Laura Lippman - By A Spider's Thread

But she just didn't feel like making the effort. Instead Tess let her suede jacket fall open, giving him a glimpse of the gun on her belt, and said, "The woman who was just in here-I need to know what kind of business she transacted."

"You're not police," he said.

"No, but I have friends in the police department, and in the state department of licensing and regs, even in the health department, and I'm sure any one of those agencies could find a beef with your store, whether it's the hot dogs that have been sitting on that grill for the past week or the gas pump that can afford to dispense gas at ten cents below the going rate because it's shorting your customers a few ounces on the gallon."

The man smiled, amused by Tess's bravado. "She wired two thousand dollars via e-mail to a Western Union store in Zanesville, Ohio."

"Which store?"

"Only one I found." He showed Tess the address in a directory. "She said it was going to someone named Wilma Loomis."

"The name mean anything to you?" Tess asked Mark Rubin.

"It sounds as if it should, but… no, no, I'm drawing a blank."

"What about Zanesville?"

He shook his head.

Tess turned back to the grinning counterman, whose enjoyment of their discomfiture seemed out of proportion. "What the hell is so funny?"

"There's a server problem. Transfers usually take only fif-teen minutes, but this one's going to take at least an hour, maybe two. That's why the girl was so upset. So while you're standing here, Wilma Loomis is still in Zanesville, waiting for the money. Too bad Zanesville is more than an hour's drive from here. But, like Einstein said, it's all about relativity."

"Were you a physics major before you started running an off-brand convenience store?"

The guy smirked. How Tess loathed him. He had no way of knowing how deeply his words cut, how Mark Rubin must yearn to manipulate time. Go back six hours and he could be in Zanesville now, waiting for his family to arrive at the Western Union office, assuming that the transfer was intended for Natalie. Go back six days and he could be sitting at a molded plastic table in McDonald's in French Lick, Indiana, a man's death no longer on his hands. Go back a month and he could refuse to leave for work on a Friday morning, have a chance to dissuade Natalie from this mysterious journey before it began.

"But we can play with time and space," Tess said. "In certain parts of the country."

Plucking Rubin's sleeve, she motioned for him to follow her outside, where she quickly dialed Gretchen O'Brien on her cell phone. Tess prayed for a voice, not voice mail. The prayer was answered. Perhaps Mark did have an in with God, because Tess didn't see how she rated.

"Gretchen? Tess. Didn't you just add someone to the network in the central Ohio area?"

"Yeah, east of Columbus. A retired librarian, with amazing online research skills. Great at financial stuff-SEC filings, Dun amp; Bradstreets-"

"I need some more basic legwork. We've got a lead on our missing family, at a Western Union store in Zanesville. They're stuck there for an hour because the server's down."

"But you don't have any paper on them, right? No warrant, no legal way to hold them?"

"No. If she finds them, she should just follow them as discreetly as possible, calling me on my cell to update their location. We'll start heading west on I-70 to get a head start and hope that they're heading east. Meanwhile, tell her the client will pay her hourly rate plus expenses plus a bonus if she has to go beyond eight hours today."

"Okay, but you should know she's not exactly used to this kind of fieldwork."

"She's within an hour of Zanesville, which is all that matters. Just get her on the phone and get her on the road as quickly as possible. She's our only shot."

"Too bad we don't have a Learjet, gassed up and ready to go from some central location."

"Very funny, Gretchen."

"Who's joking? I have big plans for the SnoopSisters. Sky's the limit. I've registered the domain name snoopsisters.com and I'm looking to get some sort of trademark protection. We're going to be the Starbucks of private investigation. You've got to think big, Tess."

Tess was too busy thinking little, hoping this one precious clue would bring Mark Rubin's children back to him.

They stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts on Reisterstown Road before heading to the highway.

"Kosher," Mark explained. "And quick.".

"I usually don't have a chocolate frosted for lunch, but sugar and caffeine will be a boon. Zanesville is at least eight hours from here. But if they head east, we could catch a break and overlap them."

"We're due for a break, don't you think?"

"Definitely." Tess, who had taken the first driving shift, was grateful she had a reason to stare straight ahead. She still didn't know whether to tell Mark what Larry Kirsch had said about Natalie's visits to the prison, the "services" she had provided. "Mark"-the name still felt funny in her mouth, but he didn't correct her-"how much do you know about Natalie's life before you met?"

"How much could there be to know? She was eighteen."

"And she had already decided to embrace Orthodox Judaism before she met you?"

"Yes, but she didn't know how to go about it. That was why she sought me out. Her father suggested I could help her find a rabbi who would oversee her education, prepare her for a bat mitzvah."

"How… propitious."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Nothing," she lied. "But her father's attempt to blackmail her later-"

"I told you, I was never tempted by Boris's games. Marriages must be based on trust. Whatever Boris wanted to tell me about Natalie was unimportant. She was so young. What could she possibly have done that couldn't be forgiven?"

Tess's thoughts were going somewhere else. If all Boris had on Natalie were his allegations about their own little prison-outreach program, as it were, she could have bluffed her way around that. A few tears, a convincing story, and Mark would have been willing to believe it was all a vile lie. Boris had something more concrete on his daughter-and a potential buyer, as he had told Tess, but one who hadn't paid him yet. If I don't get my due by the end of the month , he had said, I'll put it back on the market . Why had he been so definite about the date? Something was supposed to happen this month, the same month Natalie had disappeared.

"You should sleep," she told Mark. "We don't know how long we're going to be spelling each other behind the wheel of this car."

"I can't sleep," he said. "I got maybe two hours last night."

"You told me you slept fine last night."

"Two hours is fine for me. It's about as much sleep as I've had in the past month."

They had reached the turnoff that had taken them to western Maryland the day before, but the skies were not threatening today. The countryside's beauty had a mocking edge-the trees crimson and gold, the hills still green. Tess's cell phone rang, and she picked it up, expecting her emergency dog-sitter.

"Tess Monaghan?" The voice was an older woman's, enthusiastic and a little breathless. "This is Mary Eleanor Norris, and I've got 'em in my sights."

ISAAC NOTICED THE CAR FIRST BECAUSE IT WAS A MlNI Cooper, a gold one. He loved Mini Coopers. He and his father had watched The Italian Job -the real one, not the remake-just last month. His father said he was pretty sure Michael Caine might be Jewish, which surprised Isaac because he didn't know Jews could have English accents. This Mini Cooper wasn't right behind them, but it never lagged more than a few car lengths back. The other cars on the highway whizzed past Zeke, who was driving a very steady fifty-five, staying in the right lane, unusual for him. He didn't drive fast, but he liked to zig and zag, muttering under his breath at the other drivers.