Mirror Image

as before,” she answered evasively, unable to connect with Irish’s shrewd blue eyes.
    The succinct note, found in her lingerie drawer, had read,
You’ve slept with him. Good work. He’s disarmed.
    It had made her queasy to think of that unknown someone crowing over what had happened at the Adolphus. Had Tate discussed their lovemaking with his traitorous confidant? Or was he so close to Tate that he had sensed his mood swing and made a lucky guess into the reason for it? She supposed she should be glad that he thought it was a ploy and hadn’t figured it for an act of love.
    “Whoever he is,” she told her friends now, “he still means to do it.” Her arms broke out in chill bumps. “But I don’t think he’s going to do the actual killing.” The word was almost impossible for her to speak aloud. “I think someone’s been hired to do it. Did you bring the tapes I asked for?”
    Van nodded toward an end table where he had stacked several videotapes when he arrived, just a few minutes ahead of Avery. “Irish passed along the note you sent me through his post office box.”
    “Thanks, Van.” Leaving her place on the sofa, she retrieved the tapes, then went to Irish’s TV set and VCR and turned them on. She inserted one of the videos and returned to the sofa with a remote control transmitter. “This is everything you shot during our trip?”
    “Yep. From your arrival at Houston to your return home. If we’re going to watch unedited home movies, I’ve got to have another drink.”
    “Next time, bring your own bottle,” Irish muttered as Van sauntered into the kitchen.
    “Screw you, McCabe.”
    Taking no offense, Irish leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. On the television screen Tate was seen emerging from a Jetway. Avery and Mandy were at his side. The rest of the entourage was in the background.
    “You’ve got the kid, but where are his parents?” Van asked, returning with a fresh drink.
    “They drove down. Zee refuses to fly.”
    “Funny for an air force wife, isn’t it?”
    “Not so much. Nelson flew bombing missions in Korea while she was left at home with baby Jack. Then he did some test piloting. I’m sure she was afraid of being widowed. And Nelson’s buddy—Tate’s named after him—was lost at sea when his plane crashed.”
    “How’d you learn all that?”
    “I went to Tate’s office when I knew he wouldn’t be there, with the excuse of wanting to have all the pictures reframed. I manipulated his secretary into conversation about the people in—Wait! Stop!”
    Realizing that she was controlling the TV with the transmitter, she stopped the tape, backed it up, and replayed it. Very quietly, fearfully, she said, “He was at the airport when we arrived in Houston, too.”
    “Who?” Irish and Van asked in unison.
    Again Avery rewound the tape. “This is still Hobby Airport, right, Van?”
    “Right.”
    “There! See the tall man with gray hair?”
    “Yellow polo shirt?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where? I don’t see him,” Irish grumbled.
    “What about him?” Van asked.
    Avery rewound the tape. “Does this thing have a stop action?”
    “Hell, yes.” Irish snatched the transmitter from her hands. “Say when. I haven’t seen a goddamn thing to—”
    “When!”
    He depressed the button, freezing the action on the screen. Avery knelt in front of the TV set and pointed the man out to Irish. He was standing in the background, at the periphery of the crowd.
    “He was in our hotel,” she declared as the realization struck her. “We were rushing off to a rally and he held an elevator for us.”
    That’s why she had noticed him in Midland. She had just seen him in Houston, although it hadn’t registered at the time that the sweaty man who’d come from a workout in the hotel gym was the same as the man in the western suit.
    “So?”
    “So he was in Midland, too. He was at the airport when we landed. And I saw him later, in Dallas, at the fund-raising dinner at Southfork.”
    Van and Irish exchanged worried glances. “Coincidence?”
    “Do you really think so?” Avery demanded angrily.
    “All right, an avid Rutledge supporter.”
    “I had just about convinced myself of that,” she said, “but I’ve been dropping by campaign headquarters nearly every day since we got back, and I haven’t seen him among the volunteers. Besides, he never approached us while we were away. He was always at the edge of the crowd.”
    “You’re jumping to