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“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.”
“Have you heard from him anymore?”
“Yes. Yesterday. I received another typed communiqué.”
“What’d it say?”
“Virtually the same 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?”
