By A Spider's Thread

Chapter One

TESS MONAGHAN HAD BEEN A HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR when her father had bestowed his single life lesson, the one piece of advice that was supposed to open all doors and allow his only child to hurdle every obstacle: He showed her how to shake a man's hand.

He demonstrated by making firm, confident contact at the V between her thumb and index finger, then gave her arm one adamant shake. "Don't wag it like a garden hose," Patrick Monaghan had said, and that was that. His daughter was ready to go forth into the world, or at least the world her father knew, where a handshake still counted for something.

Patrick Monaghan had neglected, however, to tell his daughter what to do when the intended recipient of her firm, manly handshake looked at her palm as if it were contaminated.

"I'm so sorry," she said, remembering a beat too late. "But I thought-"

"Your uncle told me your mother's family was Conservative," her prospective client said, hands clasped behind his back, just in case she made another lunge for his digits.

"Well, I think what my grandfather always said was 'The temple my family does not attend must be Conservative.' The Weinsteins are not a particularly observant bunch."

Mark Rubin didn't laugh at the old family joke. Several inches taller than Tess, which put him well over six feet, he was stocky in a robust, attractive way, and he wore a beautifully tailored suit that emphasized his broad chest and shoulders. He had black-brown eyes, a trim black beard, and the kind of blue-black hair that teenage girls tried to emulate when they went through a Goth phase, only with a shine that marked it as natural. The overall effect reminded Tess of a stuffed-sealskin otter she had been given as a child, back when such a gift would not have been regarded as a gauche act of political incorrectness.

Or perhaps she had that old toy on her brain because she knew this man sold furs for a living, and the otter had been fashioned from the leftovers of an aunt's jacket. She wondered if Rubin wore a fur coat himself, when winter came. This September day was almost too warm for his lightweight wool suit.

"Your uncle," he said, his voice stiff as his collar, "is quite active in Jewish causes. That's how we met and how he came to recommend you when he found out I needed the services of someone in your line of work."

"My Uncle Donald is active in Jewish causes? Was it court-ordered?"

Rubin frowned, although this wasn't an attempt at humor on Tess's part. Her Uncle Donald had had a short-lived association with a sleazy state senator that haunted him to this day.

"I'm not sure when he started volunteering, but I met him over ten years ago, so it's been quite some time. He's a very good man, your uncle."

"Oh," she said, annoyed and flustered by the hint of reproof in his voice, the implication that her uncle had not prepared her well for this meeting. Uncle Donald had, in fact, briefed her thoroughly. He had told her he had an acquaintance, that the acquaintance was a wealthy furrier, an Orthodox Jew in need of a discreet private detective. Modern Orthodox, Uncle Donald had clarified, not Hasidic, which was why Tess had thought herself on safe ground offering Rubin her hand.

Really, the only thing that Uncle Donald had neglected to mention was the large pole permanently inserted in Mark Rubin's sphincter.

"Would you like a seat? Something to drink? I keep Coca-Cola and bottled water in my fridge, and… well, that's kosher, right? If it's done under supervision. We could check the label for… what? A little k in a circle…?"

"I'm fine," Mark Rubin said, taking the wooden chair opposite her desk. His dark eyes scanned the room, absorbing his surroundings without comment. Tess had decorated the one-room office with whimsical artifacts to provide conversational fodder for the ill at ease, but these photographs and strange objets d'art didn't seem to be having much effect on Rubin. He didn't even raise his eyes to the "Time for a Haircut" clock, a barbershop find of which Tess was particularly proud.

Although it smarted a little now, sitting beneath that glowing clock, given the untimely circumstances of Tess's most recent haircut. Self-consciously, she reached for her hair, a stubby ponytail where a long braid had once hung. Her friend Whitney said the style made Tess look like one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. It was, like most of Whitney's tactless assessments, all too true, but Tess didn't care. She wanted her braid back, and she was prepared to live through all the growing-out stages.

The furrier did take notice of the greyhound and the Doberman vying for control of the sofa. The greyhound, Esskay, was winning, but only because she fought dirty, rabbiting her legs so her untrimmed toenails scraped the tender-skinned Miata, who whimpered piteously. Esskay always triumphed over Miata, the world's most docile Doberman.

"Are the dogs for protection?"

"More for companionship. The neighborhood's not that bad."

"Times change. My grandfather couldn't wait to get out of East Baltimore. Of course, we lived closer to Lombard Street, just off Central."

"Near the old synagogue."

"There were several synagogues in the neighborhood then."

He had a funny way of holding his neck, as if that pole in his butt ran all the way up his backbone, and Tess wondered if his rigid posture came from years of balancing a yarmulke on the crown. There was no sign of a bobby pin or a clip. Did Mark Rubin consider bobby pins cheating? Were bobby pins unorthodox? Up to five minutes ago, Theresa Esther Weinstein Monaghan had considered herself well versed in the religion practiced by her mother's side of the family. She knew a little Yiddish, could fake her way through a seder as long as the Haggadah included an English translation. But now she felt 100 percent goyish. To her visitor she probably looked like some field-hockey player from Notre Dame Prep.

"Did Donald tell you anything of my situation?"

"Only that it was a missing-person case, an unusual one that the police won't handle. He said you would prefer to fill me in on the details."

"Persons," he said. "Missing persons. Four, in fact. My entire family."

"Divorce?" She suppressed a sigh. Until recently Tess had disdained divorce work, picking and choosing her jobs. But she had lost several weeks of work this summer and could no longer afford to be fussy.

"No, nothing like that. I came home one day and they were gone."

"Voluntarily?"

"Excuse me?"

"I assume your wife's flight was legal and not suspicious, or this would be a police case."

"The police agree it's not their case," he said, his voice so low as to be almost inaudible, and Tess realized that what she had taken for coolness was an attempt to keep strong emotions in check. "Me, I'm not so sure. I went to work, I had a family. I came home, I didn't. I certainly feel as if something has been stolen from me."

"Was there talk of a separation? Had you been quarreling? It's just hard to imagine such a thing happening out of the blue."

"But that's exactly what did happen. My wife left with my children, with no warning, no explanation. She simply disappeared the Friday before Labor Day, right before school started and just as my business was picking up."

"Early September is your busy season?"

"No, but many of my customers get their furs out of storage in the month before the high holidays, just in case."

"Would the Orthodox wear fur to shul on Yom Kippur?" Tess had no idea where her mind had dredged up this odd fact, but she felt as if she had just pulled off a sophisticated thought in a foreign language. Score one for her.

"Not all my customers are Orthodox. They're not even all Jewish."

Point lost. Tess had envisioned a sea of glossy hats in a synagogue, but maybe she was thinking of some long-ago church service her grandfather had dragged her to. Or perhaps she wasn't having a memory so much as she was replaying a movie version of someone else's memories. Probably Barry Levinson's. A lot of people in Baltimore had Barry Levinson's life lodged in their heads and had begun to mistake it for their own.

"It's never cool enough to wear a fur in September, not in Baltimore."

"Yes, but hope springs eternal." He offered Tess a crooked smile. "I guess that's why I'm here."

She bent her head over her desk, focusing on the lines of the legal pad in front of her, counting on Rubin to get his emotions under control if she didn't look straight at him. Tess was sure he didn't want her to see him cry. She was even surer that she didn't want to see him cry. Men crying creeped her out.

"If your wife took your children without your permission, isn't that a kidnapping? Can't the police go at it from that angle? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have the work, but the police have far more resources than I do."

"I know, and that's why I started with them. But… it's amazing. If you're married and your spouse leaves you, taking your children, you have no real rights. I've been told that I have to get divorced in absentia and petition for custody. Only then will I have any rights to assert. And that could take up to a year."

"Oh, there has to be some way to expedite a divorce in this case. I can't imagine the state would hold to the one-year rule in such a case." Maryland did have odd marital laws, Tess knew. It was all too easy to get married here-it was one of the few states that didn't require a blood test, which years ago had made Elkton a destination for impatient New Yorkers-but relatively difficult to get divorced. A legacy, she had always assumed, from its Catholic founders. Marry in haste, live in purgatory.

"You don't understand. Even if I divorced my wife under Maryland law, it wouldn't count, not to me."

"Why not?"

"I would need a get from a rabbinic court as well. Divorce may be granted easily in the world at large, but my faith insists that a couple make every attempt at mediation and reconciliation before giving up on a marriage."

"But I assume your wife's actions would satisfy even a-what did you call it?-rabbinic court." Tess had an image of an appeals court, only in slightly different robes and with the bushy beards, side curls, and large-brimmed hats of the Hasidim.

"Perhaps, but it would not satisfy me. How can I give up on my marriage when I don't know what went wrong? You have to understand she gave no sign, absolutely no sign, that she was unhappy in any way. How could she be on the verge of something so drastic and provide no clue?"

She probably gave you a million clues, Tess thought, but kept the observation to herself. In her experience, men were capable of going to great lengths to ignore the evidence of women's unhappiness. It was how men survived, by not inquiring too closely about the melancholy some women carried with them. If they ignored it, maybe it would go away.

Sometimes it was the woman who went away instead.

"Mr. Rubin…" She paused, but he did not invite her to call him Mark, so she forged ahead. "The very nature of my work requires me to ask rude, intrusive questions, not unlike the kind that doctors and lawyers ask, so I'll beg your forgiveness in advance. Did you have a good marriage?"

"We had a wonderful marriage."

"No disagreements, no tensions?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary. There was a slight age difference…"

So that's where the dog was buried, as her Grandma Weinstein might say. "How much?"

"Twelve years. I married relatively late, at thirty-one."

Funny, Tess was thirty-three, and she considered that a damn early age for matrimony.

"You're… what?" She checked her notes. "Forty-one. So she was only nineteen when you married?"

A slight defensiveness crept into his tone. "Yes, but Natalie was an unusual woman, more mature at nineteen than most women are in their thirties." Was it Tess's imagination, or did he glance at her neon human hair sign just then? A gift from her boyfriend two Christmases ago, it complemented the "Time for a Haircut" clock nicely.

"How old are the children?"

"Isaac is nine, the twins are going on five. We wanted more, but it was not to be. I had hoped to have a houseful of children."

"And your wife?"

"Of course I want my wife in my house. That's why I'm here."

"No, I meant… did your wife want a lot of children, too?"

"Absolutely. It's our way. It's what God wants."

Mark Rubin's very certitude seemed a bad sign to Tess. It was bad enough to claim you knew your wife's mind, another to assume you knew God's as well.

"She had absolutely no reason to leave?"

"None." The reply was too firm, too automatic. He wasn't allowing anyone to question this fact, beginning with himself.

"What about addictions? I'm not talking just about drugs or alcohol, but gambling or other compulsive behaviors, such as eating disorders. Even shopping."

"No, nothing like that."

"Does she spend a lot of time on the Internet?" A new wrinkle in divorce cases, stealth adultery, which didn't reveal itself until the person ran off to be with his or her virtual love. Installing spyware was one of Tess's first steps in any case where a spouse suspected another spouse of fooling around.

"She barely knows how to use a computer. Our oldest son had to set up her e-mail account."

"And there was no"-she took a breath and plunged ahead-"no violence in the household?"

"No." Here, at least, he was utterly convincing.

"It's just that it's very unusual for a woman to up and leave, taking her three children. Does she have a job?"

"No matter my circumstances, I would never allow-I mean, I would never expect my wife to work outside the home."

"Then how would she support them? Does she have her own money? Family?"

A slight hesitation here. "Not one that she can rely on. Her mother is still here in Baltimore, but she and Natalie have been estranged since her parents' divorce, back when she was a young teenager. Her father's completely out of the picture now, has no contact with her at all."

Tess wondered if Rubin's marriage had been an arranged one, then wondered if the Orthodox still used arranged marriages. Her upbringing had been bicultural primarily in the culinary details. The Weinsteins went out for Chinese and held backyard crab feasts, rationalizing that anything eaten outside wasn't really treyf. The Monaghans had lesser palates, but they loved the Sour Beef dinner put on by the ladies of Good Counsel every autumn. On St. Patrick's Day, they drove for lean corned beef to what Tess's paternal grandfather called Jewtown. Pop-Pop Monaghan had called the neighborhood that to the day he died, literally. In his bed in the old house on Wilkens Avenue, he had reached for Tess's hand, mistaking her for his only daughter, Kitty, the youngest and best loved of his seven children.

"Well," he had said, "Patrick married a Jew. What do you know about that, Kitty? A Jewess from Jewtown."

There was no meanness in his tone, no censure. He was just calling a spade a spade, a Jew a Jewess. As for Jew-town-well, that designation had appeared on some local maps well into the 1930s, and Pop-Pop Monaghan's world-view had pretty much jelled by then.

"I know," Tess had replied, trying to find something that would be neither rebuke nor agreement, "that he loves her."

"Love," her grandfather scoffed.

Some men might have been smart enough to exit on a line like that, but Brian Monaghan, a belligerent Irishman to the end, wore out his welcome, coming back from death several times in that last day. Finally life seemed to tire of him and shuttered itself against his return, like a tavern giving someone the bum's rush.

But her Monaghan side was of no use here. Today Tess needed to rely on her Weinstein genes if she was going to find any affinity with this prickly man who clearly had the wherewithal to help her out of her financial slump.

"Do you have any leads at all? A vehicle, a name she might use, a place, a friend she might reach out to, a list of long-distance phone calls from before she left?"

"All our cars are in our garage, untouched. My guess is she'd revert to her maiden name, or some form of it. Natalie Peters." Tess idly wondered what the surname was before it was changed. Her grandfather had been too stubborn to consider such a thing, and he was proud of having the Weinstein name on his stores until the day they sank into bankruptcy. "As for family or friends, it's only her mother, and, as I said, they have no relationship. I think she lives up on Labyrinth Road. Vera Peters."

"Still, it's a place to start. Now, has Natalie drawn on any accounts-checking or savings-since she's been gone? Used a credit card?"

"No, nothing like that."

"And the police didn't find that suspicious? That's usually a sign of… well, it's certainly something they look at."

She had not wanted to say, It's usually a sign that a person is dead.

"They know what you know, and they still don't think this is a matter for them. They have these, too."

He took a folder from his briefcase and brought out three photographs. The first could have been a miniature Mark Rubin, a boy with the same dark eyes and hair, although not the somber expression. He beamed at the camera, a little self-conscious, but clearly happy at whatever moment he had been captured. He was holding a plaque, so perhaps it was an awards ceremony.

"Isaac, my oldest."

The next photo showed a boy and girl of the same height. Their hair was several shades lighter than the older boy's and their features sharper-narrow eyes with a hint of a tilt, prominent cheekbones that gave them a foxy look. They must favor their mother.

"The twins, Penina and Efraim."

He was shy about sliding the last photograph to Tess, or perhaps just reluctant to surrender it. The woman in the picture was gorgeous, an absolute knockout, with the lush lips and heavy-lidded eyes of a movie star. Not just any movie star but a specific one, although Tess couldn't pull up the memory. Ava Gardner? Elizabeth Taylor? One of those smoldering brunettes from the studio days. The dark hair was perfect, cut and shaped into curls that looked too natural to be anything but labor-intensive, and the makeup had the same deceptively simple aspect. She had taken less care with her clothing, content with a simple cardigan that was buttoned to the top, the wings of a white collar visible above the dark wool.

She also was the unhappiest-looking woman Tess had ever seen, a woman whose very expression-the dark eyes, the set mouth, which really was the shape of a Cupid's bow-bespoke a secret burden. But Mark Rubin looked at the photo as if all he could see was the beauty.

"Your wife-did she have a history of psychiatric problems?"

"Of course not."

"Why 'of course not'? There's no shame in having emotional problems." Tess didn't bother to tell Rubin that she had just finished her own course of court-ordered therapy. It was simply too long a story. "It's all chemicals, just another organ in your body having problems."

"I know that." Still too sharp, too defensive. "But chemicals are not the issue here."

"What about organs?"

"Excuse me?"

But that was as close as Tess would get to asking Mark Rubin if he and his wife had a fulfilling sex life.

"So there were no problems, and you don't have a clue why your wife left, and you're not even sure she wanted to leave, yet you don't think there's foul play involved?"

"Sometimes-I mean, I have no evidence of this-but sometimes I think maybe she left to protect me from something."

"Such as?"

"Nothing that I know of. But I can think of no other reason she would leave. Whatever she does, she always puts her family first."

"Is there anything to support this, um, idea?"

"No, not really." His shoulders, which he had been holding so straight and square, sagged. "I honestly don't know what is going on."

Tess looked at the photos in front of her. If there had been only one, and it had been the wife, she would have advised him to save his money and go home. She might have even recited the dorm-wall-poster wisdom of letting something go if you really loved it. But there were the children to consider. They were entitled to their father. He was right, even admirable, in his desire not to let them go.

"I'm going to scan these pictures into my computer, so you don't have to leave them with me. Besides, then I can print them out as necessary, show them to people, create flyers."

"And then?" he asked.

"I never promise results in any case, and I'm not starting with a lot of leads. But I have some ideas about how to proceed. Meanwhile, I'll need you to sign a letter of agreement and pay the equivalent of… eighty hours up front, as my retainer."

Tess had an unofficial sliding scale for her work. She didn't gouge anyone, but a man like Rubin could subsidize some of the less prosperous clients who found their way to the detective agency officially known as Keyes Investigations. She had been having a run of such clients lately, down-on-their-luck types and flat-out deadbeats. After making a quick calculation, she tossed off a figure that seemed fair to her, only to watch in amazement as Rubin pulled out a wallet and paid in cash.

"Maybe I'll remember more, or come up with some other leads for you," he said, counting off the ATM-crisp bills. "I'm still a little… numb. My only comfort is knowing that Natalie is a good mother. She's a good wife, too. I don't know why she decided to stop being one. If I failed her-if I worked too hard or was too inflexible in my ways-I'm willing to change. But I have to find them first, right? Without my family I'm nothing, just a man who sells coats."

Tess didn't have the heart to tell him that the best she could do was find his family. In a case like this, Tess was all the king's horses and all the king's men, picking up the broken pieces at the foot of the castle wall.

Mark Rubin stood, then reached for Tess almost as if to tuck a loose strand of hair behind one ear. She recoiled instinctively, nervous about allowing any strange man too close to her, confused at how Rubin could attempt this kind of contact when he had made such a point about refusing her hand. But his hand quickly retreated, holding a quarter he had pretended to pluck from behind her ear.

"I used to do this for my oldest son," he said. "You see, I'm actually a funny guy. I make people laugh. I was a joyous man-it's one of the tenets of Hasidism I happen to embrace as a Modern Orthodox, the idea that one honors God by being full of joy. But you'll just have to take my word for that for now."

Chapter Two

TESS FOUND A TOEHOLD ON A METAL HANDLE JUTTING from the side of the Dumpster, scrambled to the top, and swung her legs so she was perched on the lip. She was now staring down into, if not the abyss, a reasonable and pungent facsimile. Even in hip waders and the decontamination suit she had acquired from a friend in city Homicide, she was less than eager to take the plunge.

"Baruch ata Adenoid, Mark Rubin," she said, pronouncing the blessing as she had misheard it in her childhood, when she believed her Aunt Sylvie was offering a prayer to cure her cousin Deborah of her allergies. "If working for you means no more Dumpsters for a while, I won't complain about what a deluded tight-ass you are."

Meanwhile, a girl had to eat, although at this exact moment it seemed unlikely that food would ever interest Tess again. The Dumpster was one of three behind a popular Fell's Point bar, and it smelled strongly of stale beer, processed cheese, and rancid meat. As a bonus there were bright yellow and blue newspaper wrappers tucked among the dark green garbage bags, knotted in a way that any responsible dog owner would recognize.

Feeling only mildly ridiculous, Tess secured a surgical mask over her face and scooted down the interior wall in her best Spider-woman fashion, landing as softly as possible. The garbage bags were packed closely, and the effect was not unlike a Moonwalk ride at a small-time carnival, albeit one with occasional crunchy sounds underfoot that she tried not to ponder. Bottles? Crack vials? She took small, tentative steps, hoping to feel something relatively solid beneath her. She walked the perimeter, circling toward the center. No, her quarry was definitely not here.

On to the next Dumpster, which smelled more like secondhand margaritas under the late-afternoon sun.

"Divorce," Tess said, speaking out loud to keep herself company, "makes people do some weird shit. Or hire those who will do it for them."

To think she had been cocky enough to imagine matrimonial work was behind her forever. But a string of clients, stung by this strange hit-or-miss economy, had told her to line up behind their other empty-handed creditors. So Tess found herself with no choice but to take on the soon-to-be-ex of a city official, a harridan who swore that her husband had ordered sanitation workers under him to remove incriminating files from his office and leave them in these Dumpsters.

Like most novice criminals, the public-works boss had been a little too in love with his cloak-and-dagger maneuvers. Because these Dumpsters were privately owned, their debris should have ended up in a private landfill. He must have figured that no one could tie the king of public waste to trash serviced by private contractors. But he had chosen a bar that had a habit of stiffing hauling companies, so the garbage tended to sit for a few days. Hard on the nose, unfortunate for the neighborhood, but very good for Tess and the soon-to-be-ex-wife.

Assuming that the documents were actually here. The wife could be wrong. Divorcing spouses were often clueless about each other. Hence the impending divorce. Tess was almost to the center of the third Dumpster before her foot hit an unusually solid bag that neither cracked nor oozed. Crouching down, she made a slight tear in the plastic with her gloved hands and saw reams of documents on Baltimore City letterhead. Score.

The bag was heavy enough that the seams might pop if Tess heaved it over the side. Resignedly, she ripped it open and ferried the papers out an armful at a time, which took almost a dozen trips but allowed her to skim some of the documents as she worked. They did make for interesting reading.

It was all here, just as the wife had promised, a history of bribes and kickbacks that helped explain how a midlevel city bureaucrat had come to own a vacation home in Rehoboth Beach and a timeshare in Steamboat Springs. Sure it was graft, but even graft was marital property under Maryland law. If the IRS could tax ill-gotten gains, the wife's slicky-boy lawyer was going to argue, then a spouse could claim half of it, too. The argument was a bluff, but one her husband would never dare to call. A settlement would be reached quickly and quietly once Mr. Public Works knew that his wife had these documents in her possession.

The bottom of the bag yielded an unexpected bonus, a memo that was small potatoes for the divorce but a big find in the annals of city folklore-the official plowing list. Here was the shifting hierarchy of city power brokers, with names crossed off and reinstated according to how the political winds blew in any given year. There was even an enemies list, stipulating which streets should not be plowed, such as the cul-de-sac of a former mayor.

Tess put that aside, reserving it for her one friend left at the Beacon-Light, Kevin Feeney, a throwback who still cared about good old-fashioned politics. She loaded the rest in the trunk of her ancient Toyota, while the dogs, who had been tied to a nearby utility pole, began panting and pulling at their leashes, anxious to leave.

"Good girls," she cooed as they sniffed her legs, intrigued by the smells that clung to her. No anthropomorphizing here-dogs really did grin. Better yet, they loved you when you stank of garbage, loved you just for coming through the door at the end of the day or putting down a dish of food, which made it easy to love them back. "Just let me scald myself in the office shower, and we'll convene to the branch office for our coffee break."

" 'My appetite comes to me while eating,'" Tess announced upon taking one of the outdoor tables at Pearl 's, dogs still in tow. Her apt quotation of Montaigne did not seem to impress the sullen waitress, much less the dogs. The attitudinal blonde simply disappeared inside to place Tess's usual order-a chocolate-pumpkin muffin, a latte, and two large bowls of water. Tess's usual orders were known all over Baltimore, from the mozzarella en carozza at the Brass Elephant to the lamb lawand at the Helmand and the veal scallopine at Pazza Luna. Ruts weren't ruts if you varied them, Tess had reasoned.

Pearl's was new to Baltimore, and Tess had been prepared to object to it on principle, the principle being that three-dollar muffins might be the final straw in a wave of gentrification that would price her out of her Butchers Hill office. But the small cafe, which was as cheerful as its waitstaff was sullen, was simply too convenient to ignore. And it wasn't a franchise, Tess reminded herself every time she dropped six dollars for her afternoon snack. She was supporting a local merchant, a dog-friendly one who served bird-friendly coffee and appeared to have a thing for shorthaired German pointers. How else to explain the small bookshelf that held nothing but Robert B. Parker novels?

She spooned up a bit of frothed milk, then held her face up to the sun, trying to be mindful of her good luck. She was outside, unlike Baltimore's office-bound drones. She was her own boss. She was alive, and she had learned the hard way not to take that for granted. Persuaded, she turned on the clam-shaped plastic monster that ran her life and, through a technology she couldn't begin to understand, grabbed an open line from thin air and jumped into cyberspace via WiFi.

Her e-mail was the usual mix of spam and people eager to grant her the privilege of doing things for free. Today it was an invitation to teach a course in self-defense, something about which Tess knew nothing-and she had the scar to prove it, a purple-red checkmark on her left knee. She sent a form-letter reply from her "assistant," S. K. Chien, which stated Miss Monaghan's fee structure-five thousand dollars for public speaking, five dollars per word for articles (minimum fee of one thousand dollars), and first-class travel arrangements for out-of-town gigs. That usually ended the queries, although some of the pushier types asked if the fee could be waived. S. K. Chien, however, was never moved by such pleas; she simply sent the same form letter until these supplicants gave up. Greyhounds are stubborn that way.

Her mailbox culled, Tess settled down to the messages from people who actually knew her. There was a political petition from Whitney, who had awakened one morning and decided she actually cared about the world. And an oddly formal invitation to lunch from Tyner Gray, a lawyer who had helped her get started as a PI and still threw her work. He had, in fact, vetted Rubin and hooked Tess up with Mrs. Public Works, so Tess probably owed him a lunch. She typed back her RSVP.

She saved for last the daily SnoopSisters Digest, a networking service for female private investigators that was fast becoming the highlight of Tess's working day.

Dear Sisters, the first entry read. Weather fine and clear in St. Louis this a.m., almost too warm to my way of thinking. I am trying to figure out where a prominent local man may have stashed assets prior to wife's divorce filing. Usual trails all dead-ended. Any thoughts? Letha in St. Louis .

Dear SS'ers: There's a good seminar on computer-related investigation in Houston in January. I'm enclosing a link to the program sked. I'll put you up if you don't want to spring for a hotel room. By the way, here's a link to one of those quiz sites that helps you figure out whether you're a hobbit, an elf, or a troll. I'm an elf. JR, your Texas Tornado.

The digest was the brainchild of Tess's onetime partner, Gretchen O'Brien. Baltimore born and bred, Gretchen had slipped on the ice last winter and suddenly decided she wanted to live in… Chicago. "They do winter right there," Gretchen had said with her usual conviction. "If you're going to have winter, you might as well have it in a city that can cope." Tess suspected there was a man involved in this western trek, but closemouthed Gretchen seldom yielded such personal information.

Soon after she returned to work in late August, Tess had scored a lead on an identity thief she was pursuing. The guy was in Naperville, Illinois, but moving fast. Tess's client, already facing bankruptcy because of her former fiance's credit-card shenanigans, couldn't afford for Tess to buy the pricey last-minute plane fare. (She was one of the clients who ended up stiffing Tess, but ever so apologetically.) The guy was such a small-timer that the Naperville police couldn't be bothered to pick him up in a timely fashion. Enter Gretchen, who had already made contacts with several Chicago-area bounty hunters. She had the guy hog-tied on his own motel-room bed within three hours of Tess's e-mail, and DuPage County was happy to extradite him once he was caught.

Where Tess saw a fortuitous coincidence, Gretchen had seen the future of the small businesswoman.

"The thing is, independents like us could save money if we had a network operating in key hub cities," Gretchen had decreed. "Not so much with collars, but with paperwork, the various bureaucracies. Everything's still a long way from being online, and there's always stuff you can only get in person, with a little persuasion. Why not have a cooperative, with women working out of key cities, exchanging work on a barter basis?"

And so the SnoopSisters Digest was born. Tess loathed the name. "Why not Miss Marple's Tea Party?" she had suggested. "Or the Redheaded League?" The literal but never literary Gretchen had pointed out that their only flame-haired member was Letha in St. Louis.

Even with the unfortunate name, the network was an unqualified success. There were still some wide-open places to be filled-they had no one to cover the vast swath west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies, and an Atlanta connection would have been helpful. But they were otherwise solid along the eastern seaboard and could do most of Texas and the Pacific Coast in a pinch. They shared information, brainstormed tough problems, and, as they got to know one another, divulged more and more details about their private lives-boyfriends, husbands, teething children, rambunctious dogs, garden pests (except for Gretchen, who got very impatient with what she called the "damn chitchat"). A typical digest might contain information about a handy new database followed by a recipe for those overwhelmed by the summer bounty of tomatoes and zucchini.

And Tess loved it, somewhat to her amazement. The digest was a virtual kaffeeklatsch, with all the chummy camaraderie of an office and none of the backstabbing politics. The group was also genuinely helpful-no one-upmanship, no macho posturing, no disdain for simple questions.

Dear S-Sisters , she wrote that morning, refusing to use the full name on principle and eschewing "SS" because of its unkind historic associations. I have scanned three photos into the shared files, part of a missing-persons case. To say that the information is sketchy would be generous. Natalie Rubin, nee Peters, disappeared three weeks ago with three children-a boy, Isaac, 9, and boy-girl twins, Efraim and Penina, 5. Police have ruled out foul play, but husband insists he never saw it coming and thinks-hopes-her flight may have actually been done for his benefit. What's the emoticon for skepticism? I'll enter DOBs for all four into the shared files. No known aliases. No known anything, really. Assumption is they're traveling together, but who knows?

It pained Tess a little, adding this cynical bit of doubt, but, out of Rubin's sight, she had to be tough-minded, entertain the possibilities he could not. There was the notorious Pennsylvania case of almost two decades ago, where a woman and two children had disappeared. The woman's body was found within forty-eight hours, the victim of a bizarre plot by her charismatic lover; the children had never been found. And if everyone was alive… well, it was hard to travel with one child, much less three. Harder still when there was no money and no vehicle. Whatever Natalie was running from or to, she'd run faster alone, to paraphrase Kipling. Would appreciate any ideas about how to proceed.

Tess then added a few lines about Baltimore's glorious Indian summer, described the muffin she was eating, and asked, almost as an afterthought, Anyone here know much about Orthodox Judaism? I'm curious because my client-Modern Orthodox, not Hasidic-refused to shake my hand. I knew; but forgot, about the prohibition against men touching women 'who are not their wives. Still, shouldn't the religion have evolved beyond this concept by now? What's the point in this day and age?

Tess disconnected and tilted her face back to the sun, trying to convince herself that she felt like Goldilocks. Everything was almost just right-the weather, her work. Rubin's job alone would make her fourth quarter, and now there was a possibility that Tyner was going to throw something lucrative her way. Why else would he summon her to lunch at Petit Louis? Meanwhile, she would start the Rubin case tomorrow by visiting Vera Peters, Natalie's mother. She imagined a Pikesville matron, a more devout version of Tess's Weinstein aunts. Perfect nails, perfect hair, shining house. Really, how estranged could any Jewish mother be from her daughter?

Then again, perhaps the reason that Natalie Rubin had exploded, taking her whole family with her, was that she had kept everything from everyone. Tess could see that happening. She had been accused of doing the same thing, but the way she saw it, a girl just couldn't win. You either talked too much or too little. There was denial, that old river in Egypt, but there also was a place called Laconia, the aptly named land that had once contained Sparta. Tess was determined to live in Laconia for a while, a place where there wasn't so much yakking about feelings and emotions.

And, yes, she knew all about the little Spartan boy who had let the pilfered fox nibble his internal organs rather than cry out in pain, but she wasn't worried. All you had to do to avoid that fate, Tess figured, was not steal any foxes.

Chapter Three

NATALIE ENJOYED PICKING OUT NEW NAMES FOR THE children once Zeke explained why the change was necessary. Zeke was good that way, making sure she understood the why of everything they had to do. Moshe had only pretended to make her an equal partner in decisions, but he always got his way in the end. All along, Natalie had wanted to give her children American names, pretty names, names that meant something to her, not God. She knew better than anyone how a name could change a child's life. Hadn't she chosen "Natalie" for herself, keen to fit in, to erase the awkward foreign girl who was teased and belittled? And it had worked, too, worked like a charm. Besides, Moshe used "Mark" in the outside world. Even his store had a fake name, so who was he to lecture her on what was real?

But when she'd made that point, he said the store's name was a business decision, one made by his father. Robbins amp; Sons Furriers was too well known, too successful to change its name at this late date. It would be silly to forfeit the brand over this small point, yet pigheaded to perpetrate the self-destructive practice of cultural assimilation generation after generation. Those were his exact words, for this was how Moshe spoke when intent on winning an argument-and he was never not intent on winning. He strung together self-important phrases, as if the words could make him right. Natalie thought he sounded like an old man, and a boring one at that. They were Jews, Mark kept repeating, their children were Jews, and they must work hard to preserve their identity in a world that attempted to substitute the secular for the spiritual. Blah, blah, blah. When Mark started talking like this, Natalie left the room, at least in her own head.

"I'm not going to repeat my father's mistakes," he often said when making his big points, and Natalie longed to fling back at him the news that he had committed a far larger one. But Moshe didn't know that, of course. So she held her tongue. She ended up holding her tongue for ten years, a third of her life. Really all her life, for her father had been quick with a hand when she dared to question him. "Whore," he might say, for no crime greater than her having an opinion. "Thief," she'd countered once, just once, and he had struck her so hard that he had not allowed Natalie to sleep for two days, in case she had a concussion. He had been kind to her for those forty-eight hours, bringing her soup, hovering by her bed. He never hit her again, and he was never quite as nice to her again either.

Zeke, however, always treated Natalie as a partner, an equal. So when he suggested that the children should have new names-she, after all, was traveling under a new one, she had arranged that in advance-he had left the decision up to her.

"We should have done this earlier, before the first time, back in Terre Haute," he said. "They need new names-and new birthdays, too, while you're at it."

"That's a lot to remember," Natalie had said. She wasn't good with numbers, whether dollars or dates.

"Give 'em easy ones, then. Fourth of July, New Year's Day. Look, a blind man could see those are your kids. No one's going to ask a lot of questions."

Except Isaac, of course, who didn't want a new name. Isaac always had questions.

"Warren?" he said, making a face. They were at a rest stop, an old one that was not particularly inviting, even on a bright, almost fall-like morning. "Warren is a stupid name. Why do I have to be Warren?"

The twins, younger and more docile, accepted that they were Robert and Daisy, although they could not remember the names from one moment to the next, and stared blankly when Natalie tried to get them to respond, until she ended up using them together, as in, "Penina-Daisy, take your thumb out of your mouth and listen to me." Or, "Efraim-Robert Rubin, are you eating dirt?" Even then their little faces looked blank, as if she were speaking to them in a foreign language.

"I want to be Sandy," Isaac persisted. "Or Hank."

"Why? What's so special about those names?"

"Dad would know." What was wrong with him? Isaac had never been so sassy at home. But then he was growing up. It was just the natural order of things for a boy to get more combative as he grew older.

"Well, your father's not here," she said, stubborn as any Rubin man, perhaps more so. "So you will do as I say. And as Zeke says."

Zeke, who had been sitting on the next picnic table over, enjoying a smoke, looked up warily. He threw the cigarette down and ground it beneath his heel.

"You shouldn't litter," Isaac admonished. Zeke walked over and crouched in front of Isaac, forcing him to meet his gaze.

"You know what I always say, Warren?"

Isaac glared at Zeke for using the new name but didn't try to correct him.

"Call me whatever you like-just don't call me late for supper."

With that he had ruffled Isaac's hair, enveloped him in a bear hug-and then popped him into the trunk. "Got to make money today," Zeke said to Natalie, "because we sure didn't make any yesterday or the day before. Isaac may have saved us from making a bad mistake back in Mount Carmel, but we're scraping bottom now."

Natalie's stomach clutched when she saw her son's face in the split second before the trunk closed. It was so stony and unforgiving, pinched with the effort of not crying. He never looked more like his father than at such moments. He was her son, her oldest boy, and she loved him with a ferocity that rivaled any emotion she had ever known. But while Zeke and others saw Natalie in her children, the only face Natalie could see in Isaac's was Moshe's, and she didn't want to see Moshe's face anymore, because it made her feel guilty and sad. She didn't hate him. She just didn't love him, not really, and no woman should have to spend a life with a man she didn't love, when the man she did love was finally in a position to claim her.

With Isaac stowed away for now, out of sight if not out of mind, Natalie settled into the front seat. The twins began to sob, asking for Isaac-they had already forgotten all about the new names-but she told them it was okay, that he wanted to ride in the trunk because it was like a little bed, so soft, so luxurious. All this accomplished was changing the tenor of the twins' sobs. Now they wanted a turn, riding in the trunk, in Isaac's cozy little bed.

"Nice job, Nat," Zeke said. "Don't try to explain everything to them. They're children. They're not our equals. We tell them what they need to know, when they need to know it."

"But I thought that's what you hated about the way you were raised."

"When I was in high school, yeah. But not when I was fuckin' five." She shot him a look for using profanity in front of the children, and he put his hand over his mouth. "Sorry."

"Okay," she said, not wanting to fight. She snaked her hand across the seat and let it brush his thigh. She didn't dare touch him when Isaac was around, and even the twins would find it confusing if she showed Zeke too much physical affection. They needed more time to get used to the new ways. She had suggested they call him "Uncle Zeke," but he had quickly vetoed that. "That's not what I am to them," he had said, and he was right, of course. Zeke was going to be their father, more of a father to them than Moshe, who was never home, who worked all the time.

True, he had spent time with Isaac, talking and reading to him late in the evenings. But Natalie had always felt that was because Mark found Isaac better company than she was. They liked the same dull things, history and baseball, things found in books. During the day Isaac was obedient and loving, interested in the things she cared about. They had a standing date at 4:00 p.m. to watch that decorating show, the one where the neighbors changed houses. But when Moshe came through the door, it was as if Natalie didn't exist anymore. They ganged up on her, made fun of her. She was the butt of all their private jokes.

"Do you think," she asked Zeke, "that we should aim a little bigger? At least on your end? There's not much I can do to bring more money in. But if you don't change up, we're going to be working almost every other day. We burn through money so fast, what with motels and eating in restaurants."

"A man has to know his capabilities," he said. "Look at your father if you ever doubt the wisdom of that."

Natalie didn't have much affection for her father, but hearing him criticized caused the usual defensive reflex. "My father lost his temper at a bad moment, that's all. He was good at what he did."

"Yeah, but he got in over his head, didn't he? That's all I'm saying. He tried to be a big shot and ended up crossways with the wrong guy. Look, I learned how to do this. I paid attention, I listened. Small is the way to go. Small towns, small places, as close to state lines as possible. Just be patient."

As if she hadn't already waited forever, as if she hadn't proved she was more patient than almost any woman on the planet. She was beginning to think Zeke was a person who loved the planning, the buildup, just a little too much. She always did everything he told her to do, only to find there was still one more thing required of her.

There was a legend in Natalie's family about a relative, a great-uncle or something like that, who had hidden himself in a cupboard at the end of World War II and stayed there for two weeks without moving. He was the only person in his family to survive the destruction of his village. He was fourteen at the time, small for his age, and he never grew another inch after he came out of that cupboard. Natalie's mother said he was forever known as the "Little Uncle." But there were no photos of him, and Natalie's persistent questions threatened to unravel the story. (Where was the village? What year was this? Weren't the Germans in retreat by then?) Her mother finally made it clear that the Little Uncle was an article of faith in her family and Natalie was a bad sport for trying to undermine the tale. "This is what happens, when you come to America," her mother had complained at last, throwing up her hands. "Your children become Americans."

"Where are we going?" Natalie asked Zeke.

"Not Indianapolis," he said. "Too big."

"I didn't ask where we weren't going."

He gave her a look, but he liked that she had spirit, that she talked back to him.

"An-ti-ci-pation," he sang. "You'll know where we are when we get there."

"But how long?" She couldn't help thinking of Isaac, back in the trunk.

"Not long. Not long at all. Get your game face on."

The Plymouth hit a bump just then, and Natalie wondered if Zeke had done it on purpose, hoping she might cry at the thought of Isaac in his little nest. It helped if she cried, they had found that out the first time, when he had hit her. Well, not hit her, because Zeke would never hit her, just pushed her a little, shook her, when she had balked. At first she hadn't wanted to do her part, didn't see why they couldn't get by on his efforts alone. Moshe had never expected her to work. But this was a partnership, a one-two system, and Zeke couldn't do his part unless she did hers. The near miss back in Mount Carmel had convinced her of the brilliance of his plan.

But what if the story of the Little Uncle were true? What if Isaac, already small for his age, never grew into his height because Natalie let Zeke put him in the trunk? No, it was for his own safety, for his own good. Isaac was as stubborn as his father and his mother combined. He would keep trying to call attention to them, and the one thing they could not risk was being noticed. Zeke had been pounding on that point from the moment he met the children.

"Act like normal and you'll pass for normal," he kept saying. "If anyone's looking for you, they're looking just for you and the kids. They don't expect to see you with a man."

They jolted over another bump. But Isaac had those blankets and a pillow, and it was such a big trunk, and it wouldn't be for more than an hour, maybe less. An hour couldn't possibly stunt his growth. But the fear must have registered in her face, for Zeke glanced over and frowned at her, and the twins began to cry as if on cue.

"Jesus, pull it together, Nat." Zeke then called over his shoulder to the twins, "I'm going to teach you a song, a song my dad taught me when I was your age and we took trips. I'll sing a line and you sing it back to me, okay? Okay?"

The twins stammered between their tears, but the noises they made sounded like agreement.

" 'We're hitting the road'-come on, sing it back. 'We're hitting the road.' "

Natalie sang, providing cover for the twins' small, garbled voices.

" 'Without a single care!' " Zeke's voice was booming, almost too loud, and Natalie knew that his song was scaring the twins more than it was cheering them up. But she didn't want to criticize him when he was trying so hard.

" 'Without a single care,' " Natalie and the twins echoed.

" 'Cuz we're going, and we'll know where we are when we're there.' Wait-don't sing that one. But then you come in again: 'We haven't got a dime.' "

" 'Haven't got a dime,' " the twins lisped dutifully after a confused pause.

" 'But we're going, and we're going to have a wonderful time, yes, sir, we're going to have a wonderful time!' " Zeke slapped the dashboard as if they were having a wonderful time, but it all fell a bit flat in Natalie's opinion. The twins went back to crying, although not quite as loudly, and Zeke looked hopeless, his scariest look of all.

"You know," he said to Natalie, "there weren't supposed to be any kids. I told you-no kids."

"But mere are." She tried a light, careless laugh, as if Zeke were complaining about something at once trivial and beyond anyone's control, like the weather.

"There weren't supposed to be."

She let it drop, knowing him well enough by now to pick her battles. He was just being obstinate. The children couldn't have stayed with Mark. Children needed their mother. Besides, Zeke would soon love them as much as she did. Natalie had no doubt of that. Zeke would come to love them as he loved her, and they would be a real family at last.