Tess's Uncle Donald winced when he entered the Kibbitz Room at Attman's Delicatessen. The pained expression puzzled Tess. He normally doted on the restaurant, one of two holdouts on the once-thriving block known as Corned Beef Row, and he loved the food. "More than it loves me," he often said, for his doctor despaired when Donald indulged in things like corned beef and Matjes herring.
"Why the long face?" she asked. "It's a beautiful day, you have a pastrami sandwich and a Dr. Brown's celery soda. What more could you want?"
"I feel like I'm visiting a ghost town when I come here," he said, unloading his tray. "Thirty years ago you couldn't move three paces down the sidewalks here on a Saturday. Now you could drive your car along them and not hit anything, except the occasional rat. Corned Beef Row indeed. Don't you need more than two places to make a row? It all just makes me feel old and sad and tired."
"Still, the food is good." Whenever Tess came to Attman's, she wondered why she wasn't there at least once a week. "Best deli in Baltimore, by my lights."
"Which is great if you're a healthy bundle of metabolism like yourself. My blood pressure goes up just looking at this food." He took a mournful bite of pickle.
"Do you really have to worry?" Tess was still of an age where high blood pressure, cholesterol, and bifocals were no more than rumors from a distant country, one she honestly thought she could avoid visiting.
"We live in a world of measurement, where everything is judged by whether it's going up or down. The stock market goes up, that's good. Your blood pressure goes up, that's bad. The stock market goes down, and that's bad. So your blood pressure goes higher, and that's bad, too."
Tess laughed. "I've noticed that whatever state agency you're posted to seems to shape your latest theories on life. When you were at Human Resources, you were talking a lot about the safety net, the social fabric, and the myth of empowerment. Now you're at the Department of Licensing and Regulation, and suddenly it's all about measurement."
"Well, given that I never have to think much about what I do at work, is it so wrong for me to think about it in a wider sense, to try and find meaning in the meaningless?"
"Damn, Uncle Donald." Tess gave the no-longer-profane profanity the full Baltimore pronunciation, so it had two syllables and a distinctive twang. "Are you angling for a transfer to some newly formed Department of Existentialism and Despair?"
"I'd like that," Donald said, chewing hard. The sandwiches here required huge, snapping bites, like those seen in nature documentaries about lions. One had to open jaws wide, stretching the hinge, and then chomp down with determined ferocity as if to break the spine of a small beast. "We have a state folklorist. Why not a state philosopher? If the new governor weren't a Republican, I bet I could get a job like that, maybe even use it to promote the case for slot machines. But it would probably be an at-will position, and I don't want to give up my PIN."
While most people associate PINs with ATMs, the Monaghan-Weinstein clans, steeped in generations of civil service, used it as shorthand for the Personal Identification Numbers in the state civil service. Keep your PIN, keep your job. Not necessarily the same job, as Uncle Donald's career illustrated, but some kind of post. Thirty years ago, when his state-senator boss had gone away for mail fraud, Donald's consolation prize had been a lifetime of full employment, moving from state agency to state agency as needs and budgets dictated. Wherever he went, the two constants were his clipboard and his frown. With those two, Uncle Donald said, anyone could survive in a bureaucracy.
"Anyway, what's your agenda this morning? It's a cinch you didn't call your uncle for his company, excellent though it is."
Uncle Donald's tone was light, but it made Tess squirm. She did have a bad habit of reaching out to her family only when she needed something. And she had been especially scarce in recent weeks, ducking dinners and get-togethers, citing the extra work she had taken on to make up for her layoff. She just hadn't been in the mood for family gatherings and the interrogations they inspired.
"This is a thank-you lunch. I really appreciate you steering the Rubin case to me."
"I find myself waiting for the 'but.' "
"No 'but.' Maybe a 'however,' or a 'yet.' Mark Rubin seemed to go out of his way to keep me from learning something. Did you know that Rubin's father-in-law is in prison for second-degree murder?"
"Sure. That's how we met."
"Because you know his father-in-law?"
"Because we visited prisons together. Rubin and I were in the same Jewish men's club, and we organized an outreach program for Jews in Maryland prisons. It was his idea, in fact."
Your uncle, Rubin had told her, is quite active in Jewish causes. She had assumed he was talking about B'nai B'rith.
"Jews in prison? What, for accounting crimes?"
"You know, you may qualify for citizenship in Israel, but I'm not sure a girl named Monaghan should traffic in those stereotypes. Someone who didn't know you so well could take offense."
"Would you feel better if I assumed everyone you visited was a murderer?"
"We've always had some very tough Jews, you know, for good and bad, throughout history. Gangsters, of course, but there's also the story of the Warsaw ghetto-"
"I'm sorry, Uncle Donald," she said, hoping a quick apology would derail him, but he was too wound up.
"Not to mention Sandy Koufax."
"How did we get on the subject of Sandy Koufax?"
"I'm just saying, he was a Jew, one of the greatest baseball players that ever lived, and when he didn't play in the World Series on Yom Kippur, he showed the world a little something. People talk about Jews being money grubbers, but it wasn't Sandy Koufax who was pushing Mr. Coffee, was it? No, he retired with some dignity, although he hardly made a tenth, a hundredth, of what a player like him would make today."
Uncle Donald normally spoke with a slight Baltimore accent, an almost Cockney-like inflection distinguished by its odd-shaped o sounds. But as he warmed to this topic, he began to sound more and more like his immigrant forebears. It was only a matter of time before Yiddish broke out. Tess decided to mollify him.
"What did your men's group do?"
"We visited Jewish inmates once a month and led them in an informal service. And we observed major holidays. Passover was my favorite."
"How do you do Passover in prison?"
"Well, they can't leave the door open for Elijah and there's no wine, but they chant 'Next year outside' instead of 'Next year in Jerusalem.' Very touching, actually."
"I didn't know you cared about religion. You never talk about it."
"Jews don't proselytize," Donald said. "Your parents decided to raise you with virtually no religious education, so who was I to interfere? Besides, I'd be suspicious of anyone who did so-called good works, then ran around talking about it. Sort of misses the point."
"I wouldn't say I was raised without a religious education. Dad told me his version, Mom told me hers, and I was free to make my own decisions. I opted for being a nonobservant Jewish Catholic who believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny but can hang with the bitter-herb crowd at a seder. Remember last year? I kept the horseradish in my mouth longer than anyone except Crow, and he has an asbestos tongue from his time in Texas."
"He's a nice boy. How's his mother doing?"
"Fine, all things considered. They're Episcopalians, by the way. I mean, as long as we're taking inventory of who believes what."
"Do you believe in God, Tesser?"
Tess squirmed on the molded plastic chair, which had probably been in the Kibbitz Room since President Jimmy Carter's visit, which was featured on the wall above her in a series of newspaper articles, some framed, some shellacked to pieces of wood. She didn't want to talk with her uncle about her love life, but she was even more reluctant to discuss religion.
"Sure," she said. "Why not? So did Rubin get involved in this group because his father-in-law was in prison?"
"Oh, no. He met Natalie at the prison because her father was one of the men in our group. You see, she sought Mark out, very keen that her father embrace his faith, eager to know what she could do to help. She had found great comfort in Judaism after her father's arrest. But Boris Petrovich… well, Boris couldn't have been less interested in the program. I think he signed up because it was a nice diversion and we brought in good food. The man knew nothing about his own religion."
"Not unusual for a Soviet Jew. In fact, I'd say Natalie's the odd one, from what I know, choosing to live an observant life after almost twenty years of being wholly ignorant of Judaism."
"True, but Boris always seemed to be working some angle." Uncle Donald frowned at the memory. "It's a funny thing, charitable work. You might not go in expecting people to be overwhelmed with gratitude, but you think they'll be polite at least Petrovich was a bit of a jerk, a schemer through and through, whether he was asking for an extra macaroon or wheedling one of us to write a letter to get some privilege reinstated. But the daughter-the daughter was nothing but lovely."
"She wasn't part of the group, though? Rubin met her through the prison connection?" So there went the touching little story about the Carvel stand, a lie through and through.
"Yes. I admit I thought it was one of Petrovich's schemes at first. He may not have known how rich Mark was, but he had him pegged as a mark, a prosperous prospect. Hey-try saying that three times fast. Prosperous prospect, prosperous prospect, prosperous-"
"You're the king of the tongue twisters," Tess agreed.
"Anyway, Natalie contacted Mark about her father, and they ended up getting married. Then Mark dropped out of the program, saying he didn't have time for it anymore. That was at least eight, nine years ago, so maybe that's why he didn't mention it to you."
Tess rescued a few pieces of fallen corned beef from her plate.
"Only here's the part that's bothering me, Uncle Donald. Rubin's the one who keeps saying he thinks his wife disappeared for some reason she can't tell him. So why withhold the information that her daddy is a convict who killed a man?"
"Well, for one thing, people sometimes forget that others don't know what they know about themselves. Maybe he thought I'd tell you about Natalie's father. Besides, Mark's always been… an elliptical man. Formal and reserved. I think it comes from spending a lifetime of telling overweight women that they don't look fatter in a fur coat."
"His mother-in-law suggested he's not always truthful."
"Really?" Donald picked up a pickle from his plate and sucked on it before taking a bite. "I never had that sense. He's extremely reticent with most people, but he's charming when you get to know him, funny even."
"Rubin?"
"Not a jokester. No lamp shades on the head. But a very-I don't know-dry wit. Like Mort Sahl."
"More salt?"
"No, Mort Sahl. He was a Jewish comedian-"
Tess patted her uncle's forearm. "I'm teasing you. I'm much better on the details of our cultural history than I am on the religious stuff. Why did Mark come to you when he needed a private detective? Are you two close?"
Uncle Donald shook his head. "Not particularly. He's a wealthy businessman, living up in the county in some Architectural Digest house, with a wife and kids. I'm a state employee, with my little rental in Mount Washington. He says his prayers three times a day. I go to shul on Rosh Hashanah, fast on Yom Kippur, and try to find a relative to take me in on Passover."
"So why did Mark Rubin come to you with this very delicate matter?"
But now she had offended him. "Your uncle is still known as a man who can get things done, Tesser. Maybe I can't do things directly, but I know who to call."
"He didn't know I was a private investigator, then, he just asked for your help in finding a PI?"
"When he came to me, he wasn't even talking about private investigators. He thought the police were putting him off, not taking him seriously, because… well, because, you know…" He made a strange, helpless gesture with his hand.
"I don't know."
"Because he's Jewish. I mean, Jewish-Jewish, really Jewish, not just Jewish-surname-Jewish. Different-Jewish."
"Oh, Uncle Donald, that's paranoid beyond belief." Tess had already forgotten how quick she had been to take the other side of this argument with Nancy Porter.
"Yeah? One detective even asked him if this was an arranged marriage or a mail-order bride."
"So? There are still arranged marriages of sorts among the Orthodox, and there are mail-order brides from Russia, where Natalie was born. They were just doing their jobs, asking those questions."
"Oh." He chewed with intense concentration, as if the act of grinding his molars also helped his brain to work. "At any rate, when I determined that the police weren't being obstinate, that they really couldn't help him, I told him he needed a private investigator-and I knew just the person. The idea of a female investigator was a bit of an obstacle for him, but I persuaded him that you were more discreet than anyone else he could hire." He wiggled his eyebrows in best Groucho fashion.
"Thanks, Uncle Donald. It's nice for a family member to steer me toward a wealthy client for once. But if he doesn't start being more forthcoming with me, I'm not sure how much I can help him."
"Are there other things he's not telling you?"
"I don't know. Something. Maybe it's just, you know…" She shrugged, unsure how to broach this topic with her uncle. "Maybe his wife wasn't, um… fulfilled in their relationship."
"Fulfilled? Oh, you mean sex. No, I never got that impression that was the issue."
"So there was an issue?"
"I'm just assuming. She left, so something must have been wrong. Right? No one walks out on a perfect relationship."
"One person's perfect could be another person's hell." Tess took out a pad and pen. "What about the other men you visited, particularly in Jessup where Petrovich was held? Do you have a list of their names?"
"I don't, but the organization might keep such records. I'm sure we had correspondence with the Department of Corrections, to get clearances and the like. Why?"
"A man's wife and children disappeared. Now, I'm still betting she just took off, for whatever reason, but he's adamant that there's something more sinister involved. Looking at known criminals in his past makes sense. I also need to find out who his father-in-law killed, don't I?"
"Oh." He furrowed his brow. "You're not mad at me, Tesser, for making this referral? It's good money, isn't it?"
"It's great money. But one of the stinky things about my line of work is that the longer it takes me to solve a problem, the more money I make. Doesn't that seem a little backward to you?"
"So you asked me here today to talk about Mark, this case?"
"Well, yeah. But to see you, too," she added. "And to gossip about Kitty's wedding."
"But mainly to talk about work?" He seemed adamant about scoring this point, which was not Uncle Donald's way. He was one of the few relatives who never tried to make her feel guilty.
"Yes, okay? Yes, I asked you here to talk about the Rubin case."
He pushed his check across the table. "Then you pay for me and put it on your expenses, mameleh. I would hope you should know that by now."
"Good news, bad news," Gretchen said over the unreliable line of a cell phone. It was 4:00 p.m., and she had already seen and conquered French Lick.
"They were here. In fact, they made quite an impression. One of the employees remembered the mother because her little girl had an accident in the playground-you know, in one of those ball rooms-and it got a little ugly. They yelled at the woman for letting her daughter go in there, knowing she wasn't toilet trained, the mother said the girl was, that it must be diarrhea from the food, and it went downhill from there. They roared out of there, leaving no forwarding address and, its being McDonald's and all, no telltale credit-card slip. Not that this woman ever uses a credit card. But it was definitely her."
"If it was Natalie, she was telling the truth about Penina's being toilet trained. The twins are five."
"Okay, great, I'm glad to know who was telling the truth in the great poopie-diaper debate. Anyway, the manager told me they were clearly passing through. They were in some big old car."
"And the car was…?"
"Green. Old. Didn't notice the tag, just that it wasn't local. One worker thought they had suitcases on the luggage rack when they pulled in, but another was adamant that the car didn't have anything on the roof when it pulled out. So big, green, and old, not from Indiana. Think we can get state police to give us a roadblock based on that information?"
"Funny, Gretchen."
"I'm sorry, but it kills me how unobservant people are. You know, our government's been telling us since 9/11 that we gotta pay attention, that we're their eyes and ears on the front lines of the war against terrorism. Meanwhile, the average Joe wouldn't notice someone building a dirty bomb at the corner table in Starbucks."
"But they were sure it was Natalie?"
"What? Oh, yeah. Apparently men remember that face. Which brings me to the most important piece of news-"
Gretchen's cell phone picked this moment to go out. Tess waited a few seconds to see if Gretchen would wander back into a good cell, then hung up, knowing she would call again.
"Sorry. Anyway, I did learn something else, but it's not going to make your client happy."
"Yeah?"
"Natalie's traveling with a man."
Tess wished she were more surprised. "Description?"
"About as helpful as old and green. Thirties or forties, tall, blue eyes, dark hair, cropped short. Muscular, but not muscle-bound. No facial hair. Dressed in what the cashier called a cowboy kind of way, which apparently translates to jeans, boots, and a denim jacket in this part of the world. She said he was good-looking, but I'm not sure the McDonald's cashier and I have the same taste in men."
"Anything else?"
"No, it's pretty much the land of generic one-syllable adjectives. Although Natalie probably would have been noticed even if her daughter hadn't flamed out in the ball room."
"Because she's so pretty?"
"And she has dark hair. You don't see a lot of brunettes in this part of the world."
Tess hung up the phone and got out an atlas, an old one, but its version of the world was good enough for her purposes as long as she wasn't tracking someone through Natalie Rubin's country of origin, still listed here as the USSR.
French Lick was in southern Indiana, and it wasn't on a major interstate. It was-Tess worked backward, using the mileage charts for Evansville and Louisville-almost seven hundred miles from Baltimore. The Internet provided the helpful information that it had a golf resort and something called the Antique Hair Museum.
But on what route did it lie, why would someone pass through there? That's what had Tess stumped. If Natalie was heading west, why was she traveling so far from the interstate, and why had she made so little progress? Gone three weeks, she could have reached the opposite coast by now. Tess knew that movies often showed people trying to hide out in small towns, but it was a ludicrous plan in practice. A strange family would be more noticeable in a small town, not less. French Lick had only two thousand people, the nearby county seat of Paoli a mere twenty thousand. It was no place to hide, and no place to go, unless Natalie was a fervent Larry Bird fan paying homage to the basketball legend's hometown.
This was one drawback to the SnoopSisters network. Gretchen had swept in and done exactly what was requested, with concrete results. She had gotten there faster and cheaper than Tess ever could. But this job-share arrangement was no substitute for seeing a place with your own eyes, for walking the streets, for getting lost and then found again. Tess often made her best discoveries as the result of wrong turns and tangents.
She had promised Rubin to call as soon as the Sabbath ended. But such news would have to be delivered in person. It would be too coldhearted to drop it on him in a phone call, to pretend the news was anything less than devastating. Natalie was traveling with a man. He probably paid the bills. That answered one question, but it raised a lot more.
The September sun was strong, and Tess decided to sit on the deck and watch it go down, dropping in and out of a novel as her attention span allowed. Too keyed up to read something new, she chose to reread, picking the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, Peyton Place. She considered pulling Marjorie Morningstar off the shelf but decided she'd rather hang out with Metalious's repressed New Englanders, who did such shocking things when they thought they were unobserved. Marjorie, on the other hand, was just a tiresome virgin who had to learn the hard way to give up on rascals and settle down with a nice Jewish boy.
In Wouk's worldview this left Marjorie with a minor deformity, not unlike the crippled arm of the man who had despoiled her. For Tess, Marjorie's mistake was the only quality that made her bearable. Choosing the wrong man was an essential step on the road to finding the right one. Or so Tess had heard.
NATALIE LEANED AGAINST A TABLE IN THE AUTOMATIC laundry in Valparaiso, watching their clothes tumble through the dryer. Her entire wardrobe was a single dryer load now, and the children's made up another, only slightly larger one. Back in Baltimore she had a laundry room larger than her childhood bedroom, outfitted with not only an extra-capacity washer and dryer but a special sink for hand washing, built-in cedar closets for out-of-season storage, and a pine table where she folded and stacked the endless, fragrant loads. She had been embarrassed when Lana had pointed out that her folding table was nicer than the Ikea one from which Lana ate her meals. "Take it, then," Natalie had urged. But Lana refused, probably out of pride. "It's too big for my place, and the style is different."
Lord, how Natalie had hated Moshe's house, if only because she could never make it hers. It had so many constant, unending needs-even more than Moshe. The Sabbath was supposed to provide a day of rest, but Natalie spent her Saturdays thinking of the tasks that the next week would bring, and the week beyond that. She had never dreamed she could miss such a burden, but life on the road had made her wistful for the things she had taken for granted, for the very things that had held her captive. For that laundry room, for bathrooms that never smelled of mildew, for gleaming copper pots, for cool lavender-scented sheets on a king-size bed in a room that belonged just to her. And Moshe, of course.
Today's trip to the launderette marked the first time Natalie had been alone in days, apart from when she was in the bathroom, and she wouldn't have been given this brief reprieve if Zeke hadn't agreed to watch the children in the room, rather than try to control them here. Plus, this way they could strip the kids down to nothing and wrap them in towels, giving Natalie a chance to clean all the clothes at once. "We're outnumbered when we take them out," Zeke had agreed. "Besides, no one's going anywhere wearing just a towel."
Isaac's head had swung up sharply, as if he wanted to disagree, and Natalie knew her oldest son would forgo modesty if he saw a chance to get away from Zeke or make another phone call. It would take more than a towel wrapped around his skinny body to keep him in his place. If his spirit weren't so wearing, she might have been proud of him. He was tough. Those were her genes, her family, the Tseltsins.
That was their name back in Russia, their real name, before her father had helped himself to the identity of Boris Petrovich in order to immigrate to the United States as a Soviet Jew.
"We're Jews?" Natalie had asked her mother, not even sure what the word meant, yet certain that it was at odds with whatever she imagined herself to be.
"Sure, why not?" her mother replied.
Her father changed the name again, after they settled in Baltimore. The reason for that second change was unclear to Natalie, like much her father and mother did. The truth was, she wasn't particularly interested in her parents. "Is your father affiliated?" Lana had asked in a tone of hushed respect the first time she had visited the house on Labyrinth Road and seen the evidence of his so-called job-the boxes of electronic equipment stacked in the kitchen, the new clothes that he would sell without letting Natalie pick even one outfit. "I don't know. I don't care," Natalie said. She wasn't ashamed that her father was a criminal. She was embarrassed because he was a bad one, as Zeke never stopped reminding her.
But it was her parents' foreignness that Natalie resented. She couldn't help feeling they were holding her back, that an American girl with her looks would have had dozens of ways to make her mark on the world. The Russian girls who became famous in the United States tended to do athletic things, figure skating and gymnastics and tennis. Natalie had no talent for sports. She was too short to model, according to all of Lana's magazines, and acting did not appeal to her because she didn't want to be anyone but herself. Still, whenever she looked in the mirror, she just knew that destiny had special plans for her.
She was fourteen when she saw the movie with the improbable name Inside Daisy Clover. It was old and strange, and she probably would not have lingered on the channel were it not for the fact that the television had become a mirror. "You look like her," Lana had said, and she did, she really did. Natalie tracked down other movies with Natalie Wood-the other Natalie, as she thought of her-even went to the library and checked out books about her. That was amazing enough that someone might have noticed, if anyone had been paying attention to her at the time. Natalie, who never read, filling out reserve cards at the branch library, even taking the bus downtown to find the one old video that wasn't at Blockbuster, This Property Is Condemned.
Here was the amazing thing: Natalie Wood had been born Natasha, just like her, and changed her name to Natalie, just like her. She was Russian, too. And she had died in a strange accident not long after Natasha came to the United States and became Natalie. So no, she couldn't say she was rein-carnated, but perhaps the actress's spirit was lodged in her body. Natalie submitted herself to Lana, her sights already on cosmetology school, and the results were surprisingly good. Lana shaped her brows into those perfect arches, showed Natalie how to paint her lips and fix her hair. The resemblance was amazing.
Yet somehow no one else seemed to see it. They saw her beauty, and it greased her way through the world, making most things easier and a few things harder. But no one else made the connection.
Until Zeke. She still remembered the feel of his eyes on her the first time she went to visit her father, just after her eighteenth birthday. She was used to stares, but this gaze was different. Intense, about something more than sex. Then he pursed his lips and let out a soft, lingering whistle, five distinct notes. "Somewhere." He was Tony, singing to Maria. Except, thank God, he was a million times better-looking than the actor who had played that part in the movie. He was better-looking than James Dean, too, in Natalie's opinion, better-looking even than Warren Beatty, with that coal-black hair and those shocking blue eyes.
And he had been so courtly. He did not want what the others wanted. He had asked her father permission to write to her-acting as if Boris were the accomplished man he wanted to be, instead of just another prisoner. Zeke's letters had been amazing, better than anything she had read in books or even seen in the movies. He said theirs was a true love, a once-in-a-lifetime love, and the obstacles to it only made it more precious. His sentence was two years. She would be a mere twenty when he got out, a baby still. She promised to wait for him. Months went by before he told her about the federal time that awaited him after he did his state stretch. She was furious with him, but by then she would have done anything he asked, absolutely anything.
Even marry a man she didn't love, because a loveless marriage was, in its own way, the best way to stay faithful to Zeke. True, she hadn't seen it that way, not at first. But between their visits and his letters, Zeke had convinced her. She was so young. She knew about sex, but she knew nothing about love. Committed to Zeke in her heart, she was still susceptible to false love, to falling under a man's spell, only to find that it was a pale imitation of the real thing. She should marry a man who could provide for her, a man whose embraces would never move her-a man who would never threaten her loyalty to Zeke. It wasn't really wrong. She was like an artist, back in the Renaissance, Zeke explained, and her husband would be her patron. Lots of marriages ended, for all sorts of reasons. She would give a man ten years of her life and then leave, asking for no more than was her due. It was more than many women gave their husbands.
Zeke had chosen Mark Rubin. He was rigid in his ways, older than his years, but basically decent. Natalie didn't mind him too much. And once the children came, her affection for him increased. He had given her the greatest gift she could imagine, a gift that doctors had claimed was beyond Natalie, because of a disease she never knew she had-a disease you couldn't see, or even feel, until you tried to conceive. And it had taken quite a bit of talking, trying to explain to Mark how she had come to have this thing called chlamydia. She had told him it was too painful to speak of to him, and let him draw his own conclusions.
True, children were not part of Zeke's plan, but even Zeke had to yield to God's wishes. Besides, Zeke knew about the other men, and he had never minded that. He also knew she had to sleep with Moshe and that he would never allow her to use birth control, given his beliefs. Besides, she had needs, too, and ten years was a long, long time. Mark was not her dream lover, but he wanted to make her happy. If she closed her eyes and thought of Zeke, which one was she really betraying? Both? Neither?
The dryer ended with a shudder and a sigh. Like most of life's obligations, like the children themselves, laundry seemed to multiply in mass when it had to be carried anywhere. Look at the mounds of clothes on the table-you would think it would last them a month, yet Natalie would be back in another laundry, in some other town, within a week. She had packed very little, because she had thought they would be on the road no more than five days. Now it was going on three weeks, and nothing made sense to her. She had thought Zeke would be happy to see her in Terre Haute, that they would go to Chicago as he had promised. Actually, he had seemed kind of mad.
And now they were traveling in odd, directionless circles through ugly little towns. She did not like the way Zeke had chosen to make money, especially her part in it, but he said his counted-on windfall, a trust or something, had been delayed by a few weeks. He pointed out that they harmed no one, unless fooling people was a kind of harm. For his part, he said, he was giving something in exchange for what he got, a great story, an anecdote. "I'm the single most exciting thing that ever happened to these people."
The phrase lingered in her head-the single most exciting thing that ever happened. Zeke had been that for her, a secret treasure, her double life. Driving her minivan, waiting in line at Seven Mile Lane Grocery, enduring the long services every Friday and Saturday, fumbling her way through the prayers she had learned so late in life-the knowledge of Zeke had been like a secret drug that made her heart race, filling her days with soaring expectations.
And yet here she was in a coin laundry in Indiana, reduced to five pairs of underwear, three T-shirts, and two blouses. Zeke had allowed her to buy three pairs of blue jeans with their scant funds, a wonderful treat after years of wearing the wool slacks Mark insisted on. Still, she couldn't help thinking about the clothes she had left behind. Conservative, true, but beautiful and well made. She missed those, too.
Catching her reflection in the porthole of the dryer, she saw a young man sneaking a look at her behind. Too bad for him, his girlfriend caught the look, too, and gave him a nice flat-handed smack across the back of his head. Natalie approved. She would have done the same, or worse. Maybe not for looking, but if she ever caught Zeke doing anything else-well, just say that she would make sure he'd never cheat on her again. In the end it was up to women to take a stand, stake out their men, keep them in check. Zeke may have been afraid of losing her, but she had been just as afraid of losing him, that he would disappear, leaving her in the cold, sad lie of her marriage. Even now that they were together, the fear hadn't subsided. Not for her, and not for Zeke. Something gnawed at him, late at night, made him whimper and fret in his sleep like a small boy. Yet when she asked, he said he never dreamed, that he had willed himself to stop dreaming long ago.
She carried the clothes to the car, taking two trips. She would have liked to stop at the Dairy Queen for a shake, or even a hot dog, but Zeke would make her account for the money she spent. Not because, like Moshe, he didn't trust her, but because they had so little. For now. He swore they would have plenty of money soon.
She checked under the front seat and made sure the box that Amos had given her was still there. Funny, but Zeke wouldn't use it. Even when working, he wanted no part of it. He had a knife, but he never unsheathed it. He said she was a fool, using up precious dollars for something they didn't need, but it made her feel safer. She tied the string back around the box, making sure it was knotted tight. It would be a tragedy for the twins to find it, or even Isaac, prudent as he was. She knew from her own father how the mere fact of having a gun at hand could wreck so many lives.
Although, in the long run, it had saved hers. She wouldn't be where she was now, on the verge of finally being happy, if it weren't for her father's mistakes, if he hadn't killed a man and ended up in prison, where he met Zeke, and then Zeke found her. You could even say a man had sacrificed his life so Natalie might realize her destiny. More proof, as if she needed any, that she and Zeke were special, God's favorites, living by different rules from everybody else.
Mark Rubin's house was a starkly modern box of glass and stucco on a country-club street given to more traditional Tudor-style homes. Not the sort of place that Tess would choose, but she realized it was a good example of mid-twentieth-century architecture. Its design, within the context of its simply landscaped lot, had balance and dignity. But it was a discordant note on this suburban street, a prickly outsider.
Not unlike the man who lived inside.
"Bad news on my doorstep," he said when he saw Tess, and it was hard not to paraphrase "American Pie" back to him. Yes, and I don't want to take one more step.
"Neutral," she said, knowing that her information was anything but. "They were there, but they appeared to be passing through. The manager at the McDonald's remembered Natalie and the children. They're in an old green car, a sedan of some sort. At least one employee thought they had luggage on the roof when they pulled in."
"Where did she get an old green car? And why would they tie the luggage to the roof?" Tess understood why Rubin was seizing on these details, which were easier to grasp and dissect than the larger issues. "They can't have that much luggage. They hardly took anything, three suitcases total."
"There's more-"
"Luggage on the roof of a green car-this is all you found out? This is what you consider a result?"
It was hard trying to be solicitous of someone's feelings when the other person was not so considerate. But Tess was determined to break the news about the mystery man as gently as possible.
"There is more, but before I tell you everything Gretchen learned, I want to tell you something I found out from my Uncle Donald. He told me the true story of how you and Natalie met."
"And?"
"As I understand it, no Carvel stand was involved, not unless Jessup had a franchise."
Rubin looked angry and relieved at the same time, as if embarrassed by the lie but also glad to give it up. "Why don't you come in? We have much to talk about."
"I didn't tell you that story to mislead you," he said. "I told it out of habit, quite forgetting that your uncle knew the true circumstances."
"And how did you get in the habit of lying?" They were sitting in his office, a cozy, cluttered refuge from the sterile perfection of the other rooms she had seen, open expanses decorated in a minimalist style, with lots of birch-pale hardwoods, pastel upholstery, and modern art. Tess wondered how someone with three children could keep a house this pristine. Then she realized that Mark Rubin hadn't-Natalie Rubin had. Another reason to head for the hills. Tess could tell by the way Rubin used a coaster for his wineglass that his standards for housekeeping were exacting.
"Natalie and I agreed when we became engaged that we would have an official version of how we met and courted. It's easier, with a story, to always tell the same one."
"Yes, that is a good rule for liars." She didn't want to let him off the hook too easily.
"I won't argue semantics with you," Rubin said. His tone made it clear that he wouldn't argue only because it would slow him down, not because he wouldn't win. "There were already so many obstacles to Natalie's being accepted in my community. She was young, with only a high-school education. She had not been raised in the faith, although that is hardly her fault. And because she was vague about her family's background, she even agreed to be dunked."
"Dunked?"
"She went for instruction with the rabbi and did the mikveh. In some ways, her passion for our religion seemed stronger than that of some lifelong Jews I knew."
"Converts making the best adherents, et cetera, et cetera."
"Well, not strictly a convert, but I know what you mean. Her zeal was exceptional. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I thought it was bound up with her love for me. When we met, Natalie seemed to mink of nothing but pleasing me. She was… uncannily perfect, everything I wanted in a woman."
"Right down to the eighteen-year-old part?"
He blushed. "Matches between older men and younger women do make sense, biologically. I'm sorry if that fact offends you, but an eighteen-year-old woman is ready to marry and have children. Culture may have changed. Our bodies did not."
"Well, Sarah had a baby at ninety or something like that. Should I interpret that biblical story as evidence of the first surrogate, or did God do some in vitro?"
"An apt biblical reference. I admit to being surprised."
"I'm agnostic, not ignorant."
Pleased with herself, Tess took a sip of the kosher wine that Rubin had poured for her. The wine was quite good, a red blend from Chile. She was beginning to get a glimpse of the man her Uncle Donald had described. Rubin might be a pain as a client and a terror as a businessman, but he probably was excellent company in social situations. The books on his shelves indicated a worldly man, with a wide range of interests, and he clearly had a talent for the kind of verbal sparring Tess enjoyed.
Then again, how would Tess and Rubin have ever met under different circumstances? Ten miles apart in physical distance, they might as well have been in different galaxies. Their Baltimores barely intersected.
"You're not the first person, male or female, to snigger at my choice of a bride. And there was some animosity toward Natalie among the women in my congregation, women who have known me all my life, who took a special interest in me after my mother died. So you can see why I didn't want to give them additional ammunition. Yes, Natalie's father was in prison, and that's how I met her."
"My Uncle Donald said she sought you out to discuss her father's refusal to embrace his faith. But he also told me that Boris gave the impression of someone who was always running a game."
"Your uncle is astute. Boris was running a game-but on his daughter, not me. When Boris became aware of my relationship with Natalie, he attempted to blackmail her. Soon after we married, he coerced her into making deposits into an account in his name, a nest egg for when he's finally released from prison."
"Blackmail her? Over what?"
"I don't know, and I don't care. I'm sure Natalie had her share of youthful indiscretions. She was a high-spirited girl who knew almost no parental supervision after her parents divorced. When I found out what her father was doing, I told her she must break off all contact with Boris." Rubin swirled the wine in his glass, studying it with an oenophile's critical eye. "That's the reason behind our financial system. I don't know what hold Boris had over Natalie, but she was clearly terrified of what he might tell me. I didn't want her to succumb to his extortion again."
"I'm surprised he gave up so quickly."
"A man in prison is easy enough to ignore. You refuse the collect calls, you don't open mail with a certain postmark. Besides, when I told Boris I didn't care what he knew about Natalie, he lost all power over us. Blackmail isn't that different from other luxury goods. The pool of customers is smaller, so the salesman has to be sharper. Boris had only one customer for what he was selling, and I shut that down."
"But now that Natalie's gone-"
"I vowed to her ten years ago that I would not listen to her father's lies about her. A promise is a promise."
"She promised to love, honor, and cherish until death do you part, so I think you can go back on your word in this instance."
"Whatever he wants to tell me, it's probably not true. So what's the point of listening?"
Mark Rubin's face seemed to be hardening as she pressed him. But Tess saw more than stubbornness in his features. She also saw fear and desperation. He was terrified of hearing whatever his father-in-law had to say.
"Because it's a lead, the best one we have. You're the one who suggested Natalie left because she wanted to protect you from some secret in her past. Boris may know what it is."
"No. He's a liar. And a thief. Not to mention a killer. Trust me, there's no reason to talk to him."
"The thing is"-she hated herself for what she was about to do-"maybe Boris could help us figure out the identity of the man who was with Natalie in French Lick."
Tess might as well have vomited on Rubin's desktop, given the way he recoiled. She tried to pretend the gaffe was more accidental than it was.
"I'm so sorry. Does kosher wine have a higher alcohol content than the regular stuff? Because that's not how I intended to tell you that one detail."
"I'm not sure anyone would know how to break such news. When you say 'with'…"
"That's all I know. With. The people at the McDonald's said Natalie left with a man. The description was vague-six feet, dark hair, slender. Not a lot to go on, but does it mean anything to you?"
"She was with a man?"
It had never occurred to him. Which was amazing, because the likelihood had been in the back of Tess's mind from the outset.
"It helps to explain the strange car, and maybe even how she's getting by financially. But it doesn't explain why she's in French Lick, Indiana. And it doesn't mean she's with him. I mean, if she wants to leave you for someone else, she could have done it in a more traditional way."
"More traditional?"
"Served you with papers and asked for half of everything you have."
"She wouldn't get it. The divorce, I mean. I would fight her on that."
"You could, but all she has to do is wait you out two years. After a two-year separation, even an involuntary one, Maryland courts will grant a divorce, no matter what rabbis do or don't do. Of course, the custody and the financial details would still have to be arranged. But it's pretty hard to make someone stay married to you these days."
"Our rabbi would talk to her, make her see common sense. Besides, there isn't that much money."
Tess rolled her eyes. "You mean, besides this million-dollar house and everything in it, and the business, and your investments? Not to mention the child support you'd have to pay."
"The business's value has been flat, and even this house has increased only marginally in value. I bought right before the market slumped a decade ago, and I'm just beginning to catch up. Most of my money comes from an inheritance. Spouses have no right to inherited funds-and that's true under state and religious law."
"You know a lot about Maryland's marital-assets law," Tess said, "for a man who has never contemplated divorce."
Rubin swirled his wine again, watching the dregs slide down the interior of the glass. "A few years back, Natalie had a strange episode of depression and talked about leaving. I… outlined the financial realities of such a decision. I also told her I would fight for custody of Isaac."
"You said there was no marital strife, that you had never discussed separation or divorce." Tess, usually tolerant of clients' lies and evasions, was beginning to lose patience with Rubin.
"We hadn't, except that one time, and it was six years ago. We're talking about a week or two, one bad patch in an otherwise strong and happy marriage. It turned out she was pregnant with the twins at the time, and we both decided it was just hormones."
You decided, Tess thought, and Natalie acquiesced. What other options did she have after you told her you'd give her no money? But she let it go. There were more pressing matters to explore.
"So any ideas about our mystery man?"
He winced, pained just by the mention. "None. As far as I know, the only men in Natalie's life were the merchants at the local stores, some teachers at Isaac's school."
"Does she have a friend, or a male relative, who might help her leave for whatever reason?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Was there any man she came into contact with on a regular basis?"
"I don't see how."
"This man was tall and slender, with dark hair and blue eyes. Clean-shaven. Sound familiar?"
"No."
"Don't be so quick and emphatic. Think about it. Everyone knows someone who looks like that. My boyfriend looks like that, okay? Hey, maybe he's in Indiana with Natalie, not in Virginia with his family."
Rubin frowned and waved Tess away, as if he wanted her to leave, or disappear. Abracadabra, make all bad news go away.
"Okay, I just thought you should know what Gretchen found out, and I thought I should deliver the news face-to-face. Now I have. Please call me if you think of anything, anything at all. Because we're at a dead end unless your phone rings again. You should get caller ID at home, by the way. If your office phone hadn't shown us that number, we wouldn't know anything right now. Star 69 is okay, but more stuff gets through on caller ID."
Rubin opened his mouth as if to speak, then thought better of it.
"I've been cheated on," Tess said. "It sucks. I cheated, too, and that sucks even more, believe it or not. And I still didn't learn from that. I did a Jimmy Carter cheat on my boyfriend a few years ago-I was guilty only in my mind, but it was just a matter of time before my body followed. He knew me so well he saw it coming, and he left. I had to follow him all the way to Texas to get him back."
"Why are you telling me this? Take my advice, these are not the sort of confidences that a businesswoman imparts to someone who has hired her. I don't wish to know anything about your private life."
"I'm confiding in you because I'm human, and I know how this feels. Okay, you say your wife would never cheat on you, that you'd know, in your bones, if she had slept with another man. And maybe you're right. But in my line of work, I see people who do things primarily for two reasons-sex and money."
"Surely there are other reasons, other secrets."
Tess nodded. "Yes, there's shame, the need to cover up a past transgression. Is that involved here? Is there anything else you're not telling me?"
Rubin shook his head.
"Your wife left you, forgoing money. She's driving around in the Midwest in some old clunker of a car and eating at McDonald's, which wasn't kosher last time I checked. Did she want to get away from you and your life that badly? Or did she want someone else that much? It's one or the other, and it could be both."
She thought her harsh words might make the always-emotional Rubin dissolve into tears, but he just stared into the distance, shaking his head. He truly seemed overwhelmed by everything she had told him, which surprised Tess. Typically, the revelation of an affair was an aha moment that shed light on many smaller mysteries in a person's life. It was like living in a house where plaster cracked and faucets leaked and wind whistled around the window frames, then finding out the foundation was sliding off the slab.
"I believed in my marriage," he said at last. "I would never be so blasphemous as to compare it to a religion, but I counted on it and assumed it would always be there for me."
"People make mistakes," Tess said. "They do stupid things. I don't know if your wife will ever come back to you once I find her. But if that's what you want, you're going to have to forgive her and be open to understanding why she did what she did."
"When you find her. Why are you suddenly so confident, when you've just told me you have no leads?"
"Because we have someone helping us out."
"That friend of yours? With all due respect, I don't see anything extraordinary in her efforts so far."
"Gretchen did okay with what we gave her. But the accomplice I'm really counting on is your son Isaac. He tried to call you twice yesterday. And he's quite the little schemer-hustling money for the first call, calling collect the second time."
"He's a smart boy, at the top of his class," Rubin said, allowing himself a moment of fatherly pride.
"So we've got someone working for us on the inside. But we can't put everything on him, and we can't give up. I'd like your permission to visit Natalie's father, ask him the secret he's been sitting on all these years."
"No."
"I won't tell you what it is. That way you won't break your promise to Natalie. And if it has no bearing on her disappearance, we'll never speak of it again. Deal?"
She would have liked to offer her hand, but she knew better. Instead she tipped her glass close to Rubin's. He hesitated, then clinked hers. They were good glasses, Riedel, a single goblet worth more than Tess's entire set of mismatched glassware.
They also had to be hand-washed. Another reason, in Tess's opinion, to run away. A sixty-dollar glass was a luxury only if you didn't have to wash it yourself.