By a Spider's Thread: A Tess Monaghan Novel (37 page)

“There are paper plates and plastic utensils in the cupboard just to the right of the refrigerator. Use those, take your containers with you, and it should be okay. Although, really, there are some lovely frozen latkes. They thaw in seconds in the microwave.”

Hanging out in Mark’s house was not unlike the babysitting gigs of Tess’s teenage years. Only instead of listening for muffled cries from a child’s bedroom, she strained her ears toward any out-of-place sounds on the quiet suburban street. And, just like when she’d been babysitting, she was bored out of her mind in less than thirty minutes.

It had been a long, fruitless day — Lana was still MIA at work and home — and Mark had steadfastly declined to call the police about the possible threat to his life, no matter how Tess coaxed in their phone conversations. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow,” he insisted over and over.

Uninterested in food, she decided to indulge in another old babysitting habit — unbridled snooping. The house was neat and fairly clean, but there was that indefinable absence, the feel of a missing woman. Everything was just a bit awry, not to mention dusty. After inspecting the bookshelves and the contents of the various medicine cabinets, Tess tried the doors of Natalie’s walk-in closet. The clothes, suitable to an Orthodox woman in their style and hues, were clearly expensive. Natalie had dozens of shoes and a shelf of fashionable hats, which she probably needed for synagogue. A built-in safe indicated a cache of fine jewelry. Why hadn’t Natalie taken those with her to pawn as necessary? Because she wanted them back, Tess thought. Because whatever’s going on is temporary, a contingency. She always meant to get them back. No fur coats, however — could she have sold them to raise money for her escape? Then Tess remembered it was still storage season. Except for excitable types such as the legendary Mrs. Gordon, who had needed her lynx before she headed off to see the fjords.

Only if the famously difficult Mrs. Gordon were on a cruise — how could she have another emergency? A distracted, lost-in-thought Mark had said last night’s call was from Paul. Did that mean Mrs. Gordon had located a ship-to-shore telephone at what must be 3:00
A.M.
her time and called Paul at home, demanding to have another coat airlifted to the
Norwegian Princess
? Dubious. Extremely dubious.

Adrenaline on alert, Tess called Mark’s cell phone and got voice mail for the first time that day. She consulted a Rolodex next to the phone in Mark’s study and found a home number for his salesman, Paul Zuravsky.

“Last night? No, Mark and I spoke this morning, and that was it. He told me he was going to be with you all day again.”

Tess was too upset to care about the disapproving note in Paul’s voice, as if he blamed the freckled shiksa for Mark’s taking time away from the business.

“Paul, do you know where Mark was calling from?”

“He must have been on his cell, I think, because the reception was bad. But he didn’t mention where he was.”

“Did he say anything else about what he planned to do today? Was there anything out of the ordinary about the conversation?”

“No. But something odd happened early this afternoon. The vice president from Mark’s bank called, pretty agitated. He wanted to talk to Mark about his decision to close an account. I didn’t think anything of it, because Mark’s capable of getting in a snit with people, forever moving and closing accounts to get better rates and deals. He’s a big believer in the well-timed fit.”

Tess remembered how he had terrorized the wholesaler from Montreal. Still, she couldn’t see how a bank had managed to enrage him just now. Mark had claimed to be in his hotel room all day. But he had told her to call on the cell.

“Did he take the money out in cash? How much?”

“No idea. Enough to get a vice president to follow up with a phone call.”

“That
fucker,
” Tess said, and Paul coughed as if shocked, although Tess bet that the Mrs. Gordons of the world used a few choice words when their whims weren’t indulged. “He set me up. He made sure I would be occupied all day so he could go behind my back and cut some deal with them. The idiot. They’ll take the money and kill him.”

“What are you talking about? He’s been with you all day —” but she hung up on Paul, too agitated to explain, and dialed the Wyndham’s main number.

Mark was registered, but the phone in his room rang unanswered, bouncing her to a voice-mail system in five rings. Fortunately, the valet confirmed that the Cadillac had gone out sometime in the last hour. It helped, Tess realized, being able to describe the driver as a tall, well-dressed man in a yarmulke. That detail tended to stick out in people’s minds.

She looked at Mark’s phone, realizing too late that she couldn’t use the redial trick that Mark had tried at Lana’s apartment. But he had caller ID, just as she had advised him. The call that had come in at 9:14 last night was a local one, a 410 number that looked familiar to Tess, although it was listed as “Caller Unknown.” She flipped open her cell, looking at the log of calls she had made in the past two weeks, and then the numbers she had stored there since taking Mark’s case.

Last night’s call had been made from Vera Peters’s home phone.

The days were getting shorter, each night falling faster than the one before. Dusk was long past when Tess pulled up at Vera’s house, but there was only one light on, somewhere on the first floor.

She banged on the door, making more and more noise, until neighbors began to shout. “They’ll be calling the police soon, if you don’t answer,” Tess screamed into the metal frame of the storm door. The inner door opened slowly, but it was Lana on the other side, not Vera.

“No one here wants to talk to you.”

“It’s really not about what you or Vera wants at this point,” Tess said, shoving past Lana and showing off her gun, although she had no idea what she would do with it here. “If you don’t cooperate with me, I’m going to call the police and tell them you’re a coconspirator in a long laundry list of crimes.”

Lana looked confused and frightened, but her voice remained firm. “No one’s here.”

“But someone’s been here.” The telltale trail of a child’s detritus snaked through the living room — a strange little rock family with googly eyes, a miniature View-Master stamped “Memories of Skyline Drive,” a paperback copy of
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
that looked as if it had been read to death. “They were here. Where are they now, Lana?”

Vera Peters came down the stairs with her heavy tread, tying a bathrobe around her as if she had already been in bed, although the hour was early. “Tell her, Lana. I don’t want any trouble. This is not my affair, and it shouldn’t be yours.”

“But —”

“No more
buts.
Why are you protecting her still? I only let them stay here because they promised to do the right thing by the children. You’re not going to get the money they owe you. You’re never going to see them again. Didn’t you notice? They left the children’s things, but they took their own. They’re going to leave us here to explain whatever happens. We’re better off talking to this nosy one than the police.”

“They haven’t done anything wrong, except want to be together. There’s no crime in that.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Lana,” Tess said. “They’ve been pulling welfare-fraud scams and robbing banks throughout the Midwest. And didn’t they hire Amos to kill Mark? Wasn’t that the plan? To arrange Mark’s death by a third party, then let Natalie come home and inherit everything?”

Lana shook her head in adamant disbelief and denial, even as Vera nodded, sad and resigned.

“I believe it. She cares for no one but herself, that one. From the day she was born. She took and took and took, just like her father. I didn’t leave him, I left
them.
I was scared to close my eyes living under the same roof with those two criminals.”

“Where are Natalie and the children?” Tess asked. “Did they call Mark last night, arrange a meeting? If they end up killing him and you don’t help me, you’ll be responsible. I’ll tell the police you’re an accessory.”

Lana still didn’t answer. Her misplaced loyalty was almost admirable. Tess had seen her all this time as a cold accomplice, but Lana was simply a smitten friend. When Vera turned her back on her own teenage daughter, Lana had been there to play the part of mother, sister, and ardent admirer. Lana had reflected back to Natalie the person she wanted to be — beautiful, worthy, deserving of whatever the world had to offer. She was the nurse to this Romeo and Juliet. Or, given Natalie’s frame of reference, the Anita to their Tony and Maria.

“They’ve gone to make a deal,” Vera said. “They’re going to sell the children back to that idiot, make him pay for what is legally his.”

“Where’s the meeting place?”

Vera shrugged, while Lana stared at the floor.

“Lana, get out now. Whatever you’ve done to help them, I can’t believe you would agree to murder.”

“They wouldn’t —”

“They would. Amos was going to kill Mark, and he would have killed me, too, just because I was there. Amos is dead because of
them.
”

Tess was hoping Lana had some residual warmth for the man she had married. Whatever had passed between Lana and Amos, however mercenary it might have been in its origins, there must have been something genuine there. The Velvet Frost had said she was distraught earlier in the week. Lana’s name was one of only five in Amos Greif’s address book. SlavicBeautee.

“The business,” Lana said at last. “But then they’re coming back here.” She looked at Vera, as if daring her to contradict. “They said they would come back for me and give me my share of the money, pay me back everything I’ve loaned them and more.”

“The business? You mean Robbins & Sons, over on Smith Avenue?”

“No, the place they keep the furs, out in the country.”

“How much of a head start do they have?”

“Enough,” Lana said, gloating a bit. “You won’t catch up to them.”

“Only fifteen minutes or so,” Vera said. “But those twins can’t go long without a bathroom break, especially with Natalie making them drink all that hot chocolate before they went out. So strange, a hot drink on a night as warm as this. But Zeke said they had to drain their cups.”

I
saac sat as far forward on the seat as his seat belt would allow, fighting his own drowsiness. He didn’t understand why he felt so sleepy, not after being stuck in that little house all day with nothing to do but watch television and reread his book. But he couldn’t stop yawning, despite his excitement and anticipation. The twins had already nodded off, one slumped on either side of him. The woman they said was his grandmother had chased them around all day, although not in the happy way he thought a grandmother would have. Her only concern had been to keep the twins from touching anything in her house, not that there was anything interesting to touch.

And Lana was there, too, standing by the door while his mother and Zeke shared secrets somewhere else in the house. Isaac guessed that was because they were in Baltimore now and they knew if he got even a chance, he would start running, running, and running until he found a pay phone or a policeman or even a street he knew. He would run all the way to his father’s house or store if he had to. But now they said they were taking him to his father, so he didn’t have to run. Still, he studied the landscape, determined to figure out where they were.

So far he hadn’t even seen anything familiar. He tried to memorize the landmarks that went past. There were the usual stores and restaurants, and now they were on a highway, but it wasn’t the baseball highway to Camden Yards or the big highway they took north to New York and south to Washington. Instead they seemed to be heading away from the city. In the middle of this highway, an empty subway car went rattling past, all lit up, but with no one on its blue seats, so it was like a subway car for ghosts. Isaac hoped Zeke wasn’t lying. Zeke had promised them their father, but Zeke was mean enough to make a promise and break it. He was, he definitely was.