"So I'd know more about what is going on. I had to get to the source of their problem before I could begin to find a motive for a killer. Obviously, my attempts to improve their marriage have been noticed. The killer figures that it's Carole's new tactic to put Tate off guard."

She chafed her arms as though suddenly chilled. "He's real, Irish. I know it. There's the proof," she said, nodding down at the note.

Not yet committing himself one way or the other, Irish tossed the sheet of paper down on the coffee table. "Let's assume there is a killer. Who's gonna ice him?"

"I have no idea," she replied with a defeated sigh. "They're one big, happy family."

"According to you, somebody out there at the Rocking R ain't so happy."

She provided him with a verbal run-down of names and each person's relationship to Tate. "Each has his ax to grind, but none of those axes has anything to do with Tate. Both his parents dote on him. Nelson's the undisputed head of the family. He rules, being stern and affectionate by turns.

"Zee isn't so easy to pigeonhole. She's a good wife and loving mother. She remains aloof from me. I think she resents Carole for not making Tate happier."

"What about the others?"

"Carole might have had an affair with Eddy."

"Eddy Paschal, Rudedge's campaign manager?"

"And best friend since college. I don't know for sure. I'm only going by Fancy's word on that."

"What a cliche How does this Paschal character treat you?"

"He's civil, nothing more. Of course, I haven't put out the signals Carole did. If they were having an affair, maybe he just assumes it ended with the accident. In any event, he's dedicated to Tate winning the election."

"The girl?"

Avery shook her head. "Fancy is a spoiled brat with no more morals than an alley cat in heat. But she's too flighty to be a killer. Not that she's above it; she just wouldn't expend the energy."

"The brother? Jack, is it?"

"He's extremely unhappy with his marriage," she mused, frowning thoughtfully, "but Tate doesn't figure into that. Although. . ."

"Although?"

"Jack's rather pathetic, actually. You think of him as being competent, good-looking, charming, until you see him next to his younger brother. Tate's the sun. Jack is the moon. He reflects Tate's light but has none of his own. He works as hard as Eddy on the campaign, but if anythinggoes wrong, he usually gets blamed for it. I feel sorry for him."

"Does he feel sorry for himself? Enough to commit fratricide?"

"I'm not sure. He keeps his distance. I've caught him watching me and sense a smoldering hostility there. On the surface, however, he seems indifferent."

"What about his wife?"

"Dorothy Rae might be jealous enough to kill, but she would go after Carole before she would Tate."

"What makes you say that?"

"I was browsing through family photo albums, trying to glean information. Dorothy came into the living room to get a bottle from the liquor cabinet. She was already drunk. I rarely see her, except at dinner, and then she hardly says anything. That's why I was so surprised when, out of the blue, she began accusing me of trying to steal Jack. She said I wanted to pick up with him where I'd left off before the crash."

"Carole was sleeping with her brother-in-law, too?" Irish asked incredulously.

"It seems that way. At least she was trying to." The notion had distressed Avery very much. She had hoped it was only an alcohol-inspired delusion that Dorothy Rae had drummed up white sequestered in her room with her bottles of vodka. "It's preposterous," she said, thinking aloud. "Carole had Tate. What could she possibly have wanted with Jack?"

"There's no accounting for taste."

"I guess you're right." Avery was so lost in her own musings, she missed his wry inflection. "Anyway, I denied having any designs on Dorothy Rae's husband. She called me a bitch, a whore, a home wreckerathings like that."

Irish ran a hand over his burred head. "Carole must have really been something."

"We don't know for certain that she wanted either Jack or Eddy."

"But she mast have put out some mighty strong signals if that many people picked up on them."

"Poor Tate."

"What does 'poor Tate' think of hiswife?"

Avery lapsed into deep introspection. "He thinks she aborted his baby. He knows she had other lovers. He knows she was a negligent parent and put emotional scars on his daughter. Hopefully, that can be reversed."

"You've taken on that responsibility, too, haven't you?"

His critical tone of voice brought her head erect. "What do you mean?"

Leaving her to stew for a moment, Irish disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a fresh drink. Feet spread and firmly planted, he stood before her. "Are you leveling with me about that midnight caller you had in the hospital?"

"How can you even doubt it?"

"I'll tell you how I can doubt it. You came to me, what was it, almost two years ago, with your tail tucked between your legs, needing a jobaany job. You'd just been fired from the network for committing one of the worst faux pas in journalism history."

"I didn't come here tonight to be reminded of that."

"Well, maybe you should be reminded! Because I think that's what's behind this whole damned scheme of yours. You plunged in that time over your head, too. Before you got your facts straight, you reported that a junior congressman from Virginia had killed his wife before blowing his own brains out."

She pressed her fists against her temples as that horrible sequence of events unfolded like a scroll in her memory.

"First reporter on the scene, Avery Daniels," Irish announced with a flourish, showing her no mercy. "Always hot on the trail of a good story. You smelled fresh blood."

"That's right, I did! Literally." She crossed her arms over her middle. "I saw the bodies, heard those children screaming in terror over what they had discovered when they had come home from school. I saw them weeping over what their father had done."

"Hadallegedlydone, dammit . You never learn, Avery. Heallegedlykilled his wife before blasting his own brains onto the wallpaper." Irish took a quick drink of whiskey. 'But you went live with a report, omitting that technicallittle legal word, leaving your network vulnerable to a slander suit.

"You lost it on camera, Avery. Objectivity took a flying leap. Tears streamed down your face and thenathenaas if all that wasn't enough, you asked your audience at large how any man, but especially an elected public official, could do such a beastly thing."

She raised her head and faced him defiantly. "I know what I did, Irish. I don't need you to remind me of my mistake. I've tried to live it down for two years. I was wrong, but I learned from it."

"Bullshit," he thundered. "You're doing the same damn thing all over again. You're diving in where you have no authority to go. You're making news, not reporting it. Isn't this the big break you've been waiting for? Isn't this the story that's going to put you back on top?"

"All right, yes!" she flung up at him. "That was part of the reason I went into it."

"That's been your reason for doing everything you've ever done."

"What are you saying?"

"You're still trying to get your daddy's attention. You're trying to fill his shoes, live up to his name, which you feel like you've failed to do." He moved toward her. "Let me tell you somethingasomething you don't want to hear." He shook his head and said each word distinctly. "He's not worth it."

"Stop there, Irish."

"He was your father, Avery, but he was my best friend. I knew him longer and a whole lot better than you did. I loved him, but I viewed him with far more objectivity than you or your mother ever could."

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 homea"

"Which was a fraction of your childhoodaa 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. Rutledgeabecause 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 deada"

"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 betterafor 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 plotaand I pray to heaven that there isn'tathe 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?"