By A Spider's Thread

Chapter Thirty-four

It took Mark Rubin less than seventy-two hours to get the results that Jessie Ray said could take several months-and he might have gotten them even faster if the weekend hadn't imposed a rain delay of sorts. By Monday afternoon he and Tess were being welcomed into the office of an undersecretary at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.

I really should work with people who have money more often, Tess thought, looking around the bland office that they hoped would provide their next lead.

"As you know, this program is used primarily to track down deadbeat dads," explained a pouty-lipped blonde in glasses. Without the black horn-rims and the business suit, she would have had no problem passing for a sixteen-year-old cheerleader. Even in conservative attire, she looked more like the sort of bespectacled woman found in a porn film. Tess kept thinking she was going to whip off her glasses, among other things. "But we've been keen to see if it could be applied to welfare fraud as well. Mr. Rubin's case gives us an opportunity to see how clients might abuse the system."

Tess did not literally bite her tongue, but she pressed her lips together until the lower one all but disappeared beneath her front teeth. This was neither the place nor the time to tell the young woman exactly what she thought of the changes in social services and her administration's priorities. By all means, track down those people taking the federal government for a few hundred dollars, while letting rapacious CEOs run free.

"But it's the same old story," the woman continued. "Garbage in, garbage out. That's why I was so pleased"-she cast an almost coquettish glance at Rubin-"to work with someone such as Mr. Rubin, who understood the kind of information we needed. It was the combination of birth dates and aliases that kicked out a pattern. The birth dates alone might have done it, but the names cinched it."

"Names?" Tess asked.

Mark smiled ruefully. "I know my wife well-despite what you've suggested over the past two weeks. She has a singular obsession with the movie star Natalie Wood. Remember Wilma Loomis?"

"The person who picked up the check in Ohio? Sure."

"The formal version threw me. Wilma Dean 'Deanie' Loomis is the full name of the character played by Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass. Natalie always insisted they looked alike."

Tess remembered her own sense that Natalie Rubin resembled a famous actress. "More Merle Oberon or Gene Tierney, I think."

"Anyway, once I realized she had taken a name from a film, I thought she might give the children names that correlated to Wood's life. I suggested that they try Warren and Robert for the boys, as those were Wood's best-known leading men on-and off-screen."

"How did you know that?"

Mark smiled. "I actually listened to my wife when she chattered. Figuring out Penina's alias was harder. I tried Lana."

"For her friend?"

"No, because it was Wood's sister. I also suggested Maria and Daisy."

"Daisy?"

"From Inside Daisy Clover. An odd piece of filmmaking, one of those movies made when Hollywood was in transition, but Natalie-my Natalie-loved it."

"And Daisy was the one that helped us hit!" Miss Horn-Rims almost shouted. "A woman named Wilmadeane-she spelled it wrong-Loomis has been visiting various county social-service offices, inquiring about benefits. She begins to fill out the application but always lacks some crucial piece of paperwork-the children's birth certificates, I'm guessing-and settles for a temporary check to tide her over."

"Doesn't a woman who applies for social services have to provide information about her children's father, so the agency can contact him? I thought there was a big push to make fathers pay."

"There is." The young woman nodded vigorously, a welfare-wonk bobblehead. "But there are loopholes. The woman can decline to provide that information if she says she's a victim of abuse."

"Abuser." Mark Rubin's face flushed wine red. "How could anyone…?"

But Tess was remembering Nancy Porter, the Baltimore County homicide detective who had felt obligated to make the same discreet inquiries, in part because of the insular nature of Baltimore's Orthodox community. Natalie had used the system-and, perhaps, certain cultural biases-quite cleverly. Maybe that explained her route through smaller Midwest towns. She was banking on people's being unfamiliar with the lives of Orthodox Jews and therefore even more inclined to believe her stories about an abusive, vengeful husband who must never know where she was.

"Is there a pattern to the towns or to the route?"

"Not that I can find," Miss Horn-Rims said, in a tone that implied that something she couldn't find didn't exist. "They just zigzagged around Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio."

"But we know they suddenly started heading east in a pretty linear way, driving across Ohio to Wheeling."

"No one ever went to West Virginia to perpetrate welfare fraud," Miss Horn-Rims said. "I could call these county agencies on your behalf to try to get more information, but my guess is she's dropped this scam. The last check was cut in Valparaiso, last Friday. Before that they never went a week without a check."

Which was, Tess calculated, right after they were spotted in French Lick. And just before Amos was killed. The zigzagging had stopped once Amos was dead. Were the two things connected?

"I'm trying to work this out," she said, remembering Amos's state-of-the-art photocopier, the templates for documents. "You say the grants averaged a hundred to two hundred dollars, which she received in the form of a check. So Natalie clearly has a fake ID, or else she couldn't cash the check."

"Right," Miss Horn-Rims agreed. "But the check is issued through the state or the county, so no bank or check-cashing store is going to be too worried about it bouncing. If she has an ID that satisfies welfare workers, she must have one that will meet standards at most banks as well."

"Still, that's not a lot of money. Total it all up. She probably hasn't made a thousand dollars since she left, and that's just not that much money for five people on the move. Her friend Lana couldn't possibly cover them for this long."

"She could be getting off-the-book work or staying in shelters," Miss Horn-Rims said with a blithe shrug, as if food and shelter were simply abstract concepts to be plugged in to her theories and formulas.

"Possibly," Tess said, trying to keep a lid on her partisan animosity. "Meanwhile, could I have a list of the banks and check-cashing stores where Natalie cashed her checks? Maybe someone will remember her or a telling detail about the man she's traveling with."

"A real man, an able-bodied man," Mark put in, "supports a woman."

The perky Human Services analyst nodded again, mistaking Mark's private bitterness for a larger worldview. "Traditional core values are at the heart of this administration's mission."

"I know," Tess said, pushed past her breaking point, a short trip at the best of times. "Sometimes I can't sleep at night, worrying about welfare fraud. Or whether billionaires are going to qualify for the family tax credit."

Miss Horn-Rims' smooth forehead crinkled. "She means well," Mark said swiftly. "She's just a little agitated. Thank you for all your work on this."

On the street outside the nondescript D.C. office building, Mark offered Tess another life lesson while she scarfed down a hot dog from a street vendor.

"When people are doing you favors, you have to swallow a few things-including your own tongue."

"Is that in the Talmud?"

"If it's not, it should be."

Tess quickly learned that small-town bank tellers don't necessarily remember strangers, not even beautiful ones who resemble Natalie Wood-or Gene Tierney or Merle Oberon-and have three children in tow. Not in Valparaiso, not in Paoli, not in Mount Carmel. The managers were invariably friendly, smothering her in chatter and irrelevant detail before finding the right teller, but no one seemed to know or remember anything. One teller did recall a dark-haired woman, but he insisted she was traveling with two children, a boy and a girl. No, he couldn't tell if they were twins. No, he didn't remember anything else.

"It was the seventeenth, a Thursday," Tess said. "Can't you recall anything more?"

The man's voice, already high and effeminate, became shrill. "Look, I'm sorry if I don't remember everything that happened that day. I happened to be held up at gunpoint, and that memory is a little more vivid than cashing some county check."

"I'm sorry," Tess said, understanding the man's testiness. Tellers were sometimes questioned closely after bank robberies, in case they were conspirators in such crimes. "That must have been harrowing."

"Well, I didn't see a gun," he said, mollified. "But you're not supposed to put up any opposition, no matter what. There's a protocol. I guess I should be grateful it's the only one so far this year."

"Really? Is Fort Wayne that dangerous?"

"Oh, the security in our branch is practically nil, but you find that everywhere these days. Did you know bank robbery is actually up, even though the takes are smaller than ever? This joker got four hundred out of my drawer, but he knew enough to make sure I didn't put a dye pack in. Made me count the money out like a withdrawal, telling me all the time that he had a gun and he had an accomplice with a gun inside the bank. I've been on Paxil since, and the side effects are dreadful."

"Side effects," Tess repeated, just to be saying something.

"Dry mouth. Among other things. Anyway, the federal agents spent all of twenty minutes with me-if it doesn't involve some guy in a turban, they're just not interested."

"That's awful," Tess said, unsure how to end the conversation without seeming callous. This man clearly had nothing to tell her, except his own sob story.

"The field agent actually said to me, 'Look, we've had five of these in the past two weeks'-not just in Indiana but in southern Illinois and Ohio, too. It's a new craze, like one of those silly dances that comes along every so often."

"A new craze of bank robberies," Tess repeated. "In southern Illinois and Ohio."

"And Indiana. So I said-"

Through being polite, Tess hung up the phone and asked Mark to read her the number for the Valparaiso bank.

"But you already talked to them."

"I know, but there's something I forgot to ask."

The Valparaiso bank had been robbed the day Natalie cashed her check. So had the Paoli bank. Only the Mount Carmel bank had been spared for some reason.

"That's how they're making it," Tess said. "Natalie gets a social-services check, takes it to the bank. Within an hour or two, it's robbed."

"Natalie's not a robber," Mark said.

"No one's saying she is. But it's three for four, which is a hell of a coincidence. She's casing the places, don't you see? The check gives her cash, but it also gives her a plausible reason to go into the bank and study the layout. That's how they're making it. They're robbing banks with lax security. Bonnie and Clyde, with three kids in tow."

"It's a ridiculous theory."

"Probably," she said, trying to placate him even as her excitement grew. "But I bet it's strong enough to go to federal authorities and persuade them to issue a warrant for Natalie. That means the next time she's spotted, local police can take her in and hold her long enough for you to get there and get your kids back."

"No."

"No?" She had thought her idea sheer genius.

"It's dangerous. The police could give chase, and the children would be in the middle."

"Your children are traveling with a bank robber, who's been risking encounters with the police up to twice a week. They'll be safer if authorities intervene."

"I don't want Natalie to face criminal charges."

"I'm sure she won't, if she agrees to cooperate. But she's clearly not going to turn herself in."

"She's doing this under duress. This man has scared her, forced her to do these things."

"Mark, you yourself pointed out that she didn't get away from him when she had the chance-"

"No." He was yelling now. "No police. And if you go to them, you're violating my confidentiality as a client. Remember the papers you had me sign, the ones drawn up by your lawyer? Those require you to honor my wishes."

"Not when I have evidence of a string of felonies."

"But you don't. This is just some wild idea you cooked up, nothing more."

"It's not as wild as what you're thinking."

He gave her a look that he must have perfected over his years in business, a level, direct gaze that was hard to meet for more than a few seconds.

"Really?" he demanded. "Tell me what I'm thinking, Miss Mind Reader."

"You believe you can turn this to your advantage, that Natalie will have to come back to you if this man is locked up. That you can get her a great lawyer, cut her a deal, and have leverage over her. But if she doesn't want to be with you, then she's never going to stay, Mark. What are you going to do, put her on an even tighter leash when you get her home?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The money, the house, the life you created for her-it was all about control. In your heart of hearts, you were always preparing for the day she might leave you. You tried to make sure she wouldn't have the wherewithal, financially or emotionally. But the fact is, she's chosen another life, with another man. Yes, he's probably a crook, and it's a crappy life, and it makes no sense, but it's what she wants, Mark. You've got to forget about Natalie and focus on your children."

Mark did not speak for several long moments. When he did, his voice was frightening in its controlled anger, its absolute disdain for Tess and her opinions. "I did not hire you for personal advice. I hired you to find my family. Given the information you've developed today, you might want to go back to the records at Jessup, see if Boris had any contact with someone serving time for armed robbery. That strikes me as the most useful thing you can do."

"Mark-"

"There will be no more talk of warrants or police," he said, holding up a hand. "You work for me. Do as I've told you or you're fired."

Chapter Thirty-five

TWO THINGS KEPT TESS FROM WALKING OUT ON MARK Rubin in a fit of pique-the thought of Isaac waving to Mary Eleanor on the highway, and the thought of her bank account waving a frantic SOS in her direction. She had not yet earned out Mark Rubin's generous retainer, but she had spent a large chunk of it. If she wanted to quit on principle, she would have to refund money she didn't have, a principle she abhorred even more.

So she sucked it up and chose the best antidote she could think of to Mark Rubin's cold, high-handed treatment. She invited her WASP-iest friend, Whitney, over for dinner. Whitney was always good company, and she would take Tess's side in this quarrel with her client, which made her even better company. Within an hour of Tess's call, Whitney arrived with Indian takeout from the Ambassador and a bottle of zinfandel.

"The guy at the Wine Source said it was peppery and aggressive, with berry overtones and a strong finish," she said. "Just like me."

"You don't look very fruity," Tess said of her sharp-chinned friend, whose coloring was more easily found in the dairy case-butter-yellow hair, milk-white skin with a bluish undercast.

"Oh, I'm sour as a pickle these days. Everything annoys me. I took my mother to a Barbara Cook concert down at the Kennedy Center, and there was a sign-language interpreter. At a vocal concert. Does this mean they're going to start providing audio commentary for the ballet? And I can't speak to the sign language, but the closed-captioning was for shit. Cook was doing Sondheim, and a line from 'Losing My Mind' was transcribed as 'I want to sew.' "

"If I said that," Tess said, "you would know I was losing my mind."

Whitney laughed, expelling a little zinfandel through her nose. "It seemed to annoy Cook, too. Here she is, singing brilliantly, and there's someone blocking her from part of the audience's view, hamming it up."

"How does an interpreter ham it up?"

"Oh, c'mon." Whitney stood, giving Esskay the opportunity she needed to snatch a half-eaten samosa from her plate and bolt. "Damn dogs-they've gotten really nutty since Crow went to Virginia." Like kids in a divorce, Tess thought ruefully, but said nothing. She hadn't told Whitney about the breakup either, if only because she didn't want to be castigated for letting go of the perfect postmodern boyfriend. Whitney had always mocked the age difference between Tess and Crow, but she was perverse enough to exalt him now that Tess had lost him. "Anyway, she was trying to upstage Cook, I kid you not. Although I guess it would be downstaging in this case."

Whitney demonstrated, making grandiloquent gestures, opening her arms wide, painting rainbows in an imaginary sky, and finishing up by twirling an index finger next to her ear.

"I don't know sign language either, but I'm dubious about the last one you threw in there."

"I don't mean to sound callous. I'm all for an inclusive society. But a lot of this is just frosting the cannoli." This was Whitney's odd variation on gilding the lily, and Tess still didn't know what it meant after fifteen years of friendship. "I went to a bar mitzvah last week-"

"You went to a bar mitzvah?"

"Professional obligation, someone from the Krieger board I'm trying to cultivate. Anyway, they were signing during the half-a-Torah."

"Haftarah."

"Right, what I said. So there's a kid up there reciting a language that ninety-five percent of the people up in the synagogue don't speak or understand, and someone's signing so the deaf people in the audience-of which there were none, I'm pretty sure, although hearing aids were in great evidence-can follow along. But there's already an English translation in the text, so who are they signing for? The illiterates? The blind?"

Tess laughed, knowing Whitney's performance was pure show. She was not as intolerant as she pretended to be. She couldn't be. Whitney played up her hard edges to compensate for life as a professional do-gooder-sitting on her family's board and dispensing gobs of money to worthy causes. Polymath that she was, she had probably learned sign language at some point.

"Were any of those real signs you were making?" Tess asked. "Or were you just faking?"

"Oh, I can say a few basic things. 'I love you. Run away.'" Whitney demonstrated.

"I'd go far with just those two sentences." Strange, Tess wanted to confide in someone, but she couldn't get the words out.

"I also know the alphabet from A"-Whitney cupped her hand-"to Z." She slashed the air.

It was Tess's turn to spit a little wine. "Do that again."

"What?"

"The Z."

Whitney slashed the air.

"Like Zorro."

"Well, duh."

It was one thing to have the action described on a computer screen, quite another to see it. The one little boy kept doing a sort of Zorro thing. Mary Eleanor had assumed that Isaac was being supportive in a silly, little-kid kind of way. But what if he had been spelling!

Less than an hour later-after consulting the Internet, talking to Mary Eleanor on the phone, then studying the Internet again-Tess was on Mark Rubin's doorstep, an insistent Whitney at her side.

"Don't be surprised if he doesn't shake your hand," Tess muttered after ringing the bell. "He doesn't touch women sometimes, but it's just a mind-fuck."

"I don't touch anybody. I'm a Presbyterian." Alcohol had an interesting effect on Whitney, sharpening the edges it softened in others. Her eyes were bright, her diction crisp, her posture perfect.

"No, I mean-" But Rubin had already answered the bell. He stood, the door only halfway open, as if unsure of whether he wanted to admit Tess to his home.

"I assume you have news." There was a stiff little pause. "Or an apology."

"News."

"And this woman is…?"

"A fearsome buttinsky named Whitney Talbot, but enormously helpful in her own way." Whitney gave him a broad wave as if she were on the deck of an ocean liner and Rubin was on a dock far below. "Does Isaac know American Sign Language?"

"I'm not sure. I think he learned it for a concert at school, but I was working and couldn't go." His voice took on a defensive edge. "It was during the day. If I left work for every concert, my family wouldn't have a roof over its head. But I remember Isaac rehearsing his part around the house."

Whitney poked Tess in the back. "I told you this sign-language thing is completely out of control."

"We think he was trying to send us a message. But it doesn't make sense to us, and I wondered if it meant anything to you."

She handed him the printout, with the American Sign Language alphabet and the variations on which Mary Eleanor had finally decided: Z-E-T-E, Z-E-R-E, and Z-E-K-E.

"Do any of those things mean anything to you?"

Rubin's face was a study. For some reason it reminded Tess of the sky in western Maryland, right before the storm began and the horizon turned green. It was a ghostly, unnatural face.

"The last one. Zeke. It could be… I don't see how, but possibly…"

"Yes?"

"It's my stepbrother's name."

Chapter Thirty-six

ZEKE HAD TAKEN NATALIE AND THE KIDS FOR AN EARLY supper outside Charlottesville, hoping that the meal would make up for the long drive ahead. They had spent the weekend in the Shenandoahs, acting like any family on a beautiful fall weekend-driving Skyline Drive, going to the caverns. Zeke had bought the kids souvenirs, given piggyback rides to Penina and Efraim. Who could ever associate this picture-perfect family of five with a cop dying on a roadside back in Ohio? A dead Ohio cop didn't even make the TV news in Virginia, the old Plymouth was back in the mall parking lot in West Virginia, and a Taurus with Maryland tags was nothing extraordinary here. But when Zeke told the family to pile into the car for dinner, Isaac had gone to stand by the trunk. Force of habit, Zeke guessed.

"I already told you, no more trunk, buckaroo," he said.

"Oh. I thought you were just giving me time off for the weekend."

"No, we're done with the trunk. You ride in the car from now on."

You think a kid would be grateful, but this one had to challenge everything.

"Why?"

"Well, for one thing, this car doesn't have a luggage rack."

"But we'll need money eventually."

So he had put it together after all. Zeke wasn't sure how much the kid knew, but it was definitely too much. Which only made Zeke more determined to do what he'd decided, to execute the plan he'd plotted in his head while pretending to look at scenery all weekend.

"No, we've got plenty." Which was a stretch, but Zeke decided to live the lie, picking one of the nicer chain restaurants for dinner, a place with menus big as Bibles and apple-cheeked waitresses in provocative little aprons that twitched around their hips when they walked. Every girl in the restaurant moved as if she were a drill-team member, with prancing, pony steps. But Zeke kept his eyes low. It was never good for Natalie to notice him noticing.

But she was absorbed in the twins, sitting between them, an arm around each one, her head lowered as they whispered to her and patted her face. At this point their chatter was almost total gibberish, or so it seemed to Zeke. He wondered if their odd sounds were some sort of bastard Russian, their own Yiddish lite. Natalie nodded and whispered to them as if she understood every word. Isaac, placed with great deliberation between Zeke and the wall, cut his vegetarian omelet into smaller and smaller pieces but didn't put any of it in his mouth that Zeke could see.

"Dunkin' Donuts is kosher," Isaac said. "Some anyway."

"Now that's a healthy way to end the day," Zeke said, trying to sound good-natured. "With a bellyful of sugar and some high-octane coffee."

"I wasn't really talking to you," Isaac said. "I was just observing to myself."

"Observe away, buddy."

Zeke studied Natalie. God, she was beautiful. Women had come easy to him all his life, always good-looking women, too. But the first time he had seen Natalie, he had understood why rich men stole masterpieces they could never display. Some things you owned to impress others, other things you needed only for yourself. From the moment he glimpsed Natalie waiting in the visiting room for her father, he had to have her. Mark, there to see Zeke, had noticed her, too. Not that he would admit it, the prig. Every man in the room had watched that teenage sylph float across the floor. She gave the impression that she didn't know the clatter she was setting off inside all those men, but that was calculated. Natalie was like a terrorist sitting on a cache of nuclear weapons. She understood exactly how much power she had, and how much damage she could do.

Lucky, she fell just as hard for him as he did for her. He had played to her sense of romance, giving her the one thing that no man ever had, entering willingly into her soap-opera world of love letters and poetry and anguished phone calls.

What do you do when you want a woman like that and you can't be alone with her for a decade? It was one thing to hold on to her while he was in Jessup, but Zeke knew that all bets would be off once he was in Terre Haute. It was too far away, his sentence too long. His solution had been nothing short of genius, if he did say so himself. He stored Natalie in Mark's house, just another beautiful thing in that sterile museum full of paintings and sculptures. It had been too perfect. Orthodox life had required her to dress modestly, to live modestly, not even touching other men. She was hidden in plain sight, locked up in Pikesville waiting for him. And while he had been furious when she showed up on his release day with three little bonuses in tow, he had to admit he was moved by her devotion to them. If only his mother had cared as much. But she had chosen her second husband over her son, time and time again.

Had his mother and Mark's father been having an affair before his father's death? He could believe it of Aaron Rubin-the gonif, the schemer-but not of his mother, never of his mother. It was not so far-fetched to believe that Rubin had coveted his mother all along, even before his own wife had died. Leah Rubenstein had been a prize, a German Jew so proper she was almost a gentile. The two young partners had met her when she came in to buy her first mink, just eighteen. Zeke's father had fallen in love with the shy, proper girl, while the already-betrothed Aaron Rubin had been smitten with her money. And in the end both men got what they wanted. Yakob Rubenstein got love, Aaron Rubin got money.

Jewish women kept their property-but not in death. Zeke's mother had died of breast cancer his senior year in college, and it was then that the boy who was born Nathaniel Ezekiel Rubenstein became just Zeke. What did it say about Aaron Rubin, that every woman who married him died of cancer? Rubin was the sickness. Rubin was evil. Rubin was the one who had convinced Zeke's mother that he would care for her son, so she hadn't felt the need to provide for Zeke in her will. And while Aaron Rubin was ready to share his second wife's largesse with her only son, it turned out he wanted to apply condition upon condition. If Zeke-or Nat, as the family never stopped calling him, despite his insistence that he wanted to be known by his middle name-brought his grades up, if he graduated from Maryland, if he stopped wrapping cars around trees, then he might-might, mind you, might-find a place at Robbins amp; Sons. The business his father had cofounded, the business that was his by all rights.

"Fuck you," Zeke told his stepfather, and struck out on his own, starting his own clothing store. Like father, like son. Right down to the money problems and the subsequent felonies. Zeke chose credit-card fraud. His father tried arson.

People always said that if Zeke's father hadn't died, the gossip would have killed him. Zeke, only five at the time of his suicide, was spared the whispers at first. By the time he was a teenager, however, the neighborhood yentas and yentas-in-training made sure he knew every shameful detail. The division of the business, with the shrewd macher Rubin screwing Rubenstein, persuading him to take the downtown real estate and the dress business, while he moved the furs to the suburbs. Then there was the fire at the store, an arson fire that killed a night watchman who should have been on his dinner break, but they never proved that Zeke's father did it. He didn't live long enough to be charged.

To Zeke's way of thinking, his father's death proved only that he was in despair, not that he had arranged that little bolt of Jewish lightning. The fire had wiped him out-the insurance company didn't want to pay because of the arson investigation. Yakob Rubenstein had nowhere to turn, except to his wife's bank accounts, and sweet, pliant Leah didn't want to give him her money. Why did everyone harp on the suspicious fire while ignoring the serendipity of the Widower Rubin marrying the Widow Rubenstein less than six months later? Rubin had screwed his onetime partner, now he screwed his wife. All the while expecting Nathaniel Ezekiel to toe the line, to be a scared little yes-sir boy like his own son, Mark.

If only his own mother had been more like Natalie and put her son first. If only Natalie were more like his mother, willing to abandon her children for the man she loved. One was too weak, the other too strong.

Well, Natalie would need her strength when she learned that her children were dead. It would be hard for weeks, even months-Zeke had no illusions about that. But it was the only solution that made everything work out. He'd give her another baby to make up for the ones she had to lose.

He reviewed the plan in his head, glorying in the details. Zeke would call Mark and propose a deal: All the cash he could raise in one business day in exchange for the children. Once that was done, they would meet-oh, so fitting-in the Robbins amp; Co. storage facility. He would tell Mark and the children to go into the storage vault, promising to send Natalie to unlock the door in a few hours. But in a few hours, Zeke and Natalie would be long gone, taking whatever money Mark had given them.

And when Mark and the children were found, suffocated, it would be obvious to everyone what had happened, even Natalie. Mark was so bitter, so warped, that he'd decided to kill her children to get back at her. It happens. Zeke knew a guy at Jessup who did just that, killed two kids to get back at the wife who was divorcing him. Men are capable of anything. So Mark would be dead-which was the plan all along-and Natalie would inherit his money, which was really Zeke's money.

He never wanted to kill the children, truly. He'd been trying to think of a way around it, truth be told. But Penina and Efraim had seen too much, back on the highway in Ohio. Isaac knew too much and talked too much. They would end up hanging their own mother-and Zeke alongside her. Besides, they'd be happy for a few hours. They'd have hope. Before they used up all the oxygen, they'd think they were preparing for a reunion. Even Mark would dare to be hopeful, thinking his life was about to be made whole again, that Natalie was finally coming back.

Horrible yes, but better for Natalie-and Zeke. They would get a fresh start, they would have the life for which they had planned all these years. There weren't supposed to be any children. He thought he had made that clear to Natalie. It wasn't his fault that she had ignored his instructions. No children, ever. He didn't want to be a father to another man's sons, because he knew how impossible that was.

"Everybody settle in," he said, trying to sound cheerful. "We need to make good time." A sign promised that Washington was only sixty miles ahead, which meant Baltimore was a mere one hundred-not even ninety minutes if the highways treated them right. "Good time means we get to the good times that much faster." Zeke's father always said that when they went on their rare trips, usually just long weekends to Ocean City. There was always too much work to do to take longer vacations. He was the one who taught Zeke the traveling song. "We're hitting the road! (We're hitting the road!) Without a single care! (Withut a single care!) 'Cuz we're going, and we'll know where we are when we're there."

Zeke began singing the song lustily, not minding when the children refused to chime in. This time he sang all the parts himself.

Chapter Thirty-seven

"BUT I ASKED YOU," TESS SAID, HER VOICE A LITTLE WHINY even to her own ears. "I specifically asked you about Nathaniel Rubenstein when his name showed up on the list, and you said he was still in federal prison. You also said he never participated in the group."

They were in the living room, where Mark had spent a painful half hour stammering through a family history that made Tess realize how uncomplicated-and, really, how unblighted-her own family was. Robbins amp; Sons had started off as a partnership between Aaron Rubin and Yakob Rubenstein, two young friends who had learned the garment trade from their fathers, both tailors. There had been no sons, and no wives, when they opened their store on Lombard Street, but all that was assumed. They soon married, and both had sons the same blessed year. They quarreled, they went their separate ways. In the same cursed year that Aaron lost his wife to cancer, Leah Rubenstein lost her husband to suicide. The pair married while the boys were in grade school. Everything Mark had told Tess about Nathaniel Rubenstein-the stolen goods accepted to prop up his fledgling business, the credit-card fraud, his refusal to participate in the group-was true.

Mark had just neglected to mention that the man was his stepbrother.

"Besides, he's still in prison, as far as I know. He got two and ten. That adds up to twelve."

"Your arithmetic is great, but your knowledge of corrections is a little sketchy. He probably got credit for the state time. Or he could have been released early for any number of reasons."

Mark held out his hands, almost as if he were a drowning man. "My stepbrother stopped speaking to me years ago, so I wouldn't have any idea if he got out early. I started the group at Jessup for him, but he wanted no part of it, and no part of me. I'm not sure he even knows Boris."

Tess shot a look at Whitney, who was circling the room appraising Mark's art collection. Literally appraising, for Whitney had a complicated formula that identified potential charitable givers according to how much they were willing to spend on the fine arts. In for a Picasso, in for a pound, she liked to say.

"Maybe this is the secret Boris has been dangling like bait all these years. He knew there was something between his daughter and your stepbrother."

"What do you mean by that? Besides, it could be a coincidence. Who knows what Isaac was spelling, if anything?"

Given their quarrel earlier in the day, Tess was reluctant to challenge Mark when he went into full denial mode. Whitney, however, had no such limitations.

"Pull your head out of your ass," she said, distracted from the statue she'd been admiring. "Your runaway wife is on the road with your stepbrother. That's not a coincidence. It's a scheme."

Mark looked furious for a moment, as if he might throw something or order them out of his home. His hands even balled into fists, then quickly came undone.

"I know," he said, his voice low. "I know. But to what purpose? If Natalie… wants to be with him, why couldn't she just tell me? Why run away? Why take the children?"

"I can't forget what Amos said when you showed up on his property," Tess said. "The mountain had come to Muhammad. A job done was a job done. And then he aimed his shotgun at you. Do you think your stepbrother wants you dead?"

"He had no use for me, but he had no anger toward me. Toward my father, on the other hand…"

"What about your father?"

"Nat blamed Dad for everything. The failure of his father's business. His father's death, his mother's death. Nat's own failings, in school and work. But Dad gave him every chance. And when Dad died, there was even a small bequest for Nat. That's what he put into his business-and lost, through his own miscalculation. I tried to stand by him, but he made it impossible. The last time I spoke to him was in Jessup, over ten years ago."

"Where you met Natalie."

"Yes, but what does that prove? I told you. I had started the group, and her father was in it. She approached me and said she wanted to embrace Judaism, live an Orthodox life. From there things followed a natural course."

"Maybe it was your stepbrother who suggested she go to you, not her father. Maybe it was his idea that Boris Petrovich join the group in the first place, and that's the information Boris used to blackmail Natalie."

"Why? If Zeke wanted her for himself, why would he send her to me, encourage her to marry me?"

"Because through Natalie," Whitney brayed, like some horrible WASP Cassandra, "he could get all your money one day. Or at least half of it."

Strange, Whitney's directness didn't seem to bother Mark at all.

"I've been over this with Tess," Mark said. "If Natalie divorced me, much of my money wouldn't be considered a marital asset. The bulk of what I have came from my inheritance."

"The bulk of which, you just made clear, came from your stepmother. But if you were dead and the marriage hadn't been dissolved," Tess said, "Natalie and the children would get all of it."

They sat in silence. At least Mark and Tess did. Whitney resumed trotting around the house studying Rubin's things. Her sky blue penny loafers clattered on the wood floors, little preppy tap shoes.

"What do you want to do?" Tess asked.

"Kill myself?"

"Seriously."

"I was being fairly serious. I want to scream. I want to talk to my rabbi. I want to go get my gun out of the glove compartment of my car and put it in my mouth. But most of all I want to see Natalie, to ask her what's going on. I don't think she could lie to my face."

"Mark-"

"I know. You're going to say she's been lying to my face for ten years, that she's a coldhearted schemer. But she never told me I was the only man she loved, just that she loved me. Isn't it possible for a woman to love two men? Couldn't she have grown to love me in spite of herself? We have three children, this house, a life together. Wouldn't that have to mean something to her?"

Tess pretended these were rhetorical questions. "Mark, I think we have to proceed with the assumption that your life is at risk, that someone's going to make another attempt. Now, I know you're handy with a SIG Sauer, but you should let me arrange some sort of professional security for you."

"A bodyguard?"

"Yes. And I'd like your permission to go to county Homicide, along with the feds, and tell them we believe that your estranged wife wants you dead."

"Only I don't believe that. Nat-Nat and Nat, Nathaniel and Natalie, how cute-may have some dark fantasies and grudges, but he's not given to violence."

"No, but he's willing to delegate. That's what we have to worry about."

Another long silence, only this time the flap-flap-flap of Whitney's loafers was interrupted by the phone. Mark went to his study, probably terrified of taking the call within Whitney's hearing. Tess seized the opportunity to grab Whitney and ask her to stop behaving like a human wealth calculator.

"Sorry. Force of habit. Boy, he's got it bad, doesn't he? 'My wife ran off with my brother, and now she wants me dead.' It's almost a country song."

"As sung by Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. Families and business. I swear, there's nothing more virulent. Mark's stepbrother may have taken it to a new level, but this is what happens in too many family businesses. Makes me glad the Weinstein dynasty went bust before I was born."

"Makes me glad I'm an only child," Whitney said.

Tess didn't point out that there were many people who were grateful the Talbots had decided to procreate only once.

"That was Paul," Mark said, returning to the room. "Another of Mrs. Gordon's famous emergencies. But I've decided you have a point. I'll go spend the night in a hotel, and I'll stay out of the office tomorrow. Only you and Paul will know where I am."

"And the bodyguard?"

"No, not yet. That seems excessive to me. But I'll call you tomorrow and tell you what I want to do, as far as the police are concerned."

"Where will you stay?"

"Harbor Court, if they have a room. Or the Wyndham."

"And you'll carry your cell and check in with me?"

"I'll carry my cell."

Whitney handed Mark her card on the way out. "We're nonsecular, but we do good work. Mostly social services with a little symphony stuff thrown in for Mom. I'll send you our most recent report."

She then climbed into Tess's Toyota and fell asleep, in the manner of a hyper child exhausted by her own ceaseless energy.

"How do you know her?" Mark asked with the kind of frightened awe that Whitney often inspired in new acquaintances.

"College," Tess said. "On the Eastern Shore. But she transferred to Yale for languages-and the connections. Whitney was always very canny that way."

"Perhaps I'll send Isaac to the University of Maryland after all."