Laura Lippman - By A Spider's Thread

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."