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  LAURA LIPPMAN

  BY A SPIDERS THREAD

  AVON BOOKS

  An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  AVON BOOKS

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, New York 10022-5299

  Copyright © 2004 by Laura Lippman

  Excerpt from To the Power of Three copyright © 2005

  by Laura Lippman

  Author photo by Marion Ettlinger

  ISBN: 0-06-050671-7

  www.avonbooks.com

  First Avon Books paperback printing: July 2005

  First William Morrow hardcover printing: July 2004

  Avon Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. and in Other Countries,

  Marca Registrada, Hecho en U.S.A.

  HarperCollins® is a registered trademark

  of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  WINNER OF EVERY MAJOR AWARD IN CRIME FICTION

  "A CRIME FICTION STAR."

  Baltimore Sun

  "I LOVE HER BOOKS."

  Harlan Coben

  "LIPPMAN IS A MASTER…

  THE BEST MYSTERY WRITING AROUND."

  Village Voice Literary Supplement

  "If Kinsey Milhone is the '80s answer to

  Nancy Drew, Lippman's Tess Monaghan is

  Nancy's darker, more literate modern-day equivalent … By a Spider's Thread plays with the tenuousness of relationships and the delicate filaments that hold people together."

  Chicago Sun-Times

  "An involving and impressive tale of a family torn asunder by old sins… Lippman unfolds its depths and manifold ironies with considerable artistry."

  San Jose Mercury-News

  "Laura Lippman is among the select group of novelists who have invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative, and exciting work.

  She consistently delivers the goods."

  George Pelecanos

  "Thoroughly believable… The real deal…

  One of the pleasures of this eighth Tess

  Monaghan novel is the cast of characters that

  Lippman draws, neatly avoiding stereotypes…

  Lippman keeps us dangling through a hair-raising ride."

  Boston Globe

  "I enjoyed Laura Lippman's standalone novel, Every Secret Thing, so much that I dipped into her established series with this new Tess Monaghan, By a Spider's Thread, and discovered a new favorite. Tess and her friends and family are warm and real, and the mystery is well-plotted and satisfyingly complex…

  Lippman creates quirky and likable characters…

  I'll definitely be going back to earlier Tess

  Monaghan books to see what I've been missing."

  Charlotte Observer

  "Mysterious and frightening… Surely Lippman deserves a place in the upper ranks of popular crime fiction. She knows her city… and her ability to develop characters is commendable…

  There's an abundance of evil in this novel…

  Betrayal and vengeance reign. But count on private-eye Tess to make sense of it all."

  Wilmington News Journal

  "The biggest challenge for the author of a mystery series is keeping a character as engaging in the sixth book as she was in the first.

  The second biggest challenge is making sure the plots don't get stale, either… [Lippman]

  succeeds on both counts … By a Spider's

  Thread is so strong… Lippman uses alternating narration to great effect… [Her] deft switches of perspective build suspense… The eventual unraveling is entertaining, to be sure, but the book succeeds because we get so far inside the heads of its characters."

  Austin American-Statesman

  "A delight… praise the author… [Her heroine] still seems fresh… [Lippman] cleans out the fiction closet for this one—the Russian mob, conniving ex-cons, Natalie Wood, the power of raw sex—and makes it all work."

  Palm Beach Post

  "Lippman brings a fresh, unconventional approach to the mystery genre in By a Spider's

  Thread… skillfully [interweaving] the diverse topics of religion, relationships, and identity…

  Lippman handles the question of prejudice and faith with the aplomb we've come to expect from this multi-award-winning author."

  Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  "It's a joy to watch [Tess] come alive."

  Washington Times

  "An original, seemingly simple case that evolves into something far more convoluted and sinister… It says something for Lippman as a storyteller that she hasn't fallen back on descriptions of high-tech gadgetry in lieu of character development… By a Spider's Thread

  has enough believable plot twists to keep you thoroughly entertained for hours."

  Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  "By showcasing the search for the Rubin family through numerous points of view, we get a stark and jarring perspective on how family members and outsiders differ in their views of reality. To say the least, the trip through their minds is disturbing and diffuse."

  USA Today

  "In the upper tier of today's suspense novelists… an author willing to take risks in both writing and storytelling."

  Publishers Weekly

  "Lippman is excellent… that invaluable kind of mystery writer who never shortchanges her genre fans on plot and atmosphere, but includes the kind of excellent writing that draws in non-mystery fans."

  Madison Capital Times

  "Laura Lippman just keeps getting better and better."

  Houston Chronicle

  "Lippman writes fiction that convinces…

  [She] has great sympathy for her characters, and she refuses to condescend to her readers."

  Seattle Times

  "By a Spider's Thread [is] arguably the most complex, moving novel in her Tess Monaghan detective series."

  Time Out New York

  "[A] fast-paced, intelligent story…

  a maze of betrayal, surprises, and murder."

  Jewish Week

  "Lippman is… consistently fresh and imaginative."

  New Orleans Times-Picayune

  'Compulsively readable' may be a cliche, but it's a perfect description of this novel."

  Toronto Globe and Mail

  "Lucky Baltimore to have such a chronicler as

  Laura Lippman. (And lucky us to have her as a tour guide!)"

  Margaret Maron

  Books by Laura Lippman

  By a Spider's Thread

  Every Secret Thing

  The Last Place

  In a Strange City

  The Sugar House

  In Big Trouble

  Butchers Hill

  Charm City

  Baltimore Blues

  For David and Ethan,

  with gratitude for the crash course in fathers and sons,

  not to mention the Advanced Mission Battleship strategy

  If God lived on earth,

  people would knock out all His windows.

  —YIDDISH PROVERB

  Evil inclination is at first as slender as a spider's thread,

  and then strong as a rope.

  —TALMUDIC PROVERB

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK WAS OFTEN THE RESULT of chance encounters and serendipity, beginning with Donald Worden's memories of transporting furs as an off-duty police officer. My former colleague Bill Salganik provided an int
roduction by proxy to Michael Miller, who shared his knowledge of the fur industry and let me try on quite a few coats. Scott Shane was generous with his insights into Baltimore's Russian Jewish community; Carole Epstein solved one of the book's knottier problems poolside in Las Vegas.

  Quite a few folks did their best to help Tess and me grasp the finer points of Orthodox Judaism as it might be practiced by the characters in this book. These included Bernard Simon, Suzanne Balaban, Rafael Alvarez, and Sarah Weinman. I also relied on a wide range of reference books, such as This Is My God, Herman Wouk; The Jewish Book of Why, Alfred J. Kolatch; Fables of a Jewish Aesop, translated by Moses Hadas; A Guide to Jewish Prayer, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz; and Essential Judaism, George Robinson. Any errors are my own. But I also invoke the novelist's prerogative to make stuff up, especially when it comes to the ever-changing social-services bureaucracy.

  Much of this book was written on the premises of Spoons, so thank you to Karen, Mike, Neil, Morgan, and everyone else at that lovely oasis.

  It should be noted that this story was inspired very loosely by the real-life experiences of the late Victor Persico. I met and interviewed Victor in the early 1990s while working for the Baltimore Sun, but the article was spiked for complicated reasons. Victor was a gentle soul, and I wish that the world had had a chance to know the full story of his devotion to his three sons, a devotion that transcended anything I could ever invent. This is much too little, much too late.

  Contents

  SEPTEMBER

  WEDNESDAY

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  THURSDAY

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  FRIDAY

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  SATURDAY

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  SUNDAY

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  MONDAY

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  TUESDAY

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  WEDNESDAY

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  THURSDAY

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  FRIDAY

  Chapter Thirty-three

  MONDAY

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  TUESDAY

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  NOVEMBER

  Chapter Forty-one

  SEPTEMBER

  They were in one of the "I" states when Zeke told Isaac he had to ride in the trunk for a little while. Zeke announced this new plan in what Isaac thought of as his fakey voice, big and hollow, with too much air in it. This was the voice Zeke used whenever Isaac's mother was nearby. He used a very different one when she couldn't hear.

  "You brought this on yourself, buckaroo," Zeke said, securing the suitcases to the roof of the car, then making a nest in the center of the trunk. When Isaac just stared at the space that had been created, not sure what Zeke wanted him to do, Zeke picked him up under the arms, swinging him into the hole as if Isaac weighed nothing at all. "See, plenty of room."

  "Put down a blanket," Isaac's mother said, but she didn't object to the trunk idea, didn't say it was wrong or that she wouldn't allow it. She didn't even mind that Zeke had stolen the blanket from the motel room. She just stood there with Penina and Efraim huddled close to her, looking disappointed. That was the last thing Isaac saw before Zeke closed the trunk: his mother's face, sad and stern, as if Isaac were the bad one, as if he had caused all the trouble. So unfair. He was the one who was trying to do the right thing.

  The trunk was bigger than Isaac expected, and he was not as frightened as he thought he would be. It was too bad it was such an old car. A new one, like his father's, might have an emergency light inside, or even a way to spring the lock. His father had shown him these features in his car after he found Isaac playing with the buttons on his key ring—popping the trunk, locking and unlocking the Cadillac's doors. Isaac's mother had yelled, saying the key ring wasn't a toy, that he would break it or burn out the batteries, but Isaac's father had shown Isaac everything about his new car, even under the hood. That was his father's way. "Curiosity didn't kill the cat," his father said. "Not getting answers to his questions was what got the cat in trouble." His father had even shut himself in the trunk and shown Isaac how to get out again.

  But this car was old, very old, the oldest car Isaac had ever known, probably older than Isaac. It didn't have airbags, or enough seat belts in the backseat. Isaac kept hoping a policeman might pull them over one day because of the seat belts. Or maybe a toll taker would report his mother for holding one of the twins in her lap in the front seat, which she did when they fussed. But there were no tolls here, not on the roads that Zeke drove. Isaac was trying so hard to keep track—they had started out in Indiana, and then they went to Illinois, but Isaac was pretty sure that they had come back to Indiana in the past week. Or they could still be in Illinois, or even as far west as Iowa. It was hard to see differences here in the middle of the country, where everything was yellow and the towns had strange names that were hard to pronounce.

  It was hard to tell time, too, without school marking the days off, without a calendar on the kitchen wall, without Shabbat reminding you that another week had ended. Would God understand about missing Shabbat? If God knew everything, did he know it wasn't Isaac's fault that he wasn't going to yeshiva? Or was it up to Isaac to find a way to pray no matter what, the way his father did when he traveled for business? Now, this was the kind of conversation his father loved. He would have started pulling books from the shelves in his study, looking for various rabbis' opinions. And, whatever the answer was, his father would have made Isaac feel okay, would have assured him that he was doing his best, which was all God expected. That was his father's way, to answer Isaac's questions and make him feel better.

  His father knew everything, or close enough. He knew history and the Torah, math and science. He knew lots of terrific old war movies and westerns, and the names of all the Orioles, past and present. Best of all, he could talk about the night sky as if it were a story in a book, telling the stories that the Greeks and Indians had told themselves when they looked at the same stars.

  "Does Orion ever catch the bull?" Isaac had asked his father once. Of course, that had been when he was little, six or seven. He was nine now, going into the fourth grade, or supposed to be. He wouldn't ask such a question now.

  "Not yet," his father had said, "but you never know. After all, if the universe is really shrinking, he may catch up with him still."

  That had scared Isaac, the part about the universe shrinking, but his father had said it wasn't something he needed to worry about. But Isaac worried about everything, especially now. He worried about Lyme disease and West Nile virus and whether Washington, D.C., would get a baseball team, which his dad said might not be so good for the Orioles. He worried about the twins, who had started talking this weird not-quite-English to each other.

  Mostly, though, he worried about Zeke and how to get away from him.

  Despite being locked in the trunk, bouncing and bumping down the road, Isaac wasn't sorry that he had tried to talk to the guard man. His only mistake was letting his mother see him do it. If the line in the bank had been
longer, if it hadn't moved so fast, he might have had time to explain himself. Why did lines move fast only when you didn't want them to?

  The guard was in a corner. He was old, really old, and he didn't look very strong, but he had a gun. Glancing around, Isaac had sidled over to him and tugged at the man's sleeve. But when the man looked at him, Isaac's mind went blank. He had no idea what to say. It was complicated, what had happened. He wasn't even sure exactly what had happened. His mother said it was okay, to trust her, that everything was going to be wonderful pretty soon. She had a reason for doing what she did. He was just too young to understand. He had to trust her, he had to be patient. She said this over and over and over again.

  Zeke said Isaac should just be quiet and do what he was told.

  "Mister…"

  "Yeah?" The guard's eyes met Isaac's only for a second, then returned to studying the bank lobby.

  "My mother… the woman in the blue scarf?"

  "Uh-huh."

  He was not sure what the guard was agreeing to—that he had a mother, that she wore a blue scarf—so he plunged ahead, his words coming fast, probably too fast. "She took us. She stole us. We don't live here. We live at 341 Cedar Court in Pikesville, Maryland, near the Suburban Club golf course, 212—"

  "But she's your mother?"

  "Yes."

  "That's your mother?"

  "Yes."

  "And she's married to your father?"

  This question tripped Isaac up, because he was no longer sure of the answer and he liked to be correct whenever possible. It had been two weeks, maybe more, maybe less, since his mother had told Isaac to pack his bag for a weekend trip. He had not seen his father or talked to him since that day. Did that make his parents divorced? No, divorce was much more complicated, he was sure of that much. It didn't happen just because somebody left. His father went on business trips all the time, and that hadn't made them divorced, so his mother's packing up suitcases and taking them away couldn't make them divorced either.