Avery withstood the verbal attack. "I believe you. It's not the earrings or any of this stuff that you wanted," she said, nodding down at the possessions she had gathered. "What you wanted was to get caught."

Fancy scoffed. "You've been out in the sun too long, Aunt Carole. Don't you know the sun's bad for your plastic face? It might cause it to melt."

"You can't insult me," Avery returned blandly. "You don't have the power. Because I'm on to you."

Fancy regarded her sulkily. "What do you mean?"

"You wanted my attention. You got it by stealing. Just like you get your parents' attention by doing things you know they'll disapprove of."

"Like fucking Eddy?"

"Like fucking Eddy."

Fancy was taken aback by Avery's calm echo of her cheeky question. She quickly recovered, however. "I'll bet you nearly shit when you saw me coming out of his hotel room. Didn't know I was anywhere near Houston, did you?"

"He's too old for you, Fancy." "We don't think so."

"Did he invite you to join him in Houston?"

"Maybe, maybe not." She sprayed fixative on her scarlet toenails, then waggled them as she admired her handiwork. Hopping off the bed, she moved to a drawer and took out a bikini. She peeled her nightgown over her head. Her body was marred by bruises and scratches. Her shapely buttocks were striped with them. Avery glanced away, a sick feeling rising in her stomach.

"I've never had a lover like Eddy before," Fancy said dreamily as she stepped into the bikini trunks.

"Oh? What kind of lover is he?"

"Don't you know?" Avery said nothing. She didn't know if Carole had slept with her husband's best friend or not. "He's the best." Fancy hooked the bikini bra, then leaned into the mirror, selected a lipstick off the dressing table, and spread it across her mouth. "Jealous?"

"No."

They made eye contact in the mirror. Fancy looked skeptical. "Uncle Tate's still sleeping in that other room."

"That's none of your business."

"Doesn't matter to me," she said with a malicious grin, "as long as you don't try and take up the slack with Eddy."

"You sound very proprietary."

"He's not sleeping with anybody else." She bent at the waist and, flipping her hair forward, began pulling a brush through the thick, dark-blond strands.

"Are you sure of that?"

"I'm sure. I don't leave him the energy to screw around on me."

"Tell me about him."

Fancy swept her hair to one side and slyly looked up at Avery from her upside down position. "I get it. Not jealous, just curious."

"Maybe. What do you and Eddy find to talk about?"

"Do you chat with the guys you're balling?" She laughed out loud. "Say, you wouldn't happen to have any grass, would you?"

"No."

"Guess not," she said, sighing with disgust as she came erect and threw her hair back. "Uncle Tate went berserk when he caught us smoking that time. Wonder what he would have thought if he'd caught us sharing that cowboy?"

Avery blanched and looked away. "I. . . don't do things like that anymore, Fancy."

"No shit? For real?" She seemed genuinely curious.

"For real."

"You know, when you first came home from the hospital, I thought you were faking it. You were Miss Goody Two Shoes all of a sudden. But now, I believe you really changed after that airplane crash. What happened? Are you afraid you're gonna die and go to hell, or what?"

Avery changed the subject. "Surely Eddy's told you something about himself. Where did he grow up? What about his family?"

Fancy propped her hands on her hips and regarded Avery strangely. "You know where he grew up, same as I do. Some podunk town in the Panhandle. He didn't have any family, remember? Except for a grandma who died while he and Uncle Tate were still at UT."

"What did he do before he came to work for Tate?"

Fancy had already grown impatient with the questions. "Look, we screw, okay? We don't talk. I mean, he's a real private person."

"For instance?"

"He doesn't like me going through his stuff. One night I was searching in his drawers for a shirt to put on and he got really pissed, said for me not to meddle in his stuff again, so I don't. I don't pry, period. We all need our privacy, you know."

"He's never mentioned what he did between Vietnam and when he came back to Texas?"

"All I've ever asked was if he'd been married. He told me he hadn't. He said he'd spent a lot of time finding himself. I said, 'Were you lost?' I meant it like a joke, but Eddy got this funny look on his face and said something like, 'Yeah, for a while there, I was.' "

"What do you think he meant by that?" "Oh, I suspect he freaked after the war," Fancy said with breezy unconcern. "Why?"

"Probably because of Uncle Tate saving his life after their plane crashed. I guess Eddy relives bailing out, being wounded, and having Uncle Tate carry him around in the jungle until a chopper could pick them up. If you've ever seen him naked, you must've noticed the scar on his back. Pretty gruesome, huh?

"He must've been scared shitless they were gonna get captured by the Cong. Eddy begged Uncle Tate to leave him to die, you know, but Uncle Tate wouldn't."

"Surely he didn't think Tate would," Avery exclaimed.- "Well, you know the fighter pilots' mottoa'Better dead than look bad.' Eddy must've taken it to heart more than most. Uncle Tate was the hero. Eddy was just another casualty. That must still play on his mind."

"How do you know all this, Fancy?"

"Are you kidding? Haven't you heard Grandpa tell it often enough?"

"Oh, sure, of course. You just seem to know so many of the fine details."

"No more than you. Look, I'm going out to the pool. Do you mind?"

Inhospitably, she walked to the door and pulled it open. Avery joined her there. "Fancy, the next time you want to use something of mine, just ask." She rolled her eyes, but Avery ignored her insolence. Touching the girl's shoulder briefly, she added, "And be careful."

"Of what?"

"Of Eddy."

"She said for me to be careful of you."

The motel room was cheap, dusty, and dank. But as Fancy bit into a fried chicken drumstick, she didn't seem to notice or mind. She'd become accustomed to the shabby surroundings in the last several weeks.

She would rather have had her trysts with Eddy in a more elegant hotel, but the Sidewinder Inn was located on the interstate between campaign headquarters and the ranch, so it was a convenient place for them to meet before going home. The motel catered to illicit lovers. Rooms were rented by the hour. The staff was discreetaout of indifference, not empathy.

Because they had worked through the dinner hour this evening, Fancy and Eddy were sharing their time together with a bucket of Colonel Sanders's best. Naked, they were sitting amid the rumpled sheets, eating fried chicken and discussing Carole Rutledge.

"Careful of me?" Eddy asked. "Why?"

"She said I shouldn't be getting involved with a man so much older," Fancy said, tearing off a bite of meat. "ButIdon't think that's the real reason."

Eddy broke apart a chicken wing. "What's the real reason?"

"The real reason is because she's eaten up with jealousy. See, she wants to play the good wife for Uncle Tate, just in case he wins and goes to Washington. But in case he doesn't, she wants to have someone waiting in the wings. Even though she pretends not to, I know Aunt Carole craves your body." Playfully, she tapped his chest with the drumstick.

Eddy didn't respond. He was staring absently into space, frowning. "I still wish she didn't know about you and me."

"Let's not have another fight about that, okay? I couldn't help it. I walked out of your room and there she was, clutching that stupid ice bucket to her chest and looking like she'd just swallowed her tongue."

"Has she told Tate?"

"I doubt it." A piece of golden-brown crust fell onto her bare belly. She moistened her fingertip, picked up the crumb, then licked it off. "I'll tell you something else," she said in a mysterious whisper, "I don't think she's quite right in the head yet."

"What do you mean?"

"She asks the dumbest questions."

"Like what?"

"Yesterday I mentioned something she should have a vivid memory of, even if she did suffer a concussion."

"What?"

"Well," Fancy drawled, dragging the nearly clean drumstick across her lips, "another ranch was buying some horses from Grandpa. When the cowboy came to look at them, nobody was around. I took him into the stable myself. He was real cute."

"I get the picture," Eddy said drolly. "What does Carole have to do with it?"

"She discovered us screwing like rabbits in one of the stalls. I thought I was sunk, see, because this was a couple of years ago and I was barely seventeen. But Carole and the cowboy connected immediately. You know, snap, crackle, pop. The next thing I know, she's as naked as we are and rolling around in the hay with us."

She fanned her face theatrically. "God, it was fantastic! What an afternoon. But yesterday, when I mentioned it, she looked ready to puke or something. You want some more chicken?"

"No thanks." Fancy tossed her cleaned bone into the box and took out the last chicken leg. Eddy encircled her ankle with his hard fingers. "You didn't give away any of my secrets, did you?"

She laughed and nudged him in the butt with her bare foot. "I don't know any of your secrets."

"So what did you and Carole talk about regarding me?"

"I just told her you were the best I'd ever had." She leaned forward and gave him a greasy kiss on the lips. "You are, you know. You've got a cock of solid iron. And there's something about you that's so excitingadangerous, almost."

He was amused. "Finish your chicken. It's time you headed home."

Disobediently, Fancy looped her arms around his neck and kissed him languorously. She left her lips in place as she whispered, "I've never done it doggie fashion before."

"I know."

She drew her head back sharply. "Didn't I do it good?"

"You did it fine. But I could tell you were surprised at first."

"I love surprises."

Eddy cupped the back of her head and gave her a searing kiss. Together they fell back onto the sour-smelling pillows. "The next time your Aunt Carole starts asking questions about me," he panted as he pulled on a rubber, "tell her to mind her own frigging business." He plowed into her.

"Yes, Eddy, yes," she chanted, beating on his back with the drumstick she still had clutched in one hand.

THIRTY-THREE.

"What the hell," Van Lovejoy said resignedly. He took a final drag on a cigarette he had smoked down to his stained fingertips. "I wouldn't be any better at blackmailing than I am at anything else. I would have fucked up."

"You threatened her with blackmail?" Irish stared at the video photographer with contempt. "You failed to mention that when you told me about your meeting with Avery."

"It's all right, Irish." Avery laid a calming hand on the older man's arm. With a trace of a grin, she added, "Van was miffed at us for not including him in our secret."

"Don't joke about it. This secret is giving me chronic indigestion." Irish left his sofa in pursuit of another shot of whiskey, which he poured into his glass from a bottle on the kitchen table.

"Bring me one of those," Van called to him. Then to Avery, he said, "Irish is right. You're up shit creek and you don't even know it."

"I know it."

"Got any paddles?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Jesus, Avery, are you nuts? Why'd you do such a damn fool thing?"

"Do you want to tell him, or should I?" she asked Irish as he resumed his seat next to her on the couch. "This is your party."

While Irish and Van sipped their whiskey, Avery related her incredible tale again. Van listened intently, disbelievingly, glancing frequently at Irish, who verified everything she said with a somber nod of his grizzled head.

"Rutledge has no idea?" Van asked when she had brought him up to date.

"None. At least as far as I can tell."

"Who's the traitor in the camp?"

"I don't know yet."