Laura Lippman - By A Spider's Thread

JR: Possibly. There's a little-known child-support enforcement program that searches federal databases for deadbeat dads, which are my specialty. It has a lot of flexibility-it can do sophisticated Boolean searches with variables, using suspected aliases in combination with data the applicant is less likely to fake. Downside is, it can take months because it searches millions of records. Veterans, federal employees, anything the feds have access to. But if you know you only want to look at social-services programs in a handful of states, it might go a little faster.

Worth a try ,Tess typed, although she doubted Mark Rubin would be placated by something so passive. He didn't want search engines crawling along millions of entries in government databases. He wanted to get in his car and just start driving until he found his family and brought them home.

A virtual door creaked audibly, and the log at the bottom of the screen showed that M'E-Mary Eleanor-had entered the room.

M'E: Hey, gang. I'm the new girl.

TM: All hail Mary Eleanor. She did amazing work today.

The Sisters responded with a variety of hip-hip-hooray emoticons.

M'E: I'm not sure I deserve to be saluted. Gosh, those kids are cute,tho . The one little boy kept giving me a thumbs-up, and doing a sort of Zorro thing, like he was cheering me on.Makes me feel worse for losing them.

TM:Please, no girly self-deprecation here. You tracked them to Wheeling . You told us they were all safe and well. It was-she stopped for a moment, trying to find the right word, one that would be positive but truthful-meaningful to their father, to know his children are well.

She bade the sisters good-bye, her fingers exhausted. The phone rang at almost the precise moment she disconnected from the Internet. It was silly to think the phone's peal was angry and insistent, as if someone had been trying to get through for a while. Yet that's exactly how her caller sounded.

"You missed the appointment with the caterer," Kitty said without preamble. "We waited and waited for you at the Brass Elephant, but you never showed up. I need to know what you think about quail."

"Given the way this country is going, I think anyone can be president."

" Tesser ." In thirty-two years Tess's Kitty had never once raised her voice to her niece, or anyone else. Her low, sweet tone was as much a part of her charm as her reddish curls, peachy skin, and perfect figure. Even now she didn't sound exactly loud, but there was an unaccustomed edge to her voice. "This is serious."

"So I'm guessing what was once described as nothing more than a large party where a couple of people happen to get married has turned into a big-ass nightmare of a wedding."

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone, and Tess wondered if Kitty was so far gone that she might take offense, or even start crying. Tess was really getting sick of making people cry. To her relief, Kitty laughed instead. A rueful laugh, to be sure, but the laugh of a woman who still had some perspective.

"I'm sorry. PMS."

"You still…"

"Tess, please. I'm only forty-five. The thing is, I worry when you don't show up for an appointment, and I can't find you at home or in your office. I should carry your cell phone number, but I never remember it and you don't always answer it. You didn't used to be so hard to find."

"You didn't used to worry about me so much."

"No, not really. But last summer was a… bit of a jolt."

Last summer. Kitty made it sound so far away. Tess glanced at the scar on her knee and remembered sitting in the vacant parking lot waiting for an ambulance. If it had been a horror film, the man she had left for dead might have risen again in the endless minutes it took for her 911 call to be answered. But when Tess Monaghan killed a man, she was nothing if not thorough. The cops who arrived at the scene had been almost perverse in their admiration for her work. At least the shooting part. She could tell that the other wound, the one that had been truly defensive, made even the cops queasy.

Kitty had come with Crow to the emergency room at Harborview Hospital. The three had agreed to protect Tess's parents from the full knowledge of what had happened to their daughter in the warehouse. For once Tess had been thankful for the dulled-down newspaper prose, which reduced the most horrific night of her life to a simple construct. Miss Monaghan followed the suspect to an abandoned warehouse, where she managed to kill him after he inflicted fatal injuries to her associate. A grand jury declined to indict, deciding she acted in self-defense and discharged the full clip only because she was panicky .

Tess could not fault the newspaper reporter for rendering the event dryly and somewhat inaccurately. She had refused repeated attempts to enlarge the tale, to participate in what the more persistent reporters promised would be empathetic narratives. The only reporter to whom she would have entrusted the full story was her old friend Kevin Feeney. And he, to his eternal credit, wanted no part of it-and not just because it was a conflict of interest to write about a friend. "I don't need to know, Tess," he had said. "If you want to confide in me, I'm here for you. But I don't want the Blight's subscribers to read about the night you almost died while they're chomping on eggs and sausage with their mouths open."

If only Crow could have been spared as well. But he knew everything, and this had made him intent on protecting her in every way. He had started working longer hours at the Point, the bar that Tess's father ran, so Tess wouldn't fret about neglecting her own work. He began speaking of the business degree he hoped to earn, his always-accessible enthusiasm as engaged by the bar and restaurant business as it had once been by music and art. He called her countless times a day and demanded she check in. His marriage proposal, Tess believed, was his last-ditch attempt to protect her from herself. He thought he could keep her safe.

But no one could keep anyone safe in this world. And Tess didn't want a bodyguard. She didn't want people peering at her, faces anxious and voices low, as if she were an invalid or an unpredictable animal. She wanted to be who she used to be, before she'd killed someone. She wanted that mark off her permanent record. But that couldn't be and would never be, so she soldiered on. Let time do its magic act. When people told Tess that time healed, she knew it was true. But she also knew that time could use a little Neosporin in its kit. It left some unsightly scars.

"I really do take fewer chances," Tess told Kitty, thankful that Amos's death would never make the papers this far east. Baltimore, with its two hundred-plus homicides a year, didn't have any attention to spare for other towns' shootings. "I'm much more careful than I was."

"If you say so. How's Crow?" A non sequitur, and yet not. Had Kitty's intuitive brain made the connection?

"Fine."

"He'll be back for the wedding?"

"I'm sure he plans to be." Damn, she shouldn't sound quite that vague, as if she never spoke to him. Luckily, Kitty was too wedding-addled to catch the slip.

"His mother's doing well?"

"Very well. And it's nice for them, being together as a family. They like each other."

"Tess, we all like each other."

"Now. More or less. But aren't Uncle Jules and Uncle Lester feuding?"

"I speak only for the Monaghan side. The Weinsteins have to keep track of their own craziness. But you should be grateful to have so many relatives, complicated as they are. Tyner has virtually no family, just a first cousin, and he's a Baltimore bachelor from way back."