by Sandra Brown
“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.”
“But why was 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—”
“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 would I need 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 them I can 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. “I love 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 knew I was 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 to try. 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 notice
d 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.
Dekker, however, had the endorsement of an incumbent president, who made a swing through the state in pursuit of his own reelection. Rutledge supporters feared that the president’s appearance might nullify the gut-busting progress they had made.
Actually, the president was fighting for his life in Texas. The rallies where he shared the podium with Dekker had a subliminal edge of eleventh-hour desperation that was conveyed to the uncommitted voters. Tate benefitted rather than suffered from the president’s vigorous campaigning. The groundswell gained even greater momentum when the opposing presidential candidate came to Texas and campaigned alongside him.
After an exhausting but exhilarating trip to seven cities in two days, everyone at Rutledge headquarters was reeling with preelection giddiness. Even though Dekker still maintained a slight margin over Tate in the official polls, the momentum seemed to have swung the other way. Word on the street was that Tate Rutledge was looking better all the time. Optimism was at its highest peak since Tate had won the primary. Everyone was buoyant.
Except Fancy.
She sauntered through the various rooms of campaign headquarters, slouching in chairs as they became available, scorning the party atmosphere, stalking Eddy’s movements with sulky, resentful eyes.
They hadn’t been alone together for more than a week. Every time he glanced her way, he looked straight through her. Whenever she swallowed her pride and approached him, he did nothing more than assign her some menial task. She was even put on a telephone and told to call registered voters to urge them to go to the polls and vote on election day. The only reason she consented to do the demoralizing work was because it kept Eddy in her sights. The alternative was staying at the house and not seeing Eddy at all.
He was constantly in motion, barking orders like a drill sergeant and losing his temper when they weren’t carried out quickly enough to suit him. He seemed to subsist on coffee, canned sodas, and vending machine food. He was the first to arrive at headquarters in the morning and the last to leave at night, if he left at all.
On the Sunday before the election, the Rutledges moved into the Palacio Del Rio, a twenty-two-story hotel on the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio. From there they would monitor election returns two days later.
Tate’s immediate family took the Imperial Suite on the twenty-first floor. The others were assigned rooms nearby. VCRs were installed on all the television sets so newscasts and commentaries could be recorded for subsequent review and analysis. Additional telephone lines were provided. Security guards were posted at the elevators, more to safeguard the candidate’s privacy than the candidate himself.
On the mezzanine level, twenty stories below, workers were draping the wall of the Corte Real Ballroom with red, white, and blue bunting. The back wall was covered with larger-than-life-size pictures of Tate. The dais was being decorated with bunting and flags, and bordered with pots of white chrysanthemums nestling in red and blue cellophane. A huge net, containing thousands of balloons, was suspended from the ceiling, to be released on cue.
Over the racket and confusion generated by obsequious hotel employees, meticulous television servicemen, and scurrying telephone installers, Eddy was attempting to make himself heard in the parlor of Tate’s suite that Sunday afternoon.
“From Longview you fly to Texarkana. You spend an hour and a half there, max, then to Wichita Falls, Abilene, and home. You should arrive��”
“Daddy?”
“Tate, for crissake!” Eddy lowered the clipboard he’d been consulting and exhaled his annoyance like noxious fumes.
“Shh, Mandy.” Tate held a finger to his lips. She had been sitting on his lap during the briefing session, but her attention span had been exhausted long ago.
“Are you listening, or what?”
“I’m listening, Eddy. Longview, Wichita Falls, Abilene, home.”
“You forgot Texarkana.”
“My apologies. I’m sure you and the pilot won’t. Are there any more bananas in the fruit basket?”
“Jesus,” Eddy cried. “You’re two days away from an election for a Senate seat and you’re thinking about bananas. You’re too damn casual!”
Tate calmly accepted a banana from his wife and peeled it for Mandy. “You’re too tense. Relax, Eddy. You’re making everybody crazy.”
“Amen,” Fancy intoned glumly from where she was curled in an easy chair watching a movie on TV.
“You win the election, then I’ll relax.” Eddy consulted the clipboard again. “I don’t even remember where I was. Oh, yeah, you arrive here in San Antonio tomorrow evening around seven-thirty. I’ll make arrangements for the family to have dinner at a local restaurant. You’ll retire.”
“Do I get to tee-tee and brush my teeth first? I mean, between dinner and retiring?”
Everyone laughed. Eddy didn’t think Tate’s wisecrack was funny. “Tuesday morning, we’ll travel en masse to your precinct box in Kerrville, vote, then return here to sweat it out.”
Tate wrestled the banana peel away from Mandy, who was sliding her index finger down its squishy lining and collecting the gunk beneath her fingernail. “I’m going to win.”
“Don’t get overconfident. The polls still show you two points behind Dekker.”
“Think where we started, though,” Tate reminded him, his gray eyes twinkling. “I’m going to win.”
On that optimistic note, the meeting concluded. Nelson and Zee went to their room to lie down and rest. Tate had to work on a speech he was delivering at a Spanish-speaking church later in the evening. Dorothy Rae had talked Jack into going with her for a stroll along the Riverwalk.
Fancy waited until everyone dispersed, then followed Eddy to his room, which was a few doors down from the command post, as she called Tate’s suite. After her soft knock, he called out, “Who is it?”
“Me.”
He opened the door but didn’t even hold it for her. He turned his back and headed for the closet, where he took out a fresh shirt. She closed the door and flipped the dead bolt.
“Why don’t you just leave your shirt off?” She leaned into him suggestively and teased one of his nipples with the tip of her tongue.
“I don’t think it would be too suave to show up at campaign headquarters without a shirt on.” He crammed his arms through the starched sleeves and began buttoning up.
“You’re going there now?”
“That’s right.”
“But it’s Sunday.”
He cocked his eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve started observing the Lord’s day.”
“I was in church this morning, same as you.”
“And for the same reason,” he said. “Because I told everybody they had to go. Didn’t you see the television cameras recording Tate’s piety for their viewing voters?”
“I was praying.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Praying that your dick would rot and drop off,” she said with fierce passion. He merely laughed. When he began stuffing his shirttail into his trousers, Fancy tried to stop him. “Eddy,” she whined contritely, “I didn’t come here to fight with you. I’m sorry for what I just said. I want to be with you
.”
“Then come to the headquarters with me. I’m sure there’s plenty of work to do.”
“It wasn’t work I had in mind.”
“Sorry, that’s what’s on the agenda from now till election day.”
Her pride could only take so much abuse. “You’ve been brushing me off for weeks now,” she said, her fists finding props on her hips. “What gives with you?”
“You have to ask?” He ran a brush through his pale hair. “I’m trying to get your Uncle Tate elected to the U.S. Congress.”
“Screw the U.S. Congress!”
“I’m sure you would,” he said wryly. “If you had a chance, you’d give every member of the legislature blue balls. Now, Fancy, you’ll have to excuse me.”
He reached for the door. She blocked his path, pleading again, “Don’t go, Eddy. Not just yet, anyway. Stay a while. We could order up some beers, have a few laughs.” Wiggling against him, nudging his pelvis with hers, she purred, “Let’s make love.”
“Love?” he scoffed.
She grabbed his hand and drew it beneath her skirt toward her crotch. “I’m already wet.”
He pulled his hand away, bodily lifted her out of his path, and set her down behind him. “You’re always wet, Fancy. Peddle it somewhere else. Right now, I’ve got better things to do.”
Fancy gaped at the closed door, then hurled the first available thing her hand landed on, which happened to be a glass ashtray. She threw it with all her might, but it only bounced against the door without breaking and landed dully on the carpeted floor. That enraged her even more.
She’d never been so summarily rejected. Nobody, but nobody, turned down Fancy Rutledge when she was hot. She stormed out of Eddy’s room, stayed in hers only long enough to change into a tight sweater and even tighter jeans, then went to the hotel garage and retrieved her Mustang.
She was damned if she was going to stop living for the sake of this confounded Senate race.
* * *
“It’s me. Anything happening?”
“Hello, Irish.” Van rubbed his bloodshot eyes while cradling the telephone receiver against his ear. “I just got in a while ago. Rutledge spoke at a greaser church tonight.”