Mirror Image (28 page)

He braced one hand on the arm of the sofa and leaned over her. "Cliff Daniels was a brilliant photographer. In my book, he was the best. I'm not denying his talent with a camera. But he didn't have a talent for making the people who loved him happy."

"I was happy. Whenever he was home—"

"Which was a fraction of your childhood—a small fraction. And you were disconsolate every time he waved good-bye. I watched Rosemary endure his long absences. Even when he was home she was miserable, because she knew it would be for only a short time. She spent that time dreading his departure.

"Cliff thrived on the danger. It was his elixir, his life force. To your mother, it was a disease that ate away her youth and vitality. It took his life quickly, mercifully. Her death was agonizing and slow. It took years. Long before the afternoon she swallowed that bottle of pills, she had begun dying.

"So, why does he deserve your blind adoration and dogged determination to live up to his name, Avery? The most valuable prize he ever won wasn't the fucking Pulitzer. It was your mother, only he was too stupid to realize that."

"You're just jealous of him."

Steadily, Irish held her gaze. "I was jealous of the way Rosemary loved him, yes."

The starch went out of her then. She groped for his hand, pressed it to her cheek. Tears trickled over the back of it. "I don't want us to fight, Irish."

"I'm sorry then, because you've got a fight on your hands. I can't let you continue this."

"I've got to. I'm committed."

"Until when?"

"Until I know who threatened to kill Tate and can expose him."

"And then what?"

"I don't know," she groaned miserably.

"And what if this would-be assassin never goes through with it? Suppose he's blowing smoke? Will you stay Mrs. Rutledge indefinitely? Or will you simply approach Rutledge one day and say, 'Oh, by the way'?"

Admitting to him what she had admitted to herself only a few days earlier, she said, "I haven't figured that out yet. I didn't leave myself a graceful escape hatch."

"Rutledge has got to know, Avery."

"No!" She surged to her feet. "Not yet. I can't give him up yet. You've got to swear you won't tell him."

Irish fell back a step, dumbfounded by her violent reaction. "Jesus," he whispered as the truth dawned on him. "So that's what this is really about. You want another woman's husband. Is that why you want to remain Mrs. Rutledge—because Tate Rutledge is good in bed?"

TWENTY-THREE

Avery turned her back to keep from slapping him. "That was ugly, Irish."

She moved to the window and was alarmed to notice that it had already grown dark. At the ranch, they'd be finished with dinner. She had told them she was going to shop through the dinner hour. Still, she needed to leave soon.

"It was ugly, yes," Irish conceded. "It was meant to be. Every time I feel like going soft on you, I think about the countless nights following the crash when I drank myself into a stupor. You know, I even considered cashing it all in."

Avery came around slowly, her face no longer taut with anger. "Please don't tell me that."

"I figured, fuck this life. I'll take my chances in the next one. I had lost Cliff and Rosemary. I had lost you. I asked God, 'Hey, who needs this abuse?' If I hadn't feared for my immortal soul, such as it is. . ."He smiled ruefully.

She placed her arms around him and rested her cheek on his shoulder. "I love you. I suffered for you, too, believe it or not. I knew how my death would affect you."

He gathered her into a hug, not for the first time wishing she was truly his daughter. "I love you, too. That's why I can't let you go on with this, Avery."

She leaned away from him. "I have no choice now."

"If there is somebody who wants Rutledge dead—"

"There is."

"Then you're in danger, too."

"I know. I want to be a different Carole for Tate and Mandy, but if I'm too different, her coconspirator will figure she's betrayed him. Or," she added soberly, "that Carols isn't really Carole. I live in fear of giving myself away."

"You might have failed already and don't know it."

She shivered. "I realize that, too."

"Van noticed."

She reacted with a start, then expelled her breath slowly. "I wondered. I nearly had a heart attack when I opened the door to him."

Irish related his conversation with Van. "I was busy and didn't pay much attention to him at the time. I thought he was just being his usual, obnoxious self. Now, I think tie was trying to tell me something. What should I say if he brings it up again?"

"Nothing. The fewer who know, the better—for their sakes, as well as mine. Van knew Avery Daniels. The Rutledges didn't. They don't have anyone to compare the new Carole to. They're attributing the changes in her to the crash and its traumatic aftermath."

"It's still shallow," he said worriedly. "If there is no assassination plot—and I pray to heaven that there isn't—the best you can hope to get oat of this is a broken heart."

"If I gave it up now and managed to come out alive, I would have done it for nothing. I haven't got the whole story yet. And what if Tatewereassassinated, Irish? What if I could have prevented it and didn't? Do you think I could live with that the rest of my life?"

He lightly scrubbed her jaw with his knuckles. "You love him, don't you?"

Closing her eyes, she nodded.

"He hated his wife. Therefore, he hates you."

"Right again," she said with a mirthless laugh.

"What's it like between you?"

"I haven't slept with him."

"I didn't ask."

"But that's what you wanted to know." "Would you?"

"Yes," she replied without equivocation. "From thetine I regained consciousness until the day I left the clinic,hewas wonderful—absolutely wonderful. The way he treats Carole in public is above reproach."

"What about how he treats her in private?"

"Chilly, like a betrayed husband. I'm working on that."

"What will happen then? If he gives in and makes love to you, don't you think he'll know the difference?"

"Will he?" She tilted her head to one side and tried to smile. "Don't men say that all cats are gray in the dark?"

He gave her a reproving glare. "Okay, let's say he doesn't notice. How will you feel about him making love to you while thinking you're somebody else?"

That hadn't occurred to her. Thinking about it now caused her to frown. "I'll want him to know it's me. I know it's wrong to trick him, but. . ."

Her voice trailed off as she wrestled with the question she hadn't yet found an answer for. Leaving it unresolved again, she said, "And then there's Mandy. I love her, too, Irish. She desperately needs a caring mother."

"I agree. What will happen to her when your job is done and you desert her?"

"I won't just desert—"

"And how do you think Rutledge is going to feel when you do an expos6 on his family?" "It won't be an expose."

"I'd hate to be around when you try and explain that to him. He'll think you've used him." He paused for emphasis. "He'll be right, Avery."

"Not if I saved his life in the process. Don't you think he could find it within himself to forgive me?"

He swore beneath his breath. "You missed your calling. You should have been a lawyer. You'd argue with the devil himself."

"I can't let my career end in disgrace, Irish. I've got to make restitution for the mistake I made in Washington and earn back my credibility as a journalist. Maybe I am only trying to be daddy's little girl, but I've got to do it." Her eyes appealed to him for understanding. "I didn't pursue this golden opportunity. It was forced on me. I've got to make the best of it."

"You're going about it the wrong way," he said gently, tilting her chin up with his index finger. "You're too emotionally involved, Avery. You've got too much heart to remain detached. By your own admission, you care for these people. You love them."

"All the more reason for me to stay. Someone wants to kill Tate and make Mandy an orphan. If it's within my power, I've got to prevent that from happening."

His silence was as good as waving a white flag of surrender. She consulted his wall clock. "I must go. But first, do you have something belonging to me?"

In under a minute she was slipping the gold chain of her locket over her head. Monetarily it wasn't worth much, but it was her most valued possession.

Her father had brought it back to her from Egypt in I967, when he had been hired byNewsweekto document the conflict between that country and Israel.

Avery depressed the spring and the two disks parted. She gazed at the photographs inside. One was of her father. In the photograph, he was dressed in battle fatigues, a 35-mm camera draped around his neck. It was the last picture taken of him. He had been killed a few weeks later. The other picture was of her mother. Rosemary, lovely and dainty, was smiling into the camera, but sadly.

Hot, salty tears filled Avery's eyes. She closed the locket and squeezed it in her palm. Not everything had been taken away from her. She still had this, and she still had Irish.

"I hoped you had it," she told him gruffly.

"It was in the dead woman's hands."

Avery nodded, finding it difficult to speak. "Mandy had noticed it around my neck. I had given it to her to look at. Just as we were about to take off, Carole became annoyed because Mandy was twirling the chain. She took it away from her. That's the last thing I remember before the crash."

He showed her Carole's jewelry. "Shook my gizzard when I opened that envelope you sent. Youdidsend it, didn't you?"

She told him how that had come about. "I didn't know what else to do with it."

"Why didn't you just throw it away?"

"I guess I secretly wanted to make contact with you."

"You want her jewelry?"

She shook her head no, glancing down at the plain gold band on her left ring finger. "Its sudden reappearance would require an explanation. I have to keep things as simple as possible."

He cursed with impatience and apprehension. "Avery, call it off—now. Tonight."

"I can't."

"Hell and damnation," he swore. "You've got your father's ambition and your mother's compassion. It's a dangerous combination—lethal under these circum-stances. Unfortunately, you inherited a stubborn will from both of them."

Avery knew he had capitulated completely when he asked regretfully, "What do you want me to do?"

Tate was standing in the hallway when she returned. Avery thought he'd probably been waiting and watching for her, but he tried to pass it off as a coincidence.

"Why are you so late?" he asked, barely looking in her direction.

"Didn't Zee give you my message? I told her I had some last-minute things to get for the trip."

"I thought you'd be back sooner than this."

"I had a lot of shopping to do." She was loaded down with shopping bags—purchases she had made before her meeting with Irish. "Could you help me get this stuff to the bedroom, please?''

He relieved her of some of the bags and followed her down the hall. "Where's Mandy?" she asked.

"She's already asleep."

"Oh, I was hoping I'd get back in time to read a bedtime story to her."

"Then you should have come home sooner."

"Did she get a story?"

"Mom read her one. I tucked her in and stayed until she'd gone to sleep."

"I'll check on her in a while." She noticed as she passed the hall windows that Nelson, Jack, and Eddy were conversing over one of the patio tables in the courtyard. Zee was reclined in a lounger reading a magazine. Fancy was cavorting in the pool. "You're missing the conference."

"Eddy's going over the itinerary again. I've already heard it a thousand times."

"Just set those bags on the bed." She slid off her linen jacket^ tossed it down beside the shopping bags, and stepped out of her pumps. Tate hovered close, looking ready to pounce.

"Where did you go shopping?" "The usual places."

He had asked a dumb question, since the glossy sacks had familiar logos on them. For one horrifying moment, she wondered if he had followed her to Irish's house. He couldn't have. She had taken a circuitous route, constantly checking her rearview mirror to make sure she wasn't being followed.

Safety measures like that, which would have seemed absurdly melodramatic months ago, had become second nature. She didn't like living dishonestly, being constantly on guard. Tonight, especially, after the emotionally draining visit with Irish, her nerves were shot. Tate had picked the wrong night to interrogate her and put her on the defensive.

"Why are you giving me the third degree about going shopping?"

"I'm not."

"The hell you're not. You're sniffing like a bloodhound." She came a step closer to him. "What did you expect to smell on me? Tobacco smoke? Liquor? Semen? Something that would confirm your nasty suspicions thatIspent the afternoon with a lover?"

"It's happened," he said tightly.

"Not anymore!"

"What kind of sap do you take me for? Do you expect me to believe that an operation on your face has turned you into a faithful wife?"

"Believe what yon bloody well want to," she shouted back. "Just leave me alone while you're believing it."

She moved to her closet and almost derailed the sliding door as she angrily shoved it open. Her hands were trembling so badly that her fingers couldn't manage the buttons on the back of her blouse. She softly cursed her unsuccessful efforts to unbutton them. "Let me."

Tate spoke from close behind her, an underlying apology in his tone. He tipped her head forward, leaving her neck exposed. His hands captured hers and lowered them to her sides, then unbuttoned the blouse.

"It wouldhavebeen a familiar scene," he remarkedashe undid the last button.

The blouse slid off her shoulders and down her arms. She caught it against her chest and turned to face him. "I don't respond well to inquisitions, Tate."

"No better than I respond to adultery."

She bowed her head slightly. "I deserve that, I suppose." For a moment, she stared at his throat and the strong pulse beating there. Then she liftedher eyesto his again. "But since the airplane crash, haveIgiven you any reason to doubt my devotion to you?"