The alarm on Oscar's watch woke them at six the next morning. Jaime groaned at the sound of it, jammed a pillow over her head and resolved to resist. Staying in bed was so much nicer than dressing and going out into the wintry chill - it was dark to boot - and she wasn't feeling exactly perky. However there would be no negotiating with Oscar. This was one of his flaws - he could ignore physical frailties - the need for food and sleep, the desire to lie in bed to sleep off four martinis - like no one else she knew.
In ten minutes they were dressed and standing in the backyard, Oscar wielding a flashlight he had dug out of a kitchen drawer. The air was wet and cold - the kind of cold that burrowed through clothing and headed straight for the bones.
"Maybe she tied it around the leg of a migrating bird right now on its way to Mexico." Jaime whispered through a yawn.
"Hmm." Oscar grunted. This was his one concession to his martini induced frailty - he became monosyllabic.
It seemed obvious that the yard was too large to be properly searched by two people with one flashlight in the dark. They stood on the deck for some moments, Oscar shining the light randomly over grass and trees and fence.
"Is there a birdbath?" Jaime inquired.
"No... but I think I saw…." he aimed the beam back toward the house, illuminating a bird feeder hanging from the eaves.
"Ah ha!" Jaime exclaimed. Conveniently, a patio chair stood next to the feeder, allowing her to retrieve it easily. Inside, on top of a pile of seeds, was a curled up piece of paper.
It was a picture of a tree. There were probably twenty trees in the yard, and they set about examining them together, walking around each one, shining the flashlight up and down the length of the trunk, concentrating at the height most easily accessible to a four feet tall person.
"I sure hope nobody looks out the window right now." she said.
Two trees away, she spied a square shape glowing against the bark. "Got it!" she whispered, jogging over and snatching it from where it was pinned. "A house?" she murmured disappointedly, once Oscar had illuminated the image. "That's a pretty general clue. And here I thought we were getting somewhere."
"Treehouse?" Oscar suggested, pointing the flashlight up to a large dark form in the branches of the trees at the back of the yard.
"Yeah…" Jaime agreed, heading straight to it.
In the dark she could just make out the rope ladder hanging from a hole in the floor of the structure. She headed up, Oscar lighting the way for her.
Squeezing with some difficulty through the small hole, she was engulfed in darkness until her eyes adjusted. Then triumphantly she whispered, "Paydirt, Bup!"
Oscar halted at the entrance rather than get himself stuck in the hole. Only his head poked up into the little room.
"I could try coming in the window…" he offered, his voice gravelly.
"No!" Jaime barked. "Not in the dark. We don't need any trips to the emergency room today."
He forced his arm and shoulder through the hole and shone the flashlight through the small room. They had indeed found Command Central of Katie's operation. Oscar's razor was laid out neatly in the center of the floor. Near the window at the back of the fort was a pair of binoculars and a clipboard, containing notes of some kind.
Jaime brought it to Oscar and lay on the floor beside him so they could examine it together. On a sheet of foolscap was a neat list of dates and times – seven of them altogether.
"If the position of the binoculars indicate which window she's been looking through…" Oscar mused, "then it's possible she's been watching…"
"…the Markhams." Jaime finished.
By six forty-five they were back into bed. Chilled and sluggish, neither saw the point in sitting in a quiet house for the next hour or more, waiting for everyone else to rise - bed was much more appealing. Jaime slept well in Oscar's arms – she usually conked out for a full six to eight hours a night, and best of all were those morning they could lie in together, dozing and snuggling. In her darkest moments of the previous couple of years – before Oscar - she had been down to two or three hours a night. Rudy told her it was the boost given to her metabolism by bionics. Now she knew it had been a combination of anxiety and exhaustion.
Lying face to face, they considered the situation.
"So why spy on the Markhams?" Jaime whispered. From this perspective Oscar was all nose and sincere brown eyes.
"And why get us involved?" he added. "Is she testing us? Or does she think they're spies, or both?"
"I think there's more to it…" Jaime mused, absently caressing his ear. After some moments she added, "Do you think…maybe this is going to sound crazy…but is it possible, if we take her worries about divorce…she must be worried about her parents divorcing….and then if you add her sudden anger at the Markhams, and the spying from the treehouse…"
"What?" He was not catching on.
"The fact that she knows Brenda's father is seeing another woman…"
"...that she thinks one of her parents is having an affair with one of the Markhams?" he gasped incredulously.
"Yeah…" Jaime said, "As crazy as it sounds?"
"Pretty crazy all right. Ridiculous in fact." Suddenly he was a tiny bit doubtful. "Do you think there's marital trouble there?"
"I don't think so...they look pretty solid to me...but then...it doesn't have to be true." she said. "She is only nine."
"Right….so if that is what she thinks…is it Judy having an affair with Dennis, or is it Bruce having an affair with Carol? Both scenarios are not something I care to picture." An small bemused smile crossed his face.
"I'm going to guess that...Katie thinks her father is having an affair with Carol. She seems angry at him... and the other night she said her mother didn't understand anything..." Jaime was sorting her thoughts as they left her lips, "and her hostility seemed more directed at Carol than at Dennis."
"Okay...so does that mean Bruce is going over to the Markhams alone, or does it mean that Carol comes over here?"
"Maybe it's going to be your job to find out. Mano a mano."
"How am I going to do that?"
"You're a smart man." Jaime smiled sleepily. "You'll figure something out." Then she closed her eyes.
"But…" Oscar added, and then he stopped. He was going to say "what if Bruce is having an affair?", but Jaime looked so serene, and even as he contemplated the problem her breath had become the rhythmic and steady. She was very much asleep.