MIRROR IMAGE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

"It was ghastly. So ugly."

Avery sat with her head bowed over a glass of brandy that Irish had insisted would help calm her down. The first unwanted swallow had burned a crater in her empty stomach, but she kept the glass because she needed something to hold on to.

''This whole frigging thing is ugly,'' her irascible host declared. "I've thought so all along. Didn't I warn you? Didn't I?"

"So you warned her. Stop harping on it."

"Who asked you?" Irish angrily rounded on Van, who was sipping at a joint that Irish had been too upset to notice wasn't an ordinary cigarette.

''Avery did. She called and told me to haul ass over here, so I hauled ass."

"I meant who asked you for your opinion?"

"Will the two of you please stop?" Avery cried raggedly. "And Van, will you please put that thing out? The smell's making me sick."

She tapped her fingertips against her lips, as though contemplating whether or not she was going to throw up again. "The poster terrified me. He really means to do it. I've known so all along, but this ..."

She set the glass of brandy on the coffee table and stood up, chafing her arms. She had on a sweater, but nothing helped her get warm.

"Who is it, Avery?"

She shook her head hard. "I don't know. Any of them. I don't know.''

"Who had access to your room?"

"Earlier this morning and before I came home at noon, anybody. Mona says they should install a revolving door. Everybody's in and out constantly. As the election approaches, they come and go at all hours."

"How do you know someone didn't follow you here?"

"I kept one eye on the rearview mirror and doubled back several times. Besides, no one was home when I left."

"No clues from the folder you found in the old lady's desk?"

Avery answered Van's irreverent question with a dismal shake of her head.

"She's a strange one," he observed.

"What makes you say that?"

"I've got lots of her on tape. She's always smiling, waving at the crowds, but damned if I believe she's all that happy."

"I know what you mean. She's a very private person and says little. At least until today."

"Tell us about Carole Navarro," Irish said. "She's more to the point than Zee Rutledge."

"Carole, or whatever her original name was, was a tramp. She danced in the seediest nightclubs—"

"Tittie bars," Van supplied.

"... Under a number of spicy and suggestive names. She was arrested once for public lewdness and once for prostitution, but both charges were dropped."

"You're sure of all this?"

''The private investigator might have been slime, but he was thorough. With the information he supplied Zee, it was easy for me to track down some of the places Carole had worked."

"When was this?" Irish wanted to know.

"Before I came here. I even talked to some people who knew her—other dancers, former employers, and such."

"Did any mistake you for her?" Van asked.

"All of them. I passed myself off as a long lost cousin to explain the similarity."