was home when I left."

"No clues from the folder you found in the old lady's desk?"

Avery answered Van's irreverent question with a dismal shake of her head.

"She's a strange one," he observed. "What makes you say that?"

"I've got lots of her on tape. She's always smiling, waving at the crowds, but damned if I believe she's all that happy."

"I know what you mean. She's a very private person and says little. At least until today."

"Tell us about Carole Navarro," Irish said. "She's more to the point than Zee Rutledge."

"Carole, or whatever her original name was, was a tramp. She danced in the seediest nightclubs—"

" Tittiebars," Van supplied.

". . .Under a number of spicy and suggestive names. She was arrested once for public lewdness and once for prostitution, but both charges were dropped."

"You're sure of all this?"

"The private investigator might have been slime, but he was thorough. With the information he supplied Zee, it was easy for me to track down some of the places Carole had worked."

"When was this?" Irish wanted to know.

"Before I came here. I even talked to some people who knew her—other dancers, former employers, and such."

"Did any mistake you for her?" Van asked.

"All of them. I passed myself off as a long-lost cousin to explain the similarity."

"What did they have to say about her?"

"She had severed all ties. Nobody knew what had happened to her. One drag queen that I spoke to, in exchange for a twenty-dollar bill, said she told him she was going to give up the night life, go to business school and improve herself. That's all he remembered. He never saw her after she quit working at the club where they shared a stage.

"This is pure conjecture, but I think Carole underwent a complete transformation, finessed her way into the Rutledge law firm, then once on the inside, saw a way to take her self-improvement campaign one step further by marrying Tate. Remember the piece I did several years ago on prostitutes, Irish?" she asked suddenly.

"While you were working at that station in Detroit? Sure, I remember it. You sent me a tape. What's it got to do with this?"

"The personality profile of those women fits Carole. Most of them claim to hate men. She was probably no different."

"You don't know that."

"No? Look how she treated Jack. She flirted with him to the extent of damaging his marriage, but I get the impression she never came across. If that isn't malicious, I don't know what is. For the sake of argument, let's say she didn't view men too kindly and set out to ruin one whose future looked the very brightest, while at the same time elevating herself."

"Wasn't she scared that someone would recognize her, that her shady past would eventually catch up with her?"

Avery had thought of that herself. "Don't you see, that would have iced the cake. Tate would really be humiliated if it was revealed what his wife had been before he married her."

"He must be a real dunce," Van muttered, "to have fallen for it."

"You don't understand how calculating she was," Avery said, leaping to Tate's defense. "She became everything he could possibly want. She laid a trap, using herself as the perfect bait. She was pretty, animated, and sexy. But more than that, someone who knew Tate well coached her on the right buttons to push to elevate lust to love."

"The one who wants to kill him."

"Right," Avery said, nodding grimly at Van, who had voiced her hypothesis. "He must have sensed, as Zee did, that Carole was an opportunist."

"When he approached her, why didn't she run to Tate?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "My theory isn't without holes. Maybe being the bereaved widow of a public official held more allure than being a senator's wife."

"Same status, but no inconvenient husband," Irish speculated.

"Hmm. Also, she wasn't sure Tate would make it to the Senate. Or maybe her coconspirator made it financially profitable for her. In any case, once they were married, it was her responsibility to make life miserable for Tate—a job she did with relish."

"Butwhywas someone out to make him miserable?" Irish asked. "It always comes back to that."

"I don't know." Avery's voice was taut with quiet desperation. "I wish to God I did."

"What do you make of the latest message?" Irish asked.

She raked a hand through her hair. "Obviously, they're going to make their move on election day. A gun of some kind will be the weapon of choice."

"That gets my vote. No pun intended," Van added drolly.

Irish shot him an irritated glance, then said to Avery, "I don't know. This time the symbolism seems a little too obvious."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted, gnawing on his lip. Absently, he picked up Avery's glass of brandy and took a hearty swig. "What happened to the subtlety of the earlier notes? Either he's testing your mettle or he's the cockiest son of a bitch I've ever run across."

"Maybe he's cocky because it can't be stopped now," Van said moodily. "It'll go down no matter what. Everything is already in place."

"Like Gray Hair?" Avery asked. Van shrugged.

"What about the footage you shot earlier today in Houston? Any more of him?" Irish asked Van.

"Nope. He hasn't turned up since Fort Worth. Not since Avery's been staying home." His eyes were mellowed by marijuana, but the look he gave her was meaningful enough for Irish to intercept.

"Okay, what don't I know, you two?"

Avery moistened her lips. "Van thinks it's possible that Gray Hair is watching me, not Tate."

Irish's head swiveled on his thick neck around to the photographer. "What makes you think that?"

"It's just an idea. A little off the wall, but—"

"In every one of the tapes he's looking at Tate," she pointed out reasonably.

"Hard to tell. You're always standing right beside him."

"Avery." Irish took her hand, pulled her back down onto the sofa, and squatted in front of her. He covered her hands with his own. "Listen to me now. You've got to notify the authorities."

"I said to listen. Now shut up and hear me out." He reorganized his thoughts. "You're in over your head, baby. I know why you wanted to do this. It was a terrific idea—a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a name for yourself and save lives in the meantime.

"But it's gotten out of hand. Your life is in danger. And as long as you let this continue, so is Rutledge's. So's the kid's." Since she appeared to be receptive to his argument, he eased up onto the couch beside her, but continued to press her hands beneath his. "Let's call the FBI."

"The feds?" Van squeaked.

"I have a buddy in the local bureau," Irish pressed on, ignoring Van. "He usually works undercover, looking for dope coming up from Mexico. This isn't his area of expertise, but he could tell us who to call, advise us on what to do."

Before he even finished, Avery was shaking her head no. "Irish, we can't. Don't you see, if the FBI knows, everybody'll have to know. Don't you think it would arouse suspicion if Tate were suddenly surrounded by armed bodyguards or Secret Service operatives in opaque sunglasses? Everything would have to come out in the open."

"That's it, isn't it?" he shouted angrily. "You don't want Rutledge to know! And you don't want him to know because you'd have to give up your cozy place next to him in bed."

"No, that's not it!" she shouted back. "The authorities could protect him from people outside the family circle, but they couldn't protect him from anybody within. And as we know, the person who wants him dead is someone close to him—someone who professes to love him. We can't alert Tate to the danger without alerting the enemy that we're on to him."

She took a deep breath, but it was still insufficient. "Besides, if you told government agents this tale, they'd think you were either lying or crazy. On the outside chance they believed you, think what they'd do to me."

"What would they do to you?" Van wanted to know.

"I'm not sure, but while they were figuring it out, Tate would be exposed and vulnerable."

"So, what do you plan to do?" Irish asked.

She covered her face with her hands and began to cry. "I don't know."

Van stood up and pulled on a tattered leather biker's jacket. "I've got some moonlighting to do."

"Moonlighting?"

Van responded to Irish's question with an indifferent shrug. "I've been looking through some tapes in my library."

"What for?"

"I'm working on a hunch."

Avery reached for his hand. "Thanks for everything, Van. If you see or hear—"

"I'll let you know."

"Do you still have that post office box key I gave you?" Irish asked.

"Yeah, but why wouldIneed it? I see you every day at work when I'm in town."

"But you might need to send me something when you're out of town with Rutledge—something it wouldn't do to mail to the station."

"Gotcha. 'Bye."

As soon as the door closed behind Van, Irish said, out of the side of his mouth, "That dopehead . I wish we had a more reliable ally."

"Don't put him down. I get annoyed with him, too, but he's been invaluable. He's been a friend, and God knows I need all of themIcan muster."

She checked her wristwatch—the one Tate had bought for her. Since retrieving it from Fancy, she hadn't taken it off. "I've got to go. It's getting late. Tate asks questions when I'm late, and I'm running out of plausible excuses. There's only so much shopping a woman can do, you know." Her feeble attempt at humor flew no better than a flatiron.

Irish pulled her into a hug. He clumsily smoothed his large hand over her hair while her head rested against his shoulder. "You love him." He didn't even pose it as a question. She nodded her head. "Jesus," he sighed into her hair, "why does it always have to be so goddamn complicated?"

She squeezed her eyes shut; hot tears leaked onto his shirt."Ilove him so much, Irish, it hurts."

"I know what that's like."

Avery was too absorbed in her own misery to acknowledge his unrequited love for her mother. "What am I going to do? I can't tell him, but I can't protect him, either." She clung to Irish for strength. He hugged her tighter and awkwardly kissed her temple.

“Rosemary, all ninety-eight pounds of her, would fly into me if she knewIwas letting you stay in a life-threatening situation."

Avery smiled against his damp shirt. "She probably would. She relied on you to watch over us."

"I'm letting her down this time." He clutched her tighter. "I'm afraid for you, Avery."

"After today, seeing that bloodcurdling poster, I'm a little afraid for myself. I'm still considered a conspirator. God help me if he ever discovers otherwise."

"You won't reconsider and let me call the authorities?"

"Not yet. Not until I can point an accusing finger and say, 'That's the one.' "

He put space between them and tilted her chin up. "By then it might be too late."

He hadn't needed to caution her of that. She already knew. It might already be too late to salvage her career as a broadcast journalist and establish a future with Tate and Mandy, but she had totry.She hugged Irish once more at his door before telling him good night, kissing his ruddy cheek, and stepping out into the darkness.

It was so dark that neither of them noticed the car parked midway down the block.

FORTY-THREE

The spontaneous trip to Houston to address disgruntled policemen had gone extraordinarily well for Tate and boosted him three points in the polls. Daily, he closed the gap between Senator Dekker and himself.

Dekker, feeling the pressure, began to get nasty in his speeches, painting Tate as a dangerous liberal who threatened "the traditional ideals that we as Americans and Texans hold dear."

It would have been a perfect time for him to use Carole Rutledge's abortion as ammunition. That would have blown Tate's campaign out of the water and probably cinched the race for Dekker. But whatever tactics Eddy had used on the extortionist had apparently been effective. When it became obvious that Dekker knew nothing of the incident, everyone in the Rutledge inner circle breathed a collective sigh of relief.